“It’s all about the tunnels. This war from a military perspective is all about the tunnels, British Army Maj. (ret.) Andrew Fox tells JNS.
“They are used for weapons manufacturing, they are used for storage and they are used for maneuver. The golden rule for any military is your maneuverability,” Fox continued.
We spoke about the vast damage to neighborhoods in Gaza that has outraged many in the international community.
Images of the damage has been used in information warfare, always guaranteed to elicit a robust response from the international community, but to fully understand what is happening above ground, you need to look below ground, Fox said.
“The tunnels are a weapons system of their own,” he said. “People think of them as hidey-holes, a way to avoid IDF airstrikes—and they are. But they are much more than that. To destroy the tunnels, you must destroy what is above.”
Fox said Hamas was able to weaponize this to get the international community to get Israel to stop. It has worked before. “Every tunnel is connected to every mosque, every hospital, every school, so above ground is where damage is done.
Fox completed three tours in Afghanistan, including one attached to the U.S. Army Special Forces. He also served in Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Middle East, is a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and currently serves as a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society focusing on defense, the Middle East and disinformation.
He has visited Israel numerous times since the start of the war with Hamas following the atrocities of Oct. 7 and has spent a considerable amount of time with the IDF in Gaza.
In recent weeks, Fox visited Gaza with a cohort from the High Level Military Group. The HLMG “is an independent body of former chiefs of staff, senior military officers and cabinet ministers from NATO countries with many decades of expertise at the highest level of land, air and sea conflict and the legality thereof.”
The HLMG has filed a counter-claim at the International Criminal Court following the request by Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan for the court to issue warrants of arrest for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Fox elaborated of what the HLMG has observed, that before an airstrike, “The IDF look at rules of engagement, they look at collateral damage, they look at civilian presence, they look at sites of a protected nature, they look at what munition needs to be used and the target and then prosecute it. This is all stuff we use as well.”
One in two airstrikes
He continued, “One in every two airstrikes is canceled because they fail one of those six standards. This is absolutely moral and correct and legitimate.”
To support allegations of genocide, you have to prove intent, and you can’t take politicians comments in press conferences as proof of intent, Fox told JNS. “Armies don’t take orders from press conferences, they take orders from war cabinets and the chain of orders.”
Regarding the issue of humanitarian aid, it is Fox and the High Level Military Group’s assessment that Israel has gone beyond the requirements of international law, building roads and ensuring that more calories per person are going into Gaza than before the war.
Israel has also facilitated polio vaccination, repaired water pipes and repaired electricity supplies destroyed by Hamas on Oct. 7. There have been at least 16,000 aid co-ordinations in Gaza between the IDF and aid agencies. “There have been thousands more on top of that,” said Fox.
In recent weeks, the British government announced that it would withdraw its their objection to ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. This change in attitude towards Israel was followed by Foreign Secretary, David Lammy’s announcement of the suspension of 30 out of 350 arms export licenses.
Fox said of this decision, “The double insult is performative.” The weapons will not make a difference at all to the war in Gaza. None of the thresholds of international humanitarian law were remotely breached. This is just performative spite.”
He also weighed in on the information battlefield. It is not just the kinetic battlefield where wars are fought, but in the media, and during the last 11 months, the statistics are staggering.
“The media have platformed Hamas. I have seen a study that looks at five key media platforms including Sky News, CNN and the BBC. One hundred percent of the time, they cited Hamas fatality statistics. Seventy-five percent of the time, they mentioned they were from Hamas, but not always, 4% of the time they cited IDF statistics,” he said.
“That is the scale of the imbalance. I am trying to tell the truth as I see it, and I have a better idea of the truth because I have been to Israel multiple times, I have been on the ground in Rafah, I have spoken to the IDF at every level,” said Fox. ‘I know it to be true; I have seen it with my own eyes.”
Last Sunday, the Telegraph published a damning exposé showing the BBC’s bias and violation of its own impartiality rules.
In Fox’s opinion, three things need to be understood regarding this war and Israel’s response: Oct. 7, the taking of hostages and the tunnels.
One area where the IDF could improve is running its information campaign in parallel with its military campaign, he said, adding that all Western militaries could benefit from this lesson.
There are many lessons that militaries can learn from “Operation Iron Swords” and the IDF’s conduct, Fox added.
He believes this war will be studied i depth and other militaries can learn from the IDF about urban maneuverability. Militaries will have to look at urban warfare above and below ground at the same time, how to integrate air power, how to integrate drones, coordination and other factors that have never been taken into account before.
“The Israelis have had to learn it on the job,” Fox said. “The IDF can clear the tunnels out much more rapidly [now] than in the beginning.”
