John Spencer
Modern War Institute, Oct. 11, 2023
“… urban warfare presents challenges that extend well beyond the tactical level. On top of these are several that will challenge Israel’s efforts at the operational and even strategic level.”
Shortly after a Hamas assault that produced the deadliest day Israel has suffered in decades, Israel declared war. The full range of specific actions such a war declaration will entail was not immediately clear, but when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that operations against Hamas forces that had entered Israeli territory would be followed by an “offensive formation,” this was interpreted by many as an indication that ground forces would be sent into Gaza. That possibility looks increasingly likely after Netanyahu told President Joe Biden that Israel must go into Gaza—presumably with the mission of destroying Hamas military capability. To conduct a possible ground assault, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have called up over three hundred thousand reservists and continue to mobilize a large force in southern Israel.
If Israel is indeed planning an assault by ground forces into Gaza, these forces will confront a range of challenges—some that will match those of other recent urban battles and others that stem from the unique characteristics of the urban terrain and enemy situation in Gaza. But what will they look like, specifically? Both recent cases of urban warfare and Israel’s previous experience in Gaza yield clues.
It is important to note that while the Gaza Strip’s 140 square miles contain multiple highly dense cities—including Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis, and Rafah—and are home to over two million residents, the area is not “one of the most densely populated territories on Earth,” as some reports have described it. The densest portion of Gaza, Gaza City, holds over nine thousand residents per square kilometer, but this does not even put it in the top fifty most densely populated cities in the world. A series of recent urban battles have been fought in cities with comparable population densities—like Baghdad in 2003, Fallujah 2004, Mosul and Marawi in 2017, and Kyiv and Mariupol in 2022. But as the lessons of these battles make clear, urban warfare need not take place in “one of the most densely populated territories on Earth” for it to present major difficulties for military forces. … [To read the full article, click here]
