Tunnels, traps and Tehran: Why Israel hasn’t attacked Gaza yet and what will happen when it does

It has been nearly a week since the first Israeli evacuation orders were handed down to Palestinian civilians in Gaza to head southward, sparking fears that a ground offensive in the north was imminent.

After Hamas militants broke into Israel on 7 October, killing more than a thousand innocent victims, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been clear that a retaliatory attack to “destroy” the group will happen.

Through extensive research and conversations with experts, The Independent explains what this incursion could look like and the myriad hurdles that Israel must overcome to make sure it is a success.

Urban warfare is widely regarded as the most dangerous form of fighting.

Combat in close confines makes it difficult to foresee enemy fighters and multi-storey buildings vulnerable to collapse combine to pose a significant threat to life. The battlefield is also filled with civilians protected under international law.

An Israeli urban incursion into Gaza more specifically is made harder by two additional problems.

Firstly, there are hostages throughout the enclave and their locations are not all known. Secondly, the full extent of weapons held by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant organisation in Gaza, is also unknown.

A three-tiered air column 60,000 feet tall will be vital to counteract this, according to Anthony King, a professor of War Studies at Exeter University.

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It will prevent both the immediate singular threats surrounding the soldiers and help guide the larger armed convoy, which includes tanks, armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and mine-clearance vehicles, through the enclave without being targeted by heavier Hamas weaponry.

The column will include micro drones and attack helicopters immediately overhead, larger surveillance and kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating from the second tier and fighter jets with strike capabilities high in the air.

In front of the soldiers, who look to be heading into the enclave from the north, which they have tried to evacuate, will be a series of defensive lines erected by Hamas.

They include mines, ambush sites and mortar targets, according to a recent review by Nadav Morag, a former Israeli security advisor.

It is widely suspected that areas will also be booby-trapped, including doors laden with explosives, to incur additional damage after Hamas militants have withdrawn from positions.

Snipers will also be positioned in obscured areas, firing at soldiers as they make their way through the streets.

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Israeli intelligence from 2021 estimated that the total number of rockets available to factions in Gaza was roughly 30,000, though that total may have increased since.

A similar number of militants are believed to be in the Strip. While it is not known how many Israeli soldiers will be used for the ground offensive - 360,000 reservists have been called up to supplement 170,000 active soldiers since October 7, though many will be used as a deterrent to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon - the fact remains that the personnel power of Israel far exceeds that of Hamas.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad also have their own drones, including those that can be packed with explosions and remotely navigated toward a target, as well as those that loiter in the air and deliver munitions from above.

An unknown quantity of assault rifles, machine guns and grenades will also be available to militants.

Most importantly, Hamas has spent more than 15 years building a network of underground tunnels beneath the Strip, known as the “Gaza Metro”.

Israel’s foreign ministry claims that at least 1,370 tunnels have been built since 2007. They are often between 10 and 20 metres beneath the ground and up to two metres in height.

Colin P. Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, an intelligence consultancy, told The Independent that fighting in these tunnels is a “nightmare scenario” for Israel, adding that their knowledge of the tunnel network may be incomplete.

“Preparing to fight in such terrain is incredibly difficult and would require extensive intelligence on what the network of tunnels looks like, which the Israelis may not have,” he said.

“Clearing tunnels is a nightmare scenario for the soldiers doing it, and like the urban warfare taking place on the surface, it’s a slow, methodical process. Ground mobile drones, uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs), and other intelligence assets may be used to map the tunnels and identify booby traps before sending soldiers to clear them.

“Some air-delivered munitions, referred to as ‘bunker busters,’ may be used; however, these are primarily used to target key command and control nodes. Also, the dense urban terrain in Gaza may limit their use due to the anticipated collateral damage.”

In addition to being used as storage facilities, command centres and for transportation, the tunnels have also been used to mount attacks.

