- Israel and Hamas appear close to a cease-fire deal to end 15 months of fighting in Gaza.
- The conflict has left Hamas battered, with thousands of its militants killed.
- But for Israel, an end to the conflict doesn’t mean an end to its Hamas problem.
Israel and Hamas appear close to a cease-fire deal to end more than 15 months of devastating fighting in Gaza, though it’s facing something of a last-minute crisis.
The agreement, which has hit a snag at the eleventh hour as Hamas reneges on certain parts and Israel pushes for last-minute concessions, is expected to eventually go through. The deal aims to facilitate the release of hostages from Gaza and a surge of humanitarian aid into areas devastated by fighting, as well as create options for a permanent end to the bloodshed.
But regardless of how the negotiations ultimately work out, many of the issues that fueled this conflict remain, and Israel’s Hamas problem appears to be an enduring challenge.
US officials have said that Israel’s scorched-earth campaign in Gaza killed thousands of Hamas fighters and eliminated senior commanders, including the longtime leader Yahya Sinwar. But after all of this, the militant group remains alive, leaving Israel with a problem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set out to wipe out Hamas, but that hasn’t happened.
That reality makes the next steps especially important.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US has long conveyed to Israel that it can’t defeat Hamas through a military campaign alone and needs a post-conflict plan for Gaza, or “something just as abhorrent and dangerous” will take its place.
AP Photo/Leo Correa, File
“Each time Israel completes its military operations and pulls back,” he said at an Atlantic Council event this week, “Hamas militants regroup and re-emerge because there’s nothing else to fill the void.”
The latest war is the fifth Israel and Hamas have fought since 2008, though the scale has been significantly larger than past fights. Hamas, however, remains a headache for the Israeli leadership and military.
“We assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost,” Blinken warned, adding that this “is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war.”
The October 7, 2023, attacks, during which Hamas and other militants killed some 1,200 people across Israel and took another 250 people hostage, triggered a retaliatory Israeli bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza that reduced much of the enclave to rubble and left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead.
Israeli officials have said throughout the war that the goal is to crush Hamas and remove the group from power in Gaza. However, analysts were skeptical of this approach, arguing that Israel faced a no-win situation in its high-intensity campaign.
Even with a cease-fire agreement in place now, Hamas — though heavily battered and bruised and devoid of the external support from Hezbollah in Lebanon it had enjoyed — remains a decision-making and militant power in Gaza.
“Hamas is not going to disappear,” former Israeli intelligence official Avi Melamed told Business Insider. “All this rhetoric about crushing Hamas and eliminating Hamas — it will never really stick. It was just political rhetoric.”
AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File
Melamed, the founder of the Inside the Middle East Institute, said that the big question is whether Palestinians will hold Hamas accountable for initiating the war with its October 7 massacre. He said the release of prisoners from Israel as part of the cease-fire deal could increase the popularity of the militant group in Gaza.
Polling data has indicated that the group still maintains notable support within Gaza, where Hamas as an organization has ruled for nearly two decades. Its deeply entrenched position makes it more difficult for Israel to permanently eradicate it. This has been a challenge with terrorist operations across the Middle East.
Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, told BI that such groups, which have survived for so many years, “are enormously difficult — if not impossible — to completely eliminate.”
He said that, for the foreseeable future, Hamas will be incapable of launching another October 7-style attack against Israel but cautioned that the group still has considerable resources at its disposal. What Hamas needs most is leadership, and it may be able to fill that vacuum with prisoners released from Israeli jails.
“The group is undeniably weakened and a shell of its former self, but the capacity to continue to regroup, I mean, this is a given,” Hoffman said. “I don’t think anybody’s surprised by that.”
