Israel deals a heavy blow to Hamas’ military leadership – Charlotte Lawson

July 18, 2024

TEL AVIV, Israel – After months of incremental progress in Gaza, Israel appears to have achieved its greatest military and intelligence feat of the war yet: the assassination of top Hamas commander Mohammed Deif. Although official confirmation is still awaited, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) increasingly believe that an airstrike on Saturday in Khan Younis killed the elusive figure who has been at the top of Israel’s target list for decades.

The likely death of Hamas’ military chief comes at a turning point for Jerusalem. While some Israeli politicians are calling on the government to reach a deal that will allow the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and allow soldiers to focus on the conflict with Hezbollah on the northern front, others see Deif’s attack as an opportunity to deal a decisive blow to a weakened Hamas. Nine months of almost non-stop attacks by Israeli forces seem to have finally given Israel leverage both at the negotiating table and on the ground in Gaza.

Deif – a key planner of the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war, a longtime ally of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and the mastermind of numerous suicide bombings and kidnappings – has narrowly escaped several Israeli assassination attempts in the past. But the military is increasingly confident that Saturday’s operation, which targeted a compound owned by Hamas brigade commander Rafa Salama, was finally a success.

The Israeli military announced the “elimination” of Salama on Sunday – an operational victory in itself, given his close ties to Sinwar and his high military rank.—Israeli intelligence had determined before the attack that he was with Deif in a building used by Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip. The terror group has denied reports of Deif’s death, but his chances of surviving the airstrike – which used bunker-busting bombs to target possible underground buildings – are slim. The military chief’s assassination would be a major victory in a war that has often been measured in incremental successes in recent months, as Israeli forces focus on targeted attacks and operations to clear individual towns of Hamas militants.

Since the war began, the Israeli army says it has eliminated or arrested around 14,000 Hamas fighters, including six brigade commanders and more than 20 battalion commanders. This leaves an estimated 16,000 Hamas fighters on the battlefield in Gaza, but has nonetheless contributed to the collapse of the military wing’s command and control capabilities. Its missile arsenal has been greatly reduced, as has its ability to rearm.

“When you see a brigade or a battalion losing its command structure and no longer being able to act as a cohesive unit and becoming small units conducting guerrilla warfare – that is an important benchmark,” said Assaf Orion, a defense strategist at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a retired brigadier general in the Israel Defense Forces. The shipping.

“But the long-term test would be not just how much they lose, but how much and how quickly they can regenerate and revive. Young, angry men are not in short supply in Gaza,” Orion added. “Long-range missiles are somewhat rarer. The ability to build them in factories is even more limited and has been severely compromised.”

Key to preventing Hamas from rearming in the long term is the ongoing Israeli military operation in the area of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which has uncovered Gaza’s largest network of tunnels, including underground smuggling routes to Egypt. Behind the scenes, Israeli officials have asked Egypt for cooperation to prevent the flow of weapons from the Sinai Peninsula to Gaza, including through the possible construction of underground barriers and sensors. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke of “progress” with the Egyptians in a statement last week, but an Israeli military withdrawal from the Philadelphia Corridor – a 13-kilometer strip of land between Egypt and Gaza – without a firm agreement with Cairo to help cut off Hamas’ smuggling routes remains unlikely.

In Rafah and elsewhere, tunnels remain one of the biggest challenges for the Israeli military, which can barely locate and destroy a network at least 560 kilometers long without ground troops. Entering the booby-trapped and well-defended tunnels poses a major danger to Israeli troops, although summer heat and humidity, as well as Israeli operations, are reportedly forcing increasing numbers of Hamas fighters to leave their underground hideouts.

“The biggest challenge for the Israeli forces in Gaza is the tunnel complex. You cannot defeat Hamas militarily without destroying all these hundreds of kilometers of tunnels,” said Yoni Ben-Menachem, an Israel-based expert on Arab affairs. The shipping“And it is estimated that Hamas is holding some of the hostages here.”

Therein lies another obstacle to Israel’s military campaign: More than 130 hostages, both living and dead, are still in Gaza. And an agreement to release them in exchange for a cessation of fighting is currently out of reach. WashingtonPost As outlined last week, the broad framework for such an agreement is in place, but the devil is in the details. Israel reportedly dispatched its negotiating team this week to continue internationally brokered talks, despite potential fallout from Deif’s apparent assassination.

Under the current proposal’s guidelines, the first phase would see Israel impose a six-week ceasefire in return for Hamas releasing 33 hostages — women and wounded men over 50. Once that process is complete, Phase 2 would involve a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the formation of security forces trained by the U.S., backed by moderate Arab countries and staffed by Palestinian Authority personnel in Gaza. But as in previous rounds of negotiations, Hamas remains reluctant to reach an agreement. CNN reported that a CIA assessment found growing tensions between Hamas’ leadership in Qatar, which wants a deal, and Sinwar, who does not.

With the prospects of a deal hanging in the balance and Hamas exhausted, some Israeli politicians argue that the Israeli military should focus on delivering a military knock-out blow to the terror group. Military pressure makes a hostage deal more likely, the argument goes, and a victory over Hamas makes its successful implementation more feasible.

“The world is focused on achieving a ceasefire and ending the war. In the long term, I think it is equally important to address the root causes that brought us October 7 – the massive flow of weapons into Gaza, the flow of money into Hamas’ hands, and the continued legitimacy Hamas derives from controlling Gaza and using human suffering as a weapon,” Orion said. “We must dry up the sources of legitimacy, funding and weapons to allow the emergence of a normal and responsible form of government there.”