British-Canadian Expert Advising Polish and Ukrainian Authorities: The Israel-Hamas War Holds Lessons for Baltic Defense

Now, fast-forward 19 months. In December 2023, Israel deployed over 20 brigades—roughly equivalent to six divisions—with the objective of destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages. They couldn’t do it. Not all hostages have been released, and the majority of those who were released came through negotiations, not combat. And they still haven’t managed to destroy all of Hamas.

Why is that? Because Hamas has fought far more effectively than the Egyptian army, the PLO fighters, or any of the other forces involved in the earlier conflicts I mentioned.

In December 2023, Israel deployed over 20 brigades—roughly equivalent to six divisions—in an effort to destroy Hamas and rescue the hostages. They didn’t succeed.

Hamas has suffered significant losses. Its entire political and military leadership structure is almost gone. This includes its top five leaders—among them [Gaza chief] Yahya Sinwar (killed on October 16, 2024, in a firefight with Israeli forces in the city of Rafah), the head of its military wing, Mohammed Deif (killed on July 13, 2024, in an Israeli airstrike in the Al-Mawasi area), and his deputy, Marwan Issa (killed on March 10, 2024, in an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp). The leadership of Hamas’s brigades has also been eliminated.

Hamas has around six brigades—five territorial units and one elite unit. Their commanders, along with several deputy commanders, are gone. Most of the specialized unit leaders have also been taken out, as have key logistics personnel.

Still, Hamas has proven highly capable of regenerating its forces. They are recruiting. Some might argue that the new recruits aren’t of the same caliber as the original fighters. That’s true—they need training and experience to reach that level—but they are recruiting and maintaining their numbers.

How much firepower do they still have left? Honestly, we don’t know. We’re still seeing rocket fire and mortar launches. Anti-armor attacks are far less frequent, but it appears the Israeli forces identified the locations of Hamas’s most advanced anti-tank weapons early on, which limited their use.

However, Hamas still has rocket-propelled grenades, and if fired correctly, they’re capable of destroying Israeli Merkava tanks—even those equipped with explosive reactive armor.

So yes, they still have capabilities. But it’s now a much smaller force—primarily a degraded light infantry. It’s weakened, but not destroyed.

Interviewer: How much did Yahya Sinwar’s death change things?

Omar Ashour: There are things we know from documents recovered from Hamas—but we have to keep in mind that these documents fell into the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Interviewer: So, it’s possible they were altered?

Omar Ashour: Some of the information in them is verifiable. Some of it—we just don’t know.

I’ve read all the publicly available documents, and they indicate that the October 7, 2023, attack was Sinwar’s idea. He reportedly told Hamas’s Political Bureau chief, Ismail Haniyeh (whom Israel killed on July 31, 2024, in Tehran), that there should be a full-scale offensive. The plan was for Hamas to attack from Gaza, Hezbollah from the north, the West Bank to rise up, and Palestinian nationalists within Israel to launch an internal uprising—essentially, for Israel to be attacked from four fronts.

Haniyeh responded that there was no support for this from “the brothers in the axis”—meaning Iran, Hezbollah, and others.

So, Sinwar was told, “You’re on your own. Don’t do it.” But he went ahead with it anyway.

Interviewer: So in a way, did Sinwar go rogue?

Omar Ashour: I wouldn’t put it like that, because they did follow him. But he was probably hoping he could force others to join in—thinking that once they saw the scale of the fighting and suffering, they would have no choice but to intervene. And to a limited extent, they did—but not in any major, coordinated way. There was no wide-scale assault.

To give a comparison: in October 1973, the Egyptians and Syrians decided to try to retake the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights (the Yom Kippur War). They assembled about four army corps—two Egyptian and two Syrian. The operation was preceded by intensive preparation, but in the end, it didn’t work. The Golan Heights are still under Israeli control, and Sinai was returned politically, not militarily.

If you try to launch something like that without any serious preparation, it just won’t work. And that’s what happened here.

On October 7, 2023, I was giving a lecture at the Diplomatic Academy in Ukraine. Naturally, everyone there wanted to talk about what was happening in Gaza. And honestly, I couldn’t understand what the objective of the attack was.

At first, I thought maybe it was about prisoners—that Hamas was going to take hostages in Israel to exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. But the operation was far too bloody for that. They killed hundreds of people. And no government—Israeli or otherwise—is going to negotiate with you after you’ve done something like that. It was also far too large an operation for that kind of objective—over 3,000 participants. Why would you need that many people?

