Hamas’s 24 battalions have been almost completely “shattered,” and the terror organization has been reduced to a “guerrilla” force, according to Israeli government spokesman David Mencer in a media briefing on Thursday.
Mencer was commenting on the report Wednesday by Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant that Israeli soldiers had recovered a memorandum from a dead senior Hamas commander to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in which he said that the terrorist group had been reduced to 25% of its former capacity, that it was running out of rockets, and that it was losing support from the Palestinian civilian population, whose morale had been shattered by the war over time.
Hamas still holds 101 Israeli hostages, as many as 68 of whom may still be alive, and Sinwar is still hiding from Israeli forces. Yet there have been almost no rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza in recent months, and residents of some of the Israeli communities that Hamas attacked on October 7 have begun to return safely to their homes. Mencer said that Hamas is still dangerous, and that the war continues, but noted that Israel had in fact made dramatic strides.
Prior to Israel entering Rafah in May — over the objections of the Biden administration, and in the face of a partial withholding of weapons shipments — Israel had destroyed 18 of Hamas’s 24 battalions. The remaining six were in Rafah. Israel now appears to have destroyed or severely damaged all of the battalions, ending Hamas’s ability to function, for the moment, as a unified military force, and shifting the tactics of the war toward counterinsurgency.
However, as long as Hamas still holds Israeli hostages, and threatens to rearm — or to escape, with hostages, if Israeli troops leave the Philadelphi Corridor that runs along the Egyptian border — the long war will continue in Gaza.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
