The war that changed nothing: Israel’s struggle to break Hamas

Hillel Biton Rosen, an analyst for Channel 14 — a key media ally of Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet — stressed that Hamas currently constitutes the most powerful structure in the Gaza Strip, and that Israel entered the implementation of the agreement with the issue of disarming Hamas postponed to later stages of talks.

According to this analyst, the first challenge in this process is that Hamas still controls a large part of the Gaza Strip. At the same time, it is reported that Hamas retains rockets capable of striking the Israeli heartland.

The analyst then concedes Israel’s failure to achieve the objectives of this war and admits: one of Israel’s war aims was to disarm Hamas; the success of this war will be measured by that yardstick, but we are witnessing indicators that point in the opposite direction.

The most important parameter is control of the field: from the moment the ceasefire took effect, Hamas deployed its police forces, and today we see these forces controlling areas of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City and major refugee camps. Undoubtedly, Hamas remains the most powerful structure in the Gaza Strip.

From the analyst’s perspective, a second problem Israel currently faces is that Hamas still possesses rockets that can target the heart of Israel. This is a major problem for Israel: Hamas continues to control territory and hold weapons, and therefore retains the capacity to retake power in Gaza if it so chooses.

Without explaining the reasons for Israel’s failure to weaken Hamas’s power over two years of war and atrocities in Gaza, the analyst — in a forward-leaning gambit — claimed: if in the coming months you see the United States prevent us from attacking Gaza, we will be forced this time to strike without restraint, because we no longer have hostages in Hamas’s hands and will have greater freedom to carry out our attacks.