150 days of war on Gaza: Israel far from eliminating Hamas, will create governance vacuum if it does, analysts warn

By Rabia Ali

ISTANBUL (AA) - Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has crossed the five-month mark, with the Israeli army killing thousands of Palestinians, displacing hundreds of thousands and reducing entire cities to rubble.

But experts believe that Israel has failed to accomplish its war goals and is still looking for ways to defeat Hamas politically, such as recent reports about how it is not letting the group take charge of the limited humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

According to Tahani Mustafa, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, Israel has not been able to accomplish a single military objective it set out to achieve.

Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, also believes that Israel has been “very unsuccessful” and is dragging out the war without a clear vision or strategy.

- Failed strategies

Commenting on Israel’s war strategy, Krieg said Hamas has been engaging in urban warfare, and usually attacks from “the rear and through ambushes and then disappears again.”

He said this is why there “hasn’t been any way for the Israeli army to really kill or arrest large parts of the fighting force that belongs to Hamas and the different Hamas entities.”

Krieg said around 20-30% of Hamas fighters have been killed, which is a very low number “considering how long the war has been going on and how much destruction it has already caused across the territory.”

However, Israel has potentially been significantly and strategically weakening Hamas’ missile capability, which has resulted in less missiles being fired, he told Anadolu.

Regarding another Israeli aim, the release of Israeli hostages, Krieg said “not even a handful of hostages were freed by (the Israeli army), which again shows that a ‘military-only’ approach to freeing hostages is never going to work.”

The only real significant contribution to the release of hostages was through negotiations, he added.

“So, in that respect, Israel has also failed with its strategy. It has actually killed more hostages than it has freed by military force,” he said.

In Mustafa’s assessment, the military wing of Hamas “has not even been minutely affected.

Israel has an army that does not know how to incur losses and gets demoralized very easily, she told Anadolu, adding that a big schism is now visible between the military and political establishment.

Israel is also facing a credibility issue where a lot of their previous claims have been debunked, she said.

“Initially, Israel had said that Hamas’ base was in the north and its command center was in the north, and the fact is that they weren’t able to qualify that. There was no evidential proof of any of these accusations and assumptions that were being made,” she said.

“Now we’re hearing them say that they have to go into the south, and Rafah is proving to be the last bastion of Hamas with the last four battalions – again, something that they are claiming without any serious proof.”

The Palestinian analyst noted that Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh had said that what Israel cannot achieve militarily, it cannot expect to get now politically through negotiations.

This is ultimately a war of attrition and Hamas is still able to last it out, she added.

“Hamas is pursuing a tactic of not only asymmetrical warfare but also asymmetrical diplomacy, trying to basically weather it out until Israel becomes desperate enough that it needs to talk to it,” said Mustafa.

- ‘Very difficult’ for Israel to eliminate Hamas

Krieg believes that Israel will not be able to eliminate Hamas, a group he said has deeply penetrated all aspects of civilian life, government and administration and civil society in Gaza over the past 17 years.

“You can’t eradicate these links and networks by just killing the fighting force,” he said.

Israel’s military-only approach of total eradication and annihilation is impossible as this is an insurgency, he added.

Political analyst Yossi Mekelberg agreed, saying the target that Israel set for itself to achieve of destroying Hamas is “very difficult.”

“Hamas is a political movement and Hamas represents ideas, ideologies, whether we like it or not,” he said.

From a military point of view, Mekelberg, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program, said Hamas’ military capability has been reduced but its leadership is still there.

Krieg said the military capabilities of Hamas might be weakened, but Israel is still “obviously far away from eradicating Hamas.”

He also believes that the devastation Israel has inflicted on Gaza, where it has now killed more than 30,500 Palestinians and injured almost 72,000, "will fuel radicalization and … also fuel Hamas’ support in large parts."

- ‘Vacuum of governance’

Krieg also believes that any plan by Israel to remove Hamas would result in a power vacuum in Gaza.

He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to remove anyone who has any links to Hamas from Gaza’s governance and administration structure.

That would effectively create “a vacuum of governance that will lead to insecurity and instability,” he warned.

He backed this by citing as an example the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, saying the biggest mistake the Americans made was the “de-Baathification of Iraq.”

"The complete dismantlement of the infrastructure that had run the country, the security sector that had run the military, and the Baath Party that was an entity that was also part of all aspects of Iraqi life,” he said.

“Overnight, all these Baath Party members were basically released from their duty, and that created a vacuum that led to the instability that we’re still seeing in Iraq today.”

According to him, the Israeli army is also operating in a strategic vacuum.

“They are an operation of the government and are supposed to implement political strategy, but they can’t because the government of Israel has no political strategy,” said Krieg.

- ‘Shallow day after vision’

Commenting on Netanyahu’s recent plans regarding Gaza presented to the Israeli war Cabinet, Krieg said Israel’s “day after” strategy is a “very thin and very shallow vision … which lacks again a clear strategy.”

“What he wants to achieve seems to be more like an intermediate operational approach by saying the (army) will retain full security coverage, will retain a presence in Gaza and will further control security inside Gaza with a presence on the ground, and governance should be removed from Hamas (and transferred) to entities that have no affiliation with Hamas,” he explained.

However, Krieg stressed that there has been no mention of any political solution.

Mekelberg pointed out that the “day after” plan is being called “the day after Hamas,” a scenario he said may take months.

He called it the “same old security paradigm which is based on a zero-sum game, in which only the occupation and complete control of Gaza and the West Bank will guarantee” Israeli security.

“As we witnessed on Oct. 7, it did not. This paradigm failed miserably, and there is no alternative,” he added.