A bomb site in Beirut, Lebanon, where Israel struck in the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. Israeli military tactics have changed since that time.

Thousands of Israeli troops are massing on the Gaza border, and a ground invasion is now considered imminent. This seven-day Gaza conflict has so far seen Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip and Hamas rocket attacks in Israel. The Israeli cabinet approved a ground invasion of Gaza last week.

Hampton Stephens is the editor-in-chief and publisher of World Politics Review. He writes about prospects for an Israeli ground invasion and discusses Israel’s military improvements since its widely-criticized ground assault on Lebanon in 2006.

See his interview with Martin Savidge here: Israeli ground invasion of Gaza considered imminent. 

The war in Gaza: Can Israel have military success?

Much of the commentary surrounding the current Israel-Hamas war has been addressed to the question of whether Israel has any hope of achieving its goals militarily, given that Hamas, like Hezbollah in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, is a non-state actor that does not fight conventionally and is therefore difficult to defeat with conventional military means.

Israel’s goals: Short-term vs. long-term

When addressing this question, it’s important to be clear about what Israel’s goals are in this current operation. Israel’s short-term military objectives need to be distinguished from the long-term objective of security for the state of Israel, which ultimately means some sort of sustainable peace with its Palestinian neighbors.

As many commentators have pointed out, it is indeed hard to imagine how this war with Hamas will further that ultimate goal of peace, given that conflict of this sort could well strengthen Hamas politically in the region, and given that Israel’s bombing campaign, by killing civilians and inflaming the “Arab street,” makes it difficult even for those Arab governments that might well like to see Hamas be dealt a setback to support Israel’s actions.

However, in contrast to the 2006 Hezbollah war, Israel seems to have, at least initially, set rather modest military objectives. At the outset of the Hezbollah war, Israel announced that it wanted to achieve the return of Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah, cripple the group militarily, and prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its military capacity in Southern Lebanon. By confounding those very high expectations that Israel created, Hezbollah was able to claim victory, cement the perception of that victory among its constituents in Lebanon as well as internationally and gain politically as a result.

Having apparently learned those lessons from the Hezbollah war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other Israeli officials have been much more circumspect in their declarations about Israel’s intentions this time around. Far from seeking any kind of definitive victory over Hamas, their announced intention is merely to degrade Hamas’ ability to terrorize southern Israel with rocket attacks. In a statement at the outset of the current operation on Dec. 28, Olmert said the main objective would be “to restore normal life and quiet to residents of the south.”

While the asymmetrical nature of the fight against an organization like Hamas presents distinct challenges for a traditional military operation, Israel may well be able to achieve this rather modest goal.

Israel’s successes and challenges

Israel’s bombing campaign has sought to degrade Hamas’ ability to threaten southern Israel by targeting the group’s rocket installations, destroying its existing stock of weapons, killing members of its leadership, and destroying smuggling tunnels along the Israel-Egypt border that Hamas has used to import weapons into the Gaza strip.

There are indications that Israel is having some success on all of these fronts so far, although it remains to be seen whether a bombing campaign alone will sufficiently degrade Hamas’ rocket-attack capability.

It is very difficult to find reliable damage assessments in the midst of a war, but anecdotal evidence indicates that Israel has made significant progress in achieving its goals in the early part of a campaign that could last for many days. Israeli news reports indicate that the Israeli Air Force has been gathering intelligence on Hamas smuggling tunnels along the Israel-Egypt border for months, and that it has succeeded in destroying a significant number of those tunnels in the early days of the war. Meanwhile, other reports in the Israeli press indicate that Israel may have already destroyed approximately one-third of Hamas rocket stockpiles. In the campaign to target Hamas leadership, Israel reportedly scored a significant success on Jan. 1, killing Hamas official Nizar Rayan in his home.

Even this significant success, however, highlighted how Israel’s short-term military objectives are often in conflict with its long-term strategic interests. The strike that killed Rayan reportedly also killed four of his wives and nine of his children, providing more ammunition against Israel in the international information war that is such a significant part of this conflict and of the larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a microcosm of the most significant dilemma facing Israel in its war against Hamas, the Israeli military has said that secondary explosions after the strike prove that Rayan’s home was being used to store weapons and ammunition. As of Dec. 31, a United Nations official estimated that of the approximate 400 people killed so far in the Gaza war, about 80 have been civilians, including more than 40 children.

Not all asymmetric conflicts are created equal

Beyond the dilemma that is at the heart of any asymmetric fight against a non-traditional force such as Hamas, it appears that Israel is in a better position to achieve its military objectives in this campaign against Hamas than it was vis-à-vis Hezbollah in the 2006 war to which the current conflict has so often been compared, for reasons that have to do with the nature of the battlefield on which the current campaign is being prosecuted.

In general, Hezbollah was much better able to conceal its fighters and weapons from the reach of Israeli bombs than Hamas has been, given the geography of the Gaza strip and the state of Israeli knowledge about Hamas operations there.

Whereas southern Lebanon is a mountainous region with complex geography that provides good defensive cover, one observer summed up the rather more featureless geography of the Gaza strip as “a cross between a beach, a desert and a slum.”

