While many urban warfare tactics are universal, you need to fight differently when trying to take an enemy city than you would when trying to rescue/separate a city's population from enemy insurgents.
Gaza differed from this experience in several fundamental respects, as Israel did not fight alongside a host nation, but rather against it. In Mosul, there was a legitimate Iraqi government, which at least part of the population supported, and the Islamic State ruled the territory for only two years. Hamas, by contrast, functioned not as an insurgent movement but as the sole authority of the Gaza Strip for almost two decades. Through its control of political institutions, welfare systems, education, and ideological indoctrination, it transformed both society and terrain into a prepared urban battlespace. Polling data from Gaza and the West Bank, including PCPSR surveys from December 2023, show overwhelming public support for Hamas’ October 7 attack and its earlier attacks on Israeli civilians, even when support for Hamas as a governing movement fluctuated.
Under these conditions, Israel could not plausibly expect to win over the local population. Organized anti-Hamas militias and protests against Hamas’ rule emerged only after its military capabilities had been severely degraded late in the war, and even then remained limited. For most of the conflict, the key structural conditions that underpin the Iraq and Afghanistan paradigms — friendly local government and a persuadable population — simply did not exist.
I touched on this difference over a decade ago:
Winning hearts and minds isn't some wimpy alternative to fighting insurgents. It is how you fight an insurgency when the objective is the people themselves. You want their hearts. You can settle for their minds. And when you are pacifying an enemy population, you need to grab the insurgents by the balls so the people's hearts and minds will follow.
And capturing an enemy city defended by that enemy's regular forces is even more dangerous. Doctrine for one situation is not a template for all situations.
And yeah, don't get me started on the misinterpretation of "proportionality" of the use of force around civilians that just happens to only hamstring Western armies.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
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NOTE: Photo of American artillery in Aachen during World War II.
