How Israel Uses Real-Time Combat Intelligence to Attack Hamas

Since the October 7 terrorist attacks, Israel has recovered a wealth of intelligence that its military has used to assess the extent of Hamas’s plans, as well as its battle tactics and capabilities; information that Israeli officials say helped shape the war in Gaza. .

At the sites of attacks in Israel and battles in Gaza, the military has found artifacts detailing the location of Hamas installations and tunnels, including how the armed group operates underground, according to documents and other information made available by the Israeli military The New York Times to review. A laptop was also seized, showing that Hamas wanted to seize a number of previously unknown areas on October 7, including a military base south of Tel Aviv.

“This war we are witnessing something we have not seen in previous wars: ground forces, including the armored corps, are benefiting from the real-time, accurate intelligence information sent directly to them,” said Brig. General Hisham Ibrahim, the commander of the armored corps. “Information from intelligence units is quickly passed on to armed forces.”

According to Israeli authorities, the Israeli army launched a devastating counterattack after Hamas-led attackers killed around 1,200 people and took around 240 hostages. In an effort to eliminate Hamas, the army has bombed and invaded the enclave, in a war that Gaza health authorities say has killed more than 15,000 Gazans.

During a briefing Monday for journalists at a military base north of Tel Aviv, the Israeli army shared some of the material collected over the course of the war from dead fighters and areas in the Gaza Strip, which it says it collectively maps , pamphlets, transmitters, telephones, video cameras, walkie-talkies, notebooks and computers. The information is being analyzed by a new Israeli unit that will ensure its findings quickly reach soldiers fighting Hamas, officials said.

The military granted access to key intelligence documents under an agreement that reporters would not reveal detailed details while some of the information would be made available for publication. The journalists had to use surgical gloves to handle materials, some of which were stained with dried blood.

The material reviewed by The Times matched other known documents and equipment found in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, information made public by the Israeli military and found in Hamas videos. The Times also reviewed photos of dead Hamas members and their personal belongings, including some of the same items shared by the military during the briefing.

Some documents detailed extensive information about Hamas’ tactics and military formations. One document viewed by The Times concerned the collapse of a platoon, including the ages of the fighters within it; more than half were over 25 years old, indicating that this platoon was filled with seasoned members.

The military has also collected photos and videos of Hamas military leaders, information that could be used for targeted purposes. On Tuesday, the Israeli military released a photo of what it said was senior Hamas military leaders in northern Gaza enjoying food in a tunnel, saying five of the men had been killed. The military said an Israeli intelligence unit analyzed the photo after it was seized in Gaza from a tunnel near the Indonesian hospital.

Hamas’s military wing, Al Qassam Brigades, had previously confirmed that at least three of the men in the photo had been killed.

In addition, the Israeli military said it had recovered diaries carried by Hamas attackers, along with other personal items.

Based on such information, General Ibrahim said he had made “minor adjustments in the battle strategy” since the start of the war.

From a makeshift military camp in southern Israel, General Ibrahim, the commander of the Armored Corps, oversees aspects of the tank warfare, which is taking place in a densely populated area. The 46-year-old general is one of the highest-ranking officers in Israel’s Druze community, an Arabic-speaking religious minority.

Since the ceasefire ended last week, Israeli soldiers have been engaged in heavy fighting in southern Gaza near the town of Khan Younis, as well as in the northern residential areas of Jabaliya and Shuja’iyya. Israeli tanks have played a key role in the fighting. More than a dozen Israeli soldiers have been killed since fighting resumed.

He is intensely focused on protecting soldiers and tanks, and outmaneuvering Hamas. General Ibrahim said he has six small teams on the ground in Gaza to gain insights from different units of the type materials shared with The Times. He said “learning bulletins” are sent to the armed forces every few days.

He says he also learned lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine, especially from the fact that Russian tanks in Ukraine sometimes became easy targets. To adapt to the threat from Hamas drones, he said Israel rushed to ensure tanks were equipped with canopies over the turrets.

