Israel's military is preparing for an extended urban conflict in Gaza, but those efforts go back years prior to the terrorist attacks that instigated the current war.

They have called up 300,000 reservists and have surged equipment to the borders since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of roughly 1,400 people, while roughly another 200 people remain hostages of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two of the terrorist groups that carried out the attacks.

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"This is a war. This is not a short-term operation," IDF spokesman Maj. Doron Spielman told the Washington Examiner. "This is not a go in and go out type of operation."

Despite being caught flat-footed on the day militants broke through the border wall and killed about a thousand civilians, the Israel Defense Forces has long prepared to fight in the dense urban environment that they will encounter in Gaza. The military has a mock city about an hour's drive from the Gaza border that they have used to train.

The Tze'elim training center in the southern Negev desert mimics Gaza City with around 600 structures including streets, storefronts, schools, houses, apartment blocks, and mosques all closely together so troops can simulate the urban terrain they're now going to encounter. The scenery can be modified to fit specific training needs, and there's even anti-Israel graffiti on the walls.

"It is the most realistic, extensive replication of the sort of urban area typical of this region of the world that I've ever seen," retired Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, former chief of the National Guard Bureau, said after visiting the facility in 2008. "It is just such a superb training facility for all the nuances and the situational awareness and the battlefield conditions that soldiers face in this part of the world."

The other major component that will make Israeli forces' efforts more complicated is the hundreds of miles of underground tunnels created by Hamas that they will use to move freely. The tunnels have lighting, electricity, air conditioning, and, in some cases, rails to help transport goods, an IDF spokesperson recently told the Washington Examiner.

Spielman described the tunnels as a "highly sophisticated underground terror web" and referred to it as a "metro" system due to its size and expanse.

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“This is the most difficult terrain," retired Gen. Joseph Votel, former commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Washington Examiner. "It's three dimensional, meaning that it's on the surface, it’s up in buildings, and it's subterranean. Hamas has evolved over the last number of years, probably more than a decade here, has developed some 300 miles of underground tunnels that really gives them kind of a distinct tactical advantage maybe in the strategic advantage of being able to move fighters around, escape areas, to move around without being seen."

The U.S. and United Nations peacekeepers have also trained on, as the IDF calls it, "Mini Gaza," according to the Jerusalem Post.