Clear-Hold-Build

At x.com, Jon Spencer has written an interesting summary of how the conflict in Gaza is developing.

Quoted in full in case it gets moved or enwalled; link to original at end. 

Operation Gideon’s Chariots: Israel’s Next Phase in Gaza

Israel has approved and is preparing to launch the next major phase of operations in Gaza: Operation “Gideon’s Chariots.” Unlike previous operations characterized by raids, limited clearing, and withdrawal, this new plan represents a significant shift. It appears guided by a phased strategy rooted in lessons from past conflicts—Clear, Hold, Build.
Israel’s war aims have not changed since October 7:

• Secure the release of all hostages
• Dismantle Hamas’s military and governing capabilities
• Ensure no threat can reemerge from Gaza to endanger Israel again

To accomplish this, the IDF will no longer operate with short-term objectives. Instead, it will move with full force, expand its presence across Gaza, and remain in every area it captures.
The operation appears structured into three distinct and deliberate phases:

• Phase 1: Prepare – IDF forces shape the battlespace, isolate Hamas, allow time for hostage negotiations, and pre-position for sustained operations.
• Phase 2: Clear and Hold – Methodical clearing of Hamas presence and capabilities, area by area, with Israeli forces maintaining control and preventing re-infiltration.
• Phase 3: Build – Governance, stabilization, and the cultivation of local alternatives to Hamas to begin laying the foundation for post-conflict order.

As part of this effort, civilians will be temporarily evacuated from combat zones in northern and central Gaza to humanitarian safe zones in the south recently cleared by the IDF. This aims to separate the civilian population from Hamas militants and allow for the safe delivery of humanitarian aid.

This phased strategy is not new to warfare. In Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine, General (ret.) David Petraeus and Sir Andrew Roberts describe how “Clear, Hold, Build” has been applied from Malaya to Iraq—as a way not just to defeat militant powers, but to keep them out of power by restoring governance and legitimacy.

Variations of this approach include:
Ink-blot strategy – This approach focuses on securing small, stable zones and then gradually expanding outward—like ink spreading on paper. Each secured area serves as a foundation for extending control, providing services, and establishing local governance. Over time, these zones grow and connect, creating a wider area of stability without requiring immediate dominance over the entire battlespace.

Safe neighborhoods strategy – This method involves establishing secure, walled zones—often using concrete barriers—that are physically separated from surrounding conflict areas. These zones are held by military forces, such as the IDF, to provide protection from militant infiltration and attacks. Within these enclaves, local governance structures can begin to operate, humanitarian aid can be safely delivered, and civilian life can cautiously resume.

Islands strategy – A central feature of Israel’s evolving campaign is what can be called the “Islands Concept”—the deliberate segmentation of Gaza into distinct operational zones. The IDF has already enacted this by cutting off northern Gaza from the rest of the Strip via the Netzarim Corridor, isolating Khan Yunis from Rafah, and establishing similar separations in central areas. These zones—often aligned with known Hamas military dispositions—enable the IDF to isolate and dismantle enemy networks while reducing the freedom of movement that Hamas relies on to wage asymmetric war. The approach is reminiscent of historical efforts that used secure hamlets or neighborhood enclaves to shield populations and restrict militant or insurgent access. As highlighted in many urban warfare studies, fragmenting the battlespace into manageable sections allows for concentrated force application and the gradual reintroduction of governance and services. By treating each zone as a semi-independent “island,” the IDF can hold cleared areas, prevent re-infiltration, and begin establishing localized security and aid infrastructure without being overwhelmed by the broader operational chaos. This also mitigates the challenges of trying to form a single overall governing entity in areas where different power structures are forming.

Urban warfare isn’t won by firepower alone. It’s won when the population believes that something better is possible. That’s why the IDF’s plan doesn’t stop at clearing—it is finally designed to hold territory and build a new reality in Gaza, one free from Hamas domination.
Yet the challenges are immense.

Hamas continues to use civilians as human shields, embedding itself in hospitals, mosques, and schools. It thrives in chaos. This next phase is meant to confront that chaos with order, presence, and discipline.
A critical component of the plan: humanitarian aid will be delivered directly to Gazans, bypassing Hamas entirely. This move seeks to remove one of Hamas’s key sources of power—its control over the distribution of food, fuel, and medicine.