Given potential gaps in knowledge regarding the whereabouts and extent of these tunnels, Israeli soldiers will have to be on high alert for militants appearing out of nowhere.

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The second stage of Israel’s offensive, once the major Hamas positions have been captured, will be maintaining a presence in the Strip, at least temporarily.

That carries with it novel problems.

Sir Tom Beckett, a retired lieutenant general for the British Army, wrote in a piece for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) that “once [Israel] stops attacking and starts occupying, it will lose the initiative by becoming a garrison located in fixed sites”.

This means they will face a heightened threat from insurgents hiding among civilians or in tunnels that went undiscovered during the first stage of the offensive, all the while remaining largely static.

Until all hostages are rescued and Hamas neutralised, it will be difficult for Israeli forces to leave the Strip without failing to achieve their stated aim of preventing the group from being able to “revive” itself.

David Makovsky, an expert on Arab-Israel relations at The Washington Institute, said this necessary “high bar” for Israeli success means there is a “low bar” for Hamas to claim victory.

They can essentially “pop up” after the attack and sell their survival as a success, he told The Independent.

This underscores the need for Israel to somehow eradicate the threat of Hamas entirely without spending too long in a vulnerable position within the Strip.

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An Iranian-led “axis of resistance” poses a significant additional threat to Israel, one that is heightened both by a ground offensive and a temporary occupation of Gaza.

Just above Israel’s northern border, members of Hezbollah, a militant organisation turned de facto leader of southern Lebanon, and which is armed by Iran, have been intermittently firing missiles into Israeli territory over the past week.

In Tehran, the Iranian capital, senior officials, including the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have repeatedly called for Israel to be destroyed following a campaign of airstrikes in Gaza.

“If the crimes of the Israeli regime continue, Muslims and resistance forces will become impatient, and no one can stop them,” Khamenei said.

“The bombardment of Gaza must stop immediately. We all have a responsibility to react; we must react.”

If Israel proceeds with a ground offensive, Mr Makovsky said, the “odds of an Iranian response clearly go up”.

Whether that translates to the opening of a second front or regional escalation, however, is doubtful.

Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian Studies, said the theocratic regime in Tehran was “basically … cheering Hamas on” from afar.

“The minute there is this anxiety about a wider escalation, or that Iran may be a target, there’s a clear distancing” from Tehran to Palestinians, he added.

The Iranian regime is also still wary of domestic unrest following mass protests that began last September, he said, making launching a war more difficult.

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Senior Israeli military figures said last weekend that poor weather had prevented a swift incursion; aerial surveillance, either with drones or spy planes, is vital to the safety of soldiers on the ground but near-impossible in cloudy conditions.

But when those conditions abated on Monday, still there was no ground offensive.

The reasons the incursion has not happened yet are multifaceted, relating to a heightened risk of regional escalation and a wider Western call to protect Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfires.

But primarily, it is due to the seismic task of safely sending Israeli soldiers into a highly volatile, densely-populated region filled with armed militants and hostages, the locations of whom are not fully known.

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak reiterated in a televised meeting with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that the country had a “right to defend herself” against Hamas.

But he added that measures must be put in place to “avoid harming [Palestinian] civilians” in Gaza, a caveat that many Western leaders have made in the past week.

While the solidarity showed by the West to Israel is “unparalleled”, Mr Makavosky said, what these comments show is that there are now “very candid conversations” taking place about protecting the lives of civilians.

With no one is that more important than with the US.

When Joe Biden visited Israel on Wednesday, he became the first US president to travel to the country during a time of war. He also became only the second president in history to travel to two warzones in one calendar year.

But with that level of “embrace ... comes a degree of influence,” Mr Makovsky said.

“For all this intimacy, now that the US has two aircraft carriers on the coast, it gives them more influence on the table,” he said, noting that it was close to a “strings attached” relationship.

A ground offensive is “inevitable”, he said, but the “breathing space” afforded by the West to Israel to conduct such an attack now rests on its provisions of humanitarian aid.

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