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2024-03-24 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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On both sides of Gaza’s border, the IDF is remaking security from the (under)ground up
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Consequences. None of this was seen to be needed on October 6th. [IsraelTimes] From a buffer zone to attack drones and more troops, the army plans to keep Israel safe by taking a zero-tolerance approach to tunnel building or any other disturbance.
Fewer than two kilometers (1.2 miles) separates the towns of Khuza’a from Kibbutz Nir Oz. The land between the Gazook and Israeli communities is taken up by a patchwork of neat farm fields and a fence that Hamas
 ...the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
commandos from Khuza’a tore through with ease on October 7. The turbans of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force that invaded Nir Oz made the journey from Khuza’a in minutes, equipped with maps and cycle of violences. Hours later, they left behind a demolished kibbutz soaked in the blood of 38 slain victims, taking 77 hostages with them.
To ensure such horrors never occur again, the army, while fighting a war inside Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
, is also fundamentally reconceiving how it defends Israel, especially the towns closest to the Paleostinian enclave.
The process will see the military shift away from more passive defensive measures to the adoption of a security doctrine that will see Gazooks pushed away from the border and a beefed-up force along the fence actively engaged in keeping Israeli towns safe by building deterrence, according to a well-placed defense source who briefed The Times of Israel on the development of plans for securing the border with Gaza. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Standing near the barrier separating Khuza’a from Israel on Monday, echoes of gunfire and explosions could be heard from battles taking place in Khan Younis, just a few kilometers to the west.
Nir Oz is hard to miss from the Gazook side of the fence. Even from the town of Abasan, a bit deeper inside Gaza, the kibbutz’s paint factory, Nirlat, is perenially visible.
A walk through the farmland near the fence outside Khuza’a and Abasan can feel misleadingly pastoral, until one notices markers placed by Israel Defense Forces troops to indicate the entrance to a tunnel.
The underground passage is what the IDF terms as an "approach tunnel" — it begins at the first line of houses in Khuza’a and leads to the fence.
The opening of this particular tunnel, just a few dozen paces from the fence, was discovered by chance when smoke began to rise from the ground following an Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM! ...
in an urban area elsewhere on the tunnel’s route.
Until the war, the IDF turned a blind eye to the construction of tunnels throughout the Strip due to a tacit agreement with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar designed to de-escalate tensions. Israel estimates that there are hundreds of approach tunnels near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, meant to allow terrorist cells to mount a surprise attack on the fence.
On October 7, however, Hamas turbans did not use the tunnels. Instead, they stormed the fence in plain sight, broke through the barrier in multiple locations and dashed toward Israeli towns uninterrupted.
An interrogation of a Hamas prisoner revealed that the plan was to use the tunnel system for a second wave of attackers, though in the end those who broke into Israel later on October 7 also did not need to bother hiding underground.
The tunnels were only used later when Israeli ground forces moved into the Gaza Strip, allowing Nukhba forces to attempt to sneak up on soldiers deep inside the enclave.
The IDF was surprised by the number of tunnels that were discovered, especially in the south of the Gaza Strip. Israeli intelligence knew Hamas had invested significant time and resources in the project, but underestimated its scope.
The army has found that Hamas built its subterranean warren in this area in an organized way, with a feeder tunnel deep inside Gaza connecting passages that stretch toward the border, allowing it to secretly move large numbers of forces toward Israel.
The system was seemingly built out from the remains of Hamas’s attack tunnel network that it used to mount sneak assaults inside Israel during the 2014 war. Though Israel destroyed much of that system, Hamas not only repaired it in the nine intervening years, but expanded it as well.
The IDF has said that a zero-tolerance approach to tunnel digging will be part of its post-war operational standards; any identification of tunnel digging will be immediately attacked on the ground or by air.
The source described the protocol as a "lawnmower working systematically over the next few years to nip any threat in the bud."
BUFFER ZONES
The Sisyphean task of destroying the tunnel network, which has fallen to the IDF’s Combat Engineering Corps, is part of a larger plan to create a buffer zone along the border. Officials are careful to use the term "buffer zone" and not "security zone" lest it harkens back to the southern Leb
...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
security zone maintained by the IDF from 1985 to 2000 and regarded internationally as a military occupation.
The decision to create a buffer zone was made early in the war, after the events of October 7 led the military to conclude that an early warning apparatus relying on intelligence and surveillance was insufficient to protect Israeli towns near the Gaza border. Commanders in the field found that it would be necessary to shift away from passive defense to actively meeting each threat with a strong operational response.
