Israel has now eliminated at least 17,000 of Hamas’ estimated 30,000 goons, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari announced this week, and of late it’s been taking out the terrorists’ leadership at a fast clip, too.
Good: Rot in hell, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh.
At this point, we suspect Hamas insiders are fingering each other for the IDF: With ultra-hardline, loyal-only-to-Tehran Yahya Sinwar replacing Haniyeh as the group’s chief and likely purging any potential rivals, Hamasniks with any agenda other than killing and dying to serve Iran’s imperial ambitions will fink to save their own skins.
Desertions are also likely rising.
Hamas members get exclusive use of the tunnel and bunker system to shelter from Israeli bombs, but Israel is rapidly flushing out those refuges.
Crucially, the IDF is plugging dozens of tunnels that riddled Gaza’s Egyptian border, now that it controls the Philadelphi Corridor there — and exposed Cairo’s utter failure to control smuggling into Gaza.
Of course, getting Israel to cede control of the corridor is a top goal of Hamas in cease-fire negotiations: It can’t resupply otherwise.
Maybe, just maybe, Jerusalem will agree — if it finally gets the remaining hostages back, and thinks it’s done enough to block new smuggling for the duration of the cease-fire.
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Hamas, meanwhile, isn’t even participating directly in the cease-fire talks: Sinwar’s strategy is for the mediators to get Israel to agree to major concessions, so he can demand yet more as soon as the go-betweens claim to have a tentative deal.
Eliminating Hamas’ cadres and its vast terror infrastructure is one of Israel’s chief war aims, along with recovering all hostages and ensuring Gaza never again becomes one vast launching pad for terror attacks.
Israeli officials say the IDF has reached “the vast majority” of those goals, though exactly how Gaza’s to be governed once fighting stops remains a mystery.
The greatest farce here isn’t that Hamas isn’t in the talks, but that Iran isn’t: Tehran, after all, calls the shots not just for Hamas, but also Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and various smaller militias across the region that have been attacking Israel, Red Sea shipping and US bases over there.
Until the Biden-Harris team admits that grim truth, all their efforts to avoid “escalation” and restore peace are little more than a joke.