Hamas' guerrilla tactics in North Gaza make it hard to defeat

Israel has decimated Hamas’ military wing, along with much of Gaza. But the group’s small-scale, hit-and-run approach poses a threat in the enclave’s north.

Jerusalem: The top commanders of Hamas are mostly dead. The group's rank and file has been decimated. Many of its hideouts and stockpiles have been captured and destroyed.

But Hamas' killing of an Israeli colonel in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday underscored how the group's military wing, though unable to operate as a conventional army, is still a potent guerrilla force with enough fighters and munitions to enmesh the Israeli military in a slow, grinding and as yet unwinnable war.

Col. Ehsan Daksa, a member of Israel's Arab Druse minority, was killed when a planted explosive blew up near his tank convoy. It was a surprise attack that exemplified how Hamas has held out for nearly a year since Israel invaded Gaza in late October 2023, and will likely be able to even after the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, last week.

Hamas' remaining fighters are hiding from view in ruined buildings and the group's vast underground tunnel network, much of which remains intact despite Israel's efforts to destroy it, according to military analysts and Israeli soldiers.

The fighters emerge briefly in small units to booby trap buildings, set roadside bombs, attach mines to Israeli armored vehicles or fire rocket-propelled grenades at Israeli forces before attempting to return underground.

While Hamas cannot defeat Israel in a frontal battle, its small-scale, hit-and-run approach has allowed it to continue to inflict harm on Israel and avoid defeat, even if, according to Israel's unverified count, Hamas has lost more than 17,000 fighters since the start of the war.

"The guerrilla forces are working well and it will be very difficult to subdue them -- not just in the short run, but in the long term," said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and a former fighter in the group's military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul.

Though Israel may have destroyed Hamas' long-range rocket caches, al-Awawdeh said, "there are still endless explosive devices and light arms at hand."

Some of those explosives were stockpiled before the start of the war. Others are repurposed Israeli munitions that failed to explode on impact, according to both Hamas and the Israeli military. Hamas released a video this week that appeared to show Hamas combatants turning an unexploded Israeli missile into an improvised bomb.

In open combat, Hamas' fighters are no match for Israel's army, as the killing of Sinwar in southern Gaza last week showed. Cornered in the ruins of Rafah, Sinwar was killed by an Israeli unit that could call on tanks, drones and snipers for backup.

But his death is unlikely to affect the capacity of the Hamas fighters in northern Gaza, according to Israeli and Palestinian analysts.

Since Israel took control in November of a key thoroughfare that divides north and south Gaza, Hamas' leadership in the south, which included Sinwar, has exercised little direct control over fighters in the north. And after over a year of guerrilla fighting, Hamas' remaining fighters are likely now used to making decisions locally instead of taking orders from a centralized command structure.

In addition, the group said over the summer that it had recruited new fighters, though it is unclear how many it signed up, or how well trained they are.

Hamas has also benefited from Israel's refusal to either hold ground or transfer power in Gaza to an alternative Palestinian leadership. Time and again, Israeli soldiers have forced Hamas from a neighborhood, only to retreat within weeks without handing power to Hamas' Palestinian rivals. That has allowed the group to return and reexert control, often prompting the Israeli military to return months or even weeks later.

Israel's current campaign in Jabalia in northern Gaza, where Daksa was killed, is at least its third operation there over the past year.

Israeli officials say this latest action is necessary to undercut a resurgent Hamas.

Yet the aimlessness of Israel's strategy has led to questions from both Israelis and Palestinians about why its soldiers were sent again to Jabalia.

"We occupy territories, and then we get out," said Michael Milstein, an Israeli analyst of Palestinian affairs. "This kind of doctrine means that you find yourself in endless war."

Meanwhile, Palestinians say this operation in Jabalia has been one of the most traumatic of an already brutal war. As fighting intensifies, the specter of famine once again looms over northern Gaza, and health care workers have warned that the area's last remaining hospitals are at risk of collapse.

For Palestinians, the general assumption is that this is an attempt to expel the remaining population of northern Gaza. The majority of the north's prewar population -- roughly 1 million people -- fled south at the war's onset, but about 400,000 are thought to remain.

The Palestinian alarm has been partly fomented by a prominent former Israeli general, Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, who has publicly pressed Israel's government to depopulate northern Gaza by cutting off food and water.

Under Eiland's plan, the Israeli military would give the remaining 400,000 one week to move south before declaring the north a closed military zone. Israel would then block all supplies to the north in an effort to force Hamas militants to capitulate and return the hostages it has been holding since the October 2023 attack on Israel.

"They will face two alternatives: either to surrender or to die of starvation," Eiland, a former director of Israel's National Security Council, said in an interview.

Any civilians who refused to leave would suffer the consequences, without any new supplies entering, the general said.

"We are giving them all the chance. And if some of them decide to stay, well, it is probably their problem," Eiland said.

The plan has generated significant debate and some support in Israel, including from government ministers and lawmakers, as some Israelis seek decisive solutions to a repetitive war.

Human rights advocates have said that such a policy, if carried out, would violate international law and severely threaten the welfare of civilians in northern Gaza.

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, said Eiland's plan would involve "the deliberate creation of humanitarian crises as a weapon of war." Besieging an enemy in a small area could be acceptable, he said, but not a siege of such a wide territory.

The general's proposals "could very likely amount to a war crime," Sfard said.

Both Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, and Omer Dostri, the spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said this month that the government is not implementing the plan.

Still, Dostri said Netanyahu had studied the plan.

Palestinians speculate that a version of it has become Israeli government policy: Israel has issued evacuation warnings for more neighborhoods in northern Gaza, home to at least tens of thousands of people, and the amount of aid entering the area has sharply declined the start of October.

Montaser Bahja, 50, said he fled his home in Jabalia to shelter elsewhere in northern Gaza at the start of Israel's renewed operation. He said relatives who remained have described Israel's bombardments as unusually fierce, and that the new policy appeared to be part of an attempt -- along with the restriction on humanitarian aid -- to force people to move south.

"They might be shy about saying it in front of the world and deny it," said Bahja, a high school English teacher. "But based on what they're doing on the ground, it seems like that's what it is."

Israeli officials have said they allow plenty of aid into all parts of Gaza and blamed shortages on the United Nations and relief organizations' logistical challenges.

Just 410 relief trucks have entered Gaza in the first three weeks of October, compared with roughly 3,000 in September, according to the United Nations. The Israeli military's own figures show a similar drop.

Prices of vegetables and canned goods in northern Gaza's makeshift street markets are skyrocketing, Palestinians say, adding to concerns among rights activists that Israeli restrictions have already led to widespread hunger.