Since receiving a green light from the government, the army has been working to clear a one-kilometer-wide (0.6-mile) strip of land running along the border, inside Gaza, for the buffer zone.
Besides destroying dozens of kilometers of tunnels, creating the zone includes clearing away any vegetation, including farm fields, and razing homes or other buildings.
The destruction is evident in Khuza’a, whose eastern edge practically kisses the border. Houses that sat only a few hundred meters (1,000 feet or more) from the fence before the war are now mostly reduced to rubble.
The army is still working on the administrative plan for the buffer zone: how it will look, what capabilities it will include, what the rules will be for opening fire on those who enter, and whether there will be a visible demarcation of where it begins.
The work is being done in conjunction with the military’s legal division, which may one day have to defend the decision to expropriate a chunk of land from the Gaza Strip.
OUTPOSTS, DRONES AND ARMED LOCALS
Along with the buffer inside Gaza, the IDF is planning moves that will fundamentally transform its defense posture on the Israeli side of the fence. In the past, the risk of an invasion from Gaza ranked near the bottom of what the IDF considered to be a probable threat. But now, it is the logical point to underpin a new defense doctrine, which will see a buildup of forces and the development of new operational protocols.
This will include a line of military outposts to be built along the fence and next to communities near the border, promising a massive military presence and immediate response to threats.
On the morning of October 7, there were four IDF battalions stationed along the border with Gaza, comprising a few thousand soldiers. That number will now double, if not more.
The military is also expediting existing plans to move the Gaza Division’s Northern Brigade’s headquarters to a new building closer to its area of operation, rather than being commanded from the same base near Re’im where the Gaza Division and its other brigade is also headquartered. On October 7, turbans managed to pin down the division’s complete command structure by launching a massive assault on the base, disrupting its ability to coordinate an effective response to the multifaceted Hamas onslaught across the south.
Along with manpower, firepower will also be beefed up. Hamas’s explosive drones largely disabled IDF equipment stationed near the fence to surveil the border and to remotely fire at suspects approaching the border. Now, the army is looking to both improve those systems and add a large number of attack drones to the bag of tools at troops’ disposal, giving soldiers stationed on the border the ability to deploy air power before the Air Force can arrive.
Beyond that, the IDF is replanning its surveillance array, adding tools and allowing troops to control various surveillance systems from multiple places at the same time.
One plan already nearing implementation is the creation of a quick response counterterror reserves force made up of residents living near the Gaza border with experience in special forces. The unit is modeled on LOTAR Eilat, a counterterror unit made up of residents of the Red Sea city and others in the area, which has been called upon several times to respond to terror incidents before other forces could arrive.
The unit’s volunteers train once a week and engage in advanced training once a month. Permanent emergency teams within the unit remain in place even when others are called to fight elsewhere, ensuring that civilians are continually protected.
BACK TO 2002
The more apt parallel to how defense in the south will look after the war, however, may be to the West Bank, where the IDF protects settler communities and secures the barrier with Israel while also implementing offensive operations aimed at diffusing any terror threat that may emerge from Paleostinian areas.
The situation in Gaza and on the Israeli side of the border today is not unlike the end of Operation Defensive Shield, a massive military operation in the West Bank launched in 2002 to stem the terror of the second intifada, including large incursions into Paleostinian cities.
Then, as now, Israel struggled with how it could maintain the operation’s gains once fighting ended and troops pulled back. The difference is that Hamas in Gaza is much stronger, and has ground infrastructure that didn’t exist in the West Bank in 2002.
It’s clear that even after the war ends, troops will need to continue operating inside Gaza. Once the buffer zone is established, the army is hoping to build up deterrence by deploying an immediate response to any possible disturbance, keeping things from snowballing out of control. On Tuesday, for instance, forces in Khuza’a fired warning shots multiple times at Paleostinian civilians trying to reach homes in the buffer zone.
October 7 did not begin on that bloody morning. For years, Gazooks chipped away at Israel’s deterrence with seemingly small-scale acts like launching incendiary balloons and noisy border riots.
These provocations escalated into the massacre in which Hamas rampaged through the south murdering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 253 others. This time, the army does not plan on giving any inches.
"The principle will be clear," said the defense source. "The rate of destruction of [Hamas’s abilities] and the erosion of its powers will be higher than the rate at which it can build them back up. Only that way can we ensure that what was will be no more." 
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Posted by trailing wife 2024-03-24 00:00||
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