Peloni: The slowed pace of the war, the propaganda campaign in favor of Hamas, and the international campaigns to continue feeding and thereby funding Hamas have each played a role in stabilizing Hamas in Gaza rather than displacing it. This has also had the counter effect of reducing Gazan expectation of Hamas being ultimately displaced from power, thus intimidating any locals who might have an interest of working with Israel. Thus, we are caught in a stymied mess of achieving victories without ultimate victory, while any local resistance to Hamas is in turn quashed by the limits placed upon the war, and the butcher’s bill just gets longer and more painful to achieve. There can be no end to this war without defeating Hamas, but defeating Hamas requires that the war must begin in earnest, which is currently nowhere in sight.
Despite multiple IDF campaigns, Hamas continues to recruit fighters
by Seth J. Frantzman | Jan 7, 2025
As the new year begins, Israel will need to find a strategy for the war in Gaza. Several factors are at play in this decision. First, the war has gone on for more than fifteen months since it began with the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Although Israel has fought long conflicts in the past, such as the Second Intifada and the war in Lebanon that began in 1982 and lasted for eighteen years, the war in Gaza has been of greater intensity and complexity than those other wars. This is because the war in Gaza also set off Iranian-backed attacks on Israel from multiple fronts. It is also due to the fact Hamas still holds 100 hostages captive in Gaza.
The conflict in Gaza is challenging because there is evidence Hamas continues to recruit and also controls a large swath of the area. “We are not yet at the point of defeating Hamas entirely,” Brigadier General (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser told ILTV in December 2024. A separate report at The Jerusalem Post noted that Hamas is recruiting more members.
Taken together, these assessments point to a recurring trend. The IDF has operated in Gaza primarily by going into areas, clearing them of Hamas and other terrorist groups, and then leaving the area. In some cases, the IDF has stayed for the long term, such as in the border area in southern Gaza called the Philadelphi Route along the border with Egypt. The IDF has also carved out another corridor south of Gaza City. However, in many urban areas, the IDF withdraws after weeks or months of combat. This was the case in Khan Younis, where an IDF division spent several months fighting between December and April 2024. Today, in Jabaliya and several areas in northern Gaza, the IDF spent three months trying to remove Hamas members, detaining and eliminating thousands of enemy fighters, and yet combat continues.
Although the fighting in Gaza is not as intensive as it was a year ago when it first began in the fall of 2023 and the first months of 2024, the IDF is suffering casualties every week. On January 6, a company commander in the 932nd Battalion of the Nahal Brigade fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip, the IDF said. Another soldier was also killed. Civilians in Gaza continue to be caught in the maelstrom. Most of the two million residents of the Gaza Strip have been displaced by the fighting.
The tough choices ahead for Israel relate to several key factors in the Gaza war. First of all, Hamas took 250 hostages on October 7, of whom ninety-six are thought to remain in Gaza. Recently, Hamas released a video of one of the hostages. However, Hamas has refused to provide Israel with a list of the total number and names of the hostages who remain alive. Despite various reports over the last six months, The Israeli prime minister’s office clarified on January 6 that a recent list of hostages circulating in the media was “not provided to Israel by Hamas but was originally given by Israel to the meditators in July 2024.” Despite reports of a deal taking shape, Hamas appears to be stalling. Changes may occur once President-elect Donald Trump takes office later in the month. Trump has said several times recently that he wants the hostages released or else “there will be hell” for Hamas.
The hostage deal appears to have been stuck for a year with little progress. It requires a rethink in terms of a strategy. Leaving living and dead hostages in Gaza for a long period of time would appear to be a macabre end to the October 7 attack and send a message that Hamas can get away with its crimes. On the other hand, the Israeli political leadership appears wary of a deal similar to the one in 2011 when one Israeli soldier held hostage in Gaza for five years was released in exchange for 1,000 Palestinians, many of them convicted terrorists. Some, like Yayha Sinwar, were even involved in the October 7 attack.
Israel could choose to continue negotiations in Gaza with limited military incursions, as has been the norm over the past year after fighting became less intense in the spring of 2024. However, Israel’s initial military campaign in Gaza was designed to apply military pressure to secure hostage deals. That pressure largely ended in the spring of 2024 after the first deal took place in late November 2023. Israel could choose to renew pressure on Hamas and try to remove the group from areas it controls in Gaza, such as the central Gaza Strip. The IDF has never entered central Gaza in force, despite the long war, leaving Hamas in charge of key urban areas such as Deir al-Balah and Nuseirat.
The hostage deal and military pressure are not the only challenges in Gaza. A related challenge is the question of whether Hamas will be replaced as the governing authority in Gaza. When the war began, Israel’s political leadership compared Hamas to ISIS and said it would be crushed in the same way ISIS was defeated. ISIS was removed from areas in Iraq and Syria after a multi-year campaign between 2014 and 2019. However, Israel’s goals in Gaza appear to have shifted since October 2023 statements about removing Hamas completely.
