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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30316 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #2

This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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Points for thinking about it, but I'm skeptical on both the political and pragmatic side.

Israel isn't a signatory to the Ottowa Treaty, but large deployments of landmines near a civilian area would be a long-lasting cause celebre even before some teenager became an example, and their use in the past at the West Bank / Golan Heights in much more conventional military contexts had previously been a matter of a lot of international fuckery. There are also just pretty high upper limits to the utility of landmines in an open environment where your sappers would be near-constantly observed. Electric fences are so simultaneously useless (defeated by gloves!) and politically controversial that they've been a goto slur for electronic monitoring.

A lot of the remainder of your suggests are just things already present, but harder, in ways that may not be possible. Israel hadn't closed all but one border crossing, but the number of crossings dropped dramatically from 2005-2011, culminating in the closure of the Karni crossing, while the remaining handful had been heavily fortified. Of the three major remaining ones, Rafah is in Egyptian territory and Kerem Shalom is politically necessary as part of relationships with Egypt. There's already some use of anti-vehicle ditches and other terrain.

10/7 seems like it depended on overwhelming observation, surveillance, and quick-response features so fast and so heavily that the IDF response took hours; I'm not seeing how 500m would have changed much of it.

And, yes, as 2fara points out, you need to block of not just the tactics from 10/7, but the whole class of any successful attack of this scale.

Put millions of mines behind your barrier wall. So only people who breached it are going to explode.

Do not put random mines in Gaza or on fields.

There are also just pretty high upper limits to the utility of landmines in an open environment where your sappers would be near-constantly observed.

Just dump massive amounts of them?

I think you’re overestimating the efficiency of land mines. They aren’t just dump-and-forget. See this manual for some of the complexities involved. Note in particular figure 2-2: possible effects of minefields. Disrupt the enemy, slow him down, turn him towards a different angle of approach…or maybe, maybe stop his advance. All of these are only considered effective when combined with integrated fires. In other words, if you give the enemy a passive obstacle, he will circumvent it.

Getting enough mines to cover the border is achievable. At which point irregular forces of terrorists just…start tossing explosives in that direction. Sending dogs or prisoners out to find—or make—a path. They don’t even have to exploit any gaps, just waste Israeli time and money repairing and replacing static obstacles.

Put millions of mines behind your barrier wall. So only people who breached it are going to explode.

Yes, having a sterile (buffer) zone between two fence lines with clear signage is the way to go here. There would not be children wandering in. Intruders would have to deliberately defeat the outer fence before wandering into the mine field.

Edit: A big vulnerability is tunneling. A captive motivated population with a lot of time on their hands can dig more tunnels. There are vibration sensors for this, but deploying them along the entire border would be a very expensive prospect.

There are vibration sensors for this, but deploying them along the entire border would be a very expensive prospect.

Ignorant question: how expensive? Vibration sensors range from like @$0.50 for "cheap vibration-triggered switch for your kid's Arduino project" to @$1000+ for "high-frequency accelerometer for your industrial turbine", but I have no idea where in that range (or beyond it?) a tunneling detector would fall ... nor how many such detectors they'd need per linear distance.

You really want a digital seismometer network. Google cache indicates that digital seismometers used to be advertised on Amazon for $8999 each. Which is a steal for defense technology, but the real engineering costs probably come from setting up the network and the analysis software to detect tunnelling without triggering on nearby trucks or nearby uses of bunker-busting munitions.

You're honest in your ignorance, but I am too. I don't have a cost per kilometer (200km?) vs depth of tunnel detection analysis. I just know that tunnel detection vs video motion analysis, vs drone/para-glider detection across the entire Gaza border needs to be calculated, put into a brief, and given to cabinet. They'll run those numbers against whatever the ethnic cleansing numbers are and eventually make a decision.

There would not be children wandering in.

there would be, but at that point it blame would be far more clearly on people that forced them.

(see also Iranian approach to demining: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/53791/during-the-iran-iraq-war-did-the-iranians-use-small-children-to-trip-land-mines )

I have a strong suspicion that the Americans and Europeans would happily help foot the bill in exchange for closing off various Israeli revenge options.

The real question is how the to deal with the tunnels themselves once detected. If you're going the landmine route, I've heard unironic advocacy for digging a moat around gaza from the Mediterranean. Not particularly well thought advocacy, probably, but unironic, with the premise of 'if tunnel detected, flood it.'

