Irregular Warfare Podcast - IW Lessons from Gaza: Lawfare, Humanitarian Crises, and Urban Combat

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

Be sure to visit the Irregular Warfare Initiative website to see all of the new articles, podcast episodes, and other content the IWI team is publishing! For nearly two months, three powerful dynamics have converged in Gaza: lawfare, a humanitarian crisis, and urban combat. This episode examines those subjects and explores how they play out and influence one another in Gaza. Our hosts are joined by retired General Joseph Votel, the distinguished chair of West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center and former commander of US Central Command, and Dr. Raphael Cohen, the director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE. They explore Hamas’s hybrid strategy in Gaza and Israel’s traditional counterterrorism approach in the Middle East, the importance of addressing lawfare and humanitarian considerations head on, and the challenges of operating in urban terrain and navigating geopolitical complexities that may require the United States and its allies to reconsider their global force structure. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

You know, what I think sets 10-7 apart from the previous attacks is the ability of Hamas to effectively employ combined arms maneuver in ways that, frankly, we hadn't seen before, both on terms of scale, but also in terms of using both airborne ground and naval activity to gain an operational effect that, frankly, you haven't seen before from Hamas, certainly on this scale, and that, frankly, most militant groups really can't pull off. You know, the risks, I think, with this are what comes next. You know, the challenge of a deliberate clearance operation in a place like Gaza is the same challenge that we had with ISIS,

is that once you clear through this, when you are eventually successful, and they will eventually be successful in this, then what? Welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm your host, Ben Jepp, and my co-host today is Elisa Lauffer. Today's episode examines irregular warfare in Israel and the Gaza Strip. Our guests begin by delving into Hamas and its hybrid strategy in Gaza before addressing Israel's traditional counterterrorism approach in the Middle East. They then discuss the risks associated with the invasion of Gaza and the importance of addressing lawfare and humanitarian considerations head on. Finally, our guests conclude with recommendations about operating in urban terrain and navigating

a complex geopolitical environment that may force the U.S. and its allies to rethink global force structure. General Joseph Votel is the current Distinguished Chair of West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. He is a retired Army four-star officer who, in his last active duty assignment, served as the commanding general of U.S. Central Command. During his 39 years in the military, he commanded special operations and conventional military forces at every level. Dr. Raphael Cohen is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he directs the Strategy

and Doctrine Program of Project Air Force. He works on a broad range of defense and foreign policy issues, including defense strategy and force planning, Middle East and European security, and civil-military relations. In 2017, Dr. Cohen and his colleagues published a report titled Lessons from Israel's Wars in Gaza, which serves as the anchor for today's conversation. You are listening to The Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated

to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with General Joseph Votel and Dr. Raphael Cohen. Joe, Rafi, it's great to have you both on the show today, and thanks for joining us on the pod. Thanks for having me. Yeah, looking forward to it. So to start off, we're first going to recognize that today's episode has the potential to generate strong feelings over a very contentious issue. This show, like all of our episodes, shies away from the glitz of our 24-hour news cycle,

and instead we discuss events like what's going on in the Middle East right now to examine deeper patterns of irregular warfare theory, practice, and policy, which is why we're examining Dr. Rafi Cohen's report today. Rafi's report takes a longer view of the conflict in Israel, which will allow us to better extract meaning from the brutal cycle of ongoing violence. So that being said, we'd like to start off by asking both of you if you could provide us some background context. For Rafi, who exactly is Hamas, how did they come to be, and what is the organization's role in the Middle East?

Well, Hamas was founded in 1987 by Sheikh Yassin. He was a Palestinian. He was trying to provide an alternative to the dominant Palestinian resistance organization at the time, the Palestinian Liberation Organization. And it's important to know that at the time, the Israelis weren't actually as antithetical to Hamas simply because they were pursuing sort of a divide-and-conquer strategy, the idea being that this would fracture the Palestinian resistance at the time. Now, as later events showed, Hamas turned into a bigger problem for the Israelis. Beginning in the 1990s, Hamas begins to take an increasingly important role. And once we go to the second intifada between 2000 to 2005,

Hamas is really behind a lot of the suicide bombings that captured the core aspects of that conflict. Now, how they raised power goes to 2005. Now, in 2005, a right-wing Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, decides that it's no longer strategically worthwhile to hold on to Gaza and executes a withdrawal from Gaza. longer strategically worthwhile to hold on to Gaza and execute a withdrawal from Gaza. This means forcibly removing about 8,000 Israeli settlers from Gaza with the 50,000-odd IDF troops and turning it over to the Palestinian Saudi. Now, the Palestinian Saudi can't control Gaza. And in 2007, they are thrust from power in a violent coup launched by Hamas. And from 2007 onwards, they become the de facto government in the Gaza Strip. And that sort of sets up an ongoing series of low-level conflicts that we've been seeing play out between Israel and Hamas, as well as some smaller Islamic militant groups in and around the Strip from 2007 on through today. in and around the strip from 2007 on through today.

This is largely a militant Palestinian Islamist movement here that continues to draw a lot of attention, especially in the area there. Really focused on an independent state of Palestine. And, you know, from my experience, my study of this has largely rejected any of the secular approaches that have been pursued over a number of years here and has really embraced violence as part of this. And I know we have a tendency to think of it as the de facto government, but I think it's important to appreciate that they don't really practice any of the normal policies or strategies or approaches that a normal government would have. And I think this is a particularly unique aspect, not just to Hamas and Gaza, but

really to the conflict that is taking place. That's a great point, Joe, and I'd like to expand on that if I could. Because I think it's important to know that Hamas at its core ideology is not simply dedicated to a Palestinian state. It's dedicated to the annihilation of the state of Israel. This is one of its founding beliefs, and it makes it a distinction from the Palestinian authority, which has at least expressed openness to some sort of two-state solution here, too. And that gets to some of the ideological roots of the current conflict. And the United States recognizes Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Not everybody does, but we do. And that puts it in a different class in terms of how you interact and other things with Hamas. And so it does take on a different connotation for us. These are all really great points and actually a fantastic segue into one of the next topics that we wanted to discuss with both of you, which is the hybrid nature of Hamas and the threat that it poses. Rathi, in your report, you argue that Hamas really does pose a true hybrid threat, given that it functions, whether others want to recognize it this way or not, partially as a state while also exercising terrorist capabilities. Can you explain how, in previous wars, Hamas has leveraged that hybrid identity to gain an advantage over Israel? Yeah, so Hamas is not simply a terrorist organization.

Israel? Yeah. So Hamas is not simply a terrorist organization. Because they control Gaza, that gives them access to resources that, frankly, other terrorist groups do not have. Depending on the estimate, you're talking about $350 to $450 million of assets a year. They're doing that by some from Iranian aid, some from siphoning off aid and taxing the local population. Now, that gives them the access to resources that, frankly, smaller terrorist groups do not have. And that, in turn, allows them to conduct operations on the size and scale, as we've witnessed during the 10-7 attacks, in a way that are significantly above what a normal terrorist organization could do. Just to put this into context here, these really estimates for how many people participated in the 10-7 attacks are on the order of 2,500 up to 3,000 militants all at once in a mass-coordinated attack. That's a gauge-style sized element,

if you were to take the analog here for an American military context. That's the size and scale that you don't get with many terrorist organizations. And it's not only in terms of size, but also in terms of sophistication of doing really sort of combined arms maneuver with an aerial dimension, a naval dimension,

a ground dimension, of course, and the tunnels, which I'm sure we'll talk about here in a little bit. It turns it into a really thorny military problem here when you think about this in an operational context. You know, one of the things that I think about when we talk about Hamas and really other terrorist organizations, and as someone who's kind of dealt with a number of these over time, is that you do have to, you as a practitioner, you develop a respect for kind of the innovative resourcefulness of terrorist organizations. I know that sounds like a compliment. I don't mean it that way,

but it is an acknowledgement that you do have to have a level of respect for the adversaries that you deal with out there. And you see this in terrorist organizations. You certainly see this in Hamas, this idea of resourcefulness. I mean, as Rafi just mentioned, the tunnels, which I know we're going to get into in some detail here. But I mean, this is a unique asymmetric approach that they have taken, that they have invested in, that has benefited them, probably continues to benefit them. You know, the rockets, for example.

I mean, there's a fairly significant market of homemade rockets. They've demonstrated a level of innovativeness using resources that are readily available to kind of augment that which can be smuggled into this. And then, you know, just as we saw in the 10-9 attacks here, the use of paragliders, other things like this, I think, demonstrate that these are thinking organizations. And I think it's important for practitioners and policymakers to appreciate this aspect that these organizations aren't static. They don't always rely on the same things that they have done in the past. And they're always paying attention to what we are doing, to our vulnerabilities, and the ways that they can exploit this. So Hamas, I think,

characterizes a lot of this, at least as I describe it, innovative resourcefulness. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I'd just like to amplify that if I could. I mean, the other part that particularly about 10.7 that I was struck by is the degree of OPSEC, the degree of operational security inside that organization. To pull off a attack of that scale with that number of people and it for not to pop on anyone's intelligence screen is an impressive feat. I mean, and the other aspect here, which I think is interesting, is some of Hamas's use of small UAS, small unmanned aerial systems here, which in some ways, you know, I think there's a question here of how much they're learning from conflicts like Ukraine and employing that. But clearly, as the general said, it's like this is very much a learning organization. And while I deplore the end state, you got to admire the tradecraft on some degree.