In addition, Gaza is an area of just 360 square kilometers, providing a circumscribed target for Israeli intelligence gathering. Having occupied the Gaza strip for almost 30 years, Israel has a robust base of knowledge about the area. Israeli intelligence gathering and military planning, it is now clear, did not cease during the six-month ceasefire with Hamas that ended last month. Citing sources in the Israeli defense establishment, Haaretz reported Dec. 31 that the Israeli military had been gathering information for months in preparation for the Gaza operation.

New weapons on both sides

In addition to gathering information, Israel appears also to have acquired in recent months a significant new weapon that it has first used in the Gaza conflict. While Israel’s fighter aircraft have typically carried 1,000- and 2,000-pound satellite-guided munitions, the Israel Air Force in September 2008 began acquiring from the United States up to 1,000 new Boeing-made 250-pound Small Diameter Bombs. The so-called GBU-29 gives the Israeli Air Force the ability to carry up to four bombs on each of its fighter planes, allowing them to make more bombing runs per sortie, and reduces collateral damage while remaining sufficiently destructive to be effective, according to the U.S. Air Force. In addition, the bomb has some capability to penetrate hardened structures, according to Boeing, a capability that has no doubt proven useful to Israel in its efforts to destroy Hamas infrastructure in Gaza.

Hamas, of course, also used the ceasefire to prepare for the day when it would end, and while Israel has a profound advantage when it comes to the weapons and technology available to it, this conflict has revealed that Hamas’ capabilities are also improving.

Previous Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel have employed two main types of rockets: homemade Qassam rockets that are wildly inaccurate and have a maximum range of less than 10 miles; and Iranian-made, Soviet-designed Grad rockets that can fly longer distances but are still inaccurate. However, the post-ceasefire period has seen the debut of new, more accurate and more deadly Chinese-made 122 millimeter rockets that can fly up to 25 miles. On Dec. 30, one such rocket hit an empty schoolhouse in the Negev Desert city of Beersheba, about 22 miles from the Gaza strip.

A ground offensive?

It remains to be seen whether the escalation of Hamas rocket attacks that has been seen since Israel began its bombing campaign will lead Israel to conclude that it must expand its operation from an air campaign to a full-scale ground assault. What is clear, however, is that Israel is preparing for such an invasion on the ground.

Another key lesson that came out of Israel’s troubled war against Hezbollah in 2006 is that Israel was not sufficiently prepared for the ground invasion that eventually came. The report of the Winograd Commission that examined Israel’s failures in the Hezbollah warconcluded that the Israeli Defense Forces “did not demand . . . early mobilization of the reserves so they could be equipped and trained in case a ground operation would be required.”

It is clear from the preparations that are being seen on the ground that Israel does not want to make the same mistake again. However, it is perhaps premature to conclude that these preparations for a ground invasion indicate that such an invasion is inevitable. Given the undesirable results of the ground war in Lebanon in 2006, and given the unpredictable consequences of a ground invasion with regard to both the difficulty of the fight and the international reaction to such a move, Israel has significant reason to be wary of expanding the war to the ground.

Three factors are likely to determine whether a ground invasion will come: whether Israel assesses that is making sufficient progress toward degrading Hamas’ ability to threaten southern Israel with an air campaign alone, whether those voices within Israel that are agitating for expanding the objectives of the war will win out, and whether Hamas will agree to a ceasefire on Israel’s terms.

While, as mentioned above, Israeli leaders have so far been determined to keep their objectives modest, some in the Israeli defense establishment have said that Israel should not pass up an opportunity to completely destroy Hamas in the Gaza strip and to topple the group from power.

Meanwhile, there are indications that Israel might forego a ground invasion and accept a ceasefire on its own terms, which Israeli officials have said would involve international monitors to ensure compliance with any truce.

The problem for Israel is not only that a ground invasion would require a relatively higher price in blood compared to a bombing campaign alone, but that keeping Hamas out of power after having deposed it would likely necessitate a re-occupation of the Gaza strip for an indeterminate period. Such a course would then risk further tension between Israel’s short-term objective of degrading Hamas’ ability to threaten southern Israel and the country’s long-term strategic objectives.

In a comprehensive analysis of the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon war, military analyst William Arkin articulated a key strategic objective that Israel must also keep in mind in the current war. He wrote that that if Israel had prosecuted the 2006 Hezbollah war differently, it might have better achieved not only its short-term objectives, but also “the fundamental long-term objective of counterterrorism: not creating even more enemies tomorrow.” While Israel appears to be making progress toward achieving its immediate goals in Gaza, the conflict’s remaining days will tell whether it manages to avoid significantly undermining its long-term interests in the process.

Read this post on World Politics Review. 

Photo courtesy of Flickr user delayed gratification under a Creative Commons license.

Hampton Stephens, the editor-in-chief and publisher of World Politics Review, joins Martin Savidge to discuss Israeli response to Hamas rockets, likely tactics in a ground invasion and lessons learned from Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006.

Read his extended commentary about Israeli military capability here: Can Israel’s military succeed in Gaza?