Less than two weeks ago, the IDF resumed its war in Gaza against Hamas, and already it has dealt devastating blows to the terror group, with Hamas now close to collapse as a military force. Hamas used to fire up to four hundred rockets a day into Israel; from May 10-May 20, 2024, for example, it fired 4,400 rockets into Israel. In the first ten days since the war’s resumption, Hamas has managed to fire only seven rockets into Israel. More on what the IDF has managed to achieve in that short time can be found here: “With Trump’s blessing, Israel has Hamas terrorists on back foot: ‘Operating in survival mode,'” by Efrat Lachter, Fox News, March 26, 2025:
Israel’s war in Gaza resumed in full force last week after the collapse of a two-month ceasefire and a deadlock in negotiations over the release of the remaining hostages. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a new wave of airstrikes, quickly followed by coordinated ground operations in three key areas: the Netzarim Corridor, Gaza’s northern coastline and the Rafah district in the south.
With expanded U.S. support and favorable shifts in the regional landscape, this next phase signals a significant evolution in Israel’s military objectives, from degrading Hamas’s battlefield capabilities to dismantling its ability to govern.
“We’ve been fighting them for 10 days,” said Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror (res.), former Israeli national security advisor. “All they’ve managed to do is fire seven rockets. That tells you how much damage we’ve inflicted already.”
IDF troops encircled Tel al-Sultan in Rafah, Gaza, as they dismantled terrorist infrastructure in the area. The IDF said the operation was to reinforce control and expand the security zone in southern Gaza. (IDF)
A senior Israeli security official told Fox News Digital: “We seized weapons caches, labs, and command centers. Hamas today is not functioning like an army. It’s a dangerous terror group, but it’s not what it was on October 7.”
According to Israeli data, most of Hamas’s senior command has been eliminated and only fragmented units remain.
“They’ve lost their experienced leadership,” the official said. “They’re operating in survival mode.”
This time, Israel is operating under dramatically improved conditions, both militarily and diplomatically.
“The strategic environment has changed,” Amidror told Fox News Digital. “Hezbollah is weaker, Iran is constrained, and the American administration is offering us true support. They’re not telling us where to bomb or how to fight.”
With fewer threats on other fronts and strong backing from the Trump administration, the IDF has broadened its scope to include Hamas’s political leadership.
“We’re not just degrading military capabilities anymore,” Amidror said. “We’re dismantling the structure that allowed Hamas to govern.”
Among the Hamas officials killed recently were Salah al-Bardaweel, a senior member of Hamas’ political bureau, and Ismail Barhoum, the group’s finance chief. These are the kinds of losses in civilian personnel that make it much harder for Hamas to govern the Strip.
During the pause in fighting, Hamas consolidated control over humanitarian aid, confiscating supplies, reselling goods and using them to recruit fighters and maintain loyalty. Israeli officials now say that won’t be allowed to continue.
No aid is now going into Gaza for Hamas to seize. When such aid is resumed, the IDF will make sure it goes directly to its intended recipients, bypassing the grasping hands of Hamas. This will mean that either the IDF, or non-Palestinian Arabs, or possibly UN peacekeepers, will guard that aid inside Gaza and oversee its distribution.
The IDF’s goal is not only to destroy Hamas’ military capability, but to prevent it from remaining as a political force that can still rule in Gaza. That’s why the IDF has been targeting senior officials belonging to Hamas’ political echelon, who have been in charge of running Gaza.
In the past, the Israelis used to wait for Hamas to attack, and then would respond in tit-for-tat fashion. That policy is no longer in force. Now the IDF will attack whenever it senses Hamas is engaged in preparing for war, by training recruits or smuggling in weapons. Large weapons — tanks and armored vehicles — will be taken out by IDF airstrikes before Hamas has had a chance to use them. The IDF policy is now one of round-the-clock pre-emption rather than retaliation.
Could it be that the American government will rule in Gaza as it is being reconstructed, as President Trump has suggested? Or might the Palestinian Authority, eager to reassert its authority over all the Palestinians take control? Or perhaps, most fittingly, Gaza will be provided with a government of Arab technocrats, appointed by the rich Arab states who will be financing Gaza’s reconstruction, and understandably will want to have their own men in place to make sure the money isn’t stolen by Hamas or misspent in other ways.