So we're definitely interested in delving into the distinct tactics used by Hamas. But to zoom out quick and focus on some of the more regional dynamics, Hamas, like many non-state actors, is often keys of being sponsored by states like Iran. Joe, could you explain how Iran has traditionally played a role in fueling instability via proxy forces like Hamas throughout CENTCOM? There's a saying in CENTCOM headquarters, at least when I was there, that Iran will fight to the last proxy. Essentially, they have made this a principled way that they operate across the region with not necessarily directly confronting, although they do some of this with some of their IRGC

forces, but they have made use of proxy forces, so-called partners to them who can carry some of their ideology, can focus on similar enemies, and can apply tactics and keep some degree of separation between their actions and the state of Iran. And Iran has made the extraordinary use of this, as our listeners probably appreciate, not just organizations like Hamas, but Lebanese Hezbollah, a variety of the popular mobilization forces in places like Iraq and now Syria, certainly the Houthis down in Yemen, and probably a variety of others here that they have done. And so they have used these as an extension of their own policy and objectives really across the region. And a significant part of their efforts have been to continue to improve not just the ideological

connections, but the physical connections between this. One of the things we were always concerned about during my time at CENTCOM was the arc that extended from Tehran to Baghdad to Beirut and was not just an ideological arc, but was actually a physical arc that they were trying to move supplies, materials, other things through this. They do similar things with the Houthis down in the Arabian Peninsula using maritime and air platforms. So this is a key part of how Iran pursues its foreign policy. And this largely was orchestrated, obviously, by Qasem Soleimani when he was still alive and now continues to be orchestrated by his successor and the government of Iran.

So just two amplifying points here. I agree with everything the general just said, but it's important from the Iranian perspective to know that they have sort of a tiered view of their proxies, with Hamas being somewhat down the chain and people like Hezbollah being on top of that. Now that's important because when we think about the broader strategic context here, you know, what this war might escalate into, Israeli military, they always regarded Hamas as sort of a second-tier adversary. And this may explain partly why they were caught off guard by 10-7. But it also explains some of their deep concerns that this conflict will expand to the northern

front. Hezbollah has a deeper magazine depth of rockets. It also has a lot of military training, thanks to the fact that they were fighting on behalf of Iran in places like Syria. So when you think about how this thing might escalate, the concern really is about that some of the better Iranian proxies will end up getting more directly involved than they already are, apart from the sort of low-level artillery exchanges that we see on the northern front. The second aspect that I would add to this is that it shapes regional dynamics in a second sense. There was a two-sided communication between the messaging coming out of the Arab states,

particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the like. That's partly because, on the one hand, they deplore violence going on against Palestinians and civilian casualties and the like. They, however, also view the Iranians as a mortal threat to their regime. And they view groups like Hamas, which is, after all, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, that Sunni Arab Islamist ideology, as also a threat to their regime. So when you think about regional dynamics pushing forward, you're going to get two messages coming out of Arab capitals, one being from the Arab street, if you will, from the population, which are shocked and horrified by the level of civilian casualties.

And then there's going to be a subtle more message, and that's which is those capitals may be less concerned about the destruction of Hamas, and particularly going after the Iranians, than they might message publicly. Yeah, I think that's right. I think this just highlights the complexity, not just on the battlefield here that we're seeing playing out, but really behind the scenes. And these, at times, very conflicting objectives that exist through the region are really a factor that continues to make this a really super complicated area. I totally agree. That's a really interesting and important point on the strategic level that you have to keep in mind here, how other states in the region are responding to this and how that might be separate from what some of their populations are thinking. Really, really insightful point. Thank you. So we've focused the conversation until this point mostly on Hamas and its strategy and

capabilities. And at this point, I want to pivot a little bit to talking about the other party in this conflict, Israel. And I'd like to talk about their general strategy for dealing with organizations like Hamas. So could you give us a brief overview of Israel's approach to Hamas and more broadly security in the Middle East? Israel lives in a place where they're surrounded by adversaries and have been for a long period of time. And that's been a significant part of their strategy going forward has been to make sure that they are strong at home

and they can protect themselves along their borders and their frontiers. And as we've seen over history here with Gaza, with Lebanon, have fought limited conflicts in all of those locations to address that. And of course, you know, we go back to the 73 War, fought with actual nation states in this to kind of secure their area. So this is an important backdrop to the situation. My experience, what was really interesting to me during my time at CENTCOM was that this issue of the conflict between Israel and the Arab states was not at the forefront. We were actually in a period here where Israel was much more concerned about other threats. They were much more concerned about Iran and what Iran could do to enable proxy forces, kind of the militias, organizations like Lebanese Hezbollah to, you know, pose threats against Israel. So in my view, there was a subtle shift

here. You know, many of the things that we would typically think of as the underlying current of Arab-Israeli issues, I think were actually downplayed over a number of years, allowing Israel to not be completely comfortable, but certainly take the time to focus on other threats that existed in their area, whether that was what I just mentioned, the movement of materials to Iranian-aligned groups or organizations like ISIS, and instability that was occurring just to their eastern flank was Syria. So they've obviously been focused on that as well. And that's been an aspect of it over the last several years. Obviously, things like the Abraham Accord have allowed them an opportunity to begin

to develop relationships, not just diplomatically and economically, but also in the military realm to help with their security strategy vis-a-vis Iran. I think there's no doubt that a structure, a platform like the Abraham Accords can really have some positive benefits against that adversary. I think we saw that. I certainly had an appreciation for that as a former CENTCOM commander, that what this could do in helping the line nation. So that I think has taken place over the last several years. And the current conflict, of course, now is taking us back to some of the more traditional challenges that Israel has had. But that's kind of a long discussion here about, you know, this kind of winding path that Israel has had around its own security strategy.

