2023-10-18 12:59:32
by Guido Olimpio
The complex, also built with US funds, is equipped with sensors and cameras to monitor movements
Baladia a small Arab village thirty kilometers from Gaza. There is the mosque, the market, a larger building, a square, dozens of small houses built along narrow alleys, the casbah. There are some wider roads around.
In the underground tunnels with invisible accesses. Baladia is not a real village, an Israeli urban combat range, part of the large Tze’elim base. They built it in the mid-2000s, a request from the General Staff determined by battle experiences. And the first nucleus became a very realistic complex over time, with the creation of tunnels. A necessary addition after the obstacles encountered in the conflict with the Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas itself but also with Fatah groups in Jenin, in the West Bank. Each faction has exploited the territory to its advantage, i.e. the intricate neighborhoods, with homes creating labyrinths and blind corners.
The complex, also built with US funds, is equipped with sensors and cameras to monitor movements while an audio system reproduces explosions, muezzin singing and sounds. Total cost: $45 million. The units that must operate in contexts such as the Strip trained at the site renamed Chiraq, a word that unites the Iraqi theater with the well-known violence of the American metropolis, bloodied by gang feuds. The simulations involve the conquest of individual houses that have become stations.
The reclamation room by room, floor after floor, paying attention to surprises on the part of those who defend – in training soldiers play the role of militiamen -, to possible explosive traps placed behind a door, at the entrance to a warehouse, inside what looks like a chicken coop. The units employ war dogs with cameras, small drones, teams of engineers to open gaps in the walls and avoid exposing themselves in the narrow streets, the corridors of death. The men of the al Qassam Brigades can target them from a thousand points, throwing bombs from a roof, emerging from a camouflaged tunnel, lurking among the ruins of a destroyed building. They analyzed previous operations, developed countermeasures, equipped themselves with other antitanks and drones capable of dropping bombs on an armored vehicle.
In one section of Tze’elim they have large modified Humvee off-road vehicles, they have a sort of turret equipped with a cannon on the roof. They serve to familiarize the tank drivers who will have to guarantee fire coverage, even if their movements are limited by geographical characteristics. More useful are the gigantic D9R armored bulldozers, also in the radio-controlled version, armed with machine guns, protected by metal nets to reduce the impact of RPGs, the old anti-tanks part of the arsenal of Mohammed Deif’s men. But they have fewer chances if targeted by modern systems, also supplied to the mujahideen. The armored bulldozers have the task of opening paths, removing barricades or creating them to stop kamikaze vehicles. Every Israeli maneuver in recent years has seen them on the front line. However accurate the courses are, the unknowns of any such action remain.
Analysts, experts, allies, the former head of the Mossad Efraim Halevi have suggested to the government to give up a massive land intervention that would involve an area that would still be populated despite the exodus of some of the inhabitants. The consequences are evident: losses among civilians – the toll continues to rise after the hospital massacre in Gaza – and among soldiers. In fact, the army seemed to hold back at the moment, talking about other options without elaborating. The pitfalls known to many. Today like yesterday. Flavius Josephus in his famous Jewish War described how the Jewish rebels engaged the Roman Legionaries inside the villages of the time, causing losses and playing on cunning, his Time.news still relevant today. Sun Tzu’s judgment was equally clear when, in the pages of the Art of War, he warned: Fighting in cities is a last resort.
October 18, 2023 (modified October 18, 2023 | 1:09 pm)
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