NEW YORK: U.S. intelligence agencies believe that after 100 days of Israeli war on Gaza, Israel has fallen short so far of its goal of destroying Hamas, but leaves behind swaths of the enclave in ruins, according to The Wall Street Journal, a major American daily newspaper.
Citing U.S. officials who confirmed a classified evaluation, the report said that “Hamas still has enough munitions to continue striking Israel and Israeli forces in Gaza for months, and that the group is attempting to reconstitute its police force in parts of Gaza City.”
In their report, the spy agencies highlighted Hamas’ resilience over the past months, saying the Israeli war has killed 20 to 30 percent of members of the resistance movement, The Wall Street Journal said on Sunday.
Israeli officials have conceded that they have not achieved their goal of obliterating Hamas despite killing thousands of civilians in the aggressive air and ground campaign on Gaza, the report added.
It also cited military analysts as referring to adjusted tactics by Hamas fighters, saying they are operating in smaller groups and hiding between ambushes on Israeli troops, while individual fighters are likely taking on more tasks to pick up the slack from their martyred comrades.
Israel waged the war on besieged Gaza on October 7 after Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
However, more than three months into the offensive, Israeli occupation forces seem stuck in the Gaza war despite killing 25,105 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring more than 62,000 others.
The report said that US officials have begun to scale down their expectations for the Gaza war and that they have urged Israel to shift toward more targeted operations aimed at Hamas’ leadership.
The US estimated that Hamas had between 25,000 and 30,000 fighters before the Gaza offensive in addition to thousands of police and other forces, according to the report.
The Israeli military estimated that it has killed about 9,000 out of at least 30,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza with over 1,000 during the October 7 attack, amounting to about 30 percent of the resistance group’s total fighting force.
Citing a senior Israeli military official, the report said as many as 16,000 Hamas fighters have been wounded and about half of those will not return to the battlefield.
It further noted that the US estimates between 10,500 and 11,700 resistance fighters have been injured, and many of those could eventually return to the battleground.
In US military doctrine, a conventional force that loses 25%-30% of its fighters would be considered combat-ineffective. But Hamas is an irregular force fighting a defensive war in a dense urban environment and has access to hundreds of miles of tunnels under Gaza.
It has shown that it can still fight, said retired Army General Joseph Votel, who commanded US military operations in the Middle East.
Thousands of Palestinians have reportedly been returning to the north of the Gaza Strip after the withdrawal of some Israeli forces from the area.
Recently, the Israeli military withdrew thousands of forces from the Gaza Strip in the first significant troop pullback since the devastating war began.
An Israeli military officer said Hamas authorities have returned to Gaza City, including to areas previously held by the regime’s army.
“It’s only a matter of time if Israel will not be boots on the ground in these places and that they will also bring back the military wing,” said Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian affairs for Israeli military intelligence.
