“Now they see Gaza from afar, soon they will see it from within. The order will come.” These words from the Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, are one of the many predictions about the great urban battle that is expected in that Palestinian territory since the Hamas attacks of October 7. It is not only a threat from this Hebrew politician, but analysts from around the world predict such a fight.
Urban warfare is no stranger to the Tsahal (Hebrew acronym for Israel Defense Forces), as it has waged urban combat since 1948. But house-to-house fighting is where it has had to face some of its greatest challenges in these seventy-five years of conflict with its Arab neighbors.
These difficulties are not unique to Israeli troops. Military history shows that in an urban battle the differences between armies are reduced: the attacker cannot take advantage of their technological advantages, the terrain favors the defender, casualties can be very numerous… One only has to look at the recent cases of assaults on the strongholds of the Islamic State in Mosul or Raqa.
In addition to this general idea, reviewing the urban clashes of the Hebrew army is a way to see how the Arab-Israeli conflict has evolved over seventy-five years.
Urban battles began with the first Arab-Israeli war (May 1948-July 1949), in a place that can be considered the epicenter of the conflict, Jerusalem. The holy city became a strategic point for both sides in the final days of the British mandate in Palestine. The Arabs controlled the old part, to the east of the urban area, and the Jews, the western part, where they were the majority.
In that first conflict, a critical point for the Israelis was breaking the blockade that the Arab militias imposed on the western neighborhoods of Jerusalem, where one hundred thousand Jews resided, a sixth of the total Hebrew population of the Palestine mandate in 1948.
Lifting the siege was not an easy task. The Hebrew troops had to face the Jordanian Arab Legion, the best unit in the ranks of Israel’s enemies. It was commanded by British officers and had experience in the Syrian and Iraq campaigns fought during World War II.
The first phase of the confrontation with the Arab Legion took place at the entrance to the ancient city. The Israelis had wanted to control it at the beginning of the conflict, but, around May 28, 1948, Jordanian troops secured control of the Muslim-majority areas. Both sides limited the use of heavy weaponry so as not to damage their own sacred buildings.
For the rest of the war, fighting moved to the area around Jerusalem. The Israeli forces continued their attempts to lift the siege, and highlighted the various battles in the Latrun fort (in Jordanian hands), a strategic point to access the holy city.
The siege was finally lifted in July, when Hebrew forces built an alternative route. Despite this success, the new State of Israel was also unable to gain control of the old city, and Jerusalem was divided, with the eastern part under Jordanian rule.
The Six Day War in June 1967 was no exception to this rule. Israeli advances in the Sinai began with fighting in Gaza City against Palestinian and Egyptian troops, who were quickly overwhelmed by Tsahal forces. But the main focus of the house-to-house fighting would once again be in Jerusalem.
On that front, after learning of the attack on their Egyptian allies, the Jordanians began an artillery bombardment on June 5, 1967 against the western part of the city. Fifteen civilians died. The Hebrew troops counterattacked that same afternoon, but in the Hebrew cabinet of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol there was a debate about whether to launch the conquest of the ancient city.
Jordanian forces were still the best prepared in the Arab coalition, so Israel sent in its own elite troops: the 55th Parachute Brigade. The focus of the new battle for Jerusalem would be Ammunition Hill, a fortified point that allowed the Jordanian army to threaten the western part. After a debate, the Israeli army avoided the massive use of aviation and artillery to avoid damaging the holy sites.
Alternatively, a night assault was carried out to surprise the Jordanians, but this did not prevent one of the toughest battles of the Six Day War from being fought. The Israelis lost thirty-seven dead on Ammunition Hill and another thirty-eight men fell in combat in places near the old city (the total number of Israeli deaths in the conflict was about nine hundred).
Faced with the prospect of an imminent UN ceasefire, Israeli political leaders – led by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan – opted for a fait accompli and ordered the paratroopers to occupy the ancient city. The conquest of Jerusalem was concluded on the morning of June 7, 1967, when the Hebrew troops reached the Wailing Wall.
The occupation of East Jerusalem was the symbol of Israel’s domination over the entire West Bank, which it has exercised since then. In the next war with its Arab neighbors, that of Yom Kippur, in 1973, the fighting took place mainly in the deserts of the Sinai, the Golan Heights and the outskirts of Damascus. The only notable urban battle occurred in the last days of the war, in the city of Suez.
That confrontation began on October 24, and the war would end twenty-four hours later. Israeli troops were hoping for one last easy victory that would give them an advantage in negotiations. But they encountered Egyptian troops determined to fight to defend their city. The attackers did not know how to coordinate their infantry and armor, so they were defeated, despite having veteran paratroopers from 1967.