I would actually stick with a dual fence sterile zone without mines, supported by CCTV, vibration sensors and a (QRF) response force . Largely for pragmatic maintenance reasons.

A moat could be defeated given time (and planning). It would potentially prevent the use of heavy vehicles, but would otherwise be useless against tunneling, or even ground based assault with bridging (planned ahead of time).

Most modern security theory revolves around risk management and the concept that breaches are unavoidable. It is more about detecting and responding to the breach, and where possible, mitigating the damage.

With an open checkbook, it could be done. Israeli defense force would have to commit.

Edit: As for counter tunneling, there are many ways to respond as long as the tunnel can be detected early enough. which is likely with a large enough sterile zone to accommodate fly over LIDAR (which is problematic in urban areas). Tunneling is slow, so detection is a larger issue than response. Again, vibration sensors are expensive.

Wait, isn’t that more or less how it already worked?

Before the 2005 disengagement Israeli military maintained a one-kilometer buffer zone within Gaza along the border wall which prevented the militants to approach the border, sometimes with gunfire. After the IDF withdrawal the border became easily reachable by the Palestinians.

Oh. Well, I guess they kept the idea.

Overall, the first barrier is a barbed-wire fence without sensors. The second barrier codenamed Hoovers A is 20 meters off and consist of a road and a fence with sensors. These existed before 2005. A new element is a 70-150 meter wide buffer zone codenamed Hoovers B with motion sensors in the ground and surrounded by a new sensor-equipped fence with watchtowers…

Overall, the first barrier is a barbed-wire fence without sensors. The second barrier codenamed Hoovers A is 20 meters off and consist of a road and a fence with sensors. These existed before 2005. A new element is a 70-150 meter wide buffer zone codenamed Hoovers B with motion sensors in the ground and surrounded by a new sensor-equipped fence with watchtowers…

Then it should have worked unless there was detail not available to the public which I'm sure is the case (or the barrier was a fabrication displayed to be a deterrent). A barrier system like that, but somehow amazingly the enemy managed to push across in force without response or detection? Someone fucked up big time, or they're lying about the implementation. Or perhaps the response force was asleep on the job.

Never underestimate the power of holding the initiative.

The party line right now is that response teams were stretched too thin. Some Hamas forces were able to pin them down while others went and shot up music festivals. The Israeli strategy wasn’t prepared for this many coordinated attacks.

Now, there is an obvious case that intelligence fucked up big time, and missed signs of the buildup. I don’t know if this is true! Hindsight, after all, is 20/20. But it’s separate from the question of whether a border fence and buffer is sufficient. Israel tried that, tried to staff it with appropriate response teams, and Hamas worked around it anyway.

My understanding is that the Hoovers B section was sometimes thinner than initially promoted, sometimes down to 50m, and there's some amount of mumbling for how deep the underground anti-tunnel wall components of the barrier was, but otherwise the implementation was largely as described.

No land mines or electrified fence.

Both Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings were taken early, but so there were also breaks at least five other fence locations that did not have crossings, many of which were at parts of the border that matched the specifications exactly, along with limited aerial and boat forces.

I haven't seen a complete tactical breakdown of the initial attack, and some of it probably will never be released to the public, but my impression's that Hamas (and other related groups) overwhelmed or misdirected the immediately available response capabilities, then struck the observation and command posts before either a general alarm or backup response troops could be mustered. Some of that reflects reduced staffing because of a religious holiday, but more generally I don't think the IDF expected that Hamas could achieve this degree of coordination nor the simple amount of weapons and manpower without clear intel piling up for the IDF, nor that Hamas could accurately identify the observation control centers for the sort of strike blinding the surveillance side.

That explains a lot, thanks.

there were also breaks at least five other fence locations that did not have crossings

This is the real concern. This wasn't an isolated failing, but an indication that the system was wholly inadequate.

There needs to be an expansion of Defense in Depth with an appreciation of Hamas' now proven capabilities. As far as I can tell, this is actually the plan regarding annexing a buffer region around the border of Gaza. With a larger buffer/sterile zone you improve the ability to detect as well as provide enough delay to allow for a response.

Besides the physical and electronic security controls, there will need to be an overhaul of governance (response procedures), training and manpower requirements. No more skeleton crews on holidays. There's also more patchwork that needs to happen around air and seaborne detection of assaults as well as the border intersection with Egypt.

Basically the whole system needs upgrading with a big uplift in the amount of money, resources and manpower to maintain it.

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