The balance of forces between Israel and Hamas in the third week of March is as follows:
• Hamas had 24 battalions with approximately 35,000 militants on October 7, 2023, when it launched its surprise attack on Israel and caused a massacre with more than 1,200 Israeli citizens killed and approximately 240 kidnapped.
• 18 of these 24 battalions were dismantled as fighting organizations by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), meaning that more than half of its cadres – around 20,000 militants – were eliminated.
• The core of Hamas’ remaining military force consists of 4 battalions, which in total number around 5,000 fighters. Among them are the 3 main leaders of the organization: Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa.
• The 2 remaining Hamas battalions have dispersed into small guerrilla groups that plant explosives, or use missiles with self-propelled grenades, and are located in the center of the Gaza Strip, with an axis in Khan Younis, and especially in two refugee camps of great strategic importance, which are Deir al Balah and Nussei Galan.
• A strategic fact in this balance of forces is that Israel has complete intelligence on the situation in Gaza in its three regions, and the same happens with all the clandestine networks carried out by Hamas over the last 20 years. There is no “fogging” or concealment of relevant information in the current period of combat between the Israel Defense Forces and the Hamas organization.
• It is clear that Hamas made a catastrophic miscalculation in the balance of forces after 7 October, referring not only to the power of the Israeli arsenal, but also to the will to fight of the State Forces, who assumed a war of an existential nature nature.
This is a point that should be emphasized. Joe Biden’s government and the international community, which intend to impose a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, can do nothing in the face of the extraordinary will and decision of the State of Israel and its army. This is the independent variable to which everything in the Middle Eastern crisis is subordinated.
Finally, two observations must be made on the meaning of October 7 and the “Netanyahu phenomenon”.
Israel is absolutely determined to launch the final assault against the last Hamas stronghold in Rafah in the next two weeks with the aim of destroying the four remaining brigades of the organization responsible for the October 7 massacre.
This profound and irrevocable decision in no way responds to a desire for revenge, —Israel acts according to Don Corleone’s advice: “never hate your enemies”—.
On the contrary, it is the result of an absolutely realistic – or rather, hyperrealistic – observation that the strategic surprise of 7 October led to the breaking of the legitimacy pact on which the State is based; and which since its establishment in 1948 has been based on the absolute commitment of the State of Israel and its Defense Forces to guarantee the lives and property of the civilian population.
It is a security pact in the strict sense that was lost on October 7th. That day also broke the condition of the State founded by David Ben-Gurion as the last and fundamental refuge of the Jewish community in the world. “There cannot and will not be a new Holocaust because the Israel Defense Forces were born to prevent it,” said former prime minister Menachem Begin.
On October 7, the State of Israel’s preventive deterrence capacity failed not only against Hamas, but also against its multiple enemies in the Middle East, especially Iran and its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah and now the Houthis of Yemen). .
Finally, a phenomenon of enormous importance, namely the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu. He is the brother of Yoni Netanyahu, the leader of the “Entebbe rescue”, who died fighting there; To this we must add that Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel for 14 years, emerging from that almost impossible system of government that is the “Knesset”, the Israeli parliament; and Netanyahu dared to challenge then US President Barack Obama regarding his policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was producing nuclear weapons at the time.
Netanyahu declared before Congress in Washington that if the United States does not dare to forcefully prevent Iran’s transformation into a nuclear power, Israel will do so with its own forces, without depending on anyone else.
In short, there is no more lethal mistake in the Middle East – and by extension the world – than underestimating Israel and its prime minister, who in political terms emerges from one of the two founding forces of the state, Revisionist Zionism, created by Zeev Jabotinsky. And through Betar, Irgun, Herut and the current Likud, he has become one of the essential protagonists in the history of wars and conflicts of the state.
Source: Clarin