Known as “pergolas,” General Ibrahim said they have already proven to be effective deterrents, explaining that Hamas drones appear to avoid tanks with canopies because they provide protection against nuclear warheads. The general described the pergola as a low-tech measure used to defend against drones, while adding that the military has high-tech advantages, including a defense system known as ‘Trophy’.

The materials highlight other challenges facing General Ibrahim and his team. Hamas booklets viewed by The Times show the weaknesses of Israel’s Merkava tanks operating in the Gaza Strip, with their massive 120-millimeter guns, as well as Israeli armored personnel carriers. Hamas fighters also have instructions on which type of warhead to use against Israeli armor. He said Hamas fighters have mainly relied on rocket-propelled grenade launchers in attacks on armor.

Hamas fighters, the general said, will regroup after suffering heavy losses and return to fight in devastated areas – apparently lost territory. The military has adapted to avoid Hamas’ improvised explosive devices. Similar devices were used to deadly effect by militias against US forces in Iraq.

Whether it’s retrieving hostages or attacking senior Hamas leaders in the vast tunnel network under Gaza, acting quickly on new intelligence recovered from the battlefield is essential to a successful mission, according to current and former U.S. military and intelligence officials.

“Pursuing hostages or leadership targets are very intelligence-driven events,” said Mick Mulroy, a retired CIA officer and former top Middle East policy official at the Pentagon. Ideally, Mr. Mulroy said, highly trained special operations units are embedded with conventional forces conducting ground operations or on alert nearby to respond quickly to such time-sensitive information.

As Israeli ground forces clear areas in southern Gaza, Mr. Mulroy said soldiers would most likely use encrypted messaging apps to warn each other of new tactics, techniques or procedures used by Hamas.

“Lessons learned can be disseminated very quickly,” he said.

General Ibrahim has said that the Israeli military has relied heavily on what is known as combined arms combat: the use of tanks, infantry and combat techniques under the cover of heavy air strikes.

“It is a force multiplier and has been very effective in Gaza,” he said.

While Israel’s strategy has helped limit the army’s casualties, thousands of civilians have been killed in Gaza. The rising death toll has increased international pressure to negotiate a new ceasefire.

The US government has also asked the Israelis to fight more surgically as they drive deeper into southern Gaza, in places like Khan Younis. While the Israeli military believes parts of Hamas’s leadership are hiding there, it is also full of civilians, many of whom have been displaced several times, with few places to go and confusion about what is safe.

When asked about the staggering numbers of civilian deaths, General Ibrahim defended the Israeli army. He said Israel had tried to clear the battlefield of civilians, giving them time to leave, by dropping kites, broadcasting through loudspeakers and calling their cellphones to leave the area.

“It is almost impossible to avoid civilian casualties in a military operation like this,” Mr Mulroy said. “Their goal is to degrade Hamas’ military capacity to the point where it no longer poses a direct threat to Israel. ”

The United States has designated Hamas a terrorist organization, and American officials have encouraged the Israelis to model their ground campaign on the approach taken by Stanley A. McChrystal when he commanded U.S. Special Operations forces in a targeted killing campaign against Al Qaeda in Iraq.

That campaign, which killed the group’s leader in 2006, demonstrated to U.S. military theorists that using small commando teams, combined with precision strikes from drones and manned aircraft, and acting quickly on new information about the enemy approaching battlefield, effective in flushing out and targeting key leaders, and weakening their organizations.

General Ibrahim said the fighting – both above and below ground – would be heavy in southern Gaza, but that “we will still win.” He added: “We are fighting Hamas, not the people of Gaza.”

Israeli security officials continue to try to determine where Hamas obtained some of its equipment and sensitive details about Israeli locations. Among the items found and displayed in Israel after the attacks were Motorola radios used in Hamas vehicles to maintain contact with commanders in Gaza. The radios were similar to those in Israeli taxis.

There were also detailed maps of at least one kibbutz with seemingly every building marked.

And the computer from a Hamas commander’s truck also contained a diagram of the military base south of Tel Aviv, showing many of the buildings. It is not clear how much of the detailed map of the base was publicly available.

Gal Koplewitz contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Erik Schmitt from Washington.