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Hamas ghosts surface in display of Chutzpah

January 21, 2025 at 12:23 pm

Al-Qassam Brigades hand over 3 female Israeli hostages to Red Cross at al-Saraya as part of 1st phase of ceasefire and prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, Gaza on January 19, 2025 [Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu Agency]

For the last 15 months Hamas fighters have been viewed and feared by their Zionist foe as “ghosts” haunting a deep underground labyrinth of tunnels reaching out across the densely populated Gaza Strip.

Yahyah Sinwar, the late head of Hamas in Gaza, who was killed by an Israeli drone after a spectacular show of defiance, said in 2021 that his young military fighters had access to 500 kilometres (310 miles) of tunnels.

Bearing in mind Gaza is around 360 square kilometres (140 square miles), that’s quite a network and one which will be extensively researched by historians and military lecturers at the US Military Academy at West Point, the British-based Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and no doubt other exclusive military institutions around the world. When it comes to the ancient art of tunnel warfare Hamas is probably in a league of its own. Countless advancing Israeli troops have been ambushed from behind in surprise attacks by the fighters.

The strategy has come from one of my favourite books written by Sun Tsu, The Art of War. Sun Tzu believed that skilled surprise attacks would lead to victory but he also believed that supreme excellence was breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. Many IDF soldiers were psychologically defeated before they even stepped into Gaza simply because of the myths and legends arising from the underground claustrophobic maze.

The Chinese military strategist from around the 5th century BC would, I imagine, have frowned on the boastful, but largely vacuous tweets and TikTok’s from Israel’s largely gormless military.

Unlike the boastful Zionist TikTok Army whose soldiers have posted hundreds, if not thousands, of videos online, Hamas fighters have avoided the glare of publicity and have rarely been seen, let alone captured on video for the social networks. Although the resistance group did turn the inverted red triangle into an iconic symbol in a series of videos showing the targeting of the Israeli army’s infantry.

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In the first few months of engaging Hamas, Israeli soldiers were recorded screaming: “I can’t see them, I can’t see them. We are fighting ghosts!”

Many of the Israeli military videos have also revealed and exposed blatant war crimes, say lawyers who are accruing the evidence for use at the International Court of Justice. By contrast, the Hamas position of ‘less-is-more’ towards filming and posting online could also explain why many in the Arab world believe the group can claim to have won the brutal war which has, in the last 471 days, killed around 47,000 Palestinians with more than 111,000 wounded and 11,000 still missing.

John Spencer, a retired US Army major and the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, said: “I usually say it’s like walking down the street waiting to get punched in the face.” Urban defenders, he added, had time to think about where they were going to be “and there’s millions of hidden locations they can be in. They get to choose the time of the engagement — you can’t see them but they can see you.”

No doubt the debate of who won the war will continue for years but it is easy to see who are the biggest losers. Ordinary Palestinians living in Gaza are returning to their neighbourhoods only to be confronted with lunar landscapes of industrial rubble where their homes once stood. Some have already found the remains of their loved ones under collapsed concrete buildings. They will be praying for a permanent ceasefire as they set about rebuilding their homes.

Meanwhile another debate raging is the future role, if any, of Hamas and its military wing. If the Israelis thought that they had severely damaged their enemy they were in for a shock during the celebrated hostage exchange on Sunday.

Scores of armed Hamas soldiers were back on the streets of Gaza to the cheers of Palestinian residents. An impressive convoy of gleaming white Toyota pick-up trucks ushered the fighters through the streets.

This time the ‘ghosts’ were on show in an uncharacteristic display of what the Israelis called Chutzpah.

It must have been a depressing sight for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals who overnight on Friday and Saturday ordered warplanes to blitz 150 targets in northern Gaza. They justified the brutal onslaught, which killed many Palestinian women and children, by claiming they were targeting 150 Hamas tunnels. Clearly, after Sunday’s show of force, the military failed to wipe out the entire tunnel network as Hamas came back on the streets to haunt the Israelis.

READ: Hamas will remain in power in Gaza after war: Israeli analysts

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.