By Tamara Qiblawi, Allegra Goodwin, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Eugenia Yosef and Ibrahim Dahman | Visuals by Lou Robinson, Carlotta Dotto and Byron Manley | Video by Mark Baron, Barbara Arvanitidis and Alex Platt, CNN
Published August 5, 2024
Nearly half of Hamas’ military battalions in northern and central Gaza have rebuilt some of their fighting capabilities despite more than nine months of Israel’s brutal offensive, according to analyses by the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, the Institute for the Study of War and CNN.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces growing international pressure to agree to a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, has repeatedly said that Israeli forces are nearing their stated goal of eliminating Hamas and destroying its military capabilities. Addressing a joint meeting of Congress on July 24, he said: “Victory is in sight.”
But forensic analyses of Hamas’ military operations since it led attacks against Israel on October 7, which draw on Israeli and Hamas military statements, footage from the ground and interviews with experts and eyewitnesses, cast doubt on his claims.
Israel has dealt a heavy blow to the militant group: senior Hamas figures have been killed and the ongoing offensive has reduced what once was a professional fighting force into a guerrilla army.
Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated last week in Tehran in an attack Iran has blamed on Israel. Israel has not claimed responsibility, but said a day later that Hamas’ top military commander, Mohammad Deif, was killed in a July 13 airstrike in Gaza — a report Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied.
And yet, the research, which covers Hamas’ activities up until July, shows that the group appears to have made effective use of dwindling resources on the ground. Several units have made a comeback in key areas cleared by the Israeli military after pitched battles and intensive bombardment, according to the new analyses, salvaging the remnants of their battalions in a desperate bid to replenish their ranks.
“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.
“(Hamas) are ready to fight and want to fight.”
In a statement to CNN, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) rejected the findings. "The majority of Hamas brigades have been dismantled, and most battalions are at a low level of readiness, meaning they cannot function as a military framework," it said.
In response to a request for comment on the report, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said that all 24 Hamas battalions had been degraded. “Twenty-two of them have been dismantled and no longer function in a military structure, and the IDF is working to dismantle the remaining two,” the PMO said in a statement.
“Israel’s operation in Rafah severely curtailed Hamas’s ability to smuggle weapons into Gaza. These are dramatic IDF achievements on the way to achieving the complete destruction of Hamas’s military capabilities, which the Prime Minister stated is the key to total victory,” it added.
The forensic analyses in this report use definitions from the US military to characterize the status of Hamas units, which differ from Israeli military definitions.