Israeli military experts describe how the Hamas group has used its vast arsenal, knowledge of the terrain and extensive tunnel network to turn Gaza's streets into a deadly maze.
Accordingly, Hamas has different types of weapons, from drones equipped with grenades to anti-tank weapons with powerful dual-purpose destruction.
Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip. Photo: REUTERS
Since Israel's ground campaign began in late October, some 110 Israeli soldiers have been killed as tanks and infantry have advanced on cities and refugee camps, according to official Israeli figures.
That figure is more than the 66 soldiers killed in the 2014 conflict, when Israel launched a three-week ground offensive but the goal then was not to eliminate Hamas.
“There is no comparison in the scale of this war with 2014, when our forces barely operated more than a kilometer inside Gaza,” said Yaacov Amidror, a retired Israeli major general and former national security adviser now at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).
The military “has yet to find a good solution for the tunnels,” a network that has expanded significantly over the past decade, he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel will wage war “until absolute victory.” Israeli officials said it could take months before that goal is achieved.
“This was a challenge from day one,” said Ophir Falk, Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser, adding that the strike had come at a high cost. “We knew that we might have to pay a price to accomplish the mission.”
“Hamas has made some big strides to build up its forces since 2014,” said Eyal Pinko, a former senior official in Israel’s intelligence agency who is now at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University.
He said some advanced weapons, such as the Russian-designed Kornet anti-tank missile, had been smuggled in with the help of Hamas’s ally Iran. But he said Hamas had mastered making other weapons in Gaza, such as the RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade, and the militants now had a larger stockpile of ammunition.
Mai Anh (according to Reuters)
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