The IDF has drawn up a new combat doctrine to deal with Hamas, based on the destruction of its military wing, a senior military source said Tuesday, speaking one year after Operation Protective Edge.
The new doctrine is the fruit of internal investigations into last summer’s fighting. The probes centered on issues such as training, intelligence, underground combat capabilities, urban warfare, and the overall use of firepower. The IDF concluded that a central objective would be to shorten the length of any future engagement with Hamas.
The new concept, created together with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), calls for eliminating the Izzadin Kassam Brigades military wing if war erupts again in the South.
“We have new components and an approach, which was shown to the chief of staff and received his approval,” the senior IDF source said.
“There will always be a need for adjustments to fit [future] circumstances,” the source said.
“But we have a concept, and we have plans.”
The IDF has also redrawn its plans to defend Gaza border communities, based on the understanding that Hamas plans to launch raids on these areas in any future clash.
“You don’t win with defense,” the source said, “but a good defense will deny Hamas tactical gains that would allow it to claim a propaganda victory.”
A third important aspect of the IDF’s new approach to a future Gaza conflict is its focus on Hamas’s tunnel network.
Tunnels, the source said, have become Hamas’s most valuable asset. The network exists to serve its offensive forces, smuggle goods and armaments, and facilitate command and control networks.
The IDF has installed two tunnel detection systems in areas bordering Gaza, and these are to become fully operational in the coming weeks, the source said.
The systems will be able to alert the military whenever it detects digging under Israeli territory.
So far, the IDF has not detected any new cross-border tunnels since the cessation of hostilities last August. While the terrorist group is digging tunnels in Gaza, it has not yet rebuilt any of the 32 attack tunnels destroyed by the IDF last summer.
The army has also created two tunnel-warfare training sites to improve the ability of ground forces to confront this threat.
In a future conflict, the IDF plans to keep critical unit headquarters away from the Gaza border, out of the range of Hamas mortar attacks.
Operation Protective Edge was the largest armed conflict between Israel and the Palestinians so far. To prevent the outbreak of a new round of fighting any time soon, there is a need to improve Gaza’s civilian economic situation and hasten reconstruction efforts, the source said. This would provide civilians with hope and raise their standard of living.
This is a particularly difficult task in light of the fact that Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority have all disconnected themselves from Gaza, leaving the Hamas-run enclave – where there is a 50-percent unemployment rate – in a state of near total isolation.
Hamas – regarded by Egypt as an enemy allied with its domestic Islamist foes – is anxiously looking for sponsors, and its military wing has begun receiving tens of millions of dollars from Iran once again. The organization also receives cash from a global network of charities and businesses, as well as from Qatar, its chief foreign sponsor.
Reaching a long-term ceasefire arrangement with Hamas is likely to encourage the Islamist regime and its armed wing to remain restrained, according to the source.
Currently, Hamas is taking more steps than ever before to prevent other Gazan terrorist groups from firing rockets at Israel, and it has arrested many Salafi jihadists following recent rocket launches into Israel, according to military intelligence assessments.
At the same time, the group continues to restock its own rocket supplies, and is actively seeking to improve the accuracy of its projectiles.
A total of eight rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza since the end of hostilities last summer, representing the quietest period in the South since the Palestinian rocket attacks on the South in 2000. There is recognition among the IDF leadership of the possibility for “years of quiet” if the situation can be managed.
Tensions persist between Hamas’s military and political wings, the source added, and the military wing could begin to take more independent steps, military assessments have stated.
Renewing contact with Iran was cited as one example of an independent move already made by the military wing, which did not receive the backing of the group’s political division.
The political-social-military wings of Hamas are like “triple siamese”. They all need to go. The same is true for Hezbollahs.
@ Felix Quigley:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0715/hanson070915.php3
Everything comes from the Knesset. But for that to happen do two things. First arrest all the Supreme Court Judges every one a traitor. Second say only Jews vote in this new election.
