How Hamas Is Fighting in Gaza

[Pelican Press 0]

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How ****** Is Fighting in Gaza

They hide under residential neighborhoods, storing their weapons in miles of tunnels and in houses, mosques, sofas — even a child’s bedroom — blurring the boundary between civilians and combatants.

They emerge from hiding in plainclothes, sometimes wearing sandals or tracksuits before ******* on ******** troops, attaching mines to their vehicles, or ******* rockets from launchers in civilian areas.

They rig abandoned homes with explosives and tripwires, sometimes luring ******** soldiers to enter the ******-trapped buildings by scattering signs of a ****** presence.

Through eight months of fighting in Gaza, ******’s military wing — the Qassam Brigades — has fought as a decentralized and largely hidden force, in contrast to its Oct. 7 ******* on *******, which began with a coordinated large-scale maneuver in which thousands of uniformed commandos surged through border towns and ******* roughly 1,200 people.

Instead of confronting the ******** invasion that followed in frontal battles, most ****** fighters have retreated from their bases and outposts, seeking to blunt *******’s technological and numerical advantage by launching surprise attacks on small groups of soldiers.

From below ground, ******’s ghost army has appeared only fleetingly, emerging suddenly from a warren of tunnels — often armed with rocket-propelled grenades — to pick off soldiers and then returning swiftly to their subterranean fortress. Sometimes, they have hid among the few civilians who decided to remain in their neighborhoods despite ******** orders to evacuate, or accompanied civilians as they returned to areas that the Israelis had captured and then abandoned.

******’s decision to keep fighting has proved disastrous for the Palestinians of Gaza. With ****** refusing to surrender, ******* has forged ahead with a military campaign that has ******* nearly 2 percent of Gaza’s prewar population, according to Gazan authorities; displaced roughly 80 percent of its residents, according to the ******* Nations; and damaged a majority of Gaza’s buildings, according to the U.N.

By contrast, fewer than 350 ******** soldiers have ***** in Gaza since the start of the invasion, according to military statistics — far fewer than ******** officials had predicted in October.

Yet despite the carnage in Gaza, ******’s strategy has helped the group fulfill some of its own goals.

The war has tarnished *******’s reputation in much of the world, prompting charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague. It has exacerbated long-running rifts in ******** society, prompting disagreements among Israelis about whether and how ******* should defeat ******. And it has restored the question of ************ statehood to global discourse, leading several countries to recognize Palestine as a state.

Just as important for ******, its war doctrine has allowed it to survive.

******’s leader in the territory, Yahya Sinwar, and most of his top military commanders are still alive. ******* says it has ******* more than 14,000 of ******’s 25,000 fighters — an unverifiable and disputed number that, if true, suggests thousands remain active.

An analysis of battlefield videos released by ****** and interviews with three ****** members and scores of ******** soldiers, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, suggests that ******’s strategy relies on:

Using hundreds of miles of tunnels, the scale of which surprised ******** commanders, to move around Gaza without being seen by ******** soldiers;

Using civilian homes and infrastructure — including medical facilities, U.N. offices and mosques — to conceal fighters, tunnel entrances, ******-traps and ammunition stores;

Ambushing ******** soldiers with small groups of fighters dressed as civilians, as well as using civilians, including children, to act as lookouts;

Leaving secret signs outside homes, like a red sheet hanging from a window or graffiti, to signal to fellow fighters the nearby presence of mines, tunnel entrances or weapons caches inside;

Dragging out the war for as long as possible, even at the expense of more civilian ****** and destruction, in order to bog ******* down in an attritional battle that has amplified international criticism of *******.

“The aim is to vanish, avoid direct confrontation, while launching tactical attacks against the occupation army. The emphasis is on patience,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a ****** member and former fighter in its military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul. Before Oct. 7, the Qassam Brigades operated as “an army with training bases and stockpiles,” Mr. al-Awawdeh said. “But during this war, they are behaving as guerrillas.”

At the start of the war, ****** and its allies fired a barrage of rockets toward civilian areas of *******, including roughly 3,000 on Oct. 7 itself, often using launchers hidden in densely populated civilian neighborhoods in Gaza. The ******** Army captured and destroyed scores of launchers, including some it said it found near a mosque and a kindergarten, bringing the rocket ***** to a near halt.

After ******** ground troops invaded in late October, ****** went further in transforming civilian areas of Gaza into military zones, setting traps in scores of neighborhoods and creating confusion about what a combatant looks like by dressing its fighters as civilians.

******** officials say that ******’s tactics explain why ******* has been forced to strike so much civilian infrastructure, ***** so many Palestinians and detain so many civilians.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior ****** official based in Qatar, dismissed criticism of ******’s use of civilian attire and storage of weapons inside civilian homes, saying that it deflected attention away from ******** wrongdoing.

