Gaza: IDF Ground Operational Art

As I have said in my previous post, I do not doubt the IDF's ability to take Gaza given the political will for potentially high military casualties and certainly grievous Palestinian civilian losses. Gaza, presents a unique operational space that has given urban warfare theorists a good deal of fright in the past: the "feral city"--a densely populated maze of chaotic streets and defenses designed by non-state forces to frustrate invading conventional armies.

The IDF, under Shimon Naveh, developed a means for this: tactical swarming. Naveh and his Operational Theory Research Institute (OTRI) borrowed from poststructuralist philosophy and radical theories of spatiality and architecture to develop a method of complex operations in urban environments. IDF elements were atomized down to the extreme tactical level, and turned the city into a weapon against the Palestinians, utilizing tunnels as sources of fractal maneuver, "walked through walls" (aka dynamited through buildings), and utilized helicopter gunships as weapons platforms.

This was, in effect, a translation of maneuver warfare paradigms to urban warfare. The Israelis' fast transients collapsed the Palestinian defenses through deft manipulation of material space. But, as Stephen Pampinella observes, while the Israelis have certainly excelled at emancipating themselves from the problems of urban material space, they cannot enter the social, political, and information spaces where the real battles of insurgency occur.

Comments

[esmail]

Yes indeed they can not, in fact this is the palestinians who use deleuzian lines of flight, a tactic far away for israeli eyes

[A.E.]

Indeed, if you observe the present conflict the IDF backed away even from their operational excellence in 2002. They fired Naveh and junked the OTRI.

[victor]

it remember me a pioneer operation performed by peruvian special forces, in 1998, when they stormed through the floor into the japanese ambasador residence

[A.E.]

Yes, I remember that as well. That point really signaled the fall of the Peruvian terrorist groups, although I hear that Shining Path has come back.