Weaknesses of the new phase of Israel’s war against Hamas have been identified: mission impossible

“The report is not very favorable for military campaigns aimed at rooting out deep-rooted political-military movements,” Bilal Saab, an expert on the Middle East and North Africa, told CNN.

“The IDF leadership understands very well that the most they can do is to seriously weaken Hamas’ military capabilities,” Saab said.

Israel has made some progress in this regard; his forces claim to have killed thousands of Hamas fighters, including some senior members, and dismantled parts of the group’s vast network of tunnels under the enclave.

But, CNN continues, problems remain, and no solution is in sight. Few countries at war set deadlines. Israeli officials have warned of a protracted war that could last into 2024 and beyond.

This will happen in front of an international community increasingly horrified by the extreme humanitarian crisis and rising civilian deaths in Gaza.

And as international pressure increases, so too may domestic anxiety toward Netanyahu, an embattled prime minister eager to point to tangible victories.

“There is a race against time,” states Bilal Saab, outlining the key issues facing the Israeli leadership. “At what cost will this tactical success be achieved and how much time do the Israelis have to achieve this tactical success without suffering greater international outrage?”

The destruction of Hamas, the goal Netanyahu announced on October 7, has proven lofty, elusive and, according to many analysts, impossible.

“This kind of mission cannot be completed – we have seen it fail many times over the years,” Saab said.

Hamas’s influence extends far beyond Gaza, meaning that the group’s complete defeat is at least a very ambitious goal for Israel, if it can be achieved at all.

But it remains unclear whether IDF leadership places this overarching goal at the top of its priorities. Chief of IDF Intelligence, Major General. Israeli media noted that Aharon Haliva did not mention the destruction of Hamas when he listed military targets in his speech on Thursday.

And later on Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant unveiled plans for the next phase of the war in Gaza, emphasizing a new approach to fighting in the north and a continued focus on eliminating Hamas leaders suspected of having a presence in the enclave’s southern territory.

According to Gallant, in the third phase, IDF operations in northern Gaza will include “raids, destruction of terrorist tunnels, air and ground operations, and special operations.”

“This phase will be less intense, but will take longer,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute and a former Kadima member of the Knesset, told CNN.

If a more realistic goal is a serious reduction in Hamas’s fighting capabilities, many analysts say tangible progress has been made in the past three months.

“The definition of success will not be capturing or killing all Hamas militants, but ensuring that Hamas can no longer effectively govern the Gaza Strip,” Plesner said. “Hamas is organized like an army, with command and control centers, regiments and brigades. This command structure has been seriously challenged and is being dismantled.”

Speaking to reporters in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu said last week that the Israeli military is “fighting with force and new systems on the surface and underground” and said he had killed 8,000 Hamas militants in Gaza, according to Army Radio.

CNN cannot confirm this figure. Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says nearly 23,000 people have died in the territory since the war began. The agency does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but it is estimated that approximately 70% of those killed or wounded were women and children.

Israel believed Hamas had about 30,000 fighters in Gaza before the war began on October 7, IDF officials told CNN in December. The fighters were divided into five brigades, 24 battalions and approximately 140 companies, the IDF told CNN, each with capabilities such as anti-tank missiles, snipers and engineers, as well as rocket and mortar launchers.

Israel also claimed some success in striking Hamas tunnel mines, a complex that IDF troops are notoriously difficult to penetrate. This week the Israel Defense Forces released video footage it said showed the dismantling of one of the tunnels under Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in Gaza, which it accused Hamas of excavating.

Last month, the Israeli military released other videos it said showed a network of tunnels that connect to the residences and offices of senior Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif.

But the larger goal of finding and killing Hamas’ most important leaders in Gaza has so far eluded Israel, CNN admits.

“This is where intelligence is king,” notes Bilal Saab. Defense Secretary Gallant and other officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of their efforts to remove senior Hamas commanders, and the defense secretary promised in late December that Sinwar would “soon face the barrels of our guns.”

A longtime figure in the Islamist Palestinian group, Sinwar was responsible for creating Hamas’s military wing before forging important new ties with regional Arab powers as the group’s civilian and political leader, CNN recalls.

“Organizations like these replace commanders quite easily. I don’t think there is anyone in Hamas that is irreplaceable,” says Saab. “But if you take away the symbolic leaders of an organization, who knows if it might have a trickle-down effect, especially on people who perform military duties.”

It seems unlikely, CNN argues, that a new phase of the Israeli war will bring relief to Palestinians trapped in Gaza, where the humanitarian crisis has reached emergency levels.

But Netanyahu is likely to cave in the face of domestic pressure that is mounting, in part due to the continued holding of more than 100 hostages taken by Hamas on October 7.

Israel believes 25 hostages are dead and still in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office told CNN on Friday. That leaves 107 hostages from last year’s Hamas attack still believed to be alive.

The return of these hostages remains a goal in the new phase of the war, but failure to do so will increase political pressure on a decisive leader whose popularity among Israelis has only declined since October 7.

“From day one, there has been a clear disconnect – there is support for military causes and the IDF, (but) trust in the Israeli government is at an all-time low,” Plesner said. “There is a huge gap.”