Israeli military and political leaders have declared their desire to destroy Hamas, but the feasibility of such a goal remains unclear two months into the conflict.

Hamas has been in power in Gaza for more than 15 years and, as a result, is deeply ingrained in the strip, said Daniel Byman, an expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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"Hamas has very deep roots in Gaza, social rules, economic rules, religious as well, and has been the government of Gaza for 16 years," he told the Washington Examiner. "So this is something that I think the question really is, 'How much can Israel hurt Hamas?' rather than, 'Can it destroy it completely?'"

Part of the equation, Byman explained, includes how the Israelis define their objectives, which could be to kill every Hamas fighter, to settle for weakening Hamas's capabilities, or to remove Hamas from power and establish a different government in Gaza. None of those necessarily involve ending the group's ideology, which may prove to be the hardest of the possible goals.

"Now, what the military can do is contain it, defend your homeland, and establish conditions to address the underlying root causes of these terror movements. And that's a lesson I think we can apply in this instance," Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, told the Washington Examiner. "Ultimately, they will not be able to militarily destroy Hamas. What they need to be able to do is bring to bear political, diplomatic, and humanitarian elements to this to resolve that in the long run."

There is also the possibility that Israel's military campaign, which has killed more than 15,000 people, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry, could unintentionally spur a new generation of Hamas. Even if Israel is able to kill top Hamas leaders, some of whom do not reside in Gaza, there is no guarantee the group's ideology will not live on.

Proportionally, the Oct. 7 attacks killed more Israelis, around 1,200, than the roughly 3,000 Americans who died during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Now, Israel faces similar questions of how to neutralize its foe.

Despite two decades of war following 9/11, al Qaeda has survived and continues to operate in Afghanistan. Separately, the United States still has forces in Iraq and Syria to ensure the lasting defeat of the Islamic State.

"Well, the United States spent 20 years, $3.5 trillion, over 6,000 service members killed, tens of thousands of others around the world trying to defeat terror and destroy al Qaeda and ISIS. It didn't work. Al Qaeda and ISIS still exist," Crow added. "In fact, they're growing in many parts of the world, and the lesson we draw from that is that ultimately, there can be no military solution to terror."

Top U.S. officials have warned Israel to be more precise in the way it carries out the war.

There are questions about what happens politically in Gaza once the war is over, if Israel is able to push Hamas out. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. would like to see the Palestinian Authority, the governing body in the West Bank, take control of Gaza once the war ends, though the Palestinian Authority comes with its own baggage.

There is also a possibility that armed resistance groups could hinder nation-state building following the conclusion of the war, according to Alex Plitsas, an expert with the Atlantic Council.

"You're also going to have to conduct state building where you're going to have some sort of state institutions built that don't rely on Hamas for governance," he said. "It's during the course of that that you run the risk of an insurgency rising, where you have armed Palestinian groups, from either existing or new ones, that pop up to resist or fight against an Israeli security apparatus that's in place to provide security during nation-state building, and then Israel be forced into a counterinsurgency operation."

Israel's military operations now focus on the southern part of the enclave, which creates a difficult environment because Israel already demanded more than 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate south.

In fighting ISIS, U.S. troops were forced into urban combat, a situation Israel finds itself in.

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who was involved in the battle against ISIS, experienced such fighting and has shared some of the lessons learned.

"You know, I learned a thing or two about urban warfare from my time fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign to defeat ISIS. Like Hamas, ISIS was deeply embedded in urban areas," Austin said last weekend. "The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. You see, in this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population, and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat."