There Is No Sign Of The Decline Of Hamas' Military Power - New York Times

Israel has vowed time and again to eliminate the group responsible for the brutal Oct. 7 attack, but critics increasingly see that goal as unrealistic or even impossible

Standing before a gray backdrop decorated with Hamas logos and emblems of a gunman that commemorate the bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Osama Hamdan, the organization’s representative in Lebanon, professed no concern about his Palestinian faction being dislodged from Gaza.

“We are not worried about the future of the Gaza Strip,” he recently told a crowded news conference in his offices in Beirut’s southern suburbs. “The decision maker is the Palestinian people alone.”

Mr. Hamdan thus dismissed one of Israel’s key objectives since the beginning of its assault on Gaza: to dismantle the Islamist political and military organization that was behind the massacre of about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and which still holds more than 100 hostages.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly emphasized that objective even while facing mounting international pressure to scale back military operations. The Biden administration has dispatched senior envoys to Israel to push for a new phase of the war focused on more targeted operations rather than sweeping destruction.

And critics both within Israel and outside have questioned whether resolving to destroy such a deeply entrenched organization was ever realistic. One former Israeli national security adviser called the plan “vague.”

“I think that we have reached a moment when the Israeli authorities will have to define more clearly what their final objective is,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said this month. “The total destruction of Hamas? Does anybody think that’s possible? If it’s that, the war will last 10 years.”

Since it first emerged in 1987, Hamas has survived repeated attempts to eliminate its leadership. The organization’s very structure was designed to absorb such contingencies, according to political and military specialists. In addition, Israel’s devastating tactics in the Gaza war threaten to radicalize a broader segment of the population, inspiring new recruits.

Analysts see the most optimal outcome for Israel probably consisting of degrading Hamas’s military capabilities to prevent the group from repeating such a devastating attack. But even that limited goal is considered a formidable slog.

Hamas is rooted in the ideology that Israeli control over what it regards as Palestinians lands must be opposed by force, a tenet likely to endure, experts said.

“As long as that context is there, you will be dealing with some form of Hamas,” said Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank. “To assume that you can simply uproot an organization like that is fantasy.”

The Israeli military said this week that it had killed about 8,000 Hamas fighters out of a force estimated at 25,000 to 40,000. But it is unclear how the count is being made. About 500 have surrendered, according to the military, though Hamas has denied that all were from its ranks.

The military has at times delivered positive progress reports on its objectives, describing as “imminent” full control over the areas in northern Gaza where it began its ground offensive in late October.

But Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged on Sunday that the war “is exacting a very heavy cost from us” as the military announced that 15 soldiers had been killed in the previous 48 hours alone. Rockets are still being fired almost daily from southern Gaza into Israel, albeit far fewer than before.

Michael Milshtein, a former senior intelligence officer for Israel, criticized statements by some Israeli leaders depicting Hamas as being at its breaking point, saying that might create false expectations about the length of the war.

“They’ve been saying this for a while, that Hamas is collapsing,” Mr. Milshtein said. “But it’s just not true. Every day, we’re facing tough battles.”

The group’s top echelon are believed to be sheltering, along with most of its fighters and the remaining hostages, in deep tunnels. Although the Israeli army has said that it demolished at least 1,500 shafts, experts consider the underground infrastructure is largely intact.

The tunnels, built over 15 years, are believed to be so extensive, estimated at hundreds of miles long, that Israelis call them the Gaza Metro.

“Hamas is actually weathering this assault quite well,” said Tareq Baconi, an author who wrote a book about the group. “It’s still showing that it has an offensive military capability.”

Giora Eiland, a retired major general and former head of Israel’s National Security Council, said Hamas had demonstrated the ability to quickly replace commanders who are killed with others equally capable and equally devoted.

“From a professional point of view, I must give credit to their resilience,” he said. “I cannot see any signs of collapse of the military abilities of Hamas nor in their political strength to continue to lead Gaza.”

The scale of Israel’s war is likely to radicalize a new generation: More than 20,000 Gazans have been reported killed thus far, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.