Hamas surprised Israel in war

RONEN BERGMAN wrote in New York Times:

Counting bodies is not the most important criterion in deciding who should be declared the victor (in Gaza war). Much more important is comparing each side’s goals before the fighting and what they have achieved. Seen in this light, Hamas won.

Hamas started the war because it was in dire straits ... but soon enough Hamas was dictating the duration of the conflict by repeatedly refusing cease-fires. Furthermore, it preserved its capability of firing rockets and missiles at most of Israel’s territory, despite the immense effort the Israeli Air Force invested in knocking out launch sites.

Hamas also waged an urban campaign against Israeli ground forces, inflicting at least five times as many casualties as in the last conflict and successfully used tunnels to penetrate Israeli territory and sow fear and demoralization. It made Israel pay a heavy price and the Israeli army eventually withdrew its ground troops from Gaza without a cease-fire.

Israeli leaders have now set the demilitarization of Gaza as one of their goals. But it’s difficult to picture how this could be achieved. Hamas would never agree to disarm unless faced with a protracted Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, which is something the Mr. Netanyahu has declared he won’t undertake.

Hamas’s achievements on the battlefield are the fruit of a concerted effort to draw lessons from previous Israeli defeats.

In July 2006, Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers on the Israel-Lebanon border. In response, Israel sought to destroy the group. It failed — and even the more modest aims of returning of abducted men or demilitarizing southern Lebanon, proved unattainable. Israel came out of that war battered, leading to the departure of almost the entire top military command, and a number of hard-hitting internal inquiries.

And, in the 2012 war, Hamas learned lessons and acted on them. First, Hamas took stringent counterintelligence measures to avoid Israeli electronic surveillance. Israel consequently knew much less than it should have about the increased range and payloads of Hamas rockets, the distribution of rocket storage depots and the firing of rockets by remote control.

Second, in order to prepare for an Israeli invasion, Hamas replaced its battalion commanders with new men who had undergone training in Lebanon or Iran. It developed a systematic urban warfare doctrine to ensure maximal Israeli casualties and to protect its high command from assassination.

Finally, Hamas invested in the construction of a vast and complex network of tunnels that reached into Israeli territory and formed units of frogmen to attack Israel from the sea. These were major advances.

Israel’s leaders are determined to represent Defensive Edge as a victory, and it is therefore unlikely that public inquiry panels will be set up as they were after the Lebanon war in 2006 or that heads will roll.

However, the army will have to reinvent the way it counters guerrilla warfare. It will once again have to try to recruit agents in Gaza, now that it has become clear that electronic spying is insufficient because Hamas has become more careful.

Hamas surprised Israel.