The IDF Faces an Enormous Challenge in Gaza | Opinion

Combat leaders live by a mantra: Mission, troops, equipment. This priority of effort—first, accomplish the mission; second, protect your troops; third, protect your equipment—may be simplistic, but it will frame what the world observes if and when the Israel Defense Forces initiate ground operations in Gaza.

IDF leaders at every level are preparing to engage in close-combat operations to destroy Hamas. What is more subtle is that the mission is not only to "close with and destroy the enemy," but to do so consistent with the values reflected in the laws of armed conflict, or laws of war. This means that these leaders are taught and expected to achieve decisive effects against the enemy, but to also take constant care to mitigate civilian risk. This obligation to reduce civilian suffering is a constant of any professional military, even when confronting enemies like Hamas that has no respect for the law and seeks to exacerbate that risk to gain human fodder for their international misinformation campaign.

This is the reality facing the IDF as it prepares for its mission, which will almost certainly be defined as "destroy" Hamas combat capability. Destroy is a doctrinal task. At the operational level this will mean to completely disable enemy capability through the synchronized use of combined arms fire and maneuver—military code words for close combat using the full spectrum of combat capability. And while that capability in the IDF is impressive, it will be no easy task.

Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza have had years to prepare for this fight. They learned from the limited IDF ground incursion in 2014 two transcendent lessons: first, they cannot prevail in a tactical fight against the IDF; second, strategic victory is to still be standing when the dust settles. The key to strategic success is therefore clear: do whatever is necessary to compel Israel to terminate combat operations before their "destroy" mission is accomplished.

This means that Hamas will have two operational objectives to achieve its strategic goal: inflict maximum casualties on the IDF to generate pressure from within Israel to terminate or scale down operations and compel the IDF to inflict civilian casualties and destruction that can be leveraged in the international information domain to create external pressure on Israel to "stop the carnage." That external pressure, as Hamas knows full-well and as is already on display, will not focus on who is truly responsible for the civilian suffering in Gaza; it will instead focus on the more simplistic and often erroneous assumption that the side that dropped the bomb is the side to blame.

Now imagine having years to prepare the conditions to achieve these goals. Hamas knows a more powerful force is coming. But unlike most professional militaries, for Hamas information is not a supporting effort to combat success; combat is a supporting effort to information success. And they have prepared Gaza to produce those combat effects. IDF commanders and the soldiers they lead will face a labyrinth of sophisticated tactical traps in areas where the effectiveness of their superior firepower will be negated by urban terrain. They will have to contend with an enemy that uses civilians as camouflage to exploit IDF commitment to its obligation to minimize civilian casualties; an enemy that operates on, above, and below ground; that uses special action units trained to snatch and grab IDF soldiers to hold as hostage; that converts every apparent civilian structure or object into a military asset; that locates its most vital military assets in and around the most highly protected facilities, such as UN schools, hospitals, and mosques.

Because of this, accomplishing the mission to destroy Hamas military capabilities—the first priority of IDF combat leaders at every level—will require immense sacrifice. Those leaders should be expected to do all within their power to accomplish their mission in a way that minimizes that cost both to their own forces and to civilians. But no matter how hard they try it is a reality of war—especially against an enemy like that which the IDF will have to confront—that the cost in lives of IDF personnel and civilians cannot be avoided.

It is too easy for people who have never contemplated the immense challenge of battle-command, who have never been imbued with the "mission, men, equipment" ethos, to point to the tragic civilian consequences of close combat and yell war crime, or demand and immediate cease-fire. But true responsibility for those casualties should be the real focus as this conflict develops. The IDF will have a mission, one necessitated by the barbarism and avowed ultimate goals of Hamas. That will be their priority, as it must be. It will require tremendous sacrifice of their own troops, and largely thanks to Hamas, civilians in Gaza will also pay an unavoidable price. But before the sword of condemnation is unsheathed, we should always ask two questions: who bears responsibility for the necessity of this mission, and which side is trying get civilians killed and which side is trying to minimize that cost?

Geoffrey S. Corn is George R. Killam, Jr. chair of Criminal Law and director of the Center for Military Law and Policy, Texas Tech University School of Law; distinguished fellow, JINSA Gemunder Center for Defense & Strategy; member, Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law Advisory Council; and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.