With out honing in on the hostages and on Hamas’s hidden fighters in Gaza Metropolis, the IDF controlling extra land is unlikely to realize strategic targets.
There’s a built-in dilemma that appears to be hampering the present Gaza Metropolis invasion, simply because it circumscribed the affect of prior invasions.
In March, Israel hoped {that a} new technique of conquering territory in Gaza would trigger stress to Hamas greater than “solely” having overwhelmed its 24 battalions with the penetrate-and-withdraw technique it had used throughout the warfare as much as that time.
Additionally, Israel hoped extra of Hamas’s prime leaders who weren’t but lifeless – not many are left – would wish to reside greater than their predecessors, which is what occurred with Hezbollah.
It has not labored out that approach, and the identical issues Israel has encountered since March are more likely to plague the most recent Gaza Metropolis invasion, which began final week.
It turned out that even as soon as Israel began to take over a lot of Gaza’s territory – which emasculated Hamas in some ways to the extent it wished to current itself as ruling the Strip – Hamas’s leaders knew that so long as Israel wouldn’t endanger the 20 dwelling hostages, they retained their leverage.
IDF troopers function in Gaza Metropolis, September 17, 2025. (credit score: IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)
What does Hamas face within the Gaza offensive?
In different phrases, shedding territory did harm their political management over Gazans to some extent, nevertheless it was not decisive. Solely holding the hostages was decisive. So, Hamas may follow its similar calls for concerning phrases for ending the warfare no matter its lack of territory.
In the meantime, its few remaining leaders, and any new youthful leaders who was center administration, nonetheless don’t appear to care about dying so long as “the trigger” lives on and so they preserve the hostages.
If Israel hoped that the harrowing image of blowing up just a few huge Gaza Metropolis buildings would deliver Hamas to its senses and acknowledge that it is a struggle it can not win, weeks have passed by since that began with no change in Hamas’s place.
If Hamas was not prepared to surrender its hostages’ leverage to keep away from shedding three buildings or six buildings, why would it not quit that leverage for dozens of buildings?
Hamas is also extraordinarily careworn by the Gazan civilian inhabitants being compelled out of Gaza Metropolis.
It worries about having to work tougher to maintain the inhabitants in line and being blamed for this newest lack of one of many few remaining elements of prewar Gaza that’s nonetheless standing.
However Hamas has managed it again and again.
On the finish of the day, to maintain management within the Strip, it doesn’t must preserve the Gazan inhabitants completely satisfied; it simply must preserve sufficient weapons to maintain them too scared to rise as much as topple it.
It helps that about 700,000 of the 2 million Gazans are very ideologically related to Hamas, even when solely a fraction of these take part in combating.
There may very well be one other stress level from the Gaza Metropolis invasion.
The IDF may lastly find the remaining 2,000-2,500 hard-core Hamas fighters and perhaps a number of the different bigger group of less-committed Hamas terrorists and kill or arrest them.
However that is unlikely to occur, as a result of the IDF isn’t checking Gazans as they flee Gaza Metropolis.
With about 500,000 Gazans having left over the previous couple weeks, a lot of the Hamas fighters have doubtless already fled.
Each day, the IDF supplies detailed updates in Gaza Metropolis.
But when from late 2023 till summer time 2024 such updates may speak about killing a whole bunch or dozens of Hamas terrorists in a day, for all of 2025, the IDF messages usually speak about killing just a few terrorists at a time or seizing weapons caches with out even killing terrorists.
That isn’t actually going to additional decimate or defeat Hamas’s remaining forces, who determined greater than a yr in the past to bide their time by hiding and solely venturing out when it was protected – when the IDF forces are taking a break – to hold out guerrilla-style warfare.
For a while, it has appeared to be clear that the hostages may very well be freed with a deal, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejecting the return of 10 hostages for a 60-day pause within the warfare final month. Or the IDF may ship in particular forces to all identified hostage areas concurrently and hope for some fortunate rescues, however be ready for the worst.
These appear to be the 2 methods to finish the hostage standoff. If Israel isn’t keen to decide on a kind of two decisions, Hamas will retain its hostages’ leverage.
When it comes to defeating Hamas, Israel can both painstakingly vet and course of your entire civilian inhabitants in an effort to smell out the remaining Hamas terrorists, or it will probably finish the warfare however preserve sufficient troopers commonly raiding Gaza for a interval of years to attempt to get rid of Hamas’s army help over time.
Neither is assured to work, and each are extraordinarily tough to implement.
Within the absence of such methods, Israel is unlikely to realize its strategic aims simply by taking on Gaza Metropolis.