So let me take where the general left off and then amplify it a little bit. Talk a little bit about their approach, specifically vis-a-vis Hamas. The bumper sticker here that the Israelis like to talk about is quote-unquote mowing the grass. What they mean by that is a two-pronged strategy, one being containment and the other being deterrence. The idea here is since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007, they would try to contain the Hamas threat by the mixture of sort of border restrictions, now the full-on blockade of Gaza, and then deterrence, i.e. whenever Hamas got sort of out of line or one of the other militant groups got out of line, began launching rockets

into Israel or infiltrating via the borders, they would try to reestablish returns by usually fairly targeted operations, airstrikes, and in some cases, ground incursions. And so when we look at the past from 2007 on to 10-7, you see a series of relatively small-scale Gaza wars. So Israel fights a ground campaign, Operation Kathlet in 2008 to 2009. Again, lasts about a month. You have Operation Pillar of Defense, which is mostly an air campaign in 2012.

Then Protective Edge in 2014, which is also a small ground campaign that was going specifically over cross-border tunnels that Hamas was using to infiltrate southern Israel, then a series of border skirmishes in 2018, and finally Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021, again, primarily an air campaign. The point of all of these operations, as one Israeli analyst

described to me in an interview, was, quote-unquote, to break their bones but not put them in the hospital. And what he meant by that was Israel, from a strategic perspective, wanted to hit Hamas and those militant groups hard enough so they got the message, don't attack Israel, but not so hard that this conflict would either lead to Hamas imploding and chaos in the Gaza Strip or exploding into a larger regional war. I mean, from the Israeli perspective, particularly in, say, 2014 timeframe, they're looking across the border and what's happening with ISIS, and they say, well,

Hamas is bad, but it could be a whole lot worse. Now, after 10-7, that strategic calculus changes dramatically. And if you look at the statements from Prime Minister Netanyahu to Defense Minister Galant to Chief of Defense Halivi to most of the senior IDF leadership, it's all, we are going to destroy Hamas. Hamas is ISIS. There is no more negotiation. That containment deterrent strategy no longer works. And that, I think, helps set the framework for the operation that's unfolding currently and why this looks somewhat different than previous Gaza wars. Rafi, so I think we started to indirectly dig into parts of your report with that last comment about discussing Israel's strategy of mowing the grass, by which Israel would

repeatedly target Hamas leadership to keep violence at manageable levels, right? But as you just stated, in the current conflict, Israel has signaled its intent to eliminate Hamas entirely. This does seem like a pretty lofty goal for a country like Israel. So do you think a goal like that is achievable? And that might be difficult to predict, but at least what are some of the risks associated with this approach? Yeah, so the question is, can you destroy Hamas? We need to find that a little bit more. What you can certainly do with military force is remove Hamas from political power. You know, we've done it before.

The ISIS campaign, Operation Inherent Resolve, would be a good example of this. We did it in Afghanistan, at least in the early days, where we've removed a terrorist regime that was controlling ground, and then we force it underground. Now, what you can't do with military force is destroy Palestinian nationalism. That's always going to be there. You can't necessarily destroy the ideology or the underlying motivation that's fueling some of Hamas. And there'll also be certain Hamas members that won't be able to be captured or killed in this current operation, simply because they're not in the AOR. They are in Ghadar or in, Lebanon and the like. So you can do that. And removing Hamas from political power, I think, is probably a most achievable military objective, albeit a hard one, and may very well be what Israel needs to do at this stage.

But it's somewhat short of destroying Hamas completely as an organization. Now, to your second half of your question of like, what are the risks in this approach? Well, first off, it's committing to a very lengthy ground operation. Gaza is a place of 2.2 to 2.3 million inhabitants, very densely populated, all sort of packed into an area roughly the size of Philadelphia. So clearing that, you know, from a military perspective, that means going into everything from high rises to tunnels to the like, and doing so without a lot of civilian casualties is a difficult military task. It's also a politically risky task here, and you're beginning to see some of the backlash, particularly in the international arena, to Israel's tactics. Now, from my own analysis, I think a lot of this is sort of baked into the battlefield geometry of Gaza. I have a hard time imagining how to do this in a dramatically cleaner way. If your end state is indeed removing Hamas from political power, but nonetheless, you're going to

get a political backlash. And from Israel's perspective, that's something they have to worry about. Yeah, that's a really good rundown. You know, when I think about these types of things, you know, the early rhetoric, if I could just use that term from the Israeli leadership, you know, we're going to wipe out Hamas. When I hear things like that as a military practitioner, I'm always thinking to myself, how does that translate into meaningful military tasks that commanders and organizations can actually achieve on the

ground. And I think that's part of the challenge here. And I may explain why there is some confusion, maybe on international angle, and certainly in our media here about what exactly Israel is attempting to do here. But what has to happen is you have to take a political objective, whether it's, you know, wipe out Hamas, destroy them, or that action by the Israeli military has to be turned into meaningful things that organizations are. They have to be measurable. They have to be decisive in meaning that they actually accomplish something. And they actually lead to something, one step leading to another in terms of this. As I look at situations like this, and as you look at how national leaders talk about situations, I'm always thinking about, okay, how does that translate into something from the military?

