Last month, Dave Deptula, who commanded U.S. air-force campaigns in Operation Desert Storm and in Afghanistan, became the first American general to visit the Gaza Strip since the current war began. Deptula explains the mechanics of Hamas’s sacrifice of Palestinian lives for propaganda purposes:

Hamas counts on media coverage and attention to civilian deaths to shift blame to Israel. The tactic it uses to do this is to stash weapons, explosives, or rockets into every structure where, or near where, they will be operating—mosques, hospitals, schools, shops, apartment buildings, and personal residences. They walk the streets in civilian clothes with no weapons, then duck into a building knowing where weapons are stored and use them against the IDF. They depart the building without any weapons, resuming their civilian appearance.

The IDF takes measures to minimize destruction when feasible and often subjects its own forces to substantial risk to mitigate civilian casualties. Indeed, the IDF refrains from attacking Hamas operatives when they brazenly interdict and steal humanitarian supplies to avoid additional killings and violence.

Deptula notes another, less-remarked-upon tactic that may have considerably slowed the progress of the war:

Hamas also sought to gain a shielding effect from Israel’s obvious interest in avoiding confrontation with Egypt. I drove past Hamas rocket-launch positions located feet from Gaza’s border with Egypt. Hamas positioned them there, using the co-location of their rocket launch positions and the border knowing that the Israeli air force would not strike positions so close to Egypt.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.