How Hamas wants to trap the Israeli forces in the Gaza tunnel
Hamas, which rules Gaza, has stockpiled weapons, rockets, food and medical supplies.
Hamas Gaza Tunnels: Hamas has been preparing for a long, drawn-out war in the Gaza Strip and believes it can hold off Israel’s advance long enough to force its archenemy to agree to a ceasefire, two sources close to the leadership said. organization.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, has stockpiled weapons, rockets, food and medical supplies, said the people, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation. The group is confident that thousands of fighters can survive for months in a city with tunnels carved deep beneath the Palestinian enclave and frustrate Israeli forces with urban guerrilla tactics, the people told Reuters.
Ultimately, Hamas believes that international pressure on Israel to end the siege as civilian casualties mount could force a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement, with the militant group emerging with a tangible concession such as the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli prisoners. hostages, the sources said.
The group has made clear to the US and Israel during indirect, Qatari-mediated hostage negotiations that it will seek such a prisoner release in exchange for hostages, according to four Hamas officials, a regional official and a person familiar with the group’s plans. White House. think.
In the longer term, Hamas has said it wants to end Israel’s 17-year blockade of Gaza, as well as Israeli settlement expansion and what Palestinians see as heavy-handed actions by Israeli security forces at Al-Aqsa mosque, the most sacred Muslim mosque. sanctuary in Jerusalem.
On Thursday, UN experts called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, saying Palestinians there were “at high risk of genocide.” Many experts see a spiraling crisis, with no clear endgame in sight for either side.
“The mission to destroy Hamas is not easy to achieve,” said Marwan Al-Muasher, the former Jordanian foreign minister and deputy prime minister who now works for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
“There is no military solution to this conflict. We are in some dark times. This war will not be short-lived.”
Israel has deployed overwhelming aerial firepower since the October 7 attack in which Hamas gunmen left the Gaza Strip, killing 1,400 Israelis and taking 239 hostages.
The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 9,000, with each day of violence fueling protests around the world over the fate of more than 2 million Gazans trapped in the tiny enclave, many without water, food or power. Israeli airstrikes hit an overcrowded refugee camp in Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least fifty Palestinians and a Hamas commander.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to eradicate Hamas and has rejected calls for a ceasefire. Israeli officials say they have no illusions about what lies ahead and accuse the militants of hiding behind civilians.
The country has braced itself for a “long and painful war,” said Danny Danon, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN and former member of the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee.
“We know that in the end we will prevail and we will defeat Hamas,” he told Reuters. “The question will be the price, and we have to be very careful and understand that it is a very complex urban area to maneuver.”
The United States has said now is not the time for a blanket ceasefire, although it says pauses in hostilities are necessary to provide humanitarian aid.
HAMAS ‘Fully prepared’
Adeeb Ziadeh, a Palestinian international affairs expert at Qatar University who has studied Hamas, said the group must have had a longer-term plan to follow the attack on Israel.
“Those who carried out the October 7 attack, with this level of skill, this level of expertise, precision and intensity, would have prepared themselves for a prolonged battle. It is not possible for Hamas to carry out such an attack without being fully prepared and mobilized for the outcome,” Ziadeh told Reuters.
Washington expects Hamas will try to bog down Israeli forces in street-by-street fighting in Gaza and inflict enough military casualties to weaken Israeli public support for a protracted conflict, the source familiar with Israel’s thinking said the White House and who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak freely.
Israeli officials have nevertheless emphasized to their American counterparts that they are prepared to confront Hamas’ guerrilla tactics and withstand international criticism of their offensive, the person said. Whether the country will be able to eliminate Hamas or merely seriously degrade the organization remains an open question, the source added.
Hamas has about 40,000 fighters, according to the group’s sources. They can move around the enclave using a vast web of fortified tunnels, hundreds of kilometers long and up to 80 meters deep, built over many years.
According to residents and videos, militants in Gaza were seen emerging from tunnels on Thursday to fire at tanks and then disappear back into the network, according to residents and videos.
The Israeli army says soldiers from the special combat engineering unit Yahalom worked with other forces to locate and destroy tunnel shafts during what a spokesman called a “complex urban battle” in Gaza.
Hamas has fought a series of wars with Israel in recent decades and Ali Baraka, Hamas’s Beirut-based head of external relations, said it has gradually improved its military capabilities, especially its missiles. In the 2008 Gaza war, Hamas rockets had a maximum range of 40 km (25 miles), but that had increased to 230 km in the 2021 conflict, he added.
“In every war we surprise the Israelis with something new,” Baraka told Reuters.
An official close to the Iran-backed Lebanese movement Hezbollah, which is affiliated with Hamas, said the Palestinian militant group’s fighting strength remained largely intact after weeks of bombing. According to Hezbollah and Hamas officials, Hezbollah has a joint military operations room in Lebanon with Hamas and other allied factions in a regional network backed by Iran.
CALLS FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL
Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist movement by Israel, the US and the EU, called for Israel’s destruction in its 1988 founding charter.
In a subsequent document, known as the 2017 charter, the group for the first time accepted the idea of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders that Israel claimed after the Six-Day War, although the group did not explicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Hamas official Osama Hamdan, who is based in Beirut, said the October 7 attack and the unfolding Gaza war would put the issue of Palestinian statehood back on the map.
“It is an opportunity for us to tell them that we can determine our destiny with our own hands. We can regulate the equality of the region in a way that serves our interests,” he told Reuters.
Hamas gained power after the Oslo Peace Accord, agreed in 1993 between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to end decades of conflict, hit a wall. Netanyahu first won power in 1996. Palestinians and U.S. negotiators said his administration’s refusal over the years to halt Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank undermined efforts to create a separate Palestinian state. Israeli officials have denied in the past that settlements were an obstacle to peace, and Netanyahu’s current far-right coalition has taken an even tougher stance against ceding occupied land.
An Arab peace initiative, with broad international and unanimous Arab support, has been on the table since 2002. The plan offers Israel peace treaties with full diplomatic ties in exchange for a sovereign Palestinian state.
Netanyahu has opted instead to seek an Arab Sunni alliance with Israel, consisting of Egypt and Jordan – countries with which Israel has peace treaties dating from 1979 and 1994 – and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. Before the October 7 Hamas attack, he was in US-mediated talks with Saudi Arabia to forge a historic diplomatic deal as a united front against Iran, but that process has since been put on hold.
Muasher, the former Jordanian minister at Carnegie, said Hamas’ attack ended any possibility that stability could be achieved in the Middle East without pandering to the Palestinians.
“It is clear today that without peace with the Palestinians there will be no peace in the region.”
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Simon Lewis, Steve Holland and Phil Stewart in Washington and James Mackenzie in Jerusalem; Writing by Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Angus McDowall and Pravin Char)