On October 7, 2023, I was giving a lecture at the Diplomatic Academy in Ukraine. Naturally, everyone wanted to know what was happening in Gaza. And honestly, I couldn’t understand what the objective of the attack was.

My second thought was that maybe this was about territory—that they wanted to seize control of the areas surrounding Gaza. But again, the operation was far too small for that, especially when compared to, say, how ISIS took Mosul. Hamas only managed to take over a single police station. They seized it, but then Israel basically wiped out the station along with the entire Hamas unit inside. There simply wasn’t any capacity to hold territory.

A third possibility I considered was that the aim might have been to destroy Israel through a multi-front attack. But by now we know for certain that this wasn’t the plan either, because virtually all of Hamas’s allies refused to participate.

So I honestly can’t say how great a strategist Sinwar really was in the end.

Interviewer: But he did manage to surprise Israel.

Omar Ashour: Yes—on the operational level, he pulled off an unprecedented attack for a Palestinian non-state force. Why? Because the assault came from multiple military domains: air, sea, and land, along with cyber and information domains. The only domain Sinwar didn’t use was space.

But the scale was very small. He couldn’t expand it. For example, the amphibious assault involved roughly a platoon-sized unit. The paragliders—there were 12 of them, which is about the size of a squad.

The element of surprise was quite clever. The intelligence work behind it was also smart. But that was pretty much it. If you only have one operation and you know a counterattack is coming...

To be fair, Sinwar did prepare. That’s part of why this war has lasted 19 months. He fortified all five governorates of Gaza in advance.

That’s a lesson for everyone—including Estonia—on how to deeply prepare underground defense in a situation where the attacking force is larger, stronger, and dominates in every domain. Sinwar didn’t just build underground tunnels; he also established above-ground defensive lines that genuinely obstructed Israel’s operational objectives. They still haven’t achieved those goals.

Interviewer: To what extent can this kind of tunnel warfare be applied in conventional state-on-state conflict?

Omar Ashour: It can be applied in any kind of war. We’ve seen it in Ukraine—for example, in Mariupol. The difference is that Hamas created an environment that favors the defender. In Mariupol, it was the Azovstal plant, built during the Soviet era, but it was usable. The same goes for Kyiv’s subway stations, which can serve as civilian shelters.

For defensive purposes, subways are excellent—they provide mobility and cover, especially against air power and artillery. They also function as a force multiplier. You can emerge from places the enemy believes are already cleared, which gives you the element of surprise. And surprise increases lethality.

Hamas managed to establish defensive lines not only underground but also above ground, and these have genuinely hindered Israel from achieving its operational objectives—they still haven’t reached them.

The Russians also went underground in Kursk and emerged behind Ukrainian lines. The operation wasn’t very successful—but it could have been.

The idea is that when you build a defensive line, it’s worth doing it both below and above ground. “Above” in the sense that Hamas also prepared numerous passageways connecting buildings and created many firing holes within structures. This allowed them to fire from inside buildings while using the concrete as cover—in other words, you shoot from the building, and the building protects you from return fire like a shield. They also set up many urban-adapted defensive positions for entrenchment and sniping.

They steered attacking forces into kill zones by using barricades, tank traps, and other obstructions to funnel troops into areas where they could be hit by artillery and sniper fire. One mortar unit would be positioned at Point A, another at Point B, and those two fields of fire would intersect—leaving no way out, as the kill zone would fall under both units’ effective range.

They’ve been quite good at this, and it’s the result of many years of preparation. You can’t build this kind of defense in just a few months.

I’ve advised the Polish side. The areas near the Belarusian border are a good place to construct this kind of underground and surface-level defensive infrastructure.

Interviewer: And the Poles are actually interested in these kinds of recommendations?

Omar Ashour: Absolutely. Everyone is interested—because they’ve seen how effective this approach can be, both in Ukraine and elsewhere. Imagine if Bucha had underground facilities to shelter civilians and its own military tunnels. It would’ve been a completely different situation—many lives might have been saved.

Interviewer: But how smart has Israel been in handling this challenge? Sometimes it raises questions—when they bomb a major structure, was it really because of Hamas, or did they simply want to hit a civilian site?

Omar Ashour: That’s a very complex issue. I’m not taking sides here—I’m just trying to explain the technical side of it.

The line between civilian and military has become very blurry. In one article, I called it hybrid defense: it’s a set of defensive techniques, tactics, and procedures that blend civilian infrastructure—like buildings and tunnels—with military capabilities. It’s hybrid in the truest sense.

For the Israelis, the problem is this: the rocket is coming from the third floor of a building. They can’t reach the third floor without sending in soldiers. But the first and second floors are likely occupied by civilians—who probably have no idea what’s going on above them and certainly no control over the militants operating from the top floor.

