Guerrilla warfare and recruitment
At first glance, however, the Palestinian movement seems devastated. Since the start of the conflict, the Israelis have killed numerous Hamas leaders, both in Gaza and outside, including its main political leader Ismail Haniyeh as well as his successor and the architect of October 7 Yahya Sinouar. An entire generation of tactical leaders was also decimated by the IDF, and 23 of the organization’s 24 battalions were destroyed according to Israeli officials.
Yet, “Hamas was never a structured army with established leaders, but a hydra-like militia, with personalities gaining ascendancy over the group“, points out Guillaume Ancel, French writer and former officer trained at the Special Military School of Saint-Cyr. Dispersed within the enclave, the Islamist fighters had been operating for several months like small guerrilla-type cells and not organized military units By engaging in a war of attrition rather than directly confronting an army with vastly superior firepower, Hamas has likely greatly improved its chances of survival.
The challenge of making Gaza viable again will be titanic: “The residents need everything!”
At the same time, it retains enough fighters to serve as a basis for reconstitution. If Israel claims to have killed at least 17,000 soldiers of the organization since the start of the conflict, an ACLED note published in October 2024 reported around 8,500 deaths. Despite these losses, “we estimate that Hamas recruited almost as many new militants as it lost“, declared the former head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken in early January. A majority of personnel who are inexperienced and without training, certainly, but which could, in the long term, become significant military elements for the organization.
Local military production
Hamas’ military arsenal has been largely reduced by Israeli strikes. Remain now “mainly small infantry weapons (assault rifles, pistols, grenades and grenade launchers)“within the enclave, details Mr. Ancel. Limited means, but whose effectiveness is very real. This is evidenced by the difficulties encountered by the IDF in the far north of the enclave, particularly in the Beit region. Hanoun, heavily bombed since last October at the start of the conflict, the area still concentrated multiple pockets of Hamas resistance, notably armed with explosive devices. At the beginning of January, at least 16 Israeli soldiers were there. lost his life.
-To replenish its stock of heavy weapons, in particular its rockets, the organization will be able to count on its weapons production workshops. “A rocket is concretely the assembly of a tube with a propellant into which a military charge is inserted, it is not very complicated to manufacture.” In fact, many of the Israeli bombs and artillery shells dropped in Gaza fail to explode, allowing the militia to extract the components and assemble propelled grenades from the enclave. At the end of April, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory estimated that around 70,000 tonnes of bombs had already fallen on the enclave.
After the war, what future prospects for Gazans?
However, much of the organization’s weaponry remains too complicated to produce locally and will require the reestablishment of its smuggling routes. The latter will, however, be subject to reinforced monitoring and surveillance by the IDF, particularly along the Philadelphia corridor, on the border with Egypt. It is therefore mainly underground that arms trafficking will take place. “We can estimate that a quarter, or even a third, of the tunnels remain active. The damaged structures will nevertheless be quickly rebuilt: once the rubble has been removed, it will be enough to rebuild the vault“, concludes Guillaume Ancel. In the absence of lasting political prospects in Gaza, getting Hamas back on its feet is, therefore, only a question of time.
