NYT: Hamas Guerilla Tactics Make it Undefeatable

Date: 22 October 2024 - 21:21

News ID: ۱۳۲۷۴۸

OCCUPIED AL-QUDS (Dispatches) -- The top commanders of Hamas are martyred but Hamas’s killing of an Israeli colonel in northern Gaza on Sunday underscored how the group’s military wing is still a potent guerrilla force with enough fighters and munitions to enmesh the Zionist military in a slow, grinding and as yet unwinnable war, the New York Times writes.
Col. Ehsan Daksa, a member of Israel’s Arab Druse minority, was killed when a planted explosive blew up near his tank convoy. It was a surprise attack that exemplified how Hamas has held out for nearly a year since Israel invaded Gaza late last October, and will likely be able to even after the martyrdom of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, last week.
Hamas’s remaining fighters are hiding from view in ruined buildings and the group’s vast underground tunnel network, much of which remains intact despite Israel’s efforts to destroy it, according to military analysts and Israeli soldiers.
The fighters emerge briefly in small units to booby trap buildings, set roadside bombs, attach mines to Israeli armored vehicles or fire rocket-propelled grenades at Zionist forces before returning underground.
Hamas’ small-scale, hit-and-run approach has allowed it to continue to inflict harm on Israel.
“The guerrilla forces are working well and it will be very difficult to subdue them — not just in the short run, but in the long term,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and a former fighter in the group’s military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul, quoted by the Times.
Though Israel may have destroyed Hamas’s long-range rocket caches, al-Awawdeh said, “there are still endless explosive devices and light arms at hand.”
Some of those explosives were stockpiled before the start of the war. Others are repurposed Israeli munitions that failed to explode on impact, according to both Hamas and the Israeli military. Hamas released a video this week that appeared to show Hamas combatants turning an unexploded Israeli missile into an improvised bomb.
Cornered in the ruins of Rafah, Sinwar was martyred by an Israeli unit that could call on tanks, drones and snipers for backup.
But his martyrdom is unlikely to affect the capacity of the Hamas fighters in northern Gaza, according to Israeli and Palestinian analysts.
After over a year of guerrilla fighting, Hamas’s remaining fighters are likely now used to making decisions locally instead of taking orders from a centralized command structure, the Times said.
In addition, the group said over the summer that it had recruited new fighters.
Hamas has also benefited from Israel’s refusal to either hold ground or transfer power in Gaza to an alternative Palestinian leadership. Time and again, Israeli soldiers have forced Hamas from