What are Israel and Hamas working with in the face of brutal Gaza urban warfare?

What are Israel and Hamas working with in the face of brutal Gaza urban warfare?Show more

A ground operation in Gaza was considered to be a high-cost, low-reward scenario for Israel.

It is expected to escalate and prolong the war, make it much more devastating for both sides, and result in mass civilian casualties.

"There is no good ground option in Gaza. Period. Full-stop," Raphael Cohen, the head of US think tank RAND's Project Air Force, said.

"It will be very, very messy and bloody."

Israel has one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world.

It has spent decades painstakingly developing its defence capabilities, and has access to the best of the best US weapons systems.

The United States also provides Israel with around $US3.8 billion ($5.9 billion) a year in military aid.

In contrast, Hamas militants are heavily armed and have received weapons and technology assistance from Iran, "but it's pretty basic stuff," Marcus Hellyer, head of research at Strategic Analysis Australia, said.

But while Israel may have advanced technologies, thousands of tanks and sophisticated fighter jets, urban warfare can completely change the dynamic.

"Urban combat is the great leveller," Dr Hellyer said.

"Hamas is forcing Israel to fight the way Hamas wants."

Already, we've seen Hamas taking an asymmetric, unconventional approach, flying over fences fitted with advanced sensors using paragliders, and bulldozing through the border fence.

On the ground in Gaza, analysts expect rapid improvisation and adaptation will play a big role, and it will come down to old-fashioned "messy" fighting between Hamas militants and Israeli defence forces.

So what are both sides working with?

Comparing numbers
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not used the word invasion, but said the ground operation in the territory is the "second stage" of what will be a "long and difficult" war with Hamas.

There has been no word on how many ground troops might enter Gaza, but Israel Defense Force (IDF) spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, on Sunday said they were "gradually expanding the ground activity and the scope of our forces in the Gaza Strip".

Ahead of the ground operation, the Israeli military called up around 360,000 reservists — on top of some 170,000 active defence force personnel.

In comparison, when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, he amassed about 100,000 troops along the border.

Israel says Hamas has some 30,000 fighters.

They generally get around in utility vehicles and motorbikes with machine guns and small arms.

Meanwhile, Israel has armoured personnel carriers and around 1,700 combat-ready tanks to support any street-to-street battles.

But in a densely populated environment like Gaza, where threats are harder to detect, size may not always be what matters.

Often, close-quarter settings can favour guerilla groups.

Dr Hellyer believes Hamas aimed to goad the IDF into ground fighting.

"One of the things we see from urban conflict is that the defenders can continue to operate in incomplete rubble," he told the ABC.

"If you look at any kind of urban fight, the defenders can hang on for a really, really long time, and all the time inflicting casualties."

Tanks versus drones
The Israeli military used to be known as "the masters of armoured combat," Dr Hellyer said.

Their Merkava main battle tanks are the backbone of the IDF's Armored Corps and considered among the best in the world.

It is similar to the German Leopard 2 tank which became highly sought after in Ukraine.

But a tank is best when it is shooting a target several kilometres away.

And when you bring them into a city, all aspects of a tank can be threatened — especially by drones.

We will see very quickly what we have already seen in Ukraine, and that is that Hamas will weaponise stock-standard commercial drones," Dr Hellyer said.

"You can simply attach the warhead of a rocket launcher — which exist in hundreds of thousands across the Middle East — and fly it into an armoured vehicle."

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a military and geopolitical research institute, said videos have shown quadcopter-dropped munitions destroying an Israeli Merkava tank.

Hamas has likely stockpiled large amounts of drones, both developing them independently and with assistance from Iran, analysts say.

A video the militant group released after its October 7 attacks also showed it has larger drones similar to the Iranian ones used by Russian forces in Ukraine.

As one of the world's leading unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) users and manufacturers, Israel has its own vast drone capabilities — for surveillance and combat.

It also has sophisticated counter-drone technology, but urban environments also make them more difficult to use.

Rockets and missiles
In past conflicts, Hamas militants have defended Gaza using rockets, mortars, anti-tank guided missiles, and rocket-propelled grenades.

On Sunday, Hamas said it had been firing mortars against Israeli forces in north Gaza and had hit Israeli tanks with missiles.