In October 2023, many Israelis volunteered for service because they were extremely angry—it was their 9/11 moment. But now, fewer than 50 percent of reservists are showing up for duty.

And Israel doesn’t want to lose soldiers—so they would rather kill the civilians than lose one of their own. That’s why they often target an entire building. This is the ugly side of the conflict.

The same logic applies to tunnels. There are people who have no idea a tunnel runs beneath their house. And even if they do know, they have no control over it. Then Israel wants to destroy that tunnel because it may contain a command post or a logistics hub for artillery shells or improvised explosives.

The only way to eliminate the tunnel is to bring down the entire building—and that’s what Israel does. These kinds of incidents have happened, and they will likely continue to happen, because Israel doesn’t want to take risks. They’re facing a manpower problem.

Back in October 2023, many Israelis volunteered for military service out of sheer anger—it was their 9/11 moment. They managed to mobilize 300,000 people in a single week. For comparison, when the Russian Federation launched its partial mobilization two years ago, it took them a full year to reach 300,000—despite the differences in population size, geography, and other factors.

Now, in Israel, fewer than 50 percent of reservists are reporting for duty. Essentially, they are disobeying direct orders to report to base. It’s a kind of silent mutiny. Israel has a manpower issue, which is why they are trying to avoid losing soldiers at all costs.

On the other hand, due to the use of robotics and advanced IT technology, Israel has managed to reduce its casualty ratio. As a result, from Israel’s perspective, this war has one of the lowest loss-exchange ratios in all Arab–Israeli conflicts: about 20 to 25 Hamas fighters are killed for every one Israeli soldier.

Interviewer: What’s the current loss ratio in Ukraine?

Omar Ashour: About five to one—Ukraine is killing more Russians. But keep in mind that Ukraine is the smaller party. Losing one soldier for every five enemies killed is still a problem, because they’re much smaller.

Hamas is also the smaller party, and they’re losing 20 to 25 fighters for every Israeli soldier. But they’re still able to recruit new ones—not in full proportion, but about five for every 20 lost. They’re still fighting. On one hand, that shows their resilience; on the other, it also reflects how clever Israel is in its military strategy, as they’re trying to protect their troops as much as possible.

Let’s recall that Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon. During the entire episode from 1985 to 2000—15 years of conflict with Hezbollah—they lost about 300 soldiers. Over 15 years, you could lose that many people in bathroom or household accidents. But they withdrew because it was politically sensitive—losing soldiers in a war deemed unnecessary.

In this current war, they’re now focused on protecting their soldiers.

Interviewer: You already mentioned information warfare. One issue that sparked tension in the U.S. and elsewhere was the wave of pro-Palestinian protests that emerged right after the attacks. Could some of these have been part of a Hamas information operation, or were the protesters simply moved by compassion for the Palestinian people?

Omar Ashour: It’s hard to determine. But I must say, Hamas is very skilled in information operations. They’ve managed to influence large segments of Middle Eastern societies—and even beyond, including in the West.

Part of this comes from the way they document their operations—ambushes, raids, sniper attacks, anti-tank strikes, IEDs. They know how to do this effectively, and they package it with songs and poetry—in a way, like pop videos. And those get viewers.

But the other side of this is that we are likely witnessing one of the highest civilian death tolls on such a small piece of land. The entire Gaza Strip is about 365 square kilometers, and there are nearly 50,000 dead—plus the injured. That’s why I call this hybrid. Regardless of what Hamas is doing on the information warfare front, this level of suffering inevitably affects people.

The majority of victims are still women and children. That’s well documented. We’re back to the situation where an entire building is brought down to eliminate two or three fighters holed up on the third floor—while the building has seven stories, with multiple families living on each floor.

So, it was only a matter of time before this sparked a response. Interestingly, that response is coming primarily from Western and Latin American societies. You don’t see many protests like that in China or Russia. That tells us something about the systems in which such protests are allowed to happen.

Interviewer: You’ve studied both ISIS and Hamas—both of which have fairly extreme ideologies. How has Hamas managed to gain so much sympathy in the West, while ISIS has not?

Omar Ashour: ISIS and Hamas don’t share the same organizational structure or ideology. They may act similarly in some ways, and they use many of the same tactics—because those tactics are effective—but their ideologies are fundamentally different.

Hamas, simply put, is a nationalist-Islamist organization. They still believe that Islam should be a source of governance—but that’s a very vague concept in their case. What do they actually mean by that? When they governed Gaza, they didn’t enforce any kind of non-traditional Islamic law. They didn’t impose anything like ISIS’s strict interpretation of 8th–9th century jurisprudence.

