WSJ: Sinwar Tells Qatar Hamas Leaders ‘We Have Israel Right Where We Want Them’

NEW YORK (VINnews) — A Wall Street Journal report reveals that Hamas leaders in Qatar, who are eager to reach a hostage deal as Israel systematically destroys their military capabilities, received a secret message from Yahya Sinwar. The Hamas leader in Gaza told them that “We have Israel right where we want them.”

Hamas’s fighters, the Al-Qassam Brigades, were doing fine, the buoyant message said. The terrorists were ready and primed for Israel’s expected assault on Rafah, a city on Gaza’s southern edge.

Sinwar’s goal is to drag Israel into a quagmire of civilian casualties in Rafah, forcing it to withdraw under world pressure. He will then somehow emerge from the rubble, declare a historic victory for Hamas and claim leadership of the Palestinian nation’s cause.

The Hamas terrorists, commanded day-to-day by Sinwar’s brother Mohammed, have changed their tactics since the November cease fire, implementing small-scale guerilla ambushes—using tools ranging from rocket-propelled grenades to recorded voices of hostages to lure Israeli troops into traps. The ambushes have little chance of holding territory against Israel’s armored maneuvers. But they’re tailored to Hamas’s limited capabilities, and to Sinwar’s war aim.

“It’s a very sound tactical logic,” said Eyal Berelovich, a civilian analyst for Israel’s armed forces and a military historian at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “Their strategic goal is to survive.”

Many IDF senior commanders as well as ordinary soldiers who spoke to The Wall Street Journal worry that their accumulation of tactical wins on the battlefield might not add up to a lasting strategic victory. After nearly five months of intense fighting, Israel is still far from its declared war aim of eliminating Hamas as a significant military and political entity.

“Fighting the enemy is like a game of whack-a-mole,” said an Israeli reservist in Khan Younis with the 98th Division. He said many soldiers sense the lack of a plan and wonder what their efforts are for. “It will be very hard to destroy Hamas.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised a “total victory” that annihilates the radical Islamist group. Israel’s military defines its mission more cautiously: to reduce Hamas’s capabilities to a level where the group can never again launch an attack like Oct. 7.

But many in Israel’s military believe the government’s reluctance to designate a plan for who should govern Gaza after Hamas is leaving a political vacuum that could help Hamas to grow back.

Hamas leaders in Gaza have told Egyptian officials and the group’s political wing in exile that the Al-Qassam Brigades have lost at least 6,000 men killed, out of an estimated 30,000 fighters before the war. Israel says it has killed about 12,000 Hamas terrorists in Gaza so far, plus about another 1,000 during the fighting in Israel on Oct. 7.

U.S. and Egyptian intelligence officials believe the true losses are roughly in the middle between the Israeli and Hamas claims. Military analysts say Hamas can recruit new fighters to replace its rank-and-file soldiers, but that replacing experienced commanders is more difficult.

Israel has so far lost 242 soldiers killed in Gaza, in addition to over 300 killed on Oct. 7.

Degrading Hamas’s capabilities is a realistic goal for Israel’s military, said Hussein Ibish, a scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a think tank in Washington. But sustaining it would require fully occupying Gaza, which would give Hamas a target for a never-ending insurgency, he said.

Which side achieves its broader goal depends in part on the war of narratives. Israelis see the war in Gaza as necessary self-defense after Hamas’s gruesome killing of about 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, the bloodiest day in the country’s history.

But the deepening humanitarian crisis and the scale of destruction in Gaza have strained Israel’s relations with countries around the world, including with its closest ally, the U.S. President Biden recently called Israel’s use of firepower “over the top.”

The U.S. is pushing for a cease-fire and Biden on Monday expressed optimism about a deal to pause the fighting and release hostages, but Israel and Hamas warned that their negotiating positions remain far apart.