Nearly half of the Hamas military battalions in northern and central Gaza have rebuilt some of their fighting capabilities despite the more than nine months of war, according to an investigation by CNN, in cooperation with the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project and the Institute for the Study of War.
The analyses relied on thousands of claims by the IDF and by Hamas. CNN published a map of active and non-active battalions in Gaza.
According to the research, only three of the 24 Hamas battalions were destroyed, 13 were degraded and able to carry out only limited attacks, and eight remain "combat effective." Most of them are in the central part of the Strip where Israeli sources told CNN the military believes hostages were being held, restricting possible action against them.
Meanwhile, Hamas has been rebuilding its capabilities in central Gaza, according to the research. The study found that the Israeli offensive has increased the incentives of Gazans to join the terror group.
“The Israelis would say that they cleared a place, but they haven’t fully cleared these areas, they haven’t defeated these fighters at all,” said Brian Carter, Middle East portfolio manager for Critical Threats Project (CTP), who led the joint research with the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) into patterns of Hamas and Israeli military activity.
The report comes in direct contradiction to claims by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel's offensive on Gaza was nearing victory and that military pressure on Hamas would bring about the release of hostages.
CNN quotes American military experts who say there would be no military defeat over Hamas and that a political solution is needed. "The ability of Hamas to reconstitute its fighting forces is undiminished," retired U.S. Army Col. Peter Mansoor said.
CNN quotes an unnamed former senior officer in the IDF who said Hamas is able to add thousands of volunteers to its forces in recent months.
One of the interviewees in the investigation is a senior officer in the IDF who spoke anonymously, and according to CNN admitted to the difficulty of disbanding the Hamas battalions. "Wherever Hamas raises its head, we go in," he emphasized. "Can this ping-pong go on forever? No. Our society is not built for this. And there is the international community," he added, referring to the growing pressure from the U.S. and the world to end the war. The officer compared the war in Gaza to "a marathon runner who doesn't know where the stadium is. You run and you don't know if you're going in the right direction."
Officials in the Gaza Strip told CNN that, as part of Hamas's reconstruction efforts in the ruins of the northern Gaza Strip, operatives of the terrorist organization are walking around the markets in civilian clothes, using buildings burned during the fighting as centers for terrorists or public service providers - and hiding weapons under the debris.
"The presence of Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip is greater than you can imagine," a Palestinian citizen told the news network. "They are among the civilians. This helps them rebuild their forces," added the same Palestinian who fled from the north of the Strip and spoke anonymously for fear that Hamas would take revenge on him.