Hamas’ strategy in Gaza revealed

Yet despite the carnage in Gaza, Hamas’ strategy has helped the group fulfil some of its own goals.

The war has tarnished Israel’s reputation in much of the world, prompting charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, Netherlands. It has exacerbated long-running rifts in Israeli society, prompting disagreements among Israelis about whether and how Israel should defeat Hamas. And it has restored the question of Palestinian statehood to global discourse, leading several countries to recognise Palestine as a state.

Just as important for Hamas, its war doctrine has allowed it to survive. Hamas’ leader in the territory, Yahya Sinwar, and most of his top military commanders are still alive.

An analysis of battlefield videos released by Hamas and interviews with three Hamas members and scores of Israeli soldiers, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly, suggests that Hamas’ strategy relies on:

• Using hundreds of kilometres of tunnels to move around Gaza without being seen by Israeli soldiers
• Using civilian homes and infrastructure to conceal fighters, tunnel entrances, booby traps and ammunition stores
• Ambushing Israeli soldiers with small groups of fighters dressed as civilians, as well as using civilians, including children, to act as lookouts
• Leaving secret signs outside homes, like graffiti or a red sheet hanging from a window, to signal to fellow fighters the nearby presence of mines, tunnel entrances or weapons caches inside
• Dragging out the war for as long as possible, even at the expense of more civilian deaths and destruction, in order to bog the IDF down in an attritional battle that has amplified international criticism of Israel

“The aim is to vanish, avoid direct confrontation, while launching tactical attacks against the occupation army. The emphasis is on patience,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and former fighter in its military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul. Before October 7, the Qassam Brigades operated as “an army with training bases and stockpiles,” al-Awawdeh said. “But during this war, they are behaving as guerrillas.”

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At the start of the war, Hamas and its allies fired a barrage of rockets toward civilian areas of Israel, including roughly 3000 on October 7 itself, often using launchers hidden in densely populated civilian neighbourhoods in Gaza. The Israeli army captured and destroyed scores of launchers, including some it said it found near a mosque and a kindergarten, bringing the rocket fire to a near halt.

After Israeli ground troops invaded in late October, Hamas went further in transforming civilian areas of Gaza into military zones, setting traps in scores of neighbourhoods and creating confusion about what a combatant looks like by dressing its fighters as civilians.

Retreating into their labyrinth of tunnels, Hamas fighters ceded thousands of acres of farmland to Israeli forces. That was partly because the Israeli forces advanced along routes that Hamas had not lined with explosives and traps, according to a Hamas junior officer. But it was also because the Qassam Brigades’ strategy was to ambush Israeli soldiers once they had advanced deep into the territory instead of counterattacking immediately.

Hamas had been preparing for this moment since at least 2021, when the group began scaling up production of explosives and anti-tank missiles, in preparation for a ground war. It also expanded a vast network of tunnels fitted with a landline telephone network that is difficult for Israel to monitor and allows fighters to communicate even during outages to Gaza’s mobile phone networks, which are controlled by Israel. At the start of the war, Hamas had enough explosives in its underground arsenals for an extended campaign – as well as enough canned vegetables, dates and drinking water to last for at least 10 months.

As vast swaths of Gaza began to empty out in October, Hamas fighters began booby-trapping hundreds of houses that they expected the Israeli troops would seek to enter. The mines were linked to tripwires, movement sensors and sound detectors that detonate the explosives once triggered.

Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers say that Hamas also tracks the Israelis’ locations using hidden cameras, drones and intelligence provided by civilian lookouts, including children, who stand on roofs and relay information to commanders below.

Hamas’ ambush squads typically stay hidden until an Israeli convoy has moved through an area for several minutes or Israeli forces have grouped in a particular place for hours, creating the impression that Hamas has left the area. After a period of calm, a squad emerges from a tunnel, often as a group of four. Two fighters are tasked with fixing explosives to the sides of a vehicle or firing anti-tank missiles at it. A third carries a camera to film propaganda footage. A fourth typically stays at the tunnel entrance, preparing a booby trap that can be activated as soon as the others return, to kill any Israelis who try to follow them underground.

In addition to setting traps in houses, Hamas has also used residential buildings to conceal scores of small arms caches across the territory. To help its gunmen find these weapons caches, Hamas has developed an elaborate system for marking houses that double as military storerooms or contain tunnels or booby traps. Some buildings were marked with a particular symbol, some had red fabric hanging from windows, and others had plastic barrels or plastic bags outside – all of which told Hamas fighters something about what was concealed inside.

Even in areas where Israel claims to have defeated Hamas, Israeli forces have often had to return, weeks or even months later, to continue the battle against fighters who had survived earlier phases of the war.

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For Hamas, “it was always about avoiding losses for as long as possible so they can fight another day,” said Andreas Krieg, an expert on military strategy at King’s College London. “They’re nowhere near being defeated.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.