'Nothing will be left': Israel prepares for Gaza City battle

In a dense urban landscape, with likely thousands of Hamas fighters lying in wait, taking Gaza City will be a difficult and costly slog for the Israeli army, security experts say.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out his vision of victory in Gaza following 22 months of war --- with the military ordered to attack the last remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza City and the central camps further south.

With a pre-war population of some 760,000, according to official figures, Gaza City was the biggest of any municipal area in the Palestinian territories.

But following the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 that sparked the war, its population has only swelled, with thousands of displaced people fleeing intensive military operations to the north.

Gaza City itself has come under intense aerial bombardment, and its remaining apartment buildings now rub shoulders with tents and other makeshift shelters.

- 'Death trap' -

Amir Avivi, a former Israeli general and head of the Israeli Defense and Security Forum think tank, described the city as the "heart of Hamas's rule in Gaza".

"Gaza City has always been the center of government and also has the strongest brigade of Hamas," he said.

The first challenge for Israeli troops relates to Netanyahu's call for the evacuation of civilians -- how such a feat will be carried out remains unclear.

Unlike the rest of the Strip, where most of the population has been displaced at least once, around 300,000 residents of Gaza City have not moved since the outbreak of the conflict, according to Avivi.

Israel has already tried to push civilians further south to so-called humanitarian zones established by the military, but there is likely little space to accommodate more arrivals.

"You cannot put another one million people over there. It will be a horrible humanitarian crisis," said Michael Milshtein, an Israeli former military intelligence officer.

According to Avivi, humanitarian aid would be mainly distributed south of Gaza City in order to encourage residents to move toward future distribution sites managed by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Up from just four currently, the GHF plans to operate 16 sites.

However, Gaza's civil defense agency says Israeli troops are firing at and killing civilians daily around the sites.

Human Rights Watch has called them a "death trap", while the UN and other groups have lashed out at what they call a militarization of aid.

- 'Stalingrad' -

According to Michael Milshtein, who heads the Palestinian Studies Program at Tel Aviv University, Hamas's military wing could have as many as 10,000 to 15,000 fighters in Gaza City, many of them freshly recruited.

"It's very easy to convince a 17, 18, 19-year-old Palestinian to be a part of Al-Qassam Brigades," Milshtein told AFP, referring to Hamas's armed wing as he cited a lack of opportunities for much Gaza's population.

"While (Israel's army) prepares itself, Hamas also prepares itself for the coming warfare, if it takes place," he added, predicting that the battle could end up being "very similar to Stalingrad."

He was referring to the battle for the city now known as Volgograd, one of the longest and bloodiest in World War II.

The Israeli army will encounter obstacles including a vast network of tunnels where Israeli hostages are likely being held, along with weapons depots, hiding places and combat posts.

Other obstacles could include improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and the use of civilians as human shields in a dense urban maze of narrow alleys and tall buildings, according to press reports.

"It's almost impossible to go in there without creating both hostage casualties and a large humanitarian disaster," said Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group.

The material destruction, she added, will be enormous.

"They will simply destroy everything, and then nothing will be left," she said.

Despite rumored disagreements over the plan by the chief of the army Eyal Zamir, the general said his forces "will be able to conquer Gaza City, just as it did in Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south," according to a statement on Monday.

"Our forces have operated there in the past, and we will know how to do it again."