The Israeli military has killed thousands of Hamas fighters in Gaza, decimated its weapon stockpiles and destroyed much of its underground tunnel network.
That onslaught has forced Hamas’s battered military wing to change. Once an organized army, it has transformed itself into scattered groupings of fighters, focused on digging in and surviving the war, while staging ambushes of Israeli soldiers.
“On the ground, there are no longer fixed Hamas strongholds in the conventional military sense,” said Wesam Afifa, the former executive director of Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV. “What remains today are small, mobile resistance cells fighting in guerrilla style.”
Hamas, though, is still a powerful Palestinian force in Gaza. And Israeli troops began a full-scale ground invasion on Gaza City this week, in an operation that officials hope will lead to the destruction of the group.
It is a risky operation, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are living in the area, unable or unwilling to flee to overcrowded areas with scarce resources.
On the battlefield, Hamas has adopted a strategy of staging hit-and-run attacks, rather than engaging in direct combat with Israeli forces, which have a vast military advantage. The group has been planting explosives under roads, in residential buildings and on top of Israeli military vehicles, according to Israeli security officials. In recent months, Hamas’s military wing has published videos of fighters in civilian dress approaching tanks, armored personnel carriers and soldiers before firing on them and then running away.
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The post Battered but Undefeated, Hamas Remains a Fighting Force in Gaza appeared first on New York Times.
