Urban Warfare in Gaza

100 days of fighting between Israel and Palestine

Abstract

This article examines the tactics, technologies, and approaches employed by Israel and the Palestinian resistance, with Hamas as the primary faction, in urban warfare over the course of a hundred days of combat between October 2023 and January 2024. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the spatial dynamics involved in the battle space, this study employs a dialectical approach to the trajectories of the armed groups in conflict in the urban space of the Gaza Strip. In this manner, through a comparative analysis of the socio-spatial/territorial interpretation of the conflict, the objective is to highlight the conceptions of combat applied on the ground based on the tactics and forms of organization of the territory, as well as the respective military means employed. The spatial dynamics of the armed groups in dispute in the territory configure the battle space ordered by multiple spatial layers. By focusing on the tactics employed by the groups engaged in combat in the urban space of the Gaza Strip, it becomes evident that Israel employs the practice of urbicide, which can be defined as the deliberate destruction of urban space as a war policy. In contrast, the Palestinian groups engaged in insurgent struggle utilize the urban environment to organize their resistance actions in urban combat situations.