“If there’s someone who takes a ******* from under a bed, is that a justification for ******** 100,000 people?” Mr. Abu Marzouk said. “If someone takes a ******* from under a bed, is that a justification to ***** an entire school and ******** a hospital?”

Other ****** members acknowledge and defend the movement’s use of civilian clothes and civilian homes, saying the group had no alternative.

“Every insurgency in every war, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, saw people fighting from their homes,” said Mr. al-Awawdeh. “If I live in Zeitoun, for example, and the army comes — I will ****** them there, from my home, or my neighbor’s, or from the mosque. I will ****** them anywhere I am.”

****** militants wear civilian clothes in a legitimate attempt to avoid detection, Mr. al-Awawdeh said. “That’s natural for a resistance movement,” he added, “and there’s nothing unusual about it.”

How ****** Reacted to the Invasion

******’s response to *******’s ground invasion on Oct. 27 became a model for its strategy since.

When ******** tanks and infantry battalions surged into Gaza that Friday, they were met with little to no resistance for the first couple of miles, according to four soldiers who were among the first to cross the border.

Lior Soharin, an ******** reserve sergeant major, helped overrun a ****** outpost a few dozen yards from the border. There was no one inside, he recalled.

“We learned in retrospect that they were there — just underneath the ground,” Mr. Soharin said.

Having retreated into their labyrinth of tunnels, ****** fighters had ceded thousands of acres of farmland to ******** forces.

That was partly because the ******** forces advanced along routes that ****** had not lined with explosives and traps, according to a ****** junior officer from northern Gaza who left the territory before Oct. 7 and ******** in close touch with his subordinates. But it was also because the Qassam Brigades’ strategy was to ambush ******** soldiers once they had advanced deep into the territory, instead of counterattacking immediately, according to the fighter.

Dozens of ****** *********** videos, posted by the group on its social media channels, show small groups of Gazan fighters — often clad in

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and

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—

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from tunnels to take potshots at nearby ******** tanks and personnel carriers;

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on foot toward tanks and attaching mines near the turrets;

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rocket-propelled grenades from residential buildings; and

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at soldiers with ******* rifles.

****** had been preparing for this moment since at least 2021, when the group began scaling up production of explosives and anti-tank missiles, in preparation for a ground war, and stopped making so many long-range rockets, the ****** officer said.

It also expanded a vast network of tunnels, creating entry points in houses across Gaza that would allow fighters to enter and exit without being seen from the air but made targets of civilian neighborhoods. The network was fitted with a landline telephone network that is difficult for ******* to monitor and that allows fighters to communicate even during outages to Gaza’s mobile phone networks, which are controlled by *******, according to the ****** officer, Mr. al-Awawdeh and ******** officials.

By the start of the war, ****** had enough explosives in its underground arsenals for an extended campaign — as well as enough canned vegetables, dates and drinking water to last for at least 10 months, the officer said.

The tunnel network grew so extensive that it ran underneath a major U.N. compound and the largest hospital in Gaza, as well as major roads, countless homes and government buildings. Nine months later, senior ******** officials say that they have destroyed only a small fraction of the network, and that its existence has stymied *******’s ability to ******** ******.

******’s commandos had also been trained to remain alert and focused during shortages of food and water, the officer said. Before the war, fighters were sometimes ordered to spend days eating only a handful of dates and to sit for several hours without moving, even as instructors splashed water on their faces to distract them, the officer said.

As vast swaths of Gaza began to empty out in October, ****** fighters began ******-trapping hundreds of houses that they expected the ******** troops would seek to enter, the officer said. The mines were linked to tripwires, movement sensors and sound detectors that detonate the explosives once triggered, the officer said.

The terrain prepared, the fighters then descended into the tunnels — and waited for the Israelis to arrive.

How ****** Sets a Trap

In the best-planned ambushes, ****** squads have lulled ******** forces into a false sense of security by allowing them to move freely for hours or even days in areas marked for *******.

****** fighters and ******** soldiers say that ****** tracks the Israelis’ locations using hidden cameras, drones and intelligence provided by civilian lookouts. Five ******** soldiers said those lookouts include children, who stand on roofs and relay information to commanders below.

******’s ambush squads typically stay hidden until an ******** convoy has moved through an area for several minutes, or ******** forces have grouped in a particular place for hours, creating the impression that ****** has left the area, six ******** soldiers and the ****** officer said. After a ******* of calm, a squad emerges from a tunnel, often as a group of four.