But a new challenge has emerged: the United Nations has refused to assist. Despite the scale of the humanitarian crisis, the UN has made it clear it will not support aid delivery unless Hamas is given a role—an untenable position given Hamas’s status as the governing and military threat being dismantled.
This moment is an inflection point. If no hostage deal is reached by the time President Trump visits the region, Israeli officials have indicated that the full campaign will begin.
What happens next will shape Gaza’s future for decades. This isn’t just a military operation—it’s a test of whether Hamas’s grip can finally be broken, and whether something better can survive in the ruins it leaves behind.

This will not be easy—and it will not be quick.
Success will require a sustained IDF presence, large-scale force commitment, and continued evacuation of civilians—a process that Hamas actively sabotages. Clearing dense urban terrain and Gaza’s vast tunnel networks is slow, dangerous, and deadly. And as every military leader knows: the enemy always gets a vote.
The situation is fraught with unresolved questions.

President Trump has proposed letting civilians who want to leave Gaza do so—but Egypt continues to block such movement, refusing to assist or open the Rafah crossing. Beyond that, it is still unclear what political or administrative powers will emerge to govern Gaza after Hamas. Will it be clan-based leadership, municipal councils, or some other form of local governance? That answer remains elusive.

Then there is the massive challenge of rebuilding. The sheer scale of destroyed buildings, unexploded ordnance, tunnels yet found or cleared that would take years to address. Who will pay for Gaza’s physical reconstruction? Who will do the work? International donors are hesitant, and many regional actors are wary of stepping in. But regardless of who funds or manages the rebuilding, one fact is clear: the IDF will have to first remove Hamas’s power and then maintain a security presence in held areas to enable any meaningful recovery or governance to take root.

Ultimately, Israel is preparing to clear and hold territory—but it also intends to build. Security, aid, governance, and hope. The goal is twofold: to shatter Hamas’s belief that Israel lacks the will to dismantle its grip, and to offer civilians in Gaza hope that something better can come after Hamas.
That appears to be the vision behind Operation Gideon’s Chariots. Whether it can be realized will depend not only on what happens on the battlefield and in the political realm—but on what follows after the fighting stops.

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I have abundant doubts as to whether this will work, especially in a relatively urbanized area like Gaza. 

The notion of clear-hold-build goes back a long way.

David Galula was probably the first modern writer to set it down and have people pay attention in his 1964 book Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. The notion of “oil spot” or tache d’huile influenced him in his writing, and this originated with Hubert Lyautey’s time as a military administrator in Morocco in the early 1900s, after service in Indochina and Madagascar where he had served with Joseph Gallieni, who had a policy of dealing with local tribes separately to prevent one from gaining too much power within the colonial regime, a practice that goes back to Roman times!

Anyway, long roots to the idea but it’s not always a success story, and there are few examples to go on with respect to urbanized areas.  The only one I can really point to is the Battle of the Casbah in 1956-57 and the comparisons – and therefore outlook are not that great.

Just some thoughts, semi-organized as always:

Scale and duration

The Casbah was the main Arab quarter in Algiers. Over 80,000 people lived in a 40-acre (less than 1 square km) maze of buildings and narrow alleys, a natural insurgent sanctuary in the middle of the city (which at the time had a total population of about 700,000; there were an estimated 5,000 FLN insurgents in the entire city). As order in the city broke down and bombings and incidents rose, the 10th Parachute Division under General Jacques Massu plus paramilitary, law enforcement and other military units – about 10,000 troops in all – took over the city, while the Casbah was detailed for the 3rd Colonial Parachute Regiment under Col Marcel Bigeard. Within about 100 days (January to late March 1957) the French had comprehensively dismantled the FLN infrastructure in the Casbah; later, Bigeard’s regiment left the Casbah and handed over to the 1st Foreign Legion Parachute Regiment under Col Jean Jeanpierre.

There are still about 2 million living Gazans, moving around in an overall area of 365 square km and while there are will be more than 10,000 IDF troops to cordon them and herd them around, it is uncertain how many reservists they can keep mobilized to do this without crashing their own economy and administration. It’s also anyone’s guess how many Hamas fighters are left. All in all, Gideon’s Chariot is not going to be over in 100 days. 

