DeansMusings

 In my last blogpost of 10 June, I made several predictions. https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-gaza-war-part-5-what-next.html - Operations in Gaza will be largely over by the end of August. - IDF casualties in Gaza have been falling for some time, notwithstanding an increase in May,   and though Hamas has been trying to defend its last remaining strongholds.   - Two IDF divisions will handle Gaza, with a model similar to the West bank. All IDF units under    Israel’s  northern command will be moved to the North, for possible operations against Hezbollah,    after getting battle experience in Gaza. - It was not in Netanyahu’s interest to reach a ceasefire or hostages deal with Hamas, without fully   neutralizing Hamas’s in Gaza. To avoid a deal, Hezbollah will be provoked in a bid to increase   tensions and scuttle a deal. - Ground operations against Hezbollah could begin in Sept. Until then Israel can wage attritional ...

  Since my last post in April, there have been some significant non military developments in this  conflict.  Israel’s GDP grew in the 1 st Quarter of 2024 (after a fall in Q4 2023), showing it has shrugged off the effect of war. GDP growth was close to pre war estimates. Iran will elect a new President on 28 th June. His policy may impact Israel’s policy towards Hezbollah. A word about the deployable strength of the IDF : An IDF brigade is barely 2000 personnel (it is lower in an armored brigade), compared to over 3000 in an Indian army brigade. Reserve personnel who have been mobilized and form the bulk of the IDF soldiers in combat in Gaza, cannot be mobilized for more than 60 days. Thus reserve units who have been fighting in Gaza for several months, have deployed only individual battalions of those brigades at any point of time. A particular reserve brigade may be deployed in Gaza on paper, but in reality, only a single battalion (barely 500 personnel) of t...

 After 6 months of the ground war, I want to look at how Israel fared so far. Israel had the following objectives: Operational: 1. Destroy Hamas’s capacity to be threat. 2. Get their hostages back 3. Handle any threat from Hezbollah, West Bank, or others while operating against Hamas. Strategic: 1. Put any talk of a Palestinian state on the back burner (as it has been after Saudi and UAE     normalized relations with Israel) Hamas had the following objectives: Operational: 1. Demonstrate that Israel was not invincible (either on Oct 7, or in subsequent fighting).   2. Get back some of their prisoners in exchange for hostages. Strategic: 1. Force the world community to seriously discuss the creation of a Palestinian state. 2. Start a larger war against Israel with the participation of Hezbollah, Iranian proxies and other      Palestinians in the west bank. My view, as expressed in part 1 of this series, was that if the IDF suff...

100 days into the ground war (excluding the ceasefire after a month of fighting) is a good time to review the assumptions made in the first 2 parts of this series and provide and update on the fighting. As was the case in the first 2 parts of this series. I am not commenting on the moral or political aspects of the conflict, as that has been commented on at length in any number of fora, representing a wide spectrum of opinion. There are however military and military related geopolitical aspects of this war that are inadequately covered, which is a gap I’d like to fill. The 2 previous posts in this series: https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2023/10/what-israeli-invasion-of-gaza-might.html https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-gaza-war-by-numbers-2-months-later.html In my past post, at the end of Dec, I had speculated that brigades from the 36 th and 162 nd division of the IDF would move out for rest and refitting, while being replaced by fresh units. This was based on the high number o...

 My earlier post was published a week before the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza started. I had estimated then, that it would take 2 months for the IDF to eliminate Hamas as a significant threat. Two months have passed since the start of ground operations and it will be useful to see how things have progressed and how my assumptions have held up. Based on the Israeli army’s order of battle (ORBAT), I had speculated that Israel will deploy the following force for a ground invasion of Gaza: The link to that post: https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2023/10/what-israeli-invasion-of-gaza-might.html 3 Parachute / Commando Brigades. 9 Infantry brigades ( 2 regular and 7 reserve). 8 Armored brigades ( 2 regular and 6 reserve). The IDF’s did deploy 20 brigades, with a slightly different composition: 4 Parachute /Commando brigades 10 Infantry brigades (4 regular and 6 reserve), 6 Armored brigades (4 regular and 2 reserve). This is open source info from the Israeli govt website and med...