Israel's strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar as they weighed a ceasefire proposal has underscored, analysts and officials say, the limits of Jerusalem's effort to eliminate the militant group and prevent its reconstitution.
Hamas reported that its top leaders survived Tuesday's strike but provided no independent proof. Even if Israel's operation succeeded in targeting senior figures, analysts and some former Israeli security officials warn, it would not necessarily end Hamas's ability to wage, regenerate or influence conflict inside the Gaza Strip.
Since the war began after Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Israel has employed a series of unprecedented and often bloody measures to degrade Hamas's military and political capabilities. The campaign has killed nearly all of Hamas's top leaders in Gaza, according to Israeli estimates, and inflicted heavy losses among its fighters. Yet the group persists, retains fighters inside Gaza, and continues to hold roughly 20 living hostages there, complicating any declaration that the group has been vanquished.
Israel has also sought to wrest control of Gaza City and other populated areas, declaring control over some 75% of the territory. Much of that area has been reduced to rubble, and Hamas is largely confined to isolated enclaves where many of Gaza's two million residents have sought shelter. But the chaotic environment has allowed Hamas members to blend into civilian populations and for other armed groups and powerful local families to assert control over districts once governed by Hamas, creating a fragmented security landscape.
"As long as the people of Gaza believe that Hamas is an option for future governance ... they will not support any other alternative," said Kobi Michael, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute in Israel. He warned that the concentration of Gaza's population in the remaining urban enclaves helps sustain the group's influence.
Israeli tactical gains have come at a high humanitarian cost. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed and essential infrastructure devastated. The situation in Gaza City has fueled fears of famine and left public services largely provided by U.N. agencies and international aid groups. Some ministries and services run by Hamas continue to function in a limited fashion, according to Gaza civil servants and medics who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
Nahed Sheheiber, head of Gaza's private truckers' union, said plainclothes Hamas police still operate in parts of Gaza City, the central city of Deir al-Balah and densely populated refugee camps, conducting raids against looters and alleged profiteers. He denied Israeli claims that Hamas was responsible for frequent looting of aid supplies.
Israeli officials and analysts say Hamas's armed wing has suffered heavy casualties. The Israeli military has said it believed Hamas fielded up to 35,000 fighters before the war and has killed more than 20,000. Hamas itself has not commented on its losses. Departing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in January the United States believed Hamas had recruited nearly as many fighters as it had lost, reflecting assessments that the group has sought to replenish its manpower even as it endures steep attrition.
Egyptian officials monitoring Gaza estimate that Hamas and other armed groups have recruited thousands of new fighters, often assigning them hazardous tasks such as harvesting unexploded ordnance. A senior Hamas official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described cells of three to five militants operating largely independently. The official also said units holding hostages had been instructed to booby-trap their locations and wear explosive vests to detonate if Israeli forces attempted rescues.
The hostage issue continues to shape both battlefield moves and diplomatic negotiations. The armed wing inside Gaza — led by veteran commander Ezzedin al-Haddad, according to multiple accounts — is believed to control the hostages, while exiled leaders who have participated in talks in Doha may lack direct command over fighters on the ground. That separation raises doubts about whether attacks on leaders abroad would translate into concessions inside Gaza.
Israeli ground operations have produced steady casualties among Israel Defense Forces troops as well. Since March, around 50 soldiers have been killed, according to Israeli military statements, mainly in hit-and-run attacks and by explosive devices. The military said a bomb thrown into a tank in Gaza City killed four soldiers on Monday. Since the initial ground invasion in October, Israeli military losses have totaled roughly 450 troops, figures that have contributed to growing domestic pressure and mass protests in Israel calling for a deal to free the hostages.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly framed the goal as a total victory: not only military defeat of Hamas but its disarmament and the prevention of any reconstitution. That aim, however, has prompted warnings from former Israeli security officials who say an open-ended strategy of occupying Gaza to prevent a future Palestinian armed movement risks perpetual conflict and occupation.
Hamas emerged in the late 1980s and deepened its roots in Gaza over decades of changing Israeli policy, including the handover of civilian administration to the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s and Israel's 2005 withdrawal from settlements and troops. Analysts say the movement's ideology and local networks have proved resilient over time, surviving the deaths and captures of leaders and the destruction of infrastructure.
The international response to Israel's campaign, including the strike in Qatar, has complicated its regional standing. The operation that targeted leaders in Doha, and the broader offensive, have heightened concerns among Arab governments and other regional actors about the potential for escalation and the humanitarian toll of the war. Some Arab officials have described the strike as emblematic of a broader trend toward Israeli actions perceived as destabilizing in the region.
For now, analysts say, the conflict is likely to remain protracted. Hamas retains fighters and some popular support in Gaza, local governance structures are fragmented, and surviving leaders — whether in Gaza or abroad — can continue to influence outcomes. At the same time, Israel's military advances have dramatically weakened Hamas's governing capacity and degraded its long-range rocket capabilities. The combination of military, political and humanitarian pressures is producing a fraught, uncertain environment in which neither decisive defeat nor a stable postwar order appears imminent.