• The reality of Israel’s inability to destroy Hamas has been declared by Israeli Defence Force Intel.
• The continuation of a genocide under the guise of an unattainable objective.
According to a report from Israel’s Channel 12 television show aired on Thursday, Israel’s military intelligence circulated a document to Israeli leaders this week saying that:
“hamas will survive as a terror group and a guerrilla group”.
The document states that regardless of whether Hamas is dismantled or not, its existence will remain and that ‘authentic support’ for Hamas remains among Gazans.
Seeing as there is no effort being put into a plan for the ‘day after’ the genocide in Gaza ends, the document also warns that ‘Gaza will become an area of deep crisis’. Channel 12’s investigative journalist, Ilana Dayan, said that the report was sent to the Israeli political echelon on Monday.
At the start of the genocide in Gaza, prime minister Netanyahu claimed that his aim was an ‘absolute victory’ in Gaza, and he later reiterated this claim early this month after rejecting a ceasefire proposed by Hamas. This repetitive sequence of a claim that has now been debunked by the Israeli intelligence themselves, sheds light on how Israel’s initial ambition of destroying Hamas in its entirety has come to a failure.
The reality of Israel’s accomplishments in Gaza
As we read our newsfeed on our devices or switch on the TV, we hear about the looming invasion of Rafah, which hosts 1.5 million Palestinians. To many, it will seem apparent that the very fact that Israel has been able to occupy or take over the rest of Gaza is a sign that Hamas has been wiped out in the regions outside of Rafah. However, it has already been stated by aid organisations that Hamas has once again started to operate in northern Gaza, in regions previously cleared by Israel. How is this possible? Last month, US intelligence revealed that up to 80% of Hamas tunnels remain intact, with systems in place to prevent their destruction, such as barricades. Israel has tried numerous times to flood the tunnels with seawater, but it was found that flooding the tunnels is not an effective way of actually destroying them because of the barricades that Hamas had installed in anticipation. It’s likely that either Hamas was not truly defeated in Northern Gaza for their presence to once again reappear or they strategically manoeuvred in a way to reclaim the land they had lost after the Israelis had left. This again reiterates the point made by the IDF intelligence report that Hamas cannot be destroyed. With as much experience in both governance and combat within Hamas, it becomes very feasible that any vacuum left in Gaza as a result of the genocide will only backfire on Israel and be sucked up by Hamas. Last month, according to The Wall Street Journal, US intelligence stated that 20–30% of Hamas were killed. This was a stark rebuke to Netanyahu’s claim that two-thirds of Hamas were wiped out and shows that Hamas may very well still have the numbers to not just govern and reclaim land but also facilitate the reclamation of its lost military numbers through recruitment.
Israel’s continuation of this genocide sheds light on its real objectives
Rafah, an area of Gaza that hosts more than a million people, at risk of invasion by Israeli forces
For a long time, officials throughout the world have said that eliminating Hamas in its entirety would be unlikely or impossible. Yet Israeli officials have continued to suggest that their ambition is to destroy Hamas in its entirety. Now that the IDF’s intelligence has admitted that the Israeli government is incapable of destroying Hamas, why is Israel persisting in its genocide? Why plan to attack Rafah, knowing Hamas will still be around once you’re gone? The hard truth that unfortunately many Western governments and politicians have turned a blind eye to is that Israel’s ambitions are the removal of the Palestinian people from Gaza, whether it be by annihilation or forced displacement.
The objective of Israel from the very beginning was to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people by pushing them into the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. It is estimated that the entirety of Gaza is now in a state of starvation with cataclysmic levels of acute hunger. Israel’s objective that it gave to the international community as an excuse to start this genocide in Gaza was to destroy Hamas and bring back hostages. None of these two objectives seem possible anymore. Time will tell if this will open the eyes of western politicians who continue to provide Israel with weapons and arms.
Hamas is designated a terrorist group in the United Kingdom. S2J News would like to clarify that we do not endorse any particular groups. Instead, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian civilians who are being massacred daily.
