After indecisive battle, Israel will use Gaza pause to regroup for ‘extremely difficult’ underground war: Expert

By Rabia Ali

ISTANBUL (AA) – With a deal between Israel and Hamas for a humanitarian pause set to take effect, a leading security analyst believes it will be used by the Israeli forces as a window to gear up for what lies ahead: an “extremely difficult” underground war.

“They (Israel) are fighting two wars. They’re fighting the war on the surface and they are fighting, or actually not yet fighting but they will have to fight, the underground war,” Zoran Kusovac told Anadolu.

In his view, up until now, both Israel and Hamas have militarily been doing “what was expected of them.”

In purely military terms, there has not been a decisive direct battle between Hamas and Israel, he said.

At this moment, it is unclear which side is winning because “what is happening is still tactical maneuvering on both sides,” said Kusovac.

He said the Israelis have relied on aerial bombardment, followed by a push to take areas on the surface, “but they’re not taking the underground.”

Hamas operates like a guerilla organization so Israel has “a classic calculation of any military force fighting a guerilla group, because the guerrillas are among the people,” he said.

The Palestinian group, he added, is hitting Israel in “small but very often strong attacks.”

“It’s basically stinging them from the side, damaging their morale and killing their soldiers,” he said.

The analyst said there has been a significant spike in killings of Israeli soldiers over the past four or five days, terming it “proof that Hamas is not fighting on a big front, but is fighting from many different positions.”

- Future tactics

On possible future tactics, Kusovac said the two sides “will basically continue what they have been doing so far.”

“You don’t really change a strategy that serves you well in war,” he said.

He said Israel is aiming for as much gains as possible on the surface because they believe “the more they can they take on the surface … their underground war will be easier.”

For Hamas, the tactics will most likely stay the same.

“They stay underground and in destroyed buildings among the rubble and they hit the Israelis whenever they have an opportunity,” he said.

Hamas fighters will not come out charging at the Israelis because those are not their tactics and not what they are trained to do, nor is this what their equipment is optimized for, he added.

“They will continue to harass Israelis, to hit them, hoping that those attacks will basically kill the fighting spirit of the Israelis,” said Kusovac.

“The Israelis on their side, they will continue to take ground and try to block or destroy as many tunnel entrances as possible.”

For Israel, entering the tunnels is “extremely difficult” to even contemplate at this time, according to Kusovac.

Their aim will be to find as many entrances to block and cut down the surprise element, he said.

“They are not trying to destroy all of them. They’re trying to destroy some. It takes time to take specific engineering knowledge and it’s unrealistic to expect that that can be done fast and that, that can be done completely,” he added.

But if the possible number of access points are reduced to something that Israel can militarily manage, then it might “decide to go into this extremely difficult and bloody phase of the war, which is the war in the tunnels,” said the analyst.

- Military advantage for Israel, political for Hamas

For Israel, there is a “definite military advantage” to gain from any pause in fighting, said Kusovac.

“They have covered enough ground. They have gone in, they have tested their tactics, but of course, they need to sit down and analyze what was good and what was bad, what produced good results and what didn’t work,” he said.

Israel has also had quite a few of their tanks and armored personnel carriers damaged, so they will use this pause to repair some critical machinery, he added.

Then there is the element of air force and possibly other units of the Israeli military “getting short on certain material,” said Kusovac.

“We do know for a fact, it’s come from several sources and we can take it to be quite reliable, that Israel is running pretty low of smart bomb kits,” he explained.

“Four days of not spending ammunition and four days in which you can receive more can make a big change.”

For Hamas, he said, there is a definite political advantage.

“It’s much more important that Hamas will be able to claim, look, ‘they call us terrorists, but they’re negotiating with us,’” he said.

“It’s not like in past conflicts between Israel and Hamas, when they negotiated the cease-fire to get bodies out or exchange prisoners. Those were little tactical negotiations done between enemies on the battlefield without producing an international agreement.”

This time around, according to Kusovac, Hamas has made “a huge step.”

“People still don’t realize that the organization that is called terrorists, suddenly negotiates at an equal level with Israel and the US and Qatar,” he said.

“One day after the (Oct. 7) attacks, everybody was saying we’re never going to talk to Hamas and we’re going to destroy them … Now they’ve made an international agreement which is pretty much binding in international law …So Hamas is suddenly a partner.”

- War to continue for months

The analyst said Israel has so far not succeeded in its stated goal of eliminating Hamas and removing it from Gaza.

“That might still be officially Israel’s ultimate goal in this war, but that of course, has nowhere even nearly been achieved, nor is it going to be achieved anytime soon,” said Kusovac.

He said there are many signs that this war will last months rather than weeks, specifically citing recent comments from former CIA chief David Petraeus.

“Every conflict ends with an achievement. Very few conflicts – we had one example recently in Nagorno-Karabakh – end with complete victory of one side and the complete loss of the other side,” said Kusovac.

“But most conflicts don’t end that way. Most conflicts end in some kind of a compromise. And that compromise often is fuel for the next conflict which will happen in the future.”

He believes it is not possible for Israel to take the whole of the Gaza, but what it has done is “cut the Gaza Strip in two, with the northern part largely cleared of civilians.”

“At least 80% of civilians from the north are believed to have fled to the south. And that was, of course, possible because it’s the same entity. What Israel has done is it militarily surrounded Gaza City … and it is now slowly grinding into Gaza City,” he said.

“If Israel takes and controls everything, and that will take some time and that will take lots of forces, they will then deny Hamas the possibility to move above ground in Gaza City, or they will only be able to do that at great danger.”

In that case, Hamas will not be able to operate in Gaza City, but will be able to operate in Khan Yunis and everywhere else, he added.

“The other possible outcome is once they complete that, they can move south actually. They can move south even now,” said Kusovac.

​​​​​​​At the moment, without additional mobilization, Israel does not have enough soldiers to spare to keep blocking Gaza City and to move to the south, he said.

“I don’t think that they will do that because the fact that Gaza City has not been taken and secured … It has to keep a very serious army in the north because Israel doesn’t know what Hezbollah, whether Hezbollah will attack en masse,” he added.​​​​​​​