Israel may not be able to destroy Hamas despite five months of intense fighting in Gaza, Israeli intelligence officials have admitted, quoted by The Telegraph.
The main objective of the Gaza invasion is at risk of failure as international support turns against Israel, the sources have warned.
Israel believes it has dismantled Hamas’ main command and control structure in central and northern Gaza, but pockets of “guerrilla” resistance remain.
Senior officials told The Telegraph that four of the original 24 Hamas battalions remained completely intact after they fled to safety in Rafah, a town on the Egyptian border that Israel plans to invade.
But Israel believes it may be too late to find and destroy them because the US has “turned its back on Israel”.
Pressures on Israel
This week, the US allowed passage of a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, after months of upholding Israel’s right to defend itself. Frustrations about the humanitarian situation in Gaza have grown at the White House.
“If you had asked me this a month ago, I would have definitely said yes [putem elimina Hamas], because at that time the Americans were supporting Israel,” an Israeli intelligence source said. They suggested that this assessment has now changed.
They warned that Hamas is focused on surviving until the summer, when the US election campaign begins, and support for Israel is likely to wane further.
“The pressure is mounting on Israel to reach some sort of deal, which means Hamas could survive. Both Hamas and the Iranians are banking on this,” the quoted source said.
Hamas forces scattered
The latest assessment comes as the IDF has faced Hamas units that have re-emerged in parts of Gaza they had previously liberated. Fighting has been going on since March 18 at Al-Shifa hospital, which Israel first attacked in December.
Months of urban warfare have driven Hamas from its main strongholds, and Israeli intelligence says more than 11,000 terrorists have been killed, in addition to 15 top commanders.
Hamas forces, estimated before the war at 35,000 men, are now dispersed. 18 battalions are believed to have been “significantly affected”.
“Hamas no longer functions as an army. Its units have been eradicated and do not have a central command and control,” said a source in the IDF’s Southern Command.
“Each unit acts independently, doing what it thinks it should do, but there is no control center that can move the units,” she added.
“They are in a very bad position, but in saying that, they have turned to the old guerilla fighting style. They operate as guerilla terrorists, and when you operate like that, you don’t need infrastructure and facilities, you go from house to house, you hide, you use RPGs [grenade propulsate de rachete]the grenades, and disappear”.
“They’ve lost their commanders, so they’re really acting independently. Many of them surrender. Many have lost their motivation and will to fight, and this can be seen in the fact that the number of Israeli casualties has dropped significantly. Hamas does not fight.”
Senior leadership in Rafah
What remains of the senior leadership team is now in Rafah, the only remaining urban center where IDF ground teams have not reached. Israel confirmed on Tuesday the killing of Marwan Issa, number three in the Hamas chain of command.
Communications between Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader, and the rest of the resistance groups have been based on handwritten notes since the first weeks of the invasion.
With communications networks destroyed, there are some signs of a loss of confidence in the military leadership. A 54-year-old Hamas commander told The Telegraph: “There is a lot of uncertainty and we don’t know which way to go next. We don’t know which way to go.”
He said that despite the suffering, the operation had become “a source of pride” for the Palestinians and the Arab world.
He suggested that the initial operation on October 7 took some Hamas militants by surprise and said the operation did not go according to plan.
“Our plan with the three leaders [Yahya Sinwar, Marwan Issa și Mohammed Deif] it was to go in, kill, kidnap soldiers, not civilians. We have lost thousands of soldiers, and there are thousands of corpses near the borders and no one can go and get them.”
Hamas information, ‘limited’
Israeli intelligence officials said Hamas’ central command no longer had a “clear picture of what was going on” with the rest of its fighters in Gaza, hidden deep in the network of tunnels.
“Their information is very limited, they don’t have surveillance cameras in every place like they had since we destroyed them, so the big picture is very, very limited,” an Israeli intelligence source said.
“Even those on the surface are on the move all the time. You don’t really see these big orchestrated attacks against Israel like we saw at the beginning of the war when we went into Gaza.”
Much of Hamas’ 300-kilometer network of tunnels under Gaza has been destroyed, the IDF believes. However, some underground weapons production facilities are believed to have remained intact.
Israel believes its best chance to destroy Hamas is to enter Rafah.
“The US does not support entry into Rafah as they did before, so at this point the books are not good, which means that Israel needs to do something dramatic and drastic to change the momentum and the climate,” he said. cited source.
“We have to enter Rafah, one way or another, but very aggressively,” she insisted. Absent such an assault, Hamas’s chances of survival seem more likely, he added.
Tags: Israel admits destroy Hamas loses backing Rafah invasion
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