Israeli intelligence estimates the total number of rockets available in Gaza was around 30,000, including some with a range of about 250 kilometres.

While Iran and Syria have smuggled rockets to Gaza in the past, many now appear to have been locally produced, Jean-Loup Samaan, a senior research fellow at the University of Singapore's Middle East Institute, said.

"The less sophisticated rockets you don't need Iranian support," Dr Samaan told the ABC.

"The big unknown is how many rockets and drones Hamas may have in storage."

Ali Baraka, head of Hamas National Relations Abroad, said in an interview with Russia Today's Arabic news channel RTArabic that the militant group has been preparing for two years.

"We have local factories for everything. We have rockets with ranges of 250km, 160km, 80km, 45km, and 10km," he was quoted as saying.

"We have factories for mortars and their shells … We have factories for Kalashnikovs and their bullets."

Hamas has also been known to use a wide-range of anti-tank guided missiles, including the Soviet Malyutkas and Konkurs.

There are now "Iranian knock-off versions of those Russian systems," Dr Hellyer said, which the group likely has access to.

Hamas claimed it fired around 5,000 rockets in 20 minutes in its October 7 attack, which is almost more than the amount used in the 11-day Gaza conflict in 2021.

Although most were intercepted, the mass attack saturated Israel's Iron Dome air defence system with several rockets getting through.

Several thousand rockets are reported to have been fired towards Israel since the conflict broke out.

"The issue becomes how much of that is left, because the moment Hamas loses its firepower it will lose its edge," Dr Samaan said.

If the Iran-backed Hezbollah gets involved — the militant Shia Muslim group based in Lebanon — then Israel will be facing much larger bombardments with much more sophisticated missiles.

Hezbollah is believed to have around 100,000 rockets and missiles of various types.

In the lead-up to the ground operation, Mr Netanyahu boasted about "raining down hellfire on Hamas" and killing "thousands of terrorists" in its aerial strikes.

The IDF also claimed its fighter jets struck multiple Hamas command centres in Gaza.

Now to reach militants, soldiers will need to go door-to-door — or underground.

Hamas has spent around 15 years building a warren of tunnels that runs underneath much of Gaza, which Israeli troops call the "Gaza Metro".

If the IDF wants to destroy Hamas, they will need to fight militants in their vast network of tunnels, Mr Cohen said.

"Hamas knows this and would have been working presumably on booby-traps and the like," he said in a media call.

"Also operating underground means that it negates some of Israel's technological supremacy, particularly its air power."

Israel has a small number of GBU-28 "bunker buster" bombs, which Dr Samaan said could prove useful to destroy Hamas tunnels.

They are designed to penetrate targets deep underground and have been used by the US in operations av GTV gainst Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The IDF have in the past alleged that Hamas uses the tunnels as weapons caches, bunkers, command centres and a concealed transportation artery for terrorists and weapons, including rocket launchers.

It is also suspected that many hostages are also located in the tunnels.

"It's likely Hamas will distribute hostages and put them in strategically important places for Hamas, and essentially use them as human shields," Dr Hellyer said.

How dirty could it get?
Already thousands of Gazans are believed to have died in the intense aerial bombardments Israel launched in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7.

Israel says 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were killed in the militants' cross-border rampage and more than 200 were taken hostage.

By putting boots on the ground, Mr Netanyahu believes Israel will be able to "eradicate Hamas" and bring home the remaining civilians being held captive.

But eradicating Hamas might not be possible, and the high civilian and troop casualties will likely further fuel the criticisms already being directed at Israel.

"The price of victory against Hamas will be very high … There's not a lot of good options for Israel here, other than expressing rage," Dr Hellyer said.

Israel is known to have weapons such as cluster bombs, which pose a high risk to civilians, and has also long maintained an undeclared nuclear weapons program.

But Dr Hellyer said it's unlikely there will be that level of escalation.

Israel has been accused of using white phosphorus bombs in recent military operations in Gaza and Lebanon which can inflict "excruciating burns and lifelong suffering," on civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

But the IDF has denied the claims, saying it was "unequivocally false".

"Everybody's going to have their view on whether Israel is doing everything it can to avoid civilian casualties," Dr Hellyer said.

But regardless of what's used in an expanded ground operation, in the small enclave that was home to 2.1 million people, "there will inevitably be major civilian casualties".