Hamas could declare victory after a cease-fire with Israel that was introduced on Wednesday, however 15 months of battle have left the militant group severely weakened.
Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza, which started weeks after the lethal Oct. 7, 2023, assaults by Hamas, have decimated the 21 battalions that shaped the principle unit of the group’s navy wing, the Qassam Brigades, based on navy analysts.
The whole variety of Hamas fighters killed is unclear. In September, a spokesman for the Israeli navy put the quantity at greater than 17,000, together with quite a lot of senior commanders.
Hamas’s capability to mount sustained and coordinated operations has additionally been drastically diminished, the analysts say. Israel has destroyed giant portions of Hamas’s navy {hardware} and disabled most of the tunnels it used to move and retailer materials.
Israel additionally seized a strip of land that runs alongside Gaza’s southern border in Might, depriving Hamas of a conduit to funnel navy provides and personnel into the enclave from Egypt.
Hamas has misplaced lots of its senior leaders. Israeli forces killed the commander of Hamas’s navy wing, Muhammad Deif, in July; one other high chief, Ismail Haniyeh, later that month; and the group’s chief, Yahya Sinwar, in October. Mr. Sinwar had emerged from 20 years in Israeli prisons to assist plot the Oct. 7 assault.
“Israel labored on the bottom for 15 months with an enormous power and managed to destroy a lot of what Hamas had there,” mentioned Ahron Bregman, a former Israeli navy officer who’s now a political scientist and skilled in Center East safety points at King’s Faculty London.
However he added that Hamas may nonetheless have motive to congratulate itself. “Israel has turned Gaza into mud however Hamas continues to be standing and so they haven’t raised the white flag,” he mentioned.
The Iran-backed regional proxy community that has helped maintain Hamas has additionally been decimated.
Israel stepped up its assault on the Lebanese militia Hezbollah beginning in September, relentlessly concentrating on the group’s personnel and infrastructure by airstrikes and killing its chief Hassan Nasrallah in September. That month, a whole lot of pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded, killing or maiming most of the group’s operatives — in addition to civilians.
Days later, Israel launched an invasion of southern Lebanon.The invasion ended with a cease-fire in November beneath which Hezbollah agreed to cease its missile and drone assaults on Israel, which it had began in solidarity with Hamas.
Final month, rebels toppled Syria’s longtime chief Bashar al-Assad, who had been a key aspect in Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, eliminating Tehran’s major conduit to funnel arms to Hezbollah.