And of course, the risks, I think, with this are what comes next. And of course, you know, the risks, I think, with this are what comes next. You know, the challenge of a deliberate clearance operation in a place like Gaza is the same challenge that we had with ISIS, is that once you clear through this, when you are eventually successful, and they will eventually be successful in this, then what? Who's in charge? How do you emplace people in charge? One of the biggest challenges that we had in the Syrian portion of the ISIS campaign was getting some kind of political entity, some kind of local entity in

charge of security, of basic human services in these communities and villages. And that's a big challenge and that will have to be done. And that will fall very heavily on the military. So that will be a big aspect of this. And then, of course, how they just think through the whole humanitarian aspect of this. You know, we benefited, again, I'm a victim of my own experience here. We benefited when we went to Mosul in 2016, 2017, because we learned from some earlier fights we've been in, the Fallujah and some of the other ones up to that, we had a relationship with a large number of humanitarian organizations, and we actually were able to conduct humanitarian planning operations. So we could plan evacuation of civilians, we could have camps, we could have resources in place to address it. It wasn't

perfect, but it was better than not having anything. It was better than what we're seeing right now in Gaza. So I think a continuing challenge with this is going to be the humanitarian aspect and then the whole strategic communication thing that goes around this. So, you know, the risks, in my view, are not necessarily on the military side. They're on things like how you govern this, how you take care of people, how you message this and keep people on your side. And Israel has an extraordinary challenge in this. They've got a variety of audiences they're talking to, not just their own citizens, but the Jewish diaspora, the international community,

people across the region, their adversaries that they've got to effectively communicate with directly or indirectly. So that's where I kind of see the big risks of this going forward. I actually have a lot of confidence in the Israelis to be able to figure out the military component. I don't have very much confidence here in figuring out what comes next question. And in some ways, I think this is an even harder challenge than we faced in the account ISIS campaign, because at least we had the general idea as well. After we clear this place, it's going to go back to the Iraqi government. The Israelis' perspective, they don't have that first primary question figured out yet. I mean, they said they don't want to occupy it, but they don't want it to go back to what it was. The Palestinian Authority says, we don't want to govern it. Even if they could govern

it, they were kicked out of Gaza the last time. The Egyptians aren't particularly interested in taking it over, nor the rest of the Arab partners. So the basic questions of, like, what comes next is not something the Israelis have sort of laid out in any way, shape, or form. And that, I think, is what I frankly worry about. And it really begs the question of who has to take the lead in something like that. I mean, certainly, you know, there seems to be an onus on Israel to be a player in that, and they certainly should. I mean, they're going to own this at the end, and they have to be big in this, you know, there seems to be an onus on Israel to be a player in that. They certainly should. I mean, they're going to own this at the end and they have to be big in this, you know, the United States, but the international community has to play a big role in this as well. So I hope I'm not seeing it because we're seized with images of flares and smoke and other things on the TV right now. We're

not really seeing what is happening, hopefully behind the scenes to begin to build a platform upon which there can be a discussion for kind of the political resolution. And this is hard. It's harder than the military campaign is going to be, and that's going to be a hard campaign. Rafi is right. We had the Iraqi government with all of its warts and everything else. At least there was a government that you could fall back on. In Syria, we didn't. And so as a result, now almost four and a half, approaching five years after the end of the military campaign against ISIS and the destruction of the caliphate, we still do not have a political solution. In that discussion, the two of you

touched on international responses to this, and specifically international responses to the very real challenge that Israel faces conducting, Rafi, in your words, a cleaner operation given the desired end state, which is the destruction of Hamas. And that discussion reminded me of a point you made, Rafi, in your report, which was that modern democratic militaries need to be prepared to confront lawfare. That is the strategy of an adversary using or abusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve a warfighting objective, which I think is an especially interesting conversation when you're talking about a non-state actor like Hamas that does not have membership in many of the

international organizations where international law is created and used. So can you talk about in past conflicts, some particular instances where Hamas has leveraged lawfare and what that's looked like and its effect on conflict between Israel and Hamas? Sure. Let me give you an example from the current conflict, if I could. So early on in the conflicts, during the air campaign, before we get to the ground in caution, we have about three weeks of air campaigns. There was one point where there was an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. And for the last about 24 to 48 hours, every journalist was calling in to look at the same hole in the ground and say, well, is this a JDAM or was it not?

well, is this a JDAM or was it not? But nonetheless, the point is Hamas made a vague point of saying there was a Israeli airstrike on a hospital and 500-odd civilians were killed. Now, that claim ultimately was debunked. But by the time that message gets out into the international audience, it's really hard for that to get wound back. And then all of a sudden, it becomes, well, this is an example of a war crime. This brings in the lawfare component to it. It's along with just information warfare. And that in turn changes the narrative here in ways that, you know, plays out both in the information space, but also will play out in the legal space.

