Gideon’s Chariots: The Ground War in Gaza and the Mechanics of Modern Urban Occupation
In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great laid siege to Gaza, then a fortified city perched on the edge of empire and defiance. It took the Macedonian king two months to conquer the city, during which time he deployed siege engines, dug trenches, and unleashed relentless assaults against a deeply entrenched and ideologically committed resistance. The campaign was not merely a test of military power, but of imperial will, proof that the projection of dominance could not succeed without the capacity to sustain it under the pressure of attrition, ambush, and terrain. Alexander’s ultimate victory came at a cost and marked the beginning of a prolonged and uneasy integration of the city into Hellenistic control. Nearly 2,400 years later, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) now find themselves waging a similarly fraught battle for Gaza, under an operation ominously dubbed Gideon’s Chariots.
Where Alexander relied on stone rams and wooden towers, the IDF now employs digitized command networks, mechanized forces, armor, and aerial drones. Yet the structural challenges remain strikingly familiar: a densely populated urban battlespace, a committed adversary, and a city whose political significance far exceeds its geographic size. Gideon’s Chariots is not just a military campaign, it is an assertion of sovereign power over a recalcitrant terrain, and a test of whether advanced battlefield technologies can overcome the historical constraints of holding hostile ground. In this respect, the operation is as much an epistemological proposition as it is a kinetic one: can a state unmake insurgency through total spatial and infrastructural domination?
The IDF’s objectives are multifaceted and strategically ambitious: to disarm Hamas, prevent its reconstitution, and partition Gaza into controllable sectors under sustained Israeli oversight. According to statements from defense officials, the campaign will proceed in a series of phases beginning with kinetic clearing operations, followed by a geographic segmentation of the Strip into militarily manageable zones. This phased approach implies not only territorial conquest, but a vision of long-term counterinsurgency and spatial governance, tactics that extend well beyond conventional military doctrine and toward the logic of protracted occupation. The question is not whether Israel can take Gaza, but whether it can hold it, and at what cost, politically and morally.
Operation Gideon’s Chariots marks a significant doctrinal departure from previous Israeli military actions in Gaza, characterized not merely by the scale of kinetic force applied but by its phased, territorial logic. The IDF have articulated a multi-phase strategy that begins with intensive ground incursions designed to “clear” specific urban zones of Hamas operatives and infrastructure, before transitioning into a prolonged “hold” phase involving permanent or semi-permanent deployments across the strip. This evolution in operational planning reflects a recalibration of Israeli military thought, one that seeks to transition from short-term punitive raids toward sustained territorial dominance, premised on the conviction that a durable security solution cannot coexist with Hamas' survival or sovereignty in Gaza.
A picture taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip,
shows smoke billowing above destroyed buildings during Israeli bombardment
in the besieged Palestinian territory on May 21, 2025. MENAHEM
KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images
The tactical centerpiece of the plan involves the segmentation of Gaza into isolated military sectors. Each sector will be subjected to concentrated ground pressure and methodical clearing operations before being physically and electronically cordoned off to prevent the reentry of hostile forces. IDF units will proceed in a north-to-south progression, dividing the strip along major urban corridors and seizing critical infrastructure nodes, such as tunnel networks, command centers, and munitions depots. This operational geometry intends to fracture Hamas’ territorial continuity, disaggregate its command structure, and eliminate its capacity for coordinated resistance. The implementation of this “salami-slice” model of urban conquest reflects lessons drawn from earlier asymmetric engagements, including those in Jenin, Fallujah, and Mosul.
Strategically, the operation is designed not only to degrade Hamas militarily but to nullify its political influence within Gaza by rendering it territorially and symbolically irrelevant. The IDF’s stated goal is to dismantle Hamas’ ability to govern, not merely its capacity to launch rockets or execute raids. Accordingly, the military objectives encompass control of key administrative centers, communications hubs, and critical civilian access points such as border crossings and hospitals, which function as logistical arteries during wartime. By embedding control mechanisms at both tactical and bureaucratic levels, the IDF aims to establish an architecture of dominance that prevents any post-conflict resurgence of Islamist governance in the enclave.