After fifteen months of war, there is no alternative being put forward for controlling Gaza. Hamas continues to control all the areas where civilians are present in Gaza. What this means is that, unlike the war on ISIS, where civilians were able to leave areas such as Mosul and move to IDP camps under the control of the Iraqi government or the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, civilians in Gaza have not been provided a non-Hamas option for civilian rule. This is why Hamas is able to continue recruiting and also able to continue to control areas where humanitarian aid is supplied. In essence, this puts Hamas astride the supply lines and in possession of many key urban areas in Gaza.
When the October 7 War began, Hamas was able to call on support from other Iranian-backed groups in the region. Hezbollah began attacks on Israel from Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen began attacks on Israel and attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq began attacks on U.S. forces and also prepared to target Israel. This multi-front war made it difficult for Israel to vanquish all these enemies. However, fifteen months later, things have changed in Israel’s favor. Hezbollah is greatly weakened. The Iranian-backed militias in Iraq appear to have stopped their drone attacks on Israel. The Assad regime, which was a conduit for Iranian weapons transfers to Hezbollah, fell on December 8. This leaves Hamas and the Houthis still standing, although Hamas has been greatly weakened since 2023. Israel also faces increasing attacks from the West Bank by groups linked to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other armed factions.
The overall challenge for Israel in 2025 now returns to Gaza. Although the Iranian nuclear program and other fronts remain, Gaza is where the war began and where it will have to end. A long war in Gaza fighting Hamas for years does not appear to be in Israel’s interest. However, leaving Hamas in control would inevitably enable the group to reconstitute its threat to Israel. Replacing Hamas requires a strategy and coordination with other countries that want to see a peaceful, stable Gaza.
Seth Frantzman is the author of The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza (2024) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
@Adam @ Pelosi Me too. On the other hand, Bibi is playing for time. 11 days to go.
@Adam
I agree.
US Believes Only 20 Hostages Still Alive in Gaza
Read more: US Believes Only 20 Hostages Still Alive in Gaza | Newsmax.com
This article is from the January 9 edition of Newsmax ,This is less than the number that the Israeli authorities seem to think are or may be alive.
In any case, I think it is wrong, both froma moral and strategic point of view, to negotiate with terrorists and murderers.
Personally, I think it’s a fantasy to think they can be re-educated but we shall see.
Likewise, Holocaust education in the West has been a collosal failure.
We have this notion that education necessarily civilizes people.
Like the Saudi doctor who had been posting anti-jihadist posts who ploughed his car into a Christmas market in Germany last month.
Or the well respected doctor and family man in Gaza who held Jewish children captive, starved and beat them.
Adam, you’re right.
The only other way to achieve anything like winning against Hamas despite their supporting civilian community is to actually remove them from the land and get them to work (no humanitarian aid) for a living. If there are any signs of looting or similar, those involved should be arrested and dealt with. This is an enormous task and the world community that was so willing to support the poor innocent Gazans should get involved in addressing this problem. If Israel is left to do this alone, none of them have any right to criticize or otherwise interfere, especially those helpful people of the UN and the EU and of course, the UK. All those useful idiots who played witness to all the agreements Israel signed with her neighbors should line up to help und a watchful Israeli eye.
I agree with Moshe Feiglin who said Gaza must become a Jewish city like Tel Aviv. Any treaty that demands concessions from Israel isn’t worth the paper it’s written on as we have seen over and over for just over 100 years and nobody else will carry Israel’s burden. The war should end when the agreed upon war aims have been met and Israel is victorious. Not a minute before. Nobody knows when that will be. It will be over when the fat lady sings.
Excellent report by Frantzman, providing important information about Israel’s failure to destroy Hamas and remove it from power in Gaza, and the reasons for the limited success of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
To me, it seems obvious that Israel must occupy all of Gaza, kill or capture all Hamasniks and other terrorists it can locate. It must then occupy Gaza for a long time, reeducate its population, and to the limited extent that this is possible help them to find homes elsewhere. “Humanitarian aid” should be stopped immediately. Once Israel is in control of all of Gaza, it may be resumed–but only under the watchful eye of the Israeli occupation forces.
The obvious reason why Israel has not done this is the entire “international community,” including the United States under the Biden-Blinken administration, has been determined to keep Hamas in control of Gaza and severely limit Israel’s counter-terrorist offensive there. For a long time I was inclined to share the prevailing view that Israel had no choice but submit to the restrictions that the USG placed on Israel’s military response to Arab-Iranian agression,because Israel depended on armaments from the U.S. to defend itself. However, I now thing that Israel has to do waterever it takes to defeat and destroy its enemies, even if this means that the U.S. and the entire “international community” is against us.