EVEN US intelligence agencies estimate that the death toll among Hamas fighters from Israel’s ongoing attempt to crush the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip falls short of the Netanyahu regime’s goal of eliminating the Palestinian resistance group.
In a classified report, the spy agencies highlighted Hamas’ resilience over the past months, saying the Israeli war has killed 20 to 30 per cent of members of the resistance movement, the Wall Street Journal says.
‘Hamas still has enough munitions to continue striking Israel and Israeli forces in Gaza for months, and the group is attempting to reconstitute its police force in parts of Gaza City,’ said US officials who confirmed the report.
Israeli officials in fact have conceded that they have not achieved their goal of obliterating Hamas despite killing tens of thousands of civilians and children in the murderous air and ground campaign on Gaza, the report indicates.
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 genocidal war on besieged Gaza on October 7 after Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm and inflicted a major defeat on Israel.
However, more than three months into the offensive, the Netanyahu regime is stuck in the Gaza quagmire despite killing 25,105 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring more than 62,000 others.
The report said that US officials have been forced to begin to scale down their expectations for the Gaza war and that they have urged Israel to shift toward more targeted operations aimed at the Hamas’ leadership.
Hamas is still fighting despite casualties. 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 per cent of the resistance group’s total fighting force.
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 withdraw thousands of forces from the Gaza Strip in the first significant troop pull-back 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 put boots on the ground in these places that they will also bring back the military wing,’ said Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian affairs for Israeli military intelligence.
A senior member of Hamas, Ghazi Hamad says that Israel is collapsing by committing the biggest crimes against humanity at the internal, social, military and political levels and, today, has been brought to international courts.’ He added: ‘More than 100 days into the campaign, the regime has achieved no objectives despite killing more than 24,900 people, mostly women and children.’
Workers in the USA, UK and the EU support Hamas. Now is the time to show that support by calling general strikes to bring down their governments and bring in Workers Governments that will carry out socialist polices at home and abroad.
Victory to the Palestinian masses! Forward to the victory of the world socialist revolution to smash imperialism and capitalism worldwide.
