Can Hamas ever be defeated?

Now that phase one of the deal has come and gone, Hamas appears to be sitting in Gaza expecting Israel to buckle and accept a new deal.

Israel’s prime minister, finance minister and other officials have all threatened to “open the gates of hell” or let hell “break loose” if Hamas doesn’t do what Israel wants. Hamas isn’t buying it, despite the suspension of humanitarian aid to the region.

This leaves questions about whether Israel will go back into Gaza and if it is does what can be achieved. Israel has already fought Hamas in Gaza for 15 months from the day of the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023 until January 2025. The first part of the war consisted of a ground invasion on October 27, 2023 that targeted northern Gaza initially. After Hamas fighters had been partly defeated there, Israel moved its focus to Khan Younis, the city that was also the home of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 massacre. There was a brief ceasefire in late November 2023 that led to the return of dozens of women and children hostages. When Hamas refused to extend that deal, Israel returned to fighting.

Hamas may have lost many thousands of fighters in clashes with the IDF over 15 months. However, it has recruited more. Hamas never lost control of the central camps area in Gaza, an area that includes the urban areas of El Bureij, Nuseirat, Deir al-Balah and Maghazi. These are key Hamas strongholds. Hamas recruits from areas that were founded as Palestinian refugee camps in 1950s. This is where Hamas has had roots for decades. Israel never sent forces to clear out Hamas in this area, apparently because Hamas was holding hostages in central Gaza.

If Israeli leaders decide to go back into Gaza, will they send the IDF back into places they already conquered, or will they expand the operation? While the first 15 months of war led to the IDF sending tanks into many areas, backed by infantry; the fact is that Hamas continued to control much of Gaza. For instance, it controlled the humanitarian area of Mawasi in southern Gaza near the sea. It also continued to control Gaza city. Even when the IDF tried to fully clear Hamas from Jabaliya in northern Gaza in late 2024, it took three months and Hamas was still clinging on.

Israel has a new Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, who took office on March 5.

Israel also has a relatively new defence minister. Together they are likely to want a different set of tactics than the previous leadership. Zamir comes from the IDF armoured corps. This could lead to the use of heavier IDF divisions to crush Hamas.

However, the problem in Gaza is not really one of whether IDF armoured divisions can defeat Hamas. They can. But when Hamas is defeated, it always returns because nature abhors a vacuum. This has happened since the late 1980s when Hamas was founded and grew in Gaza into a terrorist force in the 1990s. In short, Israel’s problem isn’t finding the right general, it’s finding the right strategist. Israel needs a Clausewitz, the 19^th-century Prussian military theorist, to sort out what comes next in Gaza. What Israel doesn’t need is a William Westmoreland, the US general who fought and failed to achieve victory in Vietnam. Trump has floated a plan to re-settle people from Gaza in other countries. Israel’s current leaders have paid lip service to supporting this plan.

But the Arab states in the region have all opposed the Trump plan, instead neeting in Cairo this week to hammer out their own ideas of what should happen in Gaza.

The fact that Arab states are stepping up to the plate to finally come up with a plan for the Strip is a good sign and means that Trump’s rhetoric has galvanised them to do something. In the absence of a clear Israeli plan, the Arab plan may have legs. However, Israel’s current leadership has not been open to Arab initiatives in the past. For Hamas, this is good news. Hamas knows that the longer Israel doesn’t have a clear plan, and the more the Arab states squabble with the White House, the more time Hamas has to regrow its tentacles in Gaza and recruit.

Hamas has lost much of its rocket arsenal and it has lost other capabilities in the 16 months of war but it still has tunnels and thousands of armed men. It has also turned to making improvised explosive devices to target the IDF over the last year.

This means that it is shifting tactics. Hamas’ goal is to survive and keep getting hostage deals so it can drag out the conflict and eventually get Israel to leave Gaza. Hamas then estimates that it will be able to come to power in the West Bank when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas eventually passes away.

Hamas has a long-term strategy. It also has friends in high places, in Qatar, Turkey, Iran and Russia. As such, Hamas assumes that if it waits long enough it will hand Israel a fait accompli. Israel will need to take the initiative if it isn’t going to simply keep reacting to Hamas, Arab states and Trump’s plan.