Two fighters are tasked with fixing explosives to the sides of a vehicle or ******* anti-tank missiles at it, according to the ****** officer. A third carries a camera to film *********** footage. A fourth typically stays at the tunnel entrance, preparing a ******-trap that can be activated as soon as the others return, to ***** any Israelis who try to follow them underground.

A well-planned ambush aims to take out not only the initial ******** force, but also the backup fighters and medics who come to rescue the injured, according to soldiers who experienced such ambushes and the ****** officer.

One ******** special forces member recalled how a group of ****** fighters appeared to have positioned itself specifically so that ******** backup forces would have to ***** across stricken comrades in order to hit the ambushers.

Another described ****** fighters waiting after members of an ******** unit had been wounded by an exploding mine and then emerging to ***** on the rescuing force. In a June 11 ******* in Rafah, both ****** and the ******** military said that Qassam fighters fired mortars at an ******** relief force that came to rescue soldiers who had been attacked earlier in the day.

****** showed off most of these approaches in an extensive eight-minute

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released on its social media channels in early April.

The video appears to show fighters carrying out a multistage ambush that is said to take place in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

The video seems to show ****** fighters, their faces blurred, sitting on patterned mats as they plan the *******. They use pen, paper and a digital tablet to draw simplistic maps detailing where they want to plant a set of roadside mines.

“We ask, O Lord, for the ambush to achieve its goals — let us ***** your enemies, the Jews,” the narrator says.

Next, ****** men — wearing civilian clothes — are seen laying those explosives in the rubble of a ruined neighborhood. Then, the video cuts to what appears to be the planned ambush: Filmed by hidden cameras, a group of ******** soldiers pick their way through the rubble before being hit by gunfire. That ******* seems to lure an ******** relief squad to the scene, and the arrival of those rescuers appears to trigger the mines.

“This is a miniature sample of what their defeated army is suffering in the mire of Gaza,” the narrator concludes.

How ****** Uses Homes

In addition to setting traps in houses, ****** has also used residential buildings to conceal scores of small arms caches across the territory, according to more than a dozen ******** soldiers who have found such stockpiles.

The soldiers said it became normal to find munitions hidden inside civilian homes and mosques, which is one of the reasons, they said, the army had destroyed so many such buildings.

Some soldiers said their units needlessly destroyed civilian property, or filmed themselves vandalizing it, creating the impression that the ******** military often had little reason to be searching civilian homes. But others said there was usually a clear military purpose to picking through civilian belongings: One recalled finding guns behind a false wall in a child’s bedroom, while another said his unit found grenades in a woman’s clothes closet. International law

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combatants to avoid using “civilian objects,” which include homes, schools, hospitals and mosques, for military objectives.

Sometimes, ****** fighters emerged from tunnels without weapons, passing as civilians until they reached a house where other fighters had hidden weapons and ammunition inside the lining of furniture, ******** soldiers said.

To help its gunmen find these weapons caches, several ******** soldiers said, ****** has developed an elaborate system for marking houses that double as military storerooms, or contain tunnels or ****** traps. Some buildings were marked with a particular symbol, some had red fabric hanging from windows, and others had plastic barrels or plastic bags outside — all of which told ****** fighters something about what was concealed inside.

Some ******** units were eventually supplied with printed guides to help them identify the meaning of each symbol or object, one soldier said.

When in doubt, soldiers entered houses by blowing a ***** in their walls, in case the front doors were rigged with mines, according to a senior military officer, Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv, who escorted a reporter from The New York Times in central Gaza in January.

To draw Israelis toward a trap, ****** gunmen sometimes scattered a building with visible signs of their presence, such as a ****** flag. At other times, two ******** soldiers said, ******** troops were lured inside by a piece of ******** clothing or identification card, which hinted that hostages might be held within.

One soldier said ****** used chained dogs to entice soldiers toward a ******-trapped building, hoping that the soldiers would try to free the dogs.

Another soldier recalled spotting a ***** ****** fighter inside an apartment block and making his way toward the body. As he drew closer, he realized the corpse had been rigged with an explosive, he said. When his squad fired at the body, it blew up and set the building ablaze, he said.

Some soldiers said they found weapons in houses that they had searched earlier in the war. It suggested that at least some of the arms had been placed in houses after the start of *******’s invasion.

Even in areas where ******* claims to have defeated ******, ******** forces have often had to return, weeks or even months later, to continue the battle against fighters who had survived earlier phases of the war.

For ******, “it was always about avoiding losses for as long as possible so they can ****** another day,” said Andreas Krieg, an expert on military strategy at King’s College London. “They’re nowhere near being defeated.”

Adam Rasgon contributed reporting from Doha, Qatar.

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