On The Ground In Gaza: What I Saw Of Israel’s Military Operations

The smell of dust clung to the air when I departed from the border crossing at Kerem Shalom, at the intersection of Israel, Egypt, and Gaza, this past week on July 25, 2024. I traveled through an ancient city’s suburbs to the shores of the Mediterranean, and back again, becoming the first U.S. general officer (active or retired) to travel across Gaza during this war.

Gaza presents an extraordinarily difficult adversary environment. Yet the Israel Defense Forces face the acute challenge of defending their nation while striving to protect Palestinian civilians. Unfortunately, negative perceptions on social media and elsewhere, based on a combination of disinformation, ignorance, and anti-Semitism, indicates there is a wide gap between the reality I witnessed and the perceptions abroad. Sadly, war always involves civilian casualties. But there are many complex factors unfolding on the ground in this war between Israel and Hamas.

Entering Gaza, just past the Kerem Shalom crossing, there was a new road lined on both sides with dozens of trucks, most of them carrying food. The road was constructed by the IDF to make it easier to get food, water, fuel, and other essential supplies to the civilian population. An Israeli Druze colonel in the IDF, responsible for coordinating humanitarian access, explained to me that the numbers vary on average between 200 to 240 trucks entering Gaza every day to deliver food and other humanitarian aid. Some days that number goes even higher.

While there is certainly a difficult situation in Gaza for civilians, assertions by the International Criminal Court that Israel is intentionally starving Gazan civilians did not match what I witnessed on both sides of the crossing. The average man needs 2500 calories a day to maintain a stable diet; the average woman needs 2000. At current levels, there is enough aid entering Gaza daily to support over a 3,000 calorie a day diet. But food insecurity remains a challenge in Gaza, IDF officials say, because of Hamas fighters inside Gaza who steal and horde relief supplies.

Driving into the city of Rafah, I witnessed a substantial level of destruction. IDF officials say that Hamas fighters deliberately mingle with civilians in order to use noncombatants as human shields. The fact is the killing of Palestinian civilians is a cruel and illegal element of Hamas’ strategy. While there is no denying that civilians are dying because of the IDF’s actions, the routine Hamas tactic of walking the streets in civilian clothes with no weapons, then duck into a building knowing where weapons are stored for use against the IDF, makes urban structures legitimate military targets according to the laws of armed conflict. The military activities I saw, as well as the processes and procedures followed by the Israeli military, are indicative of the IDF complying with the laws of armed conflict.

In those cases where there are questions of misconduct or errors in the application of military force, these issues are investigated by a judicial arm of the IDF. In fact, such investigations are currently underway in Israel by a judicial arm that is separate from the military chain of command, causing widespread debates across the Jewish nation. Legal action is imminent. IDF personnel are legally held accountable for their actions. Israel employs measures not just to comply with international law, but because, whenever hostilities end, Israelis will still be living with the Palestinians as neighbors.

According to the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, John Spencer, “Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any military in history,” he posted on LinkedIn. His studies reveal that the ratio of enemy belligerent deaths to civilian deaths in Gaza is on the order of 1 to 1.0-1.5. Others estimate that ratio to be on the order of 1 to 2. World famous historian Lord Andrew Roberts gave a compelling expose in the House of Lords to the same effect. In similar urban terrain in Mosul, Iraq, from 2016 to 2017, the ratio was 1 to 2.5. The United Nations estimates that the nominal ratio of belligerent casualties to civilian casualties in wars of all types is on the order of 1 to 9. While the effects of combat are not conclusive, regarding the implementation of law of armed conflict obligations, they are certainly relevant. It is hard to square the accusations of indifference to Palestinian civilians and indiscriminate warfare with these statistics.

The current war also complicates Israel’s obvious interest in avoiding confrontation with Egypt. I drove past Hamas rocket launch positions that were located feet from Gaza’s border with Egypt. Hamas operatives know the Israeli Air Force would not strike positions so close to Egypt. This is the same logic Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use for occupying hospitals, mosques, schools, United Nations facilities, etc. It is important to realize that the law of armed conflict does not categorically prohibit attack on such locations, and that when an enemy transforms such locales into military objectives, such strikes are legally defensible.