You know, there's multiple organizations pushing for, you know, an investigation of Israeli war crimes, some of which will be legitimate, and some of which will be legitimate, some of which will be based on bad information. That's how groups like Hamas use lawfare to achieve their objectives. And it's really critical, I think, for the other side in this situation that Rafi just talked about, the Israelis, but we could find ourselves in this situation, have found ourselves in this situation, to really appreciate the fact that that is an aspect that will be brought into the fight and that you'll have to contend with. And I'm a little surprised that the Israeli defense has had some challenges with that

in terms of pushing back on that, something they have to focus in on. As I kind of look at the current situation here, I think there are important ways that they have to highlight the aspects of what they're doing. It's not enough to just say, I mean, if you look at what's just happened this situation here. I think there are important ways that they have to highlight the aspects of what they're doing. It's not enough to just say, I mean, if you look at what's just happened this week with the strikes up in the refugee camp, it's not enough to just say, well, we accomplished the task. We killed the person that we did. You actually do have to explain why the value of that was worth the risk that was taken to civilians in this particular situation. And so you have to be on guard to address and anticipate the challenges of lawfare throughout all of this. And the same thing on the

humanitarian side. I've got to believe that there are Israeli entities that are talking to people in the humanitarian community here about support to Palestinian refugees and displaced persons that are moving around. I just got to believe that that's happened. But it's not evident to me that that's the case. And that is another area here where combatants have to step into this and have to be very vocal, have to be very visible in terms of the outreach and support and the coordination they're doing with organizations like humanitarian efforts that are underway to take care of the Palestinians that are trying to get out of the way. It's not evident. And by not engaging in that, at least by not making it visible, it opens themselves up to more attacks from the lawfare side, in my view.

I'd like to pick up on that or pull a little bit of that string, because I think it's important for listeners to recognize that there are actual dilemmas here from sort of an operational perspective. For that public affairs officer, you know, when an incident like the hospital incident happens, do you go out with the narrative hard in the beginning, knowing that some of the information that you're going to get may be wrong? Or do you hold back till you actually have complete information? Remember, this is a highly kinetic operation. You know, there's been an odd order of 12,000 strikes to date, so that's a lot of sorties. From that person standing behind the podium, they may have some of the information.

They may not all have all of it. And so there's a real dilemma for that public affairs officer. Do you try to combat it quickly or do you go for accuracy? You know, do you go speed or accuracy? There's a bit of a tension. You know, similarly, when you talk about the refugee camp, you know, there's also a tension here between operational security and transparency here. To the extent that you're explaining why you're striking in certain places, you're going to end up revealing to a certain degree sources and methods on the intelligence side. That's always a sort of risk.

And you very well may be putting some of your own troops in jeopardy doing that. At the same time, if you don't do that, you're going to suffer a blow in the international, and that international arena may result in strategic pressure placed on political leaders to sort of rein back. So in fairness to the soldiers and the military leadership who have to make these kinds of decisions, it's a complicated trade-off that they have to weigh continuously. And so I think it's important for us to sort of understand all these sort of dilemmas that are walking around in the background. Yeah, and I think it's also important for practitioners to think about this in time. This is not a fire and forget thing, and you will have to be engaged in it over time. I just look back at my own experience, you know, whether it was

the conduct of night raids in Afghanistan and how the political pressure put on us by President Karzai and the Afghan leadership over this tactic that we were using that was extraordinarily effective. And we could point to all kinds of numbers and charts and everything else to show how important this was for us to operate this way. But the fact of the matter is we were losing operational space by continuing to do that. And we had to make changes. We doctrinally had to change how we did operations. And that took some time to actually do that. We used a variety of means.

Tactical things were done on the ground, operational approaches, et cetera. So there's a variety of things that take place. I was the SOCOM commander when we struck the hospital up in Kunduz, the Doctors Without Borders hospital, in a heated moment of combat. I'm convinced that everybody was trying to do the right thing, but we made a horrible, horrible mistake. And we're able to figure that out. But that took a long time to address and involve not just trying to get the facts out and addressing the internal issues that led to that, but it also involved developing relationships with the organizations who play in this space, not just Doctors Without Borders, but Air Wars, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees,

a variety of people. So from an operational standpoint, the practitioners have to think about this. In the run-up to Mosul, I had to have a relationship with the humanitarian aid organizations that were going to be responsible for not only taking care of people, but also the reconstruction in the wake of military operations. So you have to think deeper on this, and you have to demonstrate, I think, that you're doing this. That helps create space. It helps demonstrate that you're thinking bigger about this. You're thinking through the next steps of it. And I think it's an important way of pushing back on some of this lawfare and other aspects that can come in and have some pronounced operational impact. So considering lawfare and information operations is definitely a critical component of long-running conflicts

