Hamas Adopts Guerilla Warfare in Gaza

 🅑🅨 🅚🅐🅩🅘 🅕🅐🅗🅢🅘🅝 – 

Gaza City, July 12, 2025

Despite months of relentless military pressure by Israeli forces that have severely weakened its command structure and infrastructure, Hamas continues to display tactical resilience, now fully embracing classic guerilla warfare to sustain its campaign. Though battered, the group is not beaten. Its adaptation to decentralized, lethal tactics has transformed the nature of the conflict in Gaza, intensifying an already deadly war of attrition.

Rather than engaging in traditional battlefield formations or holding fixed positions, Hamas fighters are now organized into small, mobile cells with deep knowledge of Gaza’s dense urban terrain. These units move through an extensive underground tunnel network, launching ambushes, improvised explosive attacks, and coordinated strikes before disappearing back into the civilian landscape. The strategic shift is intended to offset the Israel Defense Forces’ technological edge and overwhelming firepower.

The toll of this shift is evident in the increasing number of Israeli military casualties. Hamas is employing a range of improvised explosive devices against convoys and armored vehicles, while anti-tank guided missiles and rocket-propelled grenades are being used with growing sophistication in narrow alleys and building interiors. Sniper fire from concealed positions in the ruins of bombed-out neighborhoods adds to the lethality, turning urban spaces into unpredictable and hazardous combat zones. These operations are not designed to hold territory but to inflict sustained attrition and undermine Israeli operational momentum.

For the Israel Defense Forces, the shift presents a profound challenge. Urban guerilla warfare requires troops to conduct slow, dangerous clearing missions, often on foot, amid tight quarters where visibility and control are limited. Israeli forces have increased their reliance on surveillance drones, signal intelligence, and coordinated small-unit tactics to reduce risk, but the complexity of the battlefield has rendered fast advances nearly impossible and forced a prolonged military presence on the ground.

The implications of this tactical evolution are strategic as well as operational. Hamas’s continued ability to strike Israeli forces even after significant battlefield losses underscores its goal of rendering a full military defeat unlikely, if not impossible. By making the occupation of Gaza increasingly costly in both lives and resources, the group appears to be aiming not for victory in the conventional sense, but for endurance. Its message is one of survivability and deterrence: that no level of external pressure can fully dismantle its presence or resistance.

As both sides settle into this grinding phase of urban combat, the humanitarian and political toll continues to mount. With no clear endgame in sight, the conflict appears set to continue as a protracted and deeply entrenched struggle, challenging regional stability and testing the limits of military strategy and political resolve.

Related questions and answers

What tactics is Hamas using in the current conflict?
Hamas is relying on guerilla-style warfare, including ambushes, IEDs, tunnel-based attacks, and sniper operations within dense urban areas.

Why is this shift significant for Israeli forces?
It forces the IDF into high-risk operations in urban environments, where progress is slow and casualties are rising due to unpredictable threats.

What is Hamas’s long-term objective with this strategy?
Rather than winning conventionally, Hamas aims to outlast Israeli operations and make sustained occupation politically and militarily untenable.