Israel and Hamas Prepare for the Next Gaza War

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As Israel prepared to launch its assault into Gaza in late December, it braced for substantial casualties among its own troops. Commanders warned their men of Hamas' suicide commandos, missiles that could smash tanks and knock helicopters out of the sky, and long-range rockets that could reach deeper into Israel. Yet, when the dust had settled, the Islamist militants' primary military achievement had been to maintain its rocket fire into Israel throughout the 22-day conflict. Of the 10 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza, four were victims of friendly fire accidents.

The militants continue to fire rockets: On Tuesday, a medium-range Grad missile struck the Israeli port city of Ashkelon in what may be Hamas' closing shot before an Egyptian-brokered truce finally takes effect. Hamas and its supporters have claimed victory as a result of simply being able to survive the fierce Israeli onslaught. And, as a result, Hamas says, Israel lost the political battle; — its pummeling of Gaza and the heavy civilian death toll inflicted has offended many former supporters, while Hamas' political position has been strengthened. But in battle, Israel clearly held the upper hand. During the conflict, very little of Hamas' force of 15,000 fighters appeared, and neither did its feared arsenal of Iranian-supplied weapons. (See images of Gaza digging out)

Several senior Israeli officers provided TIME with a detailed account of the military campaign. "There was never a single incident in which a unit of Hamas confronted our soldiers," one Israel Defense Forces official says. "And we kept waiting for them to use sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles against us, but they never did." Israeli military reported only four attempts by suicide bombers instead of the dozens they had feared from Hamas' special kamikaze unit.

So what happened to Hamas? Israeli military officials offer a triumphalist explanation in which the Islamist militants simply wilted in the face of Israel's overwhelming firepower. By this reasoning, Israel had over-inflated the Hamas threat. The militants are able to lob dozens of crude, badly aimed rockets into southern Israel, but that may be the limit of their abilities. And Israeli officials are congratulating themselves for their tactics. "Hamas and Hizballah are worried that Israel has broken the DNA code of urban fighting," says reserve Brig. Gen. Shalom Harari, while cautioning that Hamas' military planners are probably already at work planning ways to block the military's next assault if fighting breaks out again in Gaza, as it undoubtedly will.

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