by Jonathan Pollard
After learning of the arrival of American generals to advise us on how to fight in an urban environment, I thought I was reading an alternative history of our war with Hamas. Regardless of how successful the Americans have been when they were recently forced to engage in urban combat, my firm belief has always been that only fools fight inside a city because casualties are usually disproportionately heavy for the attackers. It’s also a lengthy, time consuming process, that eats up supplies faster than they can be delivered to the combat zone. More troubling in our case, though, is the realization that our government may have already decided, under American pressure, to withdraw from Gaza City after our soldiers have bled and died to take it. Although the Americans and Europeans would undoubtedly be pleased by this development, our evacuation of Gaza would simply leave the next round of fighting there to our children. No thank you. Luckily, there are better ways to deal with this problem that don’t involve the initial deployment of boots on the ground.
What would this involve?
The first weapon employed would be what’s called a GBU-28, which is a ground penetrating munition dropped at high altitude by our F-15s. These were initially provided to us some time ago by the Americans, presumably for use against Iranian nuclear facilities. Able to slice through many meters of steel reinforced concrete, they would easily be able to reach Hamas tunnels, opening up what could be described as “access doors”, that our next weapon would exploit.
These weapons are referred to as thermobaric or vacuum bombs. Such a munition first sucks in all the available oxygen in a given area, then ignites it in a manner that looks like a giant ball of searing hot napalm. This flame thrower effect would literally race through all the Hamas tunnels that had been opened up by the GBU-28s, asphyxiating then burning everyone hiding in them. The effect would be incredibly devastating on both Hamas personnel and their weapons storage facilities, which they thought would be safe under a few meters of simple concrete top cover.
The last act of this pre-assault preparation would involve the use of Massive Ordnance Air Blast weapons, otherwise known as the “mother of all bombs”. This 10 ton monster would be dropped by a C-130 transport, which we have in our air order of battle. The effect this particular munition has both in terms of surface destruction and ground compression is so overwhelming that the MOAB has been referred to by observers as a poor man’s nuclear bomb. If we conducted a 2-3 day round the clock bombardment of Gaza City with these weapons we’d probably crush to death any surviving Hamas fighters and leave nothing on the surface but pulverized rubble. THEN we could send in our ground forces to see what’s left to kill.
Any Israeli ground assault that doesn’t involve this type of pre entry preparation would needlessly endanger the lives of our soldiers and require a very, very long, costly process of house to house fighting. We just can’t do this to our warriors when we have the means of surprising the enemy by fighting in a totally unexpected way. And, in any event, with the use of the pre assault munitions I’ve suggested, there wouldn’t be anything Hamas could do to protect themselves. They would die asphyxiated then burned then crushed. Quite literally nothing would be left for the IDF to do at the end of such a pre invasion phase except to bring in the bull dozers to prepare the area for annexation. This is how you fight the cowardly drug crazed beasts who slaughtered our men, women and children on Simchat Torah. We simply can’t allow them to kill more of our best because of some irrelevant fear of world opinion.
If you’re wondering whether our military high command is aware of this scenario, the answer is yes. Although I briefed relevant people 3 years ago about exactly how we could annihilate Hamas in a one week campaign that wouldn’t require a single soldier to enter Gaza City, I was politely dismissed with the assurance that we would never, ever need to undertake such an operation. Hamas, I was told, didn’t represent such a dire threat since we were going to provide them with enough jobs and Qatari largesse that they wouldn’t even think of jeopardizing such an economic bonanza. I guess our military and political elites didn’t quite appreciate the genocidal intentions of Hamas. How this could have happened will undoubtedly be the subject of a commission of inquiry after the war. Until then, the scenario I’ve outlined provides us with a more effective solution to the problem of how to exterminate Hamas with as few IDF casualties as possible. For the sake of our brave soldiers, may we get it right this time.
As for our hostages, the sad fact is that even if we delayed a ground offensive against Gaza in order to allow the Red Cross or some other humanitarian organization to negotiate the release of additional hostages, Hamas would undoubtedly stretch out the process for months.
One problem with this scenario that we’d have to deal with during this time would be the impossibility of maintaining the IDF’s current mobilization level without cratering our economy. Another problem would involve Hamas’ probable insistence on the release of their security prisoners, that would make the prisoner exchange that occurred during the Shalit affair pale in comparison. If Hamas played its cards right, and there’s no doubt they would, the wholesale release of their security prisoners would constitute a major victory for the terrorist organization that would reverberate to our detriment throughout the region. Such weakness on our part would embolden Hezbollah while dissuading potential allies like Saudi Arabia to abandon any thought of signing a normalization treaty with us. Then, there is the problem of what we could do if the US and others decided to bring the evacuees back into Gaza City during the cease fire needed to arrange the hostage releases. We could scream and complain all we wanted, but the repopulation and rebuilding of northern Gaza would continue, probably under the protective mantle of the US, EU, Arab League and UN. This situation would make it practically impossible for the IDF to conduct any air strikes against Hamas, let alone a ground invasion intended to wipe out Hamas once and for all.
As is evident, Hamas’ taking of hostages has placed us between a rock and a hard place. The only viable approach to this seemingly intractable problem would be to bite the bullet and acknowledge that the security of the state must be purchased at the cost of the hostages’ lives. This is a horrible thing to say, but sometimes the needs of the many must come before the needs of the few. But if this is the course of action we decide on, we must never forget that it was Hamas, and Hamas alone that is to blame.
In the submarine service there is an awareness that there may come a time due to combat damage, that part of the vessel must be closed off, sacrificing those trapped behind the closed hatch, to insure the survival of the remaining crew members. I’ve talked to quite a few submarine captains and asked them about how they’d react to this type of situation. Each one said that for the sake of the crew that could be saved and for the survival of their command, they would, with a heavy heart, close the required hatch and sacrifice those crew members trapped on the other side.
We are in this type of situation right now. The only thing we must commit ourselves to if we decide to sacrifice the hostages for the survival of our state, is that every Hamas member- even those we’ve captured, must be executed and that Gaza must be annexed so that it will never again pose a threat to our people.
Jonathan Pollard is a former US naval intelligence analyst who spent 30 years in prison for having spied for Israel. After his release he made Aliyah to Israel and today writes and speaks on behalf of Israel and the Jewish People.