This paradigm of occupation via fragmentation draws implicitly from counterinsurgency doctrines that emphasize spatial control as a prerequisite for political transformation. However, the IDF’s embrace of a prolonged presence, perhaps indefinite in some sectors, raises questions about Israel’s long-term capacity to sustain such operations amid fluctuating political support, asymmetric resistance, and international scrutiny. The operational clarity of Gideon’s Chariots is not matched by a coherent political roadmap for post-conflict governance or legitimacy-building. Thus, while the campaign may succeed in achieving battlefield superiority, it remains to be seen whether it can deliver a lasting strategic end state or whether it will instead reproduce the very conditions of instability it seeks to extinguish.
Urban warfare represents one of the most complex operational environments in contemporary military strategy, and Gaza epitomizes its most intractable form. Characterized by dense civilian infrastructure, multilayered building elevations, and subterranean tunnel networks, Gaza’s urban fabric blurs the line between combatant and noncombatant space. The IDF, through Operation Gideon’s Chariots, is deploying an integrated approach involving heavy armor, advanced surveillance, and combat engineering to navigate and dominate this battlespace. The unique spatial constraints demand decentralized decision-making at the squad and platoon level, while simultaneously requiring real-time coordination with aerial intelligence and logistical support, necessitating a level of operational synchronization that borders on the doctrinally experimental.
At the center of Israel’s tactical doctrine is the coordinated use of tanks and armored personnel carriers, designed not just for survivability in high-threat environments but for supporting dismounted infantry in hyper-local engagements. These platforms, equipped with active protection systems such as Trophy, are meant to mitigate the risks posed by anti-tank guided missiles and improvised explosive devices, both of which are signature elements of Hamas’ defensive repertoire. Simultaneously, Israel’s specialized Yahalom combat engineering units are tasked with detecting, neutralizing, and mapping tunnel networks that may span kilometers beneath densely populated neighborhoods. This subterranean dimension introduces a vertical complexity to combat operations, turning each block into a three-dimensional battlespace with hidden threats both above and below.
The IDF’s tactical adaptation is further enhanced by its integration of real-time drone surveillance, SIGINT collection, and AI-assisted target recognition, allowing units to engage with heightened precision. These technologies reduce the fog of war but do not eliminate the ethical dilemmas inherent in operating among civilians. Hamas’ strategic embedding within hospitals, schools, and residential towers transforms tactical maneuvers into legal and moral quandaries. The IDF’s stated approach, precision engagement, pre-strike warnings, and proportional force, is as much a legal posture as it is a tactical imperative, one designed to forestall international condemnation while attempting to degrade Hamas’ command-and-control architecture.
Despite its technological superiority, the IDF faces the same historical challenge that has plagued urban counterinsurgency for decades: the risk of overextension and tactical success without strategic consolidation. Every street secured may contain latent insurgent infrastructure, every civilian spared may become a future combatant under conditions of prolonged occupation. In this regard, Operation Gideon’s Chariots is not merely a test of Israel’s technological prowess but a crucible of doctrinal innovation. Whether the operation culminates in decisive territorial control or devolves into protracted attrition will depend less on the IDF’s capacity to destroy infrastructure and more on its ability to sustain operational tempo while managing civilian dynamics in one of the most volatile urban theaters of the modern era.
Israel’s current operational doctrine in Gaza reflects a shift from punitive expeditionary tactics toward a more classical “clear and hold” counterinsurgency model. Unlike previous campaigns characterized by short-term incursion and rapid withdrawal, this approach is predicated on a sequential and sustained projection of territorial dominance. The operational core involves a phased methodology: first, combat brigades conduct aggressive clearing operations to dismantle militant infrastructure; then, stabilization units establish a persistent presence in these zones to forestall re-infiltration. By dividing Gaza into sectors, some reports describe a grid-like framework, the IDF intends to impose localized control mechanisms that will allow for tighter management of both insurgent activity and civilian populations.
The "hold" phase, however, presents complex logistical and doctrinal challenges that extend well beyond battlefield victory. Unlike kinetic engagements, which are often time-bound and objective-specific, the occupation of cleared urban terrain requires uninterrupted resupply chains, redundant communication nodes, static security outposts, and adaptable civil-military coordination frameworks. The IDF will be required to manage rotating personnel deployments, medical and engineering detachments, and a consistent psychological operations campaign aimed at maintaining civilian compliance or passivity. Such operations are inherently resource-intensive and require a level of endurance and adaptability that strains even advanced militaries operating on familiar terrain, let alone within one of the most densely populated and politically volatile urban environments on Earth.
