Opinions

Over 130 days of fighting – is the Israeli army still one of the best in the world?

Recently the war in Gaza reached over 130-day mark, on that same week the brigade who spearheaded the fighting was released of its campaign’s duties.

The three goals set by the political echelon for the war still not met: there are still 136 hostages in Hamas captivity; Hamas still shows military capabilities although in much less scale; Hamas Political bureau, the main leadership of Hamas, still walks around peacefully in Qatar and although some high ranked arch-terrorist were killed most of the Hamas-Gaza leadership still alive in hiding inside under-ground tunnels.

Despite the mention above the answer for the question in the title is a hard yes. I will explain by diving in to what challenge sets the war to the IDF and how the IDF contends with it by using its comparative advantage.

First and foremost, the battlefield by itself presents impossible challenge because its actually the most comprehensive fortified zone in military history which has a 500 Kilometers of underground tunnels and Iranian technologies.

Beside smuggling, Hamas uses its tunnels as a safe hiding place and as a tactical tool to pinch soldiers from different directions.

These tunnels are branched and one who is not familiar with them may be lost in the labyrinth, in some areas the maze is so complicated Israelis refer to it as “the metro”. Moreover, entrance tunnel-shafts are hard to discover and concealed in civilian surroundings like schools, children’s beds, agricultural fields and more.

Hamas utilize these tunnels as part of its “urbanism guerilla warfare” against the Israeli forces in the streets of Gaza, which means the “pinching” is not just a goal but the actual strategy.

Nonetheless, all in all Hamas was and still is a terror organization and its goals are to harm and to influence the Israeli people. In one hand, short well-produced horror clips are being published which shows Israeli soldiers being hit and hostages begging for their lives, like ISIS does.

On the other, Hamas still lunches rockets directed to population centers and without the Iron Dome tech, mobile all-weather air defense system, which intercepts most of these rockets Israel will be in a different state

In order to confront Hamas guerilla warfare and to get control over territories it wishes to eradicate terror elements from, the IDF enters war zones in a very secure way.

The first steps in a war zone are made very slowly and that slow movement of heavy armored vehicles by itself has a deterrence effect, nonetheless the vehicles are equipped with what the world nicknamed “the Trophy” and Israelis call it “Windbreaker”, a military armored vehicle active protection system (APS) which prevents, for example RPJ rockets hits.

By so the IDF managed to split the Gaza strip into several battlefields where it dominates the fighting, manages to kill third of the estimated total terrorist in Hamas ranks were killed while minimizes casualties in its ranks.

Worth mentioning that many anticipated a very heavy loss in soldiers’ lives, though the lost of our men is devastating the numbers still small.

The slow movement enables to maintain close communication with the air-force who backs the fighters from above and with the intelligence army wing.

That communication, first of its kind and that fast, professional and efficient way helps to “close the circle” on immanent terror threats of incoming attack, reduces incidents when the IDF identify its own forces as enemy by mistake, blocks Israeli attacks on civil objectives which prevents un-called non-combatant deaths and most importantly helps chasing the general goals mentioned before: searching for hostages and the Hamas leadership.

The reason some question the abilities of one of the Israeli army are not because it is failing in the battlefield but because it was hit by surprise and suffered a major blow, the worst in Israel’s history.

Despite the intensity of the events on that morning, the IDF manage to do quick regrouping and reserve forces recruiting while showing strong resilience capabilities.

Nevertheless, the comparative advantage – the innovative technologies which I hinted of between the lines – did not fail in that morning.

The technology aimed to warn and restrain attackers were the first objectives of the well-planned enemy attack, to destroy the cameras and communication facilities and installations, this was the enemy key for success.

In the battlefields it’s a different story, the IDF uses the top of the art technology like Guided Mortar Munition, which enables more precise targeting focused on the enemy, those guided weapons are being used also from the air.

Lately it’s been published that the guiding tech also being used to direct supplies to soldiers in battle. This is the secret weapon and the thing which makes the Israeli army one of the best in the world – the ability to adapt and change to new situations while learning and showing flexibility and innovative state of mind.

The Author, Aviad Mendelboim, is the spouse to Israel Ambassador to Rwanda.

Related Posts

Leave A Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

panen303