Ritter: Israeli military demoralized by Gaza urban warfare

Ritter sees IDF in panic: 500 km of tunnels under Gaza

Analyst Scott Ritter argues that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are "demoralized" and gripped by "panic" facing an urban war they cannot fight, with Israeli leadership in "chaotic collapse" and an offensive stalled by "time," despite their air force operating in all weather conditions. In his view, international opinion is shifting, the world aligns with Palestinians, and the end of the State of Israel is already written: "It's over for Israel. They just haven't realized it yet," he concludes. From there, the debate moves from whether the Israeli army can enter Gaza to at what cost they enter and how much ammunition they have time to spend.

The immediate response has two directions. The first discredits the analyst: it is recalled that this same expert has been predicting the fall of Kyiv since day one of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a forecast that largely failed. Half a million dead Ukrainian soldiers and more than two hundred thousand missing or permanently maimed is, according to one participant's calculation, a terrible balance; not a three-day capitulation. The second direction is the opposite: accepting the thesis without nuance, declaring the current Israeli state unviable, and dating the outcome by comparing it to the defeat at Cuito Cuanavale for apartheid South Africa, dissolved three years later. Two ways of looking at the same data.

The army that stopped being invincible without changing sides

One argument repeats itself: nothing has changed within the Israeli army; what has changed is the world around it. The halo of being the second or third operational military power on the planet was built about six decades ago, on a board with two superpowers, a handful of nuclear-armed countries, and poorly equipped neighbors. Today there are more nuclear powers than in the seventies, and China's economic and military weight is different. The parallelism is flawed, and this is admitted: that superiority also included adversaries, in a context where Europe emerged devastated from World War II and Washington had its own incentives to sustain the project.

The counterpoint uses the past in reverse. Israel accumulates decades of operations, but its historical advantage was measured against conventional armies, not a tunnel network. In 2014, ground entry ended up replaced by massive bombardments. Here lies the part that least closes: a heavily armed army is not the same as one designed to fight underground.

500 km of tunnels and the problem of mandatory conscription

The figure anchoring this section is the tunnel network under Gaza, estimated at about 500 km, plus supply depots prepared for years. The thesis is that a conventional army loses its technological advantage there and enters a labyrinth where urban combat becomes a deadly trap. This is the scenario that international press began describing with such language, as if the conflict coverage itself were ceasing to believe the narrative of unquestionable superiority.

On top of this is the human composition of the force. Sustaining two fronts simultaneously with such intensity requires many people, and much of that population serves mandatory military duty: young, often urban and Westernized individuals, for whom a weeks-long operation in a closed, devastated environment is not an appealing assignment. The comparison made from the other side—a population already living in absolute misery and thus having less to lose—is harsh and debatable, but it is on the table.

The interceptor bill: cheap rocket vs. expensive missile

Here the tone jumps from military to economic, and these are the numbers no one has finalized. The reasoning is simple: each rocket launched from Gaza is a cheap, mass-produced artifact; each Israeli interception requires a sophisticated, expensive, and scarce missile. The question raised—and unanswered with figures in this discussion—is how many thousands of rockets an air defense system can absorb before running out of missiles. The fine breakdown of that ratio, with prices and production cadences, is exactly what is missing: no one yet provides the cost per interception that would turn intuition into a profit-and-loss statement.

Until then, everything remains a textbook asymmetry: those who launch cheaply can exhaust those who intercept expensively, even if technologically far inferior.

Ukraine as precedent and ally abandonment

The comparison with Ukraine appears for a specific reason: it helps calibrate timelines and measure the reliability of those promising quick victories. Also for a more uncomfortable argument: the United States has previously abandoned allies on the ground, and those counting on indefinite aid are miscalculating. From here jump regional hypotheses: that Syria and Iran wait to see how Washington positions itself and that Egypt remains neutral, and that this is what truly stalls the operation.

There is consensus on nothing. Some predict an Israeli medium-term defeat due to exhaustion of troops and ammunition; others maintain material superiority will prevail through bombardments of the Strip; and others argue the reference analyst lacks credibility. All three positions are defended on the same day.

The nuclear card and where analysis gets stuck

The last resort of the argument is the Israeli nuclear arsenal: anyone facing annihilation would not hesitate to use it. Against this, Michael Hudson is cited: "I don't think the war will be nuclear, although it could; in Washington there are many like Pompeo: they think Jesus will come if you blow up the world." The most cited counterweight is not technical but bad luck: best-designed plans fail due to an unforeseen detail, and a misaimed missile does not distinguish between a city and a sensitive facility.

That is where everything gets stuck. One side calculates ammunition, troops, and tunnels. The other, survival. No one has put a price on the last variable, and without that number any forecast, including Ritter's, is a well-written wish.