Battered but Undefeated, Hamas Remains a Fighting Force in Gaza

The Israeli military has killed thousands of Hamas fighters in Gaza, decimated its weapon stockpiles and destroyed much of its underground tunnel network.

That onslaught has forced Hamas’s battered military wing to change. Once an organized army, it has transformed itself into scattered groupings of fighters, focused on digging in and surviving the war, while staging ambushes of Israeli soldiers.

“On the ground, there are no longer fixed Hamas strongholds in the conventional military sense,” said Wesam Afifa, the former executive director of Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV. “What remains today are small, mobile resistance cells fighting in guerrilla style.”

Hamas, though, is still a powerful Palestinian force in Gaza. And Israeli troops began a full-scale ground invasion on Gaza City this week, in an operation that officials hope will lead to the destruction of the group.

It is a risky operation, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are living in the area, unable or unwilling to flee to overcrowded areas with scarce resources.

On the battlefield, Hamas has adopted a strategy of staging hit-and-run attacks, rather than engaging in direct combat with Israeli forces, which have a vast military advantage. The group has been planting explosives under roads, in residential buildings and on top of Israeli military vehicles, according to Israeli security officials. In recent months, Hamas’s military wing has published videos of fighters in civilian dress approaching tanks, armored personnel carriers and soldiers before firing on them and then running away.

Since January, about 70 Israeli soldiers have died in combat in Gaza, according to the military.

Last week, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William J. Burns, said Hamas no longer had the capacity to mount another attack like that of Oct. 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and hundreds were abducted. That attack ignited the war in Gaza, and Israel's military response has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Hamas also does not have the capability to launch large-scale rocket barrages on Israel, as it routinely did in the early days of the war, or repel the advance of Israeli soldiers, according to current and former Israeli security officials.

The exact number of militants left in Gaza is unclear. Israeli security services estimate that there are roughly 15,000 remaining in the territory, said Shalom Ben Hanan, a former senior official in Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, who is regularly briefed on the war.

“It’s naïve to believe Israel can put an end to Hamas in short order,” said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer specialized in Palestinian affairs. “It just doesn’t work that way.”

As Israel advances into Gaza City, the likelihood is that most of Hamas’s remaining fighting force would disperse into other areas of Gaza. Hamas’s forces are concentrated in Gaza City, Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, and Mawasi, a coastal region in the south, according to a senior Middle Eastern intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

Israel could attempt to take over those areas too, but security officials have said that it would require years of fighting to prevent Hamas from regaining a foothold.

Mr. Netanyahu has set out principles for ending the war, which include Hamas’s effective surrender, and has vowed to achieve them by force or negotiation. Hamas, however, has rejected those demands, and vowed to achieve a deal that ends the war on its terms or to fight until its last bullet. Hamas has said it would free all Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for a permanent end to the war, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of Palestinian prisoners.

On Thursday, as Israeli troops advanced in Gaza City, Hamas’s military wing said in a statement that it had prepared “an army of suicide fighters and thousands of ambushes.”

But some Palestinian analysts believe that both Hamas and Israel have exaggerated the group’s power to serve their own interests.

Mohammed al-Astal, an analyst based in southern Gaza, said Hamas was projecting strength to pressure Israel into accepting a deal to end the war. While Israel, he said, was portraying Hamas as a serious adversary as a pretext to destroying the enclave and expelling its residents.

“What Israel is practicing on the ground goes beyond eliminating Hamas,” he said. “There’s a general impression among Palestinians that Israel wants to eliminate Gaza and the people.”

The Israeli military has said that Hamas militants and their weapons infrastructure are embedded in civilian areas.

Asked whether Hamas was still a significant force, Mr. Ben Hanan, the former intelligence official, said the group was extorting businesspeople in Gaza and recruiting fighters. “All these things demonstrate that Hamas is still in power,” he said.

Hamas has also continued to run some civil institutions, operate internal security forces and make payments to government employees.

“When we talk about Hamas, we’re really talking about the remnants of Hamas,” said Esmat Mansour, a Palestinian political analyst who spent years in Israeli prisons with top Hamas leaders. “But as much as they’ve been weakened, they’re still the only game in town.”