Integral to this strategy is the prevention of insurgent resurgence, which necessitates the transformation of tactical clearing into strategic denial. The IDF is reportedly deploying layered monitoring systems, incorporating drone swarms, subterranean detection networks, and AI-assisted threat modeling, to create an interlocking surveillance architecture. This system is designed to act as a tripwire, detecting and responding to attempts by Hamas or aligned factions to reestablish operational footholds. Yet, such mechanisms, no matter how technologically sophisticated, must contend with a physical and human environment that offers militants unparalleled concealment, psychological leverage, and strategic ambiguity. The ultimate question remains: can any state, even one with Israel’s capabilities, enforce a comprehensive and enduring military occupation in a space where the very act of holding ground is interpreted as an existential provocation?
Moreover, the IDF’s planners appear cognizant of the risk that protracted occupation may paradoxically produce the very instability it seeks to quell. Holding territory in Gaza, particularly after the destruction of governance infrastructure and displacement of populations, necessitates not just physical presence but administrative control. This includes not only managing aid distribution, restoring basic utilities, and mediating local disputes, but also constructing a post-Hamas political framework without inviting further radicalization. The lack of clarity about a governing alternative, coupled with Israel’s insistence on not allowing Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to fill the vacuum, places additional burden on the military to serve as both enforcer and ad hoc administrator. In this sense, the “hold” phase may be less a conclusion than a transformation: from military operation to military governance, with all the perils that such a transformation historically entails.
Despite Israel’s overwhelming firepower and technological superiority it faces a strategic paradox that has historically undermined even the most meticulously executed military campaigns: the insurgent’s advantage in asymmetry. As the IDF pushes deeper into urbanized zones of Gaza, their forces enter an environment designed to nullify conventional superiority. Hamas has had nearly two decades to prepare subterranean tunnel networks, preposition IEDs, and adapt to the rhythms of Israeli operational doctrine. Rather than meeting the IDF in force-on-force engagements, Hamas fighters are expected to disperse into civilian infrastructure, leveraging human shields and spatial familiarity to frustrate Israeli advances and increase the political cost of every IDF maneuver.
Israeli tank in Gaza (Photo: IDF)
The use of “tactical elasticity” by Hamas, a doctrine of retreat, ambush, and re-infiltration, presents a particularly potent challenge to the IDF’s “clear and hold” paradigm. Urban density not only impedes maneuverability but also serves to compartmentalize conflict, allowing Hamas units to remain dormant in one neighborhood while engaging offensively in another. This decentralized approach undermines Israel’s traditional reliance on technological dominance, including drone-based ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) and electronic warfare systems, which become less effective in saturated electromagnetic environments and dense subterranean terrain. The adversary, in this context, becomes less a targetable military unit and more a fluid social ecosystem, capable of regeneration even in the face of localized tactical defeat.
Moreover, Israel’s strategy risks creating a “second-phase” insurgency, in which Hamas, or successor factions, reemerge in the vacuum between territorial control and political resolution. Past conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that insurgent forces thrive in precisely this liminal space, where occupation is sustained but governance remains ambiguous. Absent a credible and accepted political authority to replace Hamas in post-clearing phases, IDF units may find themselves engaged in a protracted, manpower-intensive counterinsurgency, marked by attritional clashes, reputational degradation, and declining domestic support. The longer Gaza remains militarily subdued but politically unsettled, the more probable it becomes that resistance will mutate, rather than disappear.
To mitigate this outcome, Israeli planners are reportedly developing predictive models of insurgent reconstitution, integrating intelligence from previous incursions with real-time data to identify likely points of resistance resurgence. These efforts, however, are constrained by the fluidity of human terrain, the opacity of local allegiances, and the inherently political nature of insurgent legitimacy. Technical countermeasures, such as tunnel demolition units, SIGINT integration, and rapid-response mechanized units, may address the kinetic dimensions of Hamas’s resistance doctrine, but they offer limited efficacy against the broader insurgent paradigm, which is embedded in grievance, identity, and narrative. In this light, the IDF’s operational success will depend not merely on its ability to hold ground, but on its capacity to anticipate, disrupt, and delegitimize the evolving modalities of Palestinian resistance.
