On October 23, the Al-Qassam Brigades – the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) – announced that its fighters attacked the headquarters of the Israeli military operation in the northern Gaza Strip, killing and wounding its members. The brigades added that the attack that took place near the Jabalia Camp Club was carried out using an anti-fortified TPG shell.
After that, Al-Qassam fighters clashed inside the headquarters with an Israeli force, using medium and light machine guns, and Al-Qassam announced that it had killed and wounded members of the Israeli force.
A few days before that, specifically on October 20, and in the midst of the third Israeli siege of Jabalia, north of Gaza, the occupation army announced the killing of the commander of the 401st Brigade, Colonel Ihsan Daqsa, after he was targeted by an explosive device while he was next to a tank in the area of operations. A battalion commander and two officers were also injured along with him. Two more.
Daqsa is the highest Israeli military rank to be targeted since the beginning of the ground operation in the Gaza Strip. He is the commander of one of the most important elite brigades in the army, and he played the most prominent role in many large-scale offensive operations in the areas of Shifa, Zaytoun, Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Rafah.
This type of operation, which falls under the concept of “high-value assassinations,” requires a degree of coordination between an intelligence effort, field reconnaissance, and bomb deployment units, in addition to the multi-angle photographic documentation that the resistance is accustomed to, which indicates that there is a system of command and control (C2). ) is still effective and operating with some degree of efficiency even in one of the most concentrated points of the Israeli war effort, more than a year after the war.
Most importantly, this operation is not the first of its kind to confirm this hypothesis. About a week ago, the resistance broadcast a videotape of a mechanized infantry company accompanied by vehicles, consisting of 12 vehicles and trucks, in a complex ambush, which may require a higher degree of coordination and control.
How can we understand the ability of the resistance to maintain this relatively good degree of cohesion and the ability to plan and implement this type of complex operations despite the enormous pressure it was exposed to over more than a year, during which it lost many field and political leaders?
Although it is not possible, of course, to reduce the totality of factors – material, moral and logistical – that give the resistance this important ability nor reduce them to one element, one of the most important of those factors is that the fighting forces (the Qassam Brigades in this case) are within the scope of the war. Irregular, usually following a regular command structure, but it is more decentralized and far from the style of traditional armies.
Contract tactic… a lesson from the German experience
To understand the matter deeply; Let’s go back in time, to May 1940, when the capture of Fort Eben-Emile, located between Liège and Maastricht on the Belgian-Dutch border, was extremely important to the success of the campaign launched by the Wehrmacht against France. You might imagine that a mission of this sensitivity was entrusted to a senior army commander, but the truth is that the one who planned, implemented and managed it was a first lieutenant from the parachute corps called Rudolf Weitzig, and he had only 77 soldiers at his disposal.
The operation did not go smoothly, and the commander of this small division was forced to make an emergency landing in a field about 100 kilometers from the target, and during his trip to “Eben Emil” to control it, he was forced to make decisive decisions on his own, which in normal circumstances required referring to the central command before Implemented.
What happened at Eben-Emel is a good example of the “contract tactic”, in German: “Auftragstaktik”, a command and control method practiced by the German armed forces for 200 years, and rooted in the theories of the Prussian-German general and prominent military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, and it was an exceptionally effective innovation.
One of the most important factors that made Ofragetactic successful was the focus on lowering decision thresholds, by allowing team leaders and field ranks to act without asking for permission. This increased the speed of the Germans’ tactical decision cycle after the smaller commands felt that they could act with a greater degree of freedom, based only on the central strategy and combat doctrine that they had studied well.
In general; We can imagine the leadership and management of military tasks as a matrix of multiple options connecting two opposites. The first is complete centralization, so that only one command center can control the conduct of all lines of operations in the army. The second is complete decentralization, where the center is completely absent and each unit works according to its vision. own and adapt it to its own context. Between these two most extreme points, there are multiple and varying degrees depending on the proximity or distance from either point.
By this measure; The above-mentioned processes can be considered on the side of the system of centralization, but they are not completely extreme to the pattern of complete centralization.
