An Israeli ground offensive in Gaza would be an "incredibly dangerous, difficult challenge" against a "formidable foe" using a combination of "old-school and new-school warfare," a security expert has told CGTN. 

Even so, Colin Clarke – a specialist on international security and terrorism – expects the operation to begin soon. 

"It could be any day now – it definitely feels imminent with the massing at the border," says Clarke. "There's already been reports that the IDF is conducting sporadic sweeps with small numbers of soldiers."

Clarke says such forays are "an intelligence preparation of the battlefield. The Israelis are looking to seek intelligence on the hostages, the location of those hostages, and then also try to map out the network of subterranean tunnels that Hamas has constructed over the past several years. That's going to be a key component of urban warfare in this next phase if the Israelis do, in fact, go forth with a full-on ground invasion."

Huge risks and hybrid fighting

Such a military operation would inevitably lead to urban fighting, which Clarke says would bring huge risks for the Israelis, despite previous experience.

"It's going to be incredibly dangerous," says Clarke, who is director of policy and research at the Soufan Group consultancy. "The Israelis have done it before, if you think back to Operation Cast Lead 2008/2009, so they've got a lot of experience fighting in Gaza. 

"But to me, Hamas is a different enemy in 2023. Clearly, their operational capabilities have improved significantly with Iranian assistance, training and equipment."

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The nature of fighting has also changed in the intervening years, and Clarke expects battles between Hamas and the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) to reflect this.

"You're going to see a combination of what I would call old-school and new-school warfare," he says. "Old-school, it may very well look like the block-to block fighting in Grozny in Chechnya during the 1990s. 

"However, it will have that additional element of drones and other emerging technologies that both sides will bring to bear. Hamas will rely on asymmetric tactics, including improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades, snipers, ambushes. And so even for the IDF, which is a world-class military, Hamas will prove to be a formidable foe, especially in this terrain.

"Even for a nation like Israel, that has all of the latest and most innovative weapons, precision-guided munitions and the like, it's a hornets' nest that they're about to walk into."

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