Physical control – “Safe neighbourhoods” and “islands” – and intelligence control

The whole of Algiers was overlaid in a grid of zones that controlled individual movement and permitted systematic searches, under a system the French called quadrillage. As seen in the famous movie Battle of Algiers, physical barriers and checkpoints were set up all over the city but especially to control movement into and out of the Casbah. But controlling movement is not useful unless you have some idea of who you are keeping in or out of somewhere. Col Roger Trinquier, Massu’s head of intelligence started with a census, then established a system of ID cards keyed to people’s locations to ensure the French knew just who lived where, who they were related to and who they associated with. Combined with a doctrine of collective responsibility and punishment, a network of checkpoints and saturation patrols, regulated movement through curfews and ID cards that restricted individual freedom of movement, and an indigenous intelligence network of “responsables“, the French soon had most of the city under control, and were on their way to identifying the insurgents and their place in the “organigramme” of the insurgent organization that Trinquier filled in during the campaign.

Just as important as collecting good intelligence on the population is unity of effort in analyzing and acting on it. Trinquier’s efforts to control and collect information on the population, together with his access to police files, paid off in tips that directed Major Paul Aussaresses’ raids and snatches. The discriminating use of his “Action Service” teams often paid further results when they discovered that people would often talk without coercion, and could be turned to serve the French, without threats. Trinquier was soon able to establish a network of turned insurgents and double agents. Each unit in Algiers organized itself for collecting information through interrogation, which meant collecting people. For example, in Bigeard’s regiment each company commander was an interrogator, and each company had a liaison officer who worked with the local police precinct, which also detailed a detective to work with the regimental intelligence officer. The companies and platoons, besides manning checkpoints, conducted frequent sweeps or surprise ratissages (“combing”) where a single building or block would be minutely searched and everyone in it checked out. But these operations were only done in response to tips, and the troops were careful to explain to the inhabitants just why they had been rooted out of bed at 3 in the morning. These operations also kept the troops in constant contact with the population, and while they did engage in a certain amount of “hearts and minds” activities like building schools or operating medical clinics, it was always understood that security and population control were what they were primarily there to do.

We know the IDF has plenty of bulldozers and concrete and the intention to use them in chopping the Gaza Strip up into tiny walled compounds, something like this was also done for certain periods and sectors of Baghdad post 2004 as well. But do they have anything like the intelligence network the French were able to build? Or rather, how much of it is left after a year and a half of war?

And the Arab population was left where it was while the paras combed through it, they were not all moved into tents up the coast… though that did happen to nearly a quarter of the Arab population during the war, nearly two million people over 6-7 years, so it is at any rate possible. 

The idea of “build”

This is something the French did not bother to do. The French did not have any interest in changing the political or administrative order of things in the Casbah; as long as there were no more problems, that would be that. The 10th Parachute Division handed the city back to the municipal government in the fall and went off to the Atlas Mountains to fight insurgents from helicopters. The city itself was largely physically intact, as well. 

The cost of rebuilding Gaza is stupendous and frankly I do not think it will even be attempted. There is the additional aim of removing Hamas and anyone associated with the organization and replacing it with… something… perhaps there is a new Lyautey working in the IDF General Staff’s Operation Directorate. 

Whither? Wither!

Tactically and operationally, the Battle of the Casbah (and of Algiers) was a decisive French victory in that it cleared the insurgents out…however, politically and diplomatically the methods used to achieve that victory gave France a huge black eye (and in December 1960 a near-spontaneous uprising restored disorder to the city). Perhaps this does not matter to Israel; as COL Spencer notes Israel’s war aim is that no threat should ever emerge from Gaza again, come what may.

(You will also note that neither Spencer nor I have mentioned the legality or illegality of any of what the IDF has done or is about to do; it no longer seems to matter to anyone in charge… though in contrast Massu, before entering Algiers with his division, was careful to clarify that he was granted responsibility for riot control in the department of Algiers, which gave him wide powers of over controlling movement and investigation of ordinary people, and all military personnel were given police powers equal to civilian police. This gave at least a base of legality to what was done, and a degree of immunity to the perpetrators.)

I have spent all my time talking here about the Battle of the Casbah, and perhaps that’s an unfair comparison but it’s something I know a bit more about than about the occupation of Baghdad (except that there are few points of comparison).