Conflict adopts psychological warfare
Dubai: Beyond the military campaign, Hamas and Israel are fighting a psychological war in an attempt to make the other side surrender.
Apparently, the Palestinian resistance group is adopting some Israeli tactics in its use of equipment and technology.
According to some residents in the Palestinian territories, Hamas supposedly hacked into the Israeli army's communication system and broadcast messages to Israeli soldiers saying "they would be killed if they enter Gaza."
Hamas also sent text messages prior to the beginning of Israel's ground invasion to dozens of Israelis warning them that the military operation will only bring them more rockets.
The message sent by Hamas was written in Hebrew and it read, "Rockets on all cities, shelters not protect, Qassam rocket. Hamas."
The psychological warfare also includes the dropping of leaflets from warplanes, media censorship and frequent official public warnings of the grave consequences.
According to many Palestinians and residents in the West Bank, Israelis are dropping leaflets to get people to lead them to the rocket launchers Hamas uses to attack Israel. The Israeli army is also making calls at 3am and after that, every three hours urging the Palestinians to reject Hamas.
"Psychological warfare completes the war on the ground," Lebanese military expert Major General Elias Hanna said.
In psychological warfare, "you make your enemy convinced of something he is not convinced of.... You are shaping a perception in your enemy, so he will surrender and come to the negotiation table," Hanna told Gulf News.
Until a truce is reached, it is difficult to ascertain the psychological damage the war inflicted on the people, Robert Blecher from the International Crisis Group said.
"I would say the leaflets did cause some fear in Gaza city, Gazans are being told to evacuate, but they have nowhere safe to go.
"Some are leaving their homes, other are not," said Belcher, who is based in Jerusalem.
Hanna said psychological warfare was also important because "it affects those who can't change what is happening on the battlefield. It affects those who follow the news from afar but cannot do anything." The winner of this war will also be hard to verify, analysts say.
Hamas is a political group, not a state agency, so the criteria for determining winners and losers is much different from traditional military conflicts, they added.
If Israel doesn't win, it loses. But if Hamas doesn't win, it doesn't lose. Either way, they explained, it would emerge a winner.
With the passage of every day of the war, Hamas is improving its status, and Israel's position becomes weaker, they added.
"Hamas' goal... is not so much to win militarily but rather to exact a psychological victory, in the same way Hezbollah bolstered its leg-itimacy both inside Leb-anon and in the Arab world after its war," said a Washington Post article recently in reference to the war of summer 2006.
However, many differences between the ongoing war and the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah exist.
"There are differences in terms of abilities, military capabilities, geographic location," said Uraid Al Rentawi, director of the Al Quds Research Centre in Amman.
Do you know anyone who has suffered due to psychological warfare? How did it impact them? Were they able to overcome it?
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