like these. But another issue that IDF forces have already experienced and will likely encounter in the near future is kind of the perilous situation associated with urban and subterranean combat. Now that Israel has begun its ground invasion of Gaza, it will certainly encounter these challenges again. And Joe, based on your experience, could you just talk about what makes urban combat so difficult to wage? experience. Could you just talk about what makes urban combat so difficult to wage? Yeah, so this is an important topic and one that I've been talking a lot on here. I mean, there's a variety of factors involved with this part of the fight. I mean, you've got this idea of three-dimensional terrain. You've got tall buildings or taller buildings, you know, multiple

structures above the ground. You've got the surface canyons, you've got narrow roads now that are laden with debris and probably booby traps and IEDs and other things. Then you've got this subterranean component to it that they've got to deal with. And just in the last day or so, we've seen images on TV of Hamas fighters popping up out of tunnels or holes and engaging an Israeli vehicle and then moving back down into it. So I think that highlights some of the challenges associated with this. Urban terrain eats up organizations. It's not uncommon for, you know, a battalion worth of fighters to get consumed just in a very few city blocks. And we're talking about an urban area that's roughly the size of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So that's significant. And

progress in these things is going to be made very, very slowly. The defender has a distinct advantage in this particular situation. In this case, you have an entrenched enemy who is both figuratively and literally entrenched and dug into the terrain here. So all of these things cause for very slow movement that's measured in weeks and sometimes months through this, and it eats up a lot of resources. You can't bring everything to bear. There came a certain point in the Mosul operation, especially when you're clearing the west side of the city, that indirect fires really could not be implied any longer. We just couldn't do it and manage the risk, the risk to remaining civilians,

the risk to our own forces, our ability to effectively control them. So it results in this lengthened infantry slugfest that these types of fights have a tendency to evolve in. So it's a combination of the terrain. It's a combination of the density of what you're dealing with. You know, this is further complicated by hostages that can be located here. So it's an extraordinarily difficult environment to operate in. And all that contributes to this idea of why this is so hard to get through. Well, continuing on that point, and Joe, trying to distill everything you just said in a way that is useful and actionable for policymakers. What advice or lessons would you give to military planners or practitioners who have to deal with urban combat

against hybrid or irregular forces, while at the same time trying to uphold international law and prioritize the protection of civilians? It sounds like this is something that you've thought about quite a bit. Yeah, I think the way that you have to think about this is you have to be very deliberate. You have to pay very, very close attention to what has happened here. And you have to always be cognizant of the factors that can work against you and can work against your operational objectives. I mean, there were several times during our advance through Mosul where we slowed things down to move people around, to allow people to get out of areas, to allow the forces on the ground to reorganize in a manner that allowed them to operate more effectively and as a result, you know, minimize some of the

collateral impacts on this. There were several times in the campaign in Syria, especially as we moved on the Euphrates Valley, that at the request of tribal leaders, we and our partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, stopped operations to allow them to, first of all, to try to negotiate fighters out of those areas, but also to try to minimize the impact on, if not the civilian population, if they were still remaining there, just the civilian infrastructure. None of those tribal leaders had confidence that things that were destroyed would be replaced. So you've got to think through that. In terms of policymakers, I think it's really important to make sure you're over communicating the challenges of the environment that you get into. It was a difficult conversation between myself and the

Secretary of Defense when I was explaining to him why we were stopping as we were moving down the Euphrates Valley because our partners wanted us to do this when the emphasis was to get this done. Let's keep moving and keep the pressure on this. And it's the same thing in large urban areas with this. The decision to go in and conduct operations in this environment has to be underwritten by our political authorities. And there has to be a recognition that this is a difficult environment and there are going to be mistakes. There are going to be collateral effects here that are going to have to be dealt with. And it's important for the military component to be aligned with the policy component as we work through this. And foremost in all of this, I think, is this point that I think our administration, I think, has done a very good job in trying to communicate to their

colleagues in Israel. And that is how you do this is actually more important than the what that you're doing. It is really important to continue to reflect our values, to continue to adhere to the law of armed conflict as you go through this and where there are deviations from that to address it quickly and effectively to send a very clear message. This is about legitimacy, the legitimacy of the campaign. And this is where the political element, the policy element, and the military element have to be really, really well aligned. Because at the other end of all of this, as many have stated, Israel, this is their neighborhood. They will have to live here. They will have to rely on the international community to help with a political solution and with the international aid and everything else that comes along with this.

So the how of how you're doing this becomes very, very critical throughout this. And this requires a very clear alignment between the policy-making apparatus and those who are actually executing this on the ground. And in my view, that's where the most important alignment has to take place. executing this on the ground. And in my view, that's where the most important alignment has to take place. Joe, you bring up an excellent point that being able to take a pause or exercise strategic patience briefs well, and it probably sounds a lot simpler than it really is, but there are probably political forces at work that want some sort of expedient solution. So that was an excellent reminder. For Rafi, I'd like to pivot quick and just talk about what we learned about Hamas from its October 7th incursion into Israel. Were there elements of the

attack that suggests Hamas's strategy and capabilities have evolved since its past wars with Israel? So, I mean, when you dissect the 10-7 attacks and you look at each individual component here, none of it is particularly new. So you had previous naval incursions, previous naval activity in the 2014 war, previous sort of low-level clashes. You had even the power gliders bit. It's a very famous incident of another Palestinian militant organization during the night of the gliders in northern Lebanon, who were terrified over the northern border. And you had similar use of drones, for instance, done by ISIS, done by Hezbollah, by despairs and military groups. So in and of itself, each of those individual components of the attack, I didn't find any particularly surprising.

