Israel's goals remain unmet despite Gaza onslaught
Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip have weakened Hamas. Most Hamas battalions have been degraded and are scattered. Thousands of its members have been killed, and at least one senior military leader has been eliminated.
Yet Israel has not achieved its primary goals of the war: freeing hostages and fully destroying Hamas.
The war and the tactics of the Israeli military have come at a great cost. Vast numbers of Palestinian civilians have been killed in the Israeli campaign; hunger is widespread in Gaza; and deaths around relief efforts have generated condemnation.
Six months into the conflict, the question of what Israel has achieved — and when and how the fighting could come to an end — is creating ever more intense global strains around a war that has cost Israel support from even close allies.
Israel's own military casualties have begun to climb, with about 260 killed and more than 1,500 injured since its pulverizing ground assault began in the weeks after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7.
Israeli officials say that about 133 of the hostages taken remain in Gaza. But talks to secure the return of at least some of them in exchange for a halt in the fighting and the release of Palestinian prisoners have hit a snag. Hamas has rebuffed the latest proposal and claims it does not have 40 hostages who meet the terms of the first part of the proposed deal, raising questions about how many are still alive and how many are held by other groups.
The war has settled into a deadly pattern of skirmishes and airstrikes as Israeli forces continue to operate in Gaza, targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters. Last week, with tensions between Israel and Iran increased, the Israeli military
said it struck more than 100 targets and killed dozens of fighters in the central part of the enclave, including a Hamas security officer who served in the group's intelligence wing.
The Israeli military says Hamas casualties continue to mount but that no Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in Gaza since April 6.
But both sides are bracing for a larger operation in the southern city of Rafah, Hamas' last stronghold that Israel has not invaded.
This article is based on interviews with U.S. and Israeli officials, members of Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning, sensitive diplomacy or secret intelligence assessments.
Despite Hamas' heavy losses, much of its top leadership in Gaza remains in place, ensconced in a vast underground network of tunnels and operations centers, calling the shots in the hostage negotiations.
In an annual intelligence assessment released in March, U.S. spy agencies expressed doubts about Israel's ability to truly destroy
Hamas, which the United States has designated a terrorist group.
“Israel probably will face lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come,” the report said, “and the military will struggle to neutralize Hamas' underground infrastructure, which allows insurgents to hide, regain strength and surprise Israeli forces.”
After six intense months, the war has come down to Rafah.
The Israeli military believes four battalions of Hamas fighters are based in the city and that thousands of other fighters have taken refuge there, along with around 1 million civilians.
The Israeli military says those battalions must be dismantled.
Israeli officials said the only way to destroy those battalions is with a major push into Rafah by ground forces. Israeli security experts contend that destroying the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt that supply Hamas with arms will also be a critical goal.
But the planned invasion has become a point of friction between the United States and Israel.
Israel has not developed
a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah, U.S. officials said. Without one, the death toll in Gaza — already about 34,000, according to health officials there — will climb even higher.
U.S. military officials say that Israel should model its plan on the siege of Mosul, Iraq, in 2017 by Iraqi forces and the U.S. Air Force. The operation destroyed large swaths of what was once Iraq's second-largest city. While roughly 3,000 civilians were killed as a result of Iraqi or U.S. military action, by some estimates, the coalition successfully evacuated 1 million residents from the city before the assault on the city.
Since the beginning of the war, Israel has tried to destroy the extensive tunnel network below Gaza.
The system runs for hundreds of miles, at points reaching 15 stories below ground, according to Israeli and U.S. officials. It contains larger complexes of underground rooms, used for command posts and refuges. Hamas has used the tunnels to hide its leaders, hold hostages and allow fighters to escape Israeli attack.
Israel has not been able to destroy the tunnels, which Hamas has spent years building. But Israeli officials say they have taken out most of the key nodes, the underground strategic complexes that Hamas has used to command its forces. About 70% of the complexes have been eliminated, said an Israeli military intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comply with army protocols.
Israeli officials also say their military has killed as many as 13,000 Hamas members, although experts caution that any figures are probably imprecise given the chaos of the war. And in March, Israel killed Marwan Issa, who was the deputy commander of Hamas' military wing and a presumed planner of the Oct. 7 attacks. He is the highest-ranking Hamas military leader eliminated during the war.
Israeli officials said the group and other militant organizations still have many forces above and below ground. In northern Gaza, 4,000 to 5,000 fighters have held out, the Israeli military intelligence official said.
Some Israeli officials say grinding down Hamas may take years.
Benny Gantz, a member of Israel's war Cabinet, told a group of Israelis in January that the war could last “a year, a decade or a generation,” according to a person who participated in the meeting.
U.S. officials blanch at suggestions that intense Israeli operations could go on for two more months, let alone two more years.
They say Israel should declare victory over Hamas and move to a different kind of fight: one that targets senior Hamas leaders but does not brutalize civilians; one focused on preventing Hamas from resupplying and rebuilding, rather than pummeling the fighters that remain.
Equally critical, U.S. officials say, is coming up with a plan to return the governance of Gaza to Palestinians. U.S. and Arab officials are pushing to announce steps toward a demilitarized Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are against such moves. But Israeli officials have been reluctant to engage with Americans on their plans for Gaza, including who they intend to hand power over to, and what proposals for security and governance they would accept.
On Thursday, the United States vetoed a Palestinian bid to be recognized as a full member state at the United Nations, saying the step requires negotiations.
In the absence of Israel allowing a functioning Palestinian government to take charge, chaos and lawlessness have taken over as Israeli troops have withdrawn from parts of Gaza.
Current and former U.S. officials said that while Israel has not, and cannot, destroy Hamas, it has made the likelihood of a repeat of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack remote.
Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli military intelligence chief, agreed. “We've already achieved the most important thing: dismantling Hamas as an organized army capable of an Oct. 7 attack,” he said. “It can't do it again.”