How does Hamas manage the field?
More generally than the Jabalia operations, it is important to ask where the structure of the Qassam Brigades and the system of command and control stand between the matrix of centralization and decentralization? We note that there is an absence of consensus regarding the analysis of the methodology followed by Hamas in structuring its military organization, engineering the command and control system, and managing the operational level of the war.
For example, in a research paper published in July 2024 in the Journal of Palestinian Studies, the results conclude that Hamas in general, politically and militarily, is dominated by features of decentralization more than those of a central, hierarchical organization, and explains this by the fact that Israeli oppression The increasing and more frequent targeting of leaders has pushed its leadership towards this pattern of decentralization and “distributed leadership”, to avoid shocks resulting from the sudden loss of some leaders and to increase the degree of flexibility and adaptability.
Bilal Saab, an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank in London, agrees with this opinion when he said in statements to the British newspaper the Financial Times that Hamas uses a mixture of traditional and hybrid forces and that its operations are “very decentralized, and there is a kind of cellular military structure.” Where each group works alone.
As for the “Institute for the Study of War” in the United States, in a report published in December 2023, it disagrees with the previous views, but not completely, as it believes that Hamas is very similar in its organization to the official military structures, as the Al-Qassam Brigades organize themselves. At levels from division to brigade level just as traditional armies do, it cannot be conceived as a secret organization running interconnected cells that is completely decentralized.
But in addition to that, the study indicates that it possesses a higher degree of flexibility that appears in a flexible chain of command with distributed powers in order to facilitate recovery in the face of the loss of leaders or unit elements.
Despite the apparent difference in these assessments of the Qassam methodology, there is a common point of agreement between them: targeted killings alone will not weaken or permanently destroy Hamas. Hamas will likely retain a deep base of experienced and loyal military commanders, most of whom will be prepared to rebuild the organization and train new commanders at the operational and tactical levels.
In light of this, Peter Konchak, a US Army officer and researcher from the Lipper Research Foundation, concluded in a paper published last August that the defeat of Hamas will not be achieved solely by exhausting front-line personnel and isolating regular Hamas combat forces from sources of reinforcement and supply. Stressing that defeating the movement requires breaking up all links between the network of fighter units, down to smaller groups that operate as largely self-sufficient cells, and sometimes have no need to communicate with the leadership in order to implement the decision.
From this perspective; We can imagine the Al-Qassam Brigades in the form in which they entered on October 7, 2023, in a hybrid form that possesses some of the characteristics of irregular forces, and on the other hand, possesses the characteristics of traditional armed forces, and this allows them to maintain the cohesion of the structure, unity of command, and strategic plan, but while allowing Smaller units are allowed to make decisions at a lower strategic level with much broader authority than most regular armies.
In case of war; As matters became more complex and difficult, these units moved more towards a decentralized mode, to maintain the pace of combat and engagement. In other words, in the event of a loss of communication with any of the command points, whether senior, local, or even divisional command, or the loss of the ability to access supplies, the soldiers of smaller units are trained to deal completely independently, to achieve the strategic objectives of the war.
Why does Hamas do this?
The loss of leaders is not the only reason that prompts the resistance to adhere to some features of decentralized leadership. Rather, there are other reasons why organizations that have a smaller number of soldiers and a less sophisticated amount of equipment tend more towards decentralization when facing a regular army. The first of these reasons relates to the best investment of resources, which requires working independently without waiting for orders from a central leadership to exploit opportunities, adapt to changing circumstances, and respond to threats in a timely manner.
The nature of asymmetric wars also forces the resistance to act quickly in the context of the data and tools available to it, because the goal is to control the start and end of lightning operations, and this is essentially the essence of irregular war, where the relatively weaker force is able to achieve the best possible investment in It is available as tools to inflict losses on the ranks of the technically stronger force, without having to face direct confrontations with more efficient technologies, such as tanks and aircraft.