The main difference is this: ISIS targeted the West. Their terrorist organization was explicitly focused on attacking Western countries. Hamas, on the other hand, attacked Israel. Yes, some of their attacks in Israel have involved Western nationals, but Hamas hasn’t attacked Paris or London.

The Palestinian issue also resonates deeply—and historically—with large segments of Western societies, especially among the center-left and far-left. And it comes with a very clear humanitarian crisis.

ISIS, by contrast, was fundamentally an illegitimate organization trying to seize territory.

Hamas frames its actions as part of the Palestinian liberation struggle. And there is an occupation—on the West Bank, and since October 7, 2023, also in Gaza, at least de facto.

If we consider some of the statements made by certain Israeli politicians and officials—like Mr. Bezalel Smotrich, for example—you end up at the doorstep of ethnic cleansing. You’re talking about the total destruction of a territory that was built to support around 2.3 million people. Now, only about 1.8 million remain, and they’re being pressured to leave Gaza because all that’s left there is rubble.

That touches people. And it will inevitably trigger a reaction.

Interviewer: How much genuine compassion do the surrounding Arab states have for the Palestinians? To what extent are they actually trying to help?

Omar Ashour: At the popular level, there’s a lot of sympathy. On the official level, there’s sympathy as well—but they know there’s not much they can really do.

Take Egypt, for example. Egypt entered the [First Arab-Israeli] war in 1948. Then in 1956, they had their own war—the Suez Crisis—when the Israelis attacked and took Sinai. The 1967 war (the Six-Day War) was partly about Palestine and partly about President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s ambitions. They fought, and things didn’t go well for them.

So Egypt is out of the game now. Their stance is: We’ll do some diplomacy, we’ll talk to the Israelis, we’ll talk about a two-state solution—if Israel allows it. But don’t count on us to do much more. Of course, they could do more in terms of humanitarian aid. But there’s also the issue of resettling Palestinians in Sinai, which is an extremely sensitive subject in Egypt.

This is not like the Baltics or most of Europe welcoming Ukrainians. Most Arab states surrounding Gaza would say, We’ve already taken in enough. Lebanon has hosted Palestinians since 1948. Egypt has taken in its share. In Jordan, Palestinians make up the majority of the population. So they’re basically saying, We’ve done our part—no more.

You know the situation in Syria: at one point, the country nearly collapsed, and now it’s trying to pull itself back together. They don’t want any more confrontations with Israel. You probably saw one of President Donald Trump’s main demands to President Ahmed al-Sharaa—it was essentially: Get the Palestinians out. The Palestinian factions need to leave. It wasn’t about taking in more Palestinians.

Interviewer: Al-Sharaa—he seems to know when to switch sides?

Omar Ashour: Yes—very cleverly, and more than once. From ISIS to Al-Nusra, and when [Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi announced the unification of Syria and Iraq under his control, al-Sharaa said no and moved to Al-Qaeda instead. Then in 2016, he turned on Al-Qaeda and started fighting them. And now he’s trying to make peace with Israel—essentially trying to save what’s left of his country.

Then you have the Gulf states. They can provide financial support, but I don’t think they’re willing to resettle Palestinians. They don’t offer asylum to anyone. You can either come there to work—or they’ll pay money and expect you to live somewhere else.

So yes, there is sympathy in the surrounding countries—but no practical solution. The only seemingly practical solution has been the two-state solution, but I don’t think the current government under Benjamin Netanyahu accepts it. Meanwhile, Israel still wants to recover its hostages—which is a fair and legitimate goal.

There’s been a lot of talk, but Israel’s official endgame remains unclear. How long do they intend to continue this operation? No one knows.

Interviewer: Coming closer to our region—Hamas leaders visited Moscow right at the start of the conflict. To what extent has Russia helped fan the flames?

Omar Ashour: On the macro level, the Kremlin—since Soviet times—has viewed the entire region from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean as a single operational theater with multiple fronts that support one another. That was Soviet strategic thinking, and it later became Russian strategic thinking as well.

Let me give an example from 2015. After the second Minsk agreement, OSCE monitors documented ceasefire violations. At one point, the data showed about 40 company-level firefights per day—essentially full-on warfare.

Then, all of a sudden, it dropped to zero. Why? It coincided with [Vladimir] Putin’s peace initiative in Syria. The “independent separatists” in Ukraine were being used as pawns in Putin’s broader geostrategic game. When he wanted to de-escalate and ensure support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria, he also de-escalated in Ukraine.

