Despite global pushback, Israel sees progress in Gaza campaign against Hamas

ALUMIM, ISRAEL — Israeli military commanders say their campaign against Palestinian Hamas militants is scoring some major victories, as much of the world focuses on the humanitarian plight of Gaza civilians.

Hamas has suffered significant setbacks in the last week as Israeli forces push forward in both northern and southern Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said this week that Hamas is nearing a breaking point in northern Gaza, where its units are facing constant Israel Defense Forces attacks in two neighborhoods near Gaza City.

In southern Gaza, where Yahya Sinwar and other senior Hamas military leaders are widely believed to be, Israeli troops are scoring gains in Khan Yunis, the largest city in the southern part of the densely populated enclave.

“We have encircled the last strongholds of Hamas in Jabalia and Shuja’iya, the battalions that were considered invincible, that prepared for years to fight us, are on the verge of being dismantled,” Mr. Gallant told reporters Monday.

The state of the military machine controlled by Hamas, which Israel, the U.S. and many Western nations consider a terrorist organization, is emerging as a key question of the war. Analysts say the Hamas military leadership in Gaza remains able to field and direct thousands of fighters to combat the Israel incursion even as the militants suffer heavy losses.

Hamas and other Palestinian extremist groups also still hold more than 150 military and civilian hostages that Israeli forces have been unable to locate.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has vowed to continue the offensive until the hostages are returned and Hamas is defeated militarily and no longer in charge in Gaza. 

The U.S. has backed the Israeli campaign but President Biden on Tuesday again warned the Netanyahu government over its tactics, saying Israel risked losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza.

“Israel’s security can rest on the United States, but right now it has more than the United States. It has the European Union, it has Europe, it has most of the world supporting them,” Biden said to donors during a fundraiser Tuesday. “They’re starting to lose that support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”

The president said he thought Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understood, but he wasn’t so sure about the Israeli war cabinet. U.S. officials revealed that Mr. Biden’s top national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is heading to Israel this week to consult directly about timetables for ending major combat.

Hamas had an estimated 10 battalions in northern Gaza, according to Israel Defense Forces’ estimates provided last month. Many of those units were badly mauled in battles in November.

When a brief cease-fire to allow prisoner exchanges broke down on Dec. 1, Israel set its sights on Jabalia and Shuja’iya, two built-up areas near Gaza City that form a core of Hamas operations and were regularly targeted by the IDF in previous wars with the militant group.

Hamas controls neighborhoods via battalions of fighters, roughly several hundred men in each neighborhood. The battalions form part of a northern Gaza brigade.

Analysts estimate Hamas may command up to 25,000 fighters, but the militia has suffered major losses in this war. Israel National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel’s Channel 12 that 7,000 terrorists have been killed in Gaza.

“It could be more, because we don’t know everything beneath places that collapsed and tunnels,” he said.

The senior Hamas leadership is also suffering losses, Israeli officials insist. Commanders have been eliminated and their replacements have been targeted as well.

In one case, the Hamas Shuja’iya, battalion commander was eliminated, and his deputy, Emad Krikae, an expert in anti-tank warfare, took his place — briefly. Krikae was then killed over the weekend, the IDF said on Dec. 10.

“Krikae was also part of anti-tank missile fire and terrorist raids carried out inside Israeli territory. Following the elimination of the commander of Hamas’ Shuja’iya, Battalion during the war, Krikae temporarily assumed the position of battalion commander, before also being killed by the IDF,” the Israeli military said.

Hamas remains a formidable foe: Its units know the neighborhoods they control and they have an extensive tunnel system beneath those areas.

But the group’s ability to conduct attacks and fire rockets has been greatly reduced in the last month, to judge from the sharply reduced volume of rocket fire into Israel.

Hamas and other groups in Gaza now manage only one large barrage a day, usually trying to target Tel Aviv, a sharp drop from the thousands of rockets they fired the first day of their attack on Oct. 7. 

Back to life

As the war grinds on, there are already signs the Israeli regions ravaged by Hamas two months ago are slowly coming back to life.

On Monday, the roads near the Gaza border in southern Israel were flowing with civilian traffic for one of the first times since the war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked 20 border communities, laid waste to numerous areas and killed more than 1,200 people.

For the first two months of the war, the area around Alumim, a kibbutz near Gaza that saw fierce fighting on Oct. 7, was a broken landscape. Tens of thousands of Israelis had been evacuated, and many of the small communities, known as kibbutzim, became ghost towns.

Israel even evacuated the city of Sderot, home to some 30,000 people. Businesses closed and civilian traffic was barred from most areas near the border because of the war. IDF units poured in by the thousands. Three IDF divisions, tens of thousands of men, slipped into the border area and then pushed into Gaza in late October.

Today much has changed.

The sound of artillery throwing 155 mm shells into Gaza is ever-present in some areas. But even the artillery, which sits behind the front to support infantry and tanks, is now moving forward into Gaza.

“In recent days, soldiers from the 282nd Brigade have been operating in the Gaza Strip, in cooperation with the 188th Brigade in the Shuja’iya, area of the Gaza Strip. During their operation, the Artillery Corps struck over 20 terrorist targets, including weapons storage facilities, booby-trapped houses and terror infrastructure of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the IDF said on Dec. 10.

With the artillery moving forward, civilians can now drive from Sderot toward Yad Mordechai, a border road that takes them close to Erez, an Israeli community on the Gaza border.

Erez also used to be the name of a crossing point to Gaza, now closed after it was ransacked and attacked by Hamas in the initial rampage. In the early days of the war, Route 34 was a deadly thoroughfare. Hamas terrorists killed people in Erez, and Israeli police and counterterror units stayed up every night in the days after the ambush continuing to hunt down infiltrators.

Now cars are driving here again, even as smoke can be seen rising in the distance from battles in Shuja’iya, and Jabalia near Gaza.