What I found surprising and shocking about this was their ability to bring it all together. Is that, you know, what I think sets 10-7 apart from the previous attacks is the ability of Hamas to effectively employ to gain an operational effect that, frankly, you haven't seen before from Hamas, certainly on this scale, and that, frankly, most militant groups really can't pull off or pull off nearly as successfully as Hamas did. So based on today's conversation, discussing your report with Rand Rafi, and also using that report to take a longer view of what's happening right now in Gaza. What would you say the relevant policy implications are

for practitioners, policymakers, and academics as well who are heavily invested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the broader Middle East? I think there's going to be a host of sort of tactical and operational lessons learned here of everything from how to clear tunnels to how to deal with small UAS to better ways of maneuvering in dense urban environment. That was the question the United States Army asked us that generated the man report that we previously mentioned. I think from a broader policy perspective, though, we need to relook the

force size and construct and how we think about the world as a whole. You know, if we look at the national defense strategy, it's a current one, and we look at the 2018 national defense strategy, so both the Biden administration and a Trump administration document, we were basically premised on a one war force. We are going to fight and win in one place, and then in all the rest of the places, we will hold via a mixture of nuclear weapons and allies and so on. And the idea being basically that we could fight and choose the time and seat of our location. That's simply not the world that we're living in today, you know, in the sense that, you know, we have an active conflict in Ukraine. We have now what could be a really large regional war in the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific is heating up as well.

And oh, by the way, all of our adversaries from Hamas going to Moscow, to the Iranians fueling drones, to the Russians, to the North Koreans providing artillery shells to the Russians, to the Chinese and the Russians coordinating, all of the adversaries are becoming increasingly intertwined. So, you know, as much as successive presidential administrations have wanted to say, we're going to withdraw from the Middle East, that's the function of the last two decades was the conflict. And, you know, we're going to close the book on that chapter. And this one is all going to be about great power competition, primarily with China. That's just not the world we're living in. And I think from a macro policy perspective, if this conflict, if nothing else, should make us rethink about that, if the United States wants to remain a global power and global superpower and the guarantor of international security, it needs to be able to think about how to react to multiple crises in multiple parts of the world all at once. Rafi is hitting on a lot of important things here, and there'll be a ton of work done in the wake of this to learn lessons at tactical, operational, strategic level, no doubt about this. And I

really agree with this idea on the force sizing construct. And I've been frustrated by this just my own as a former CENTCOM commander. We do have to figure out what the sustainable presence is that we are going to keep in the Middle East. And we've obviously surged a lot of resources in there. There'll come a day when those will have to be repositioned or rotated or something else. But what is it that we are willing to commit to this area? I think this is going to be a very important discussion for us. And more broadly, I think it begs the question of how do our interests in the Middle East affect our broader national security strategy? I mean, not the subject of this podcast, but certainly this is an area where we are involved in great power competition with China and to some extent with Russia as well. So how does

this fit into the overall strategy? And as Rafi mentioned, I don't think we can fall back onto, we're tired of the Middle East, we're pulling out of this, we just, we're nothing more to do there kind of stuff. And we're going to completely focus out here in the Indo-Pacific. I just don't think we can do that and be the nation that we want us to be. I think it's going to be important for us to look at our national security interests on a much more global scale. I think this brings it back to us. I mean, this survivability of Israel and this democracy in the Middle East has been an important interest for us for a very, very long time. And now it's brought us in a big way back into the region. And, you know, it probably will be going forward. So we have to

take a look at our interests. I also think we have to look at our alliances and what direction they take across this particular region in the future. I mean, this will damage some of our existing relationships in a variety of different ways. I think you look at a country like Jordan that sits right on the periphery of this, has a large Palestinian population and themselves in a very difficult economic, political stability situation right here. What does this mean in terms of this? You've got other Arab nations here that haven't really waded into this in a significant way yet, other than some initial forays into kind of the information space early on with this. So I think we're going to have to look at alliances. And I think that's going to end our relationships in the region. I think that's going to be an important thing to review in the wake of all of this conflict. Well, gentlemen, that is why we bring true subject matter experts on, because I was not thinking at all about how the conflict in Israel could or should impact our alliances,

partnerships, and even our force structure, which are all really fascinating points. But we've reached the end of our time here, and I just wanted to thank you both for coming on the Irregular Warfare podcast today. It was great talking to you, Rafi and to you, Joe. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. Great to be with you guys. Thanks so much for doing this. Really appreciate

the good work you're doing. Thanks again for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. Next episode, Laura and Louis will host a special episode with Ravi Agrawal and Lieutenant General Ben Hodges to discuss the war in Ukraine. Subscribe to the Irregular Warfare Podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. We are a team of all

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Thanks again, and we'll see you next time. Thank you.