“They lost most of their commanders. Maybe more than 50% of their fighters were killed. …But they are now regrouping in places that were cleared by the IDF.”
—Prof. Michael Kobi of the Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute in an interview with Ami Magazine.
Ever since Israel first started its offensive in Gaza, it has been dismantling Hamas and its infrastructure piece by piece. But has it done enough?
There has been an ongoing debate in Israel about how hard to push for a ceasefire. Many of the families of hostages, along with thousands of other protesters, have called on the government to agree to a ceasefire as soon as possible in order to get the hostages back. Others have argued that continuing to fight Hamas is the better route to getting them home safely and to ensure the safety of all Israelis.
One major unknown is how much Israel has already accomplished. How debilitated has Hamas become after ten months of fighting? How much of a threat do they remain?
It’s clear that there are still Hamas fighters operating in Gaza with some level of organization; some brigades may be mostly intact. Israel’s domination on the battlefield still hasn’t revealed the location of all of the hostages, nor has it killed Yahya Sinwar, who was recently promoted to head the entire organization after the death of Ismail Haniyeh.
Is Hamas destroyed?
As the main government entity in Gaza, Hamas has several arms, including an administrative and political infrastructure. By now it is well known that Gaza’s Ministry of Health is also part of Hamas, although the Western media still don’t acknowledge that too often. All of these things have been compromised by Israel. But the most important question has do to with the ability of Hamas to keep fighting.
Over the past month there have been several different accounts, including a pessimistic one from the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project and the Institute for the Study of War, with some additional reporting from CNN. According to the latter, which used American-style references to military strength, only three of the 24 Hamas battalions in Gaza had been rendered “combat ineffective” by July 1 of this year. Another 13 were what the analysts called “degraded,” meaning that they can only carry out guerrilla-style attacks. This left eight battalions still “combat effective” based on reports of fighting and satellite imagery.
The Israeli military took issue with these numbers, saying that all 24 battalions had been degraded. A recent report by the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security said that 18 of the 24 had been “dismantled.” It also noted that two of the remaining six are in the Rafah area while the other two are in central Gaza and will either be fought alongside the battles in Rafah or afterward. (Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said this past week that Hamas’ Rafah Brigade had been defeated, although exactly what that means is unclear.)
The number of Hamas fighters killed is also unknown. Hamas has claimed that between 6,000 and 8,000 have been killed, while Israel has claimed that the number is 17,000. Before the war, Hamas had an estimated 30,000 fighters.
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