The question of whether Operation Gideon’s Chariots represents a tactical holding maneuver or a strategic blueprint for indefinite reoccupation remains deeply contested, not only within Israel's security establishment but also across its civilian political sphere. While the IDF has framed its objectives in operationally discrete terms, dismantling Hamas infrastructure, securing key urban corridors, and establishing buffer zones—there is a conspicuous absence of a clearly articulated political endgame. The ambiguity surrounding the duration and scope of Israel’s presence in post-clearing zones introduces strategic uncertainty that could destabilize both military efficacy and international legitimacy. In this sense, the operation risks devolving into a case study of what Eliot Cohen once termed “tactical brilliance in search of strategic clarity.”
Public opinion within Israel reflects this ambivalence with striking consistency. According to recent polling from The Times of Israel, a majority of respondents believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu is more preoccupied with preserving his grip on power than with achieving a coherent wartime objective, such as the return of hostages or the durable neutralization of Hamas. This perception, whether accurate or not, exerts a corrosive effect on civil-military cohesion and complicates the legitimacy of extended operations. In environments where civilian trust in political leadership erodes, even high-functioning militaries may struggle to translate battlefield dominance into lasting strategic gains. The Israeli leadership’s inability, or unwillingness, to define a stable governing architecture for Gaza exacerbates the operational vacuum left in the wake of cleared zones.
At the policy level, this uncertainty reverberates in the international arena, where Israel's allies and adversaries alike are attempting to decipher whether Gideon’s Chariots constitutes a transient operation or the prelude to de facto annexation. The absence of a civilian administration to replace Hamas, combined with Israel’s unwillingness to accept responsibility for governance, creates a paradox: territorial control without sovereign accountability. This condition, if prolonged, may resemble the “quasi-occupation” model observed in past U.S. interventions, where military forces exercised functional authority in the absence of legal recognition or sustainable governance frameworks. As such, the operation risks becoming trapped in an ethical and operational limbo, neither a clean exit nor a permanent state-building project.
Strategically, the challenge lies not merely in seizing and holding territory, but in articulating a coherent vision of what that control is intended to accomplish. Without a viable political roadmap, be it administered by a multilateral force, a Palestinian alternative to Hamas, or even a transitional Israeli mechanism, the IDF’s control of Gaza could harden into a liability. A military that is perpetually clearing ground without a counterpart institution to hold it risks transforming tactical victories into strategic stagnation. As history repeatedly demonstrates, the failure to link operational tempo with political planning tends to yield diminishing returns and escalating resistance. In the case of Gideon’s Chariots, the absence of post-conflict architecture could turn Gaza from a conquered space into an enduring quagmire.
The strategic ambition embodied in Operation Gideon’s Chariots evokes an ancient military dilemma: the ease of conquest versus the burden of governance. As with Alexander the Great’s siege of Gaza, the IDFs may well achieve operational success in dismantling Hamas' infrastructure and asserting control over key geographic corridors. Yet the specter of long-term occupation raises a fundamental question that has historically haunted every imperial power, from the Macedonians to the Americans in Fallujah: can an external force impose order, legitimacy, and enduring security in a territory where political authority and civil consent have been catastrophically fragmented?
Tactically, the IDF has demonstrated extraordinary proficiency in adapting to the complexities of urban warfare, integrating mechanized units with precision intelligence and AI-assisted surveillance. However, these capabilities, while effective in clearing operations, do not resolve the socio-political vacuum that inevitably follows the kinetic phase of war. The very act of holding Gaza implies not only a military footprint but an administrative architecture capable of sustaining governance, delivering basic services, and mediating civil unrest. Absent a credible plan for post-conflict reconstruction or local political buy-in, Israeli forces risk becoming occupiers in a city perpetually at war with itself and its rulers, thereby transforming temporary tactical success into a strategic quagmire.
Indeed, the current reoccupation plan, though cloaked in the language of security and necessity, risks creating a fortress without legitimacy, a military zone masquerading as a stable entity. Holding ground in Gaza is not merely a cartographic exercise; it demands the construction of political meaning amid ruins. Without a clearly articulated and regionally coordinated end-state, the IDF’s presence may provoke perpetual resistance, institutional fatigue, and international condemnation. In this light, Gideon’s Chariots may one day be remembered not as a chariot of liberation, but as a war machine entombed in the sand, a grim monument to the enduring paradox of war without peace.