Israeli army to confront resilient foe in anticipated Gaza invasion
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jonathan Saul
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) — An Israeli invasion of Gaza will face an enemy that has built a formidable armoury with Iran's help, dug a vast tunnel network to evade attackers and has shown in past ground wars it can exact a heavier toll on Israeli troops each time.
As Israel masses tanks on Gaza's border and ministers suggest the start of an invasion is a matter of when not if, Israel's generals will look to lessons learned from past ground offensives in 2008 and 2014 that also aimed to smash the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, an Israeli security source and experts said.
Yet Hamas has till now emerged a tougher opponent each time and on Oct. 7 staged its most devastating display when its fighters killed more than 1,300 Israelis — most of them civilians — in the deadliest attack on Israeli soil since its founding in 1948.
Israeli air strikes in response have killed more than 1,400 people in Gaza so far.
Neither side can know exactly what to expect in a ground war. Israel has promised a campaign exceeding anything ever launched to wipe Hamas «off the face of the earth», while Hamas has shown its ability to survive and surprise, and will be fighting in a dense urban setting with powerful weapons.
«A ground incursion will be like diving into the unknown by the occupation and its forces,» an official in one of Gaza's Palestinian militant factions told Reuters, giving only his nickname of Abu Abdallah.
Israeli officials have made clear it will not be a swift or easy campaign. And this time it faces the problem that scores of Israeli hostages seized by Hamas on Oct. 7 could now be held in the warren of tunnels that Israeli troops call the «Gaza Metro» and which soldiers must clear to
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