As for October 7, it’s been said that the attack was a kind of “gift” to President Putin—a surprise gift, so to speak. Was he personally involved? I don’t know. We probably won’t ever know. Maybe the next generation will find out.

But it was definitely useful for Russia. It diverted a great deal of attention away from Ukraine and toward the Middle East. It redirected many resources: various types of weapons and ammunition that were originally meant for Ukraine were rerouted to Israel by the U.S.

It also shifted media focus and international support. Putin was no longer the global pariah—there was now another major crisis unfolding in the Middle East. So yes, it helped him significantly.

I actually wrote an article in 2022 titled How Putin’s Army Fights Like ISIS in Ukraine. The idea came to me while I was interviewing Ukrainian soldiers in 2016 who had pulled out of Crimea in 2014. They were telling me how Crimea fell.

As they described it, I kept thinking about how Raqqa fell to ISIS in Syria. It was the same pattern: infiltration, front organizations, bribery, intimidation by kidnapping the children of influential people, penetration of military and security agencies.

That’s exactly what the Russians did in Crimea—using a similar playbook of bombings and terrorist attacks to destabilize society just enough to secure victory through force. They used infiltration, front organizations posing as humanitarian NGOs, but in reality serving as covers for Russian operatives.

Interviewer: So who learned from whom?

Omar Ashour: That’s a very important question. The Russians have long had the concept of maskirovka—military deception, concealment, and misdirection—going back to the 1940s. But today’s Russian military is not the same generation as the one in the 1940s.

The Russians were likely observing events in Syria and saw that this was an effective way to fight—a tiny force was able to seize control of a major city. And in Ukraine, they managed to take the country’s most strategically important region—Crimea—without a fight. And for a while, they nearly got away with it.

If I had to bet, I’d say the Russians learned from ISIS. Without question, they studied ISIS closely—because ISIS was a factor in Syria and elsewhere. I suspect they adopted some of ISIS’s methods for destabilization and information operations—what we call info-kinetic maneuvering: first destabilize through disinformation and infiltration, then consolidate through kinetic action.

And they continued down that same path—with rapes and psychological warfare in Bucha and elsewhere. As they advanced and retreated, they planted improvised explosive devices everywhere—including in children's playgrounds—to prevent Ukrainian forces from following, while keeping the area destabilized.

There was also the manipulation of religion—like Patriarch Kirill blessing weapons and soldiers. Instead of promoting peace or human dignity, this was about legitimizing killing.

One image that really shocked me was a video of Kadyrov’s fighters—I don’t call them Chechens, because many Chechens are fighting for Ukraine and view those men as traitors. In the video, the Kadyrovtsy were in Mariupol, with a completely destroyed civilian structure in the background—probably a nursing home or a school—and they were chanting Allahu Akbar ("God is great").

They were using a religious slogan to justify their actions. And what were those actions? The destruction of civilian infrastructure. There was nothing military about it—they were standing in front of a demolished civilian building. That’s one of the ugliest abuses of religion imaginable.

And who does things like that? ISIS.

Interviewer: How do you maintain humane warfare when you're facing a state that fights like ISIS?

Omar Ashour: That’s a difficult question—and it's hard to do. But it’s possible. We’ve learned a lot from Ukraine. If the Ukrainians had tried to liberate Kherson the same way the Iraqis liberated Mosul, it would have been a bloodbath. But they didn’t do it that way.

Instead, the Ukrainians blockaded the city. They didn’t target the units inside the city directly, but rather the logistics flowing into it. Their aim was to keep the Russian units inside under constant pressure—always feeling unsafe and under-supplied, lacking ammunition and food.

To do that, the Ukrainians struck bridges across the Dnipro River and tried to isolate the city. They didn’t want to enter it, because that would have meant fighting building by building—urban warfare. In a sense, they were trying to protect the city.

It’s not always a successful strategy, and it’s very difficult—especially when you're short on time—because it takes a long time. But it’s a more humane approach.

The Ukrainians did something similar in 2014 in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. They imposed a blockade. They didn’t want to storm the city, because that would have meant destroying their own city and killing civilians. So they blocked it and made sure the Russian-led forces—commanded in Sloviansk’s case by [former Russian intelligence officer Igor] Girkin—couldn’t get resupplied. Eventually, the Russians withdrew because they ran out of supplies.

But it doesn’t always work that way, and it doesn’t always go so cleanly. You need time, because it takes a while before supply lines fully collapse.

The other option is to go straight into the city—and in that case, you might as well destroy it.