Analysis: Battered Hamas clings on in Gaza, confounding Israel's bid to declare victory
PHOTO CAPTION: Hamas members take part in an anti-Israel rally in Gaza City, May 22, 2021. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell
CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Senior figures in Israel's government have said it is closing in on its war aims of defeating Hamas militarily and the return of hostages seized on Oct. 7. But Hamas' survival as a guerrilla force and its sway in Gaza may overshadow any deal.
After nine months of pummelling by one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East, Hamas is much weakened from the force that carried out the cross-border attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Early in the war, Hamas propaganda videos showed well-drilled fighters in body armour and battle fatigues, their torsos wrapped with ammunition belts. Now, small groups of insurgents in T-shirts and trainers stage hit-and-run attacks in Gaza's bombed-out streets, the videos show.
Reuters spoke with three sources with knowledge of Hamas tactics, two former Hamas militants, three Palestinian officials, two Israeli military sources and an Israeli defence official to shed light on the group's losses and its strategy.
Two Israeli and two Palestinian sources told Reuters that a communications network built by Hamas before the war has been heavily damaged. That has left its command fragmented and reliant on messages delivered in person to avoid Israeli surveillance, the Palestinian sources said.
One Palestinian source with knowledge of Hamas military tactics said personnel losses and the destruction of the communications network meant centralised decision-making had collapsed. Much of the vast tunnel network beneath Gaza has also been destroyed or compromised, the Israeli military has said.
But the guerrilla tactics adopted by Hamas cells in recent weeks are simply aimed at ensuring the group survives, ties down Israeli forces and inflicts losses, according to another Palestinian source with knowledge of Hamas military tactics.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, speaking to soldiers in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, said on Tuesday that Israel was close to defeating Hamas militarily, according to a statement from his office.
"We're eliminating Hamas as a military organisation," Gallant told the troops. "We're creating a situation that will allow us to make a deal to free our hostages."
Hamas seized around 250 hostages during the Oct. 7 attack and killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. Hamas and other militants are still holding 115 hostages, around a third of whom have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the U.S. Congress on Wednesday during a trip to Washington, pledged the hostages would be released soon and laid out a post-war vision of a "demilitarized and deradicalised Gaza" led by Palestinians who do not seek to destroy Israel.
Hamas dismissed Netanyahu's comments as "pure lies" and accused the Israeli leader of thwarting negotiations to end the war and reach a ceasefire deal to release the hostages - outlined by U.S. President Joe Biden in May and mediated by Egypt and Qatar.
Netanyahu, who will meet with Biden on Thursday, has said that victory will only be achieved when the military and governing capabilities of Hamas are eliminated and Gaza poses no further threat to Israel.
Hamas' founding charter in 1987 called for the destruction of Israel and it subsequently directed suicide bombings in Israeli cities and, with Iran's help, built an arsenal of rockets that it has launched into Israel in frequent conflicts.
'VERY FAR' FROM DESTROYING HAMAS
Hamas has insisted that, despite losses, its command structure remains in place, even if weakened.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Israel's accounts exaggerate the extent of its losses: "Facts on the ground are completely different," he said.
In a statement on July 16 to mark nine months of that war, Israel's military said that it has killed or apprehended at least 14,000 Hamas fighters out of the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 fighters that the group had at the start of the conflict.
By comparison, Israel says just 326 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the ground offensive - just above the roughly 300 killed in a single day during Hamas' Oct. 7 attack.
Crucially, the IDF has also said it had eliminated half of the leadership of Hamas' military wing, the Al-Qassam brigades, and it was pursuing Hamas' top leaders as part of its aim of dismantling the group's capabilities.
An Israeli airstrike on July 13 in a humanitarian area in southern Gaza targetted Hamas' military chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel says masterminded the Oct. 7 attack. The Gaza health ministry said at least 90 Palestinians were killed in the strike.
The Israeli military's chief spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said on July 19 there were increasing signs Deif was killed alongside another senior Hamas commander Rafa Salame, who Israeli officials believe was sitting next to him at the time and was also killed.
Palestinian sources have confirmed the deaths of several leading Hamas military commanders. They include Ayman Nofal, and Ahmed Al-Ghandour, both members of the Higher Military Council, the top decision-making body of Hamas' armed wing. Saleh Al-Arouri, the deputy chief of Hamas, was also killed in Lebanon.
Yet Hamas fighters have drawn Israeli forces back into battle in the same areas of Gaza again and again, such as this week's fighting in Khan Younis, preventing the declaration of victory Netanyahu says he is determined to secure.
Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who leads Palestinian studies at Tel Aviv-based Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, said Israel would need more boots on the ground across more areas of Gaza to achieve its aim of eliminating Hamas.
"We are very far from the goal of destroying Hamas' government and military capacities. We are really not close to that," Milshtein said. He noted, however, that a purely military victory would in any case ignore the group's social, political and economic influence.
"We're continuing to treat an enemy who is multi-dimensional in its behaviour as a military threat only."
The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel called up around 300,000 reservists to mount its assault on Gaza, its largest mobilisation in decades. It began releasing them around four months later.
MOP-UP OPERATIONS
Israel's military response to Oct. 7 has turned Gaza into a chaotic wasteland. More than 39,000 people have been killed, according to Palestinian figures.
Hamas' armed wing began the war with 24 battalions. An Israeli military source told Reuters on July 11 that four remaining battalions in Gaza's southern Rafah area, where Israel has focused its most recent offensive, are "close to being dismantled."
To achieve the government's war aims, the Israel Defence Forces planned a three-tier offensive encompassing an initial aerial campaign, followed by a ground offensive and a final phase of mopping up operations.
Most of Gaza has been in phase 3 for around six months. Once the Israeli forces have stamped out Hamas' remaining battalions in Rafah, then all of Gaza will essentially be in phase 3, according to Israeli officials.
Hamas' missile and rocket arsenal, once put at 15,000 to 30,000 has also been heavily depleted. Israel's military estimates 13,000 at least have been fired. It has also seized caches of projectiles as it has swept almost every city in Gaza.
Kobi Michael, of Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), said Hamas was no longer an institutionalised army divided into conventional military units, with weapons manufacturing, training, intelligence and air, naval and cyber forces.
"We need to carry on until Hamas has no ability to rebuild," Michael said, suggesting the Israeli military would need to have access to Gaza even after the war to carry out operations against any remaining militant cells.
"The groundwork is being laid now for the IDF to operate in a similar way to the way it does in the West Bank. We are not there yet," he said.
But one source close to Hamas said the group has been preparing for years for a scenario where it would need to shift to guerrilla-style tactics to survive a conflict with Israel.
Key operations - including a foundry to make bombs and other weapons - were still operational, the source said. New recruits were also constantly joining Hamas' military wing, while the switch to guerrilla tactics had allowed the group to contain its losses, according to another source familiar with Hamas' tactics.
The network of tunnels, even after sections have been destroyed or compromised by Israeli forces, continue to hamper Israel's goal of eliminating Hamas, experts and two sources close to Hamas says.
"They show up from one shaft, destroy a tank, or prepare an ambush for another before they disappear until they reappear at another shaft," said a former Hamas militant familiar with the group's operations.
Some new tunnels, sources close to the group say, are being dug by hand. Reuters was unable to verify this independently.
An Israeli military official on Monday told Reuters that while a lot of Hamas military infrastructure, including tunnels, has been destroyed there was still much more to be done.
(Writing by Christian Lowe and Michael Georgy; Editing by Daniel Flynn)