The Battle of Suez was a source of lessons for the Israelis. They would apply them in the 1982 Lebanon war, but here there was already a paradigm shift in the conflicts with their neighbors. They would no longer fight against regular forces, but instead would face insurgent groups that did not need a clear military victory to gain political advantage from an armed confrontation.
During Operation Peace for Galilee, in Lebanese lands, the Hebrew troops relatively easily defeated the Syrian army deployed there, but it was more complicated to deal with the guerrillas of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). These rebels sought to fight in urban terrain to reduce their material and training disadvantage.
Initially, the fighting in Sidon and some refugee camps only caused some delay for the Israelis. The real test came in Beirut, where the PLO headquarters was located. Within his taste for grandiose statements, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat assured that the Lebanese capital would be “the Stalingrad of the Israeli army.”
The Tsahal applied the lessons of 1973, avoided a frontal assault and sought to weaken the enemy with bombings and specific raids. The problem was that, although its regular units were perfectly trained to avoid the mistakes experienced at Suez, taking Beirut required more troops, and the reservists had not received such intense training for urban warfare.
The siege also led to a political debate within the Hebrew government of Menahem Begin. His Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, was in favor of a frontal assault to put an end to the PLO as soon as possible, but the rest of the cabinet did not want an operation that would cause heavy casualties among the soldiers themselves and harm Israel’s international position.
On August 4, 1982, the Tsahal launched its largest ground assault to destroy the PLO headquarters. Despite the initial success, the Palestinian guerrillas managed to stop the advance and made the Israelis pay a high price: nineteen soldiers killed and sixty-four wounded in twenty-four hours.
In parallel with the development of the siege, images of dead civilians outraged the international community, and the US was forced to pressure Begin’s government to accept a negotiated solution. The siege ended on August 21, 1982. Israel managed to get the PLO to leave Lebanon, but its leader, Arafat, sold the departure from Beirut as a victory, since they had resisted the powerful Israeli army.
In seventy days, 5,600 civilians and 1,100 Palestinian fighters or fighters from other Muslim factions died. Israeli troops suffered eighty-eight casualties; 23% of the Hebrew deaths in Lebanon, during the 1982 invasion, were in the siege of Beirut. To this human cost we must add the tragic epilogue of the Sabra and Chatila massacres, committed by the Christian militias, allies of the Tsahal.
Twenty years passed until the next major Israeli urban warfare operation. It was in 2002, during the Second Intifada. At the beginning of that year, a series of attacks killed seventy-one people, prompting Ariel Sharon’s government to launch Operation Defensive Shield against Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Martyrs’ Brigades. Aqsa.
The fighting took place in the main towns of the West Bank: Hebron, Ramallah, Jenin… Israeli forces developed innovative tactics, such as using bulldozers and explosives to open alternative paths through buildings, and thus avoid ambushes by the Palestinians. This was a double-edged sword, since they managed to reduce their own casualties, but caused the death of five hundred civilians and serious damage to urban structures, according to the United Nations.
The Tsahal achieved a short-term victory, as attacks were drastically reduced, but long-term success was more questioned. The offensive politically weakened the Palestinian National Authority, making it possible for Hamas to gain more support among the Palestinian population.
Israel hoped to repeat a similar triumph in the 2006 Lebanon war, but Hizbullah proved to be a much better prepared enemy than Palestinian groups. Thanks to a sophisticated arsenal of missiles and other anti-tank weapons, the Shiite organization surprised the Tsahal and caused significant casualties, one hundred and twenty-one dead in just over a month.
The Hebrew forces relied heavily on air power, but their tactics for coordinating armor and infantry had become outdated, making them useless in the small and medium-sized towns of southern Lebanon.
The results of the war against Hizbullah opened a debate within the Israeli army to improve its capabilities and equipment against insurgent groups. The successive conflicts in Gaza, with operations Cast Lead (2008), Defensive Pillar (2012) and Protective Edge (2014), brought mixed results.
In these operations, the Tsahal has not fallen back into the mistakes of 2006, but Palestinian groups, and especially Hamas, have also demonstrated a gradual improvement in their tactics to resist attacks from a superior force. Furthermore, Israeli troops have certified that using their heavy weaponry without restrictions is not possible without causing heavy casualties among innocent civilians.
Hamas and the Tsahal have had almost a decade to prepare for the new battle that has been announced since October 7. Drones, tunnels, state-of-the-art armored vehicles… Analysts point to these factors and others as decisive elements in a new urban struggle that will mark the coming years in the history of the Middle East.
