The Gaza City Campaign

A Departure from Israel’s Momentum Doctrine

The ongoing Israeli offensive into Gaza City represents a profound departure from the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) strategic doctrine and highlights fundamental challenges that will likely influence military thinking for years to come. This protracted urban warfare campaign contradicts the core principles of Israel’s Momentum Plan 2020 and illuminates critical lessons about modern asymmetric warfare that are already being studied at West Point and other military institutions worldwide.

The Momentum Plan’s Failed Promise

Israel’s Momentum Plan, officially launched in 2020, was designed around a revolutionary concept: achieving “short wars, decisive victory, and removal of the main military threat to Israel”. The plan emphasized rapid offensive operations supported by massive firepower, precision strikes, and multi-domain capabilities that would enable swift battlefield dominance. The doctrine called for leveraging Israel’s technological superiority to achieve what military planners termed “decisive victory” – the ability to defeat adversaries quickly while minimizing both military and civilian casualties However, the current Gaza conflict, now extending beyond 23 months, represents everything the Momentum Plan sought to avoid. Rather than the envisioned rapid, technology-driven campaign, the IDF finds itself engaged in a grinding, street-by-street urban warfare campaign that has required calling up approximately 60,000 reservists for the Gaza City operation alone. This extended timeline directly contradicts the plan’s fundamental premise that future conflicts must be resolved swiftly to prevent enemy forces from inflicting sustained damage on Israeli population centers.

The discrepancy becomes even more stark when examining the IDF’s approach to Gaza City specifically. Despite initial assessments in late 2023 that Hamas battalions in northern Gaza had been “largely broken and dismantled”, and claims by January 2024 that Hamas had been “destroyed” in northern Gaza, the IDF now finds itself conducting what amounts to a sixth reconquest of areas like Zeitoun. This pattern of advance, withdrawal, and re-advance fundamentally violates the Momentum Plan’s emphasis on decisive, irreversible victories.

John Spencer’s Analysis and the Urban Warfare Revolution

John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, has become one of the most authoritative voices analyzing the Gaza conflict from a military tactical perspective. Spencer’s research reveals that the Gaza campaign represents an unprecedented challenge in modern urban warfare history, primarily due to Hamas’s twenty-year preparation of the battlefield. He emphasizes that “from the size of the military the terrain of Gaza there are some very unprecedented aspects of this”. His analysis highlights that Gaza contains 24 cities within a relatively small area, with multiple urban centers exceeding 600,000 residents. More critically, Spencer notes that “the fact that Hamas spent billions of dollars and prepared every bit of Gaza for war is unique”. This level of defensive preparation, including the construction of 300-400 miles of tunnels underneath every urban area in Gaza, creates conditions “where the enemy defender has prepared the ground for 20 years for that battle” – a scenario without historical parallel in modern warfare.youtube

Spencer’s tactical analysis reveals why the Gaza City battle fails to meet Momentum Plan criteria. The extensive tunnel network, which Spencer describes as roughly half the size of the New York subway system, fundamentally alters the nature of urban combat. These tunnels are not merely defensive positions but constitute what Spencer calls a “system of systems” that enables Hamas to maintain operational initiative despite Israeli technological superiority.

The Tactical Innovation Imperative

The Gaza City campaign has forced the IDF to develop entirely new approaches to urban warfare that will likely become standard doctrine. The most significant innovation came from Brigadier General Dan Goldfus’s 98th Paratroopers Division, which developed the first systematic approach to simultaneous surface and subsurface maneuver warfare. General Goldfus’s breakthrough involved sending special operations forces into uncleared tunnels simultaneously with surface operations, effectively turning “tunnels from obstacles controlled by the defending enemy into maneuver corridors for the attacker”. This represents what Spencer calls “the first time in the modern history of urban warfare” that forces conducted “maneuver warfare simultaneously incorporating the surface and subsurface in dense urban areas”.