In our move to the coast, we also drove over an underground city of tunnels, not unlike those used by subways and trains in New York City. For years, Hamas has diverted resources intended for the betterment of the Palestinian civilian society to instead build this underground city for wartime purposes. There are underground bunkers full of rockets and booby traps, and command centers for the Hamas military leadership. These are the same tunnels Hamas uses to imprison hostages, smuggle aid, and store ammunition. While much of that has now been emptied, there are even server farms still housed in the Hamas tunnel system. And where does all the electric power needed to keep this underground city operating come from? It is diverted from civilian hospitals, apartments, offices, and often from UN facilities.

That is why a critical IDF operational objective is to locate, destroy, or otherwise seal off these tunnels. Hamas’ use of their tunnel city enabled them to set the conditions for the October 7th attack in a concealed fashion. By sealing off the terrorist tunnels, the IDF can force Hamas to move to the surface where they can more easily be corralled. It is slow and difficult work, as this is where Hamas is holding many of the remaining hostages. But the IDF is making progress. During my trip into Gaza, I visited an engineering unit tasked with finding and then physically confirming the exact location of the tunnels. Since going into Rafah, this unit locates, on average, two tunnels a day. Once located, they turn over the mission of destroying the tunnels to another unit with experts equipped to accomplish that task.

Once we arrived at the shore of the Mediterranean, next to a suburb of Rafah known as the Swedish village, due to the source of its aid funding, I had the opportunity to discuss IDF operations with a commander in the area. He has been fighting since ground operations began in late October 2023 in northern Gaza. He described the difficulty of the operational environment.

The commander was confident when asked about how long it would take to break Hamas, answering that, “it will take time, but it can be done.” He emphasized that this was a war—not a counterinsurgency operation. There is a lot to unpack in that statement. It became very evident during my visit that the IDF is competently integrating all available means to accomplish their objectives from all domains—air, sea, ground, space, and the electromagnetic spectrum.

As we talked, the commander pointed out an Israeli Navy ship about a mile and a half off the coast, mentioning how it was providing valuable support in the immediate fight. With machine gun fire echoing to the northeast of our position, we could still hear Israeli Air Force drones flying overhead, and occasionally fighter jets tied closely to the actions of the Israeli Army on the ground.

There are both lethal and non-lethal operations integrated across the traditional armed services. How IDF actions are conducted are informed by an assessment that involves complex telecommunication operations, including the integration and distribution of the various means of data collected by intelligence organizations. The data is then translated into situational awareness, actualized by means across the electromagnetic spectrum. From my experience, it was evident that the IDF has achieved a level of integration and an authentic understanding of how to genuinely apply jointness—using the right force, at the right place, at the right time—regardless of the service components sourcing those forces.

While there are multiple alternatives proposals for how to end this war, one thing is certain: the IDF takes many precautions in an effort to reduce civilian casualties. Thousands of phone calls, texts, leaflets, as well as roof-knocking (dropping small munitions on top of buildings) are some of the warnings the IDF uses to notify civilians to evacuate Hamas-occupied structures. I visited an IDF control center, used to integrate information from a variety of sources, that closely monitors civilian locations and movements throughout Gaza. The data is continually updated to inform IDF operations to minimize unintended collateral damage, as well as to evacuate and separate the civilian population from combat operations to the greatest degree possible.

There is no “moral equivalency” as implied by the White House’s public statements, when comparing Israel’s “right to defend itself” with ending the war in Gaza to stop “the death of far too many innocent civilians,” at least, not before the IDF reduces Hamas’ military capabilities so they can never repeat the atrocities of 7 Oct. There is no such thing as “immaculate war” where there are no civilian casualties.

Unfortunately, Hamas is only one element of an alliance of terrorist activities—Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi’s, radical Islamic militias—all under the influence of Iran. Collectively these organizations and the current Iranian government are a threat to both liberal democracy and free trade. What I witnessed in Gaza impressed upon me that the sooner the people subjugated by these militant forces—including Palestinians in Gaza—can be free of extremism, the sooner the world can become a better place.

Lt Gen David Deptula, USAF (ret.), is former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, U.S. Air Force Headquarters, and an alumnus of JINSA’s General and Admirals Program.

Originally published in Forbes.