Let us take an example from the ground, which are the attacks that fall under the concept of “ambush and raid,” which is the military tactic followed by most resistance operations after the first months of the ground invasion. Although the Qassam Brigades’ attacks of this type have become more sophisticated, complex, and complex, in terms of their use of weapons It is diverse and has multiple sides of engagement, but it remains largely dependent on a small group of fighters building a quick plan to target a squad passing through this or that place at a specific moment.
Matters do not end there. Once the Qassam Brigades increase the rates of this type of operations, the occupation will accordingly adapt to that by increasing the number of surveillance and reconnaissance patrols in the areas of incursion and focus. Then the brigades will adapt again by shifting their tactics towards the supply lines, and if the occupation returns Adapting to this by increasing the guarding of the supply lines, the resistance’s decision to switch between them is based on field data, and thus decentralization benefits more in this case, and results in a higher degree of exhaustion and dispersion of the enemy forces.
In addition, small, independent units can devise and use unique and localized tactics tailored to specific environments or target enemy vulnerabilities that have emerged in the context of a particular event, making them less predictable to the enemy.
This happens when the resistance leadership realizes that its local forces have a better understanding of the terrain, population, and dynamics of its environment, which is extremely important in irregular warfare and represents the center of gravity of the party that is less numerous and powerful. In fact, urban warfare always serves the resistance, as it is more knowledgeable about the region than the occupying attacker, and therefore He can direct the battles wherever he wants, in an area that may in itself represent a challenge to the occupation forces, especially with the resistance’s adoption of tunnel tactics, as an auxiliary tactic in raids and ambushes, which gives an additional layer of terrain complexity and gives the resistance offensive and defensive capabilities and the ability to quickly withdraw.
In the meantime, modern communications technologies allow these smaller units to stay in contact with each other, coordinating larger campaigns in parallel while continuing to operate independently. Here, decentralized units can use another principle of military tactics: “mobilization,” where small groups of Different positions towards one goal.
And the bottom line: This methodology increases the probability of success by dispersing the attacking units, and makes it difficult for the opponent to predict the course of operations, which deprives him of the opportunity to focus his defensive efforts. Let us take an example from mathematics; Within the framework of probability theory, if there is one coin, the probability of it becoming a “head” or “tail” is 50%, but if there are two currencies, the probability that both of them together produce a “head” or “tail” decreases to 25%, and if the number increases Currencies will decrease further, and small forces attacking from multiple directions increase the level of uncertainty, causing pressure on the enemy even with a power differential in his favor.
Multiple fronts
In an analytical paper issued by the ACLED Foundation, which specializes in studying war zone data, it was found that until August 2024, the Al-Qassam Brigades were operating 17 battle fronts against the occupation army in separate areas of Gaza, between the north and the south, and despite the fact that the resistance’s ability It has decreased in terms of the number of operations and the ability to repel the incursion, but it has nevertheless achieved a number of qualitative results, due to the clear shift towards guerrilla tactics since mid-2024.
This appeared in the resistance’s focus, mainly, on setting up ambushes and exploding landmines, buildings, and tunnel openings when Israeli soldiers approached the targeted sites. The paper suggests that the tunnel network is still operating in many areas and has played an important role in enabling resistance fighters to fight and flee.
In turn, the Wall Street Journal monitored, in a report published last May, the points and axes of engagement in which the resistance forces in Gaza are still showing effectiveness on the ground, and the report shows that Al-Qassam fighters have tended to use guerrilla warfare tactics versus regular tactics starting in the middle of 2017. 2024, and the wide spread of their units in Gaza makes their combat network large and multi-node, and it is still active over a large area.
This would, according to the newspaper, turn Israel’s war in Gaza into an “eternal war” that will never stop, because it is simply not possible to cut off the head of a tiger if it does not have a head, and even if the occupation succeeds in controlling an area, this will force it to reduce the war effort. In other areas, this will consequently allow resistance fighters to emerge again and continue to carry out the tasks assigned to them, even with the inability to communicate with comrades or leadership in other areas, and in the meantime they will show greater adaptation to the very changing environment in their surroundings, which will make Israel comment. In the swamp of war with no prospect of an end.
