Since Israel launched Operation Shield and Arrow on Tuesday, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has fired over 800 rockets into the southern and central parts of the country—killing at least one, wounding several, and causing extensive damage. The IDF undertook the operation after the Iran-backed organization launched a barrage of 102 rockets at Israeli towns and villages last week. Thus far, Jerusalem has killed at least three senior PIJ commanders and destroyed numerous rocket-launching facilities. Yoav Limor takes stock, and draws some conclusions:

First: while Israel should not be itching for a fight in Gaza, it doesn’t need to shy away from it, especially when a small and brazen organization like PIJ is the provocateur. The organization has tried to create linkage between Judea and Samaria, on the one hand, and the Gaza Strip on the other, so that any deadly Israeli raid against terrorists in the West Bank would automatically lead to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. Israel has now put a big flashing sign over that idea, sending the message that if it does not disabuse itself of that idea it will have to pay a price.

[Another] conclusion is that despite its inflammatory rhetoric, Hamas seeks to avoid a confrontation at present. To be more precise: it doesn’t want to be dragged into one by PIJ. Hamas, if and when it decides to enter the fray, will do it for its own reasons and at an opportune moment. This could happen sooner than we think—perhaps in response to the upcoming flag march to celebrate Jerusalem’s reunification next week. . . . If Israel acts wisely, . . . Hamas will prefer to keep things calm in the Gaza Strip and to continue building up its capabilities rather than be consumed by warfare.

[Finally], the overall fundamentals will not have changed even after the operation is over. Those on the Israeli side who gloated that we have managed to change the equation are advised to think again: this is the third time in three years that Israel has carried out this type of operation against PIJ. This means that any deterrent effect is short-lived and needs routine maintenance.

When the IDF finally caught up with the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, he wasn’t deep inside a subterranean lair, as many had expected, but moving around the streets the Rafah. Israeli forces had driven him out of whatever tunnel he had been hiding in and he could only get to another tunnel via the surface. Likewise, Israel hasn’t returned to fight in northern Gaza because its previous operations failed, but because of its success in forcing Hamas out of the tunnels and onto the surface, where the IDF can attack it more easily. Thus maps of the progress of the fighting show only half the story, not accounting for the simultaneous battle belowground.

At the beginning of the war, various options were floated in the press and by military and political leaders about how to deal with the problem posed by the tunnels: destroying them from the air, cutting off electricity and supplies so that they became uninhabitable, flooding them, and even creating offensive tunnels from which to burrow into them. These tactics proved impracticable or insufficient, but the IDF eventually developed methods that worked.

John Spencer, America’s leading expert on urban warfare, explains how. First, he notes the unprecedented size and complexity of the underground network, which served both a strategic and tactical purpose:

The Hamas underground network, often called the “Gaza metro,” includes between 350 and 450 miles of tunnels and bunkers at depths ranging from just beneath apartment complexes, mosques, schools, hospitals, and other civilian structures to over 200 feet underground. . . . The tunnels gave Hamas the ability to control the initiative of most battles in Gaza.

One elite unit, commanded by Brigadier-General Dan Goldfus, led the way in devising countermeasures:

General Goldfus developed a plan to enter Hamas’s tunnels without Hamas knowing his soldiers were there. . . . General Goldfus’s division headquarters refined the ability to control forces moving underground with the tempo of the surface forces. Incrementally, the division refined its tactics to the point its soldiers were conducting raids with separate brigades attacking on the surface while more than one subterranean force maneuvered on the same enemy underground. . . . They had turned tunnels from obstacles controlled by the defending enemy into maneuver corridors for the attacker.

This operational approach, Spencer explains, is “unlike that of any other military in modern history.” Later, Goldfus’s division was moved north to take on the hundreds of miles of tunnels built by Hizballah. The U.S. will have much to learn from these exploits, as China, Iran, and North Korea have all developed underground defenses of their own.