The overwhelming likelihood that the IDF killed Hamas chief Mohammed Sinwar on May 13 has not broken the terrorist organization, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
In fact, not only did that likely assassination not break Hamas’s fighting spirit, the IDF said on Sunday that there was no longer any one potential center of gravity, be it person, military headquarters, or territorial area, which the army could strike or take over that would instantly lead to the terrorist group’s collapse.
Rather, the military is now pursuing a strategy of attrition. First, it is attacking any Hamas terrorists who are still organized or who are still trying to fight.
Second, it is taking over most of the Gaza Strip and assuming control of food distribution in the enclave as part of a longer-term strategy of breaking down all the various elements of Hamas’s power and control over its population.
By doing so, the IDF is attempting to slowly convince Gazans that they can break free of the fundamentalist terrorist group.
Mohammed Sinwar likely dead, but no official confirmation yet
Part of the difficulty in finishing off Hamas in one fell swoop is how deep various aspects of its power are, even as all of its members have been hit hard by the IDF during this war.
If pre-war Hamas had 15,000 or more rockets, it now has only dozens to hundreds of medium to longer range ones, none of which it has managed to fire in recent months. Moreover, it only has a hundred to a couple of thousand mortars, of which it has managed to fire a few dozen at most over recent months.
Broadly speaking, Hamas ceased to be a strategic rocket threat by around January 2024, but the fact that it still has many rockets and rocket parts hidden throughout Gaza means that it would be hard to utterly quash that threat in one operation.
Likewise, while the IDF refused to give updated numbers regarding Hamas forces on Sunday, defense sources recently placed Hamas terrorists at around 20,000-25,000, not far from some estimates at the start of the war.
These forces are much more poorly armed and trained. They have no real ability to coordinate their efforts, but they are also hard to just remove from the board since they are mostly anonymous and hiding in humanitarian zones among the civilian populace.
Further, Hamas tunnels allow them to continue to hide and move about in parts of Gaza without being tracked.
While the IDF has destroyed enormous amounts of Hamas tunnels, including all or most of its strategic ones, the military continues to find new, unexpected tunnels on an almost daily basis.
Not long ago, some estimates were that 75% of Hamas’s tunnels may still not have been destroyed. However, it is possible that all of its larger strategic tunnels, formerly used for communications, intelligence, and weapons manufacturing, may have been destroyed.
On May 13, the IDF dropped a large number of bombs on a tunnel hideout under a hospital in Gaza in order to target Mohammed Sinwar.
Sinwar has been leading Hamas. He was the one in control of the remaining 58 Israeli hostages (around 21 of which are believed to be alive) since mid-October 2024, when his brother, October 7-architect Yahya Sinwar, was killed by military forces in Rafah.
Without Sinwar, Gaza Brigade chief Izz al-Din Haddad will be the last man standing out of the pre-war original five Hamas commanders of that brigade, which the Post learned would make him Hamas’s next military chief.
With so many Hamas commanders killed, it is possible that if Haddad is killed, there will no longer be a senior Hamas official capable of coordinating a full hostage release deal, given that many hostages are held separately by small disconnected Gazan terrorist cells.
The IDF said that it believes Hamas has retained a significant capacity to maintain coordination concerning this issue, since this is the terrorist group’s sole remaining bargaining chip.
Nevertheless, no specific evidence was presented of who the next Hamas official will be who can maintain command over all the disparate groups holding Israeli hostages in Gaza.
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