With that new government (not a soviet) just mark out the borders of Israel. They are Golan Heights, Jordan Valley in full meaning of term as Weizmann stated it in 1919 (3 january 1919), Egyptian border, Sea.
How utterly blissfully simple is all of that.
The problem is never BDS trash. The problem is Israeli leadership.
Shut down the blogs. Get out and fight for your land.
make it a land where Jews live and where Muslims do not live end of story, and for that (the situation has changed) you will get massive support.
I would immediately retake Sinai. Just do it anyway.
That more tan anything would place Gaza in its proper light a Little “townland” sitting like a boil there on the coast. Then ending it is downhill all the way.
BDS is not the problema. Greeks who are antisemites are not the problem. The problem is Israeli Jews who have grown verbose and can no longer do anything. The blogs are a function of this uselessness. People think they are doing something because they scribble piously on their bit of imaginary life form.
How big a problem is Hamas or Abbas? Little tiny problem. Give Trotsky a división and they will be dust.
The Israeli middle class is useless. All words.
There is a big complex among bourgeois Jews like this. They have made one total mess of their Jewish Homeland, the most valued and precious thing possible.
They are bankrupt and their Islam enemy still festers in their soul. They feel guilt and so they should for their lack of action and lack of direction. The highest they reached is Mrs Shaked who obviously cannot take a simple decision such as let Knesset rule so dismiss forthwith the Supreme Court, an action which it would have taken Lenin precisely 5 seconds, if that. How long does it take to say “Put those judges on trial!” It takes me one second speaking slowly so put me then in charge rather tan Mrs Shaked who Ted is clearly in love with!
Thus they like Yamit a perfect example of this type seek enemies for the Jews. Then (and this leads them to) they line up with the pointing finger of Mrs Merkel against the poor Greeks forgetting that Mrs Merkel is the biggest Antisemite on the planet, the little housewife from East Germany Antisemitic to the very core.
But it makes their own uselessness in Israel and their being not prepared to smash Islam in Israel easier to handle. In the deep night of their agony that comforts such Jews.
They have had many chances to smash Islam. That after all is the meaning of a state, or rather THE state, a state that was fought for by so many patriotic Jews over so many thousands of years.
Time flies by. Ted produces more articles. Nothing happens.
They had an opportunity to annihilate Hezbollahs and Hamas and in both cases they fail. Three strikes/failures and out.
May be too late.
@ Felix Quigley:
I see you have been advising the Greeks.
The military leadership of Israel and America are currently afflicted with a deficit of William Tecumseh Shermans and a surplus of Barney Fifes.
Further I would expel a goodly portion of the Jews as well as the Arabs who will never be won to supporting Israel. This idea of “democracy” is a trap in the way they sell it. The greatest “democracy” is to organise a situation where Jews will not be marched into a Holocaust situation ever again. That is REAL democracy. The first step is to sack the Knesset, bar Arabs from the vote because they do not deserve the vote in Israel, which has been so kind to them for so many years. Then destroy Islam in I call it “The Holy Land” because Islam is not Holy but is the greatest evil. It does not matter in the slightest about BDS all that matter is what the Jews of Israel do…but immediately is needed leaders. But first smash this Supreme Court then reorganise the voting system and make Jews proud to vote. Expelling Jew Hating Jews is definitely part of this.
You are absolutely right. How can these army generals of the IDF be given the slightest confidence. Looka at everything they have done over the past 20 years including dragging Jews out of their homes in Gaza by the scruff of the neck, and the Rabbis aided, and the leaders in the settlements aided it too. Then they allowed the rockets to keep taining down on Sderot. Then they launched their war in 2014 but with no aim of destroying Hamas but of keeping Hamas there. Surely with that record the first move is to kick the whole lot out including all of the Knesset,and hold new elections but this time only Jews can vote (for a start) Then make any attacks on Jews a capital or imediate expulsión offense. (as a start)
Does anyone believe that from Ya’alon and his jolly so called generals? Netanyahu would direct that?
The Oslo generals have not once destroyed enemies. They do destroy Jewish houses and towns efficiently though.