How Israel is training for urban warfare

The Israeli army has been practicing urban warfare for two decades now in an artificial city one hour's drive away from the Gaza Strip. Baladia City, as it's nicknamed ("Baladia" is Arabic for "city"), is part of the military base located near Kibbutz Tze'elim in the Negev Desert.

You can see the fake settlement with its white houses — densely built just like in Gaza — in photos and satellite images. It includes a mosque, a hospital, and fully furnished homes. There is even anti-Israeli graffiti on the walls and facades. 

"These are very well-prepared Israeli forces, the best in the world for this," according to Frank Ledwidge, an expert in military strategy at the University of Portsmouth in the UK.

But this kind of training can only be an approximation of what Israel is facing in northern Gaza, German security expert Christian Mölling told DW.

"You can practice all you like, but that doesn't mean that you can completely exclude losses on your own and the opposing side. I think that what you learn is that precisely it's impossible."

In Gaza, Hamas fighters can barely be distinguished from civilians, according to Mölling, Head of the Center for Security and Defense at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).

Israel built the simulated city in the desert with the help of the US Army in 2004. US marines and UN peacekeeping troops have also been trained at the military facility.

The German armed forces have also been sending its rapid reaction forces and mountain infantry there to learn about urban combat since 2015.

Gaza's tunnel system

In Gaza, there is the added difficulty of the tunnel system crisscrossing practically the entire area. Hamas built that network. The Islamist militant group is designated as a terror organization by the United States, the European Union, Germany and others.

Over the last two decades, Hamas has continued to expand its tunnel network, which now extends over 500 kilometers. In part, the tunnels lie 30 meters below ground and can even be used by vehicles.

The Israeli military has discovered trapdoors where Hamas fighters can rapidly get to the surface to launch missiles and then disappear again underground.

The terrorists can also suddenly appear and engage in house-to-house fighting and then vanish again. Israel's sophisticated electronic reconnaissance systems are largely useless underground — unless it is possible to infiltrate the tunnels with high-tech drones.

Difficult to track Hamas leaders

"The Israeli army will try to localize as much Hamas infrastructure as possible — bases within its tunnel system and members of the leadership, too," according to Mölling.

But the DGAP researcher says that the terror organization has been very successful in shielding its leaders up to now. He says it is possible, however, that the Israelis have received tipoffs from intelligence agents in Gaza.

"But now we are back again at problem number one. Knowing where someone is doesn't mean that you can get at them if you have to work your way through a huge number of human shields and can't just fire at people," says Mölling.

The German security analyst says that is why urban combat has always been judged to be the most dangerous type of warfare with the heaviest losses.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are completely defenseless in the face of such violence, says Möller: "Soldiers have to make decisions in seconds or even milliseconds. And they make mistakes. That cannot be avoided."

Humanitarian situation in Gaza is increasingly dramatic

US urban warfare expert John Spencer points to the possible political fallout that Israel could face from a ground offensive with urban combat. In an interview with the German weekly news magazine Spiegel, he says that the human shields and hostages make the whole enterprise extremely difficult.

Spencer, who teaches at the US military academy Westpoint, says that the fate of the hostages will strongly influence how the international community views the operation.

Spencer expects that the fighting will be conducted from house to house and tunnel to tunnel. The former army major told Germany's Spiegel that he couldn't remember any war in which so many hostages were used as human shields, as bargaining chips, or tactical tools.

The situation resembling that of Mariupol and Mosul

The war that now threatens to engulf Gaza for months is most comparable to last year's fighting in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol or the battle for Mosul between the Iraqi forces and the so-called Islamic State in 2016 and 2017, according to Spencer.

The urban warfare expert says that it is not just about the actual fighting itself, but about who can win the propaganda war. To what extent can Israel avoid the deaths of innocent civilians, not least the almost 200 hostages from Israel and other nations who are being held by Hamas?

University of Portsmouth lecturer Frank Ledwidge told DW that he was convinced that Israel would win the tactical battle: "The likelihood is they'll take Gaza and defeat Hamas on the ground and probably under the ground, too."

He says that the Israeli intelligence reconnaissance work that will be going on at the same time in the battle zone will be decisive: "What you see on your screens is just the front end of what's going on."

This article was originally written in German.

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