The Israeli government has been clear. The militant group Hamas will be “eliminated,” many senior government officials, including the country’s prime minister, have said.
Slogans such as “together we will win” regularly appear on some Israeli television channels. But is it really possible to completely eliminate Hamas and “win” in a situation like this?
The short answer, as experts have repeatedly said, is no.
Israel has been bombing the Gaza Strip, home to more than two million Palestinians, since the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas., classified as a terrorist organization by Germany, the European Union, the United States and other countries. Israel has also launched a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and is blocking the supply of food, water and electricity to the enclave.
Despite this, most analysts say that it will not be possible to get rid of Hamas completely. The main reason is that Hamas is more than just a militant organization.
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Hamas as a social movement
Hamas is estimated to have between 20,000 and 30,000 fighters, as Guido Steinberg, an expert on the Near East at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, recently told DW. But, he added, “it is also a social movement with massive support in the Gaza Strip. And that is the long-term problem.”
Hamas has de facto controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, and part of its government consists of a social assistance network known as “dawah.” This civilian network is believed to have between 80,000 and 90,000 members, according to Steinberg.
Dawah means “call” or “invitation” and is historically defined as a way of calling or inviting more believers to one’s faith through social help, explains the Oxford Dictionary of Islam.
Israel “would love to eradicate Hamas as an institution, as a political, religious and cultural structure, and as a military structure,” Rashid Khalidi, professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University in New York, told the Spanish newspaper El País at the end October. “I don’t think they can do the first two things,” he argued. Because, “whether they kill all its leaders or kill all the armed militants, Hamas will remain a political force, whether the Israelis occupy Gaza or leave. So destroying Hamas as a political institution, destroying Hamas as an idea, is impossible.”
Hamas does not recognize the State of Israel. The group believes that religion should be the basis of any Palestinian government. But it is probably its self-designated position as a resistance movement opposed to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories and the Gaza Strip that makes it most popular.
However, Khalidi added, what the Israelis can do is degrade Hamas’s military capabilities, “but only to a certain extent and for a limited period.”
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Destroy Hamas’ military potential
Israel has one of the most powerful militaries in the world, ranking 18th out of 145 nations in 2023 on Global Firepower’s annual armed force list. By comparison, Germany ranks 25th. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that last year Israel spent 4.5 percent of its GDP on defense, more than the United States or Germany, which spent 3.5 percent and 1.4 percent respectively.
Meanwhile, Hamas’s military wing operates more like a guerrilla group and has smuggled most of its weapons into the Gaza Strip.
Thus, Israel undoubtedly has the necessary resources to weaken Hamas and hunt down its leaders. Although the figures cannot be independently verified, The Israeli government recently stated that it believes it has killed between 5,000 and 7,000 Hamas fighters.
If true, this could be considered a partial success, since weakening Hamas may well be the best that could be hoped for. “Some Western officials believe that the Israeli offensive to date, combined with improved border security, has ensured that Hamas does not launch another attack like the one on October 7,” experts from the group wrote last week. think tank International Crisis Group.
“As Hamas did after conflicts with Israel in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021, the group will almost certainly rearm and reset”wrote Dennis Ross, former U.S. envoy to the Near East, in an op-ed for the New York Times, By the end of october. That’s why, he explained, he was against a ceasefire until Hamas had been removed from power.
Guerrilla groups very difficult to defeat
At the same time, very few national armies have managed to decisively defeat guerrilla organizations in the past.
Some unsuccessful examples are the United States’ efforts against the Taliban in Afghanistan and insurgent groups in Iraq. The Sri Lankan government’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers separatist rebel group in that country’s civil war is often cited as a case of a national army winning. But, as is also often pointed out, that victory cost 26 years of war, a death toll of between 80,000 and 100,000, and possible war crimes committed by both sides.
Indeed, in some situations where an insurgent group’s capabilities were weakened but it managed to survive, the group later re-emerged in a more extremist form. A common example is the brutal group “Islamic State,” which evolved from the remnants of Al Qaeda.
Israel itself has never managed to defeat Hamas conclusively, despite killing several of its leaders, including two of the group’s founders.
How to kill an idea?
“The military [israelíes] They can do the best job possible. They can eliminate the leaders. They can destroy missile launch facilities,” said Justin Crump, a terrorism expert who runs Sibylline Ltd, a global intelligence and risk analysis consultancy. “But they will not eliminate the idea of Hamas.”
Destroying Hamas by military means makes no sense, Crump told DW, because “while some Gazans turn against Hamas, other people in Gaza sympathize with Hamas. They will resent Israel for these actions and that will feed the cycle [de violencia] like it always has – unless there is a very big change at the end of this.”
“After more than two months of intense Israeli operations, it is clear that eradicating Hamas, even as a fighting force, will be a difficult task and the pressure to do so will destroy what remains of Gaza,” a political report from the think tank concluded. International Crisis Group, or ICS, published December 9.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, Israel has killed more than 18,000 people and injured more than 49,500 in just two months.; It is estimated that 61 percent of the dead are civilians, according to an analysis by Yagil Levy, professor of sociology at the Open University of Israel, cited by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. More than half of Gaza’s buildings have been destroyed and 90 percent of the population has been displaced.
“Netanyahu claims that the destruction of Hamas will allow the ‘deradicalization’ of Gaza, but the opposite is most likely,” the ICS experts wrote. “The ongoing campaign and its aftermath will produce new, perhaps even more tenacious, forms of militancy.”
Keep reading:
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– The United States vetoed the UN Security Council’s demand for a ceasefire in Gaza
– UN denounces that the south and north of the Gaza Strip suffer the same levels of violence after Israel’s offensive