The tactical innovations emerging from Gaza City extend beyond tunnel warfare to include:

Devastated Terrain Warfare: Israel coined this term to describe combat in areas reduced to rubble by preliminary bombardment
Multi-Domain Integration: Combining ground, underground, air, electromagnetic, and cyber operations at the tactical level
Precision Urban Fires: Developing new applications for small-diameter bombs and dive-bombing techniques in dense urban environments

These innovations are already being incorporated into U.S. Army doctrine through the Center for Army Lessons Learned, which has published extensive analysis of IDF tunnel warfare tactics and techniques.

West Point Case Study Development

The Gaza City battle is rapidly becoming a cornerstone case study for military education institutions worldwide. West Point’s Modern War Institute has already published multiple analyses of Israeli operations, including detailed examinations of tunnel warfare innovations and urban combat techniques. The U.S. Army has produced comprehensive assessments titled “Subterranean Operations: Israeli Defense Force Lessons from Gaza,” which provides “actionable recommendations for the U.S. Army” based on IDF experiences.

The case study value stems from several unprecedented aspects:

Scale of Preparation: Hamas’s twenty-year battlefield preparation represents the most extensive enemy defensive preparation in modern urban warfare historyyoutube

Technological Integration: The conflict demonstrates both the capabilities and limitations of advanced military technology in dense urban environments

Civilian Considerations: The operation provides extensive data on civilian casualty mitigation in urban warfare, with Spencer’s analysis showing Israel has “taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that’s fought an urban war”

The Model for Future Urban Warfare

Military analysts predict that the Gaza City campaign will become a fundamental reference point for future urban warfare doctrine development. The battle demonstrates several key principles that are already influencing military thinking:

Defensive Advantage in Prepared Urban Terrain: The Gaza experience validates theories that extensive defensive preparation can neutralize technological superiority. This has implications for potential conflicts in megacities across Europe and Asia.

Duration of Urban Operations: The extended timeline challenges assumptions about rapid urban warfare resolution, suggesting that future urban campaigns may require sustained commitment over months or years rather than weeks.

Integration Requirements: The successful innovations in simultaneous surface-subsurface operations point toward new requirements for training, equipment, and command structures in urban warfare units.

The Royal United Services Institute has already published analysis warning that “many NATO armies are ill-prepared for fighting in crowded cities” based on lessons from Gaza. The study notes that while European forces “may be trained to fight like the IDF, they find themselves equipped to die like Hamas”, highlighting the equipment and doctrine gaps revealed by the Israeli experience.

Strategic Implications and Doctrine Evolution

The Gaza City battle’s deviation from the Momentum Plan criteria reflects broader challenges in contemporary military strategy. The conflict demonstrates that technological superiority and rapid strike capabilities, while important, cannot overcome determined adversaries operating from extensively prepared urban defensive positions. This realization is forcing military establishments worldwide to reconsider assumptions about urban warfare duration, resource requirements, and tactical approaches. The fact that Israel – with one of the world’s most advanced militaries – requires 23 months to achieve objectives originally planned for rapid resolution suggests fundamental revisions to urban warfare doctrine are necessary. The implications extend beyond tactical considerations to strategic planning. The Gaza experience indicates that future urban conflicts may require sustained political will and resource commitment far exceeding current military planning assumptions. This has particular relevance for NATO planning regarding potential conflicts in Eastern European urban areas.

Conclusion

The Battle for Gaza City represents a watershed moment in modern military doctrine, demonstrating the limitations of technology-centric approaches to urban warfare while pioneering innovations that will influence military thinking for decades. Its failure to meet the Momentum Plan’s criteria for rapid, decisive victory paradoxically establishes it as a model for understanding the complex realities of 21st-century urban warfare.

John Spencer’s analysis and the emerging West Point case studies ensure that the tactical innovations, strategic lessons, and operational challenges of the Gaza City campaign will become fundamental components of military education worldwide. The battle’s transformation from a planned rapid operation into an extended urban warfare laboratory provides invaluable insights into the future of military conflict in an increasingly urbanized world.

Note: John Spencer currently serves as Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, Co-Director of the Urban Warfare Project, Executive Director of the Urban Warfare Institute, and Chair of Urban Warfare Studies with the Madison Policy Forum. He has published over 140 articles, book chapters, and case studies in major publications including Time Magazine, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and others.