In the Trump administration, unlike during that of his predecessor, no one is dictating to Israel how the IDF should operate, or for how long. The Israelis will have that year to find and destroy the remaining tunnels as well as Hamas hideouts above ground, and to kill every terrorist, whether he belongs to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And the people of Gaza will be greatly relieved to be set free from Hamas, as their recent protests make clear.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Hamas needs to be totally wiped out of not just Gaza, but Judea and Samaria as well. Same for islamic jihad, Fatah and PFLP. Let them set up shop anywhere else that’ll take them – Damascus, Ankara, Doha, Sana’a….. There is no reason Israel has to be the one to put up w/ them
James Lincoln says
࿗Infidel࿘ says,
“Hamas needs to be totally wiped out of not just Gaza, but Judea and Samaria as well.”
I would also include the so-called “Palestinians” who aid and abet Hamas.
Israel needs to be totally muslim-free.
Tony Rice says
No, the population of Israel includes 20% who are Arab and who partake peacefully in Israeli life, society and government. Long may that continue, as an example to the world.
James Lincoln says
Tony,
Seemingly peaceful muslims can become more “devout” at any time.
Especially following October 7th, Israel cannot take that chance – ever again.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Tony
They also provide the base support to a coalition of parties called the “Joint List”, which isn’t terrorist, but supports peacefully dismantling the state of Israel and turning that back to Fatah
A good percentage of that 20% may either be really agnostic, or practice their “own personally curated islam”, but by no means are all of them non-threatening to Israel. In fact, 20% is a pretty frightening number: India has 16% and is shitting bricks over that
Ralph says
Better the entire world were Mooslime-free.
Walter Sieruk says
That is very good news that the Israel Defense Force has Hamas functioning on “survival mode.”
As the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, is right when he declared that “Hamas must be destroyed.”
The reason why this is so is because when it comes to those brutal cruel vile heinous malicious and murderous jihadist savages of Hamas it’s “Either kill or be killed.”
So, Hamas needs to be hit long and hard and it should to hit with much military might and. struck great power repeatedly until it’s completely destroyed. As it had been also, rightly said “Half –measures is folly and madness.”
For the jihadists of Hamas will not respond to reason or logic , in others words, they cannot and will not be reasoned with. The only language that are able to understand is that of being the receiving end of a power of a great military might. As Thomas Jefferson had ,rightly ,written “With every barbarous people…force is law.”
Even the leftist US President Franklin D. Roosevelt with all liberal socialist had very wisely declared, “No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been—there never can be—successful compromise between good and evil. Only total victory can reward the champions of tolerance, and decency, and freedom, and faith.”
Prime Minister Benjamin had revealed knowledge and wisdom by his statement about the need to about the very important and necessary need to engage in the “Elimination of Hamas.”
Walter Sieruk says
That’s excellent news, that the Israel Defense Force has Hamas running on “survival mode.”
This is a very necessary action for the IDF to undertake . For “Strength of the Sword” is the only language that those liars murderers kidnapper, torturers and vile heinous rapist’s jihadists of Hamas are able to understand. For those dangerous death –inflecting Muslim terrorists of Hamas have no honor, at all, and cannot be reasoned with. For genuine honest negotiation with disingenuous and outright lying, malicious and vicious fiendish malice-filled Muslims terrorists of Hamas is impossible.
Therefore, Hamas needs to be taken down with a strong might of military force. Hamas hit hard, hit long and should keep on being blasted, taken down and not allowed to raise its ugly jihad head again.
Hamas is nothing a deadly plague of Islamic terrorism. Therefore, it should and needs to completely eliminated forever. It will then it will be “Good riddance to Bad Rubbish.” When it comes to Hamas it’s “Bad Rubbish” To the most extreme horrific and horrendously evil possible.
dumbledoresarmy says
John Quincy Adams, a great and wise and genuinely good man, one of the most erudite and astute statesmen that America has ever had, said this, of Islam:
“The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; **the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace** (my emphasis added: dda), and the faithful follower of the prophet may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat; but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force…”
And then he says this, which ALL non-Muslim statesmen and generals would do well to take to heart: ‘AS THE ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLE of his [Mohammed’s’ faith is the subjugation of others by the sword; it is only by force, that his false doctrines can be dispelled, and his power annihilated”.
These lapidary paragraphs, as true today as they were in 1830, can be found in “Unsigned Essays Dealing with the Russo-Turkish War, and on Greece, written while John Quincy Adams was in retirement, before his election to Congress in 1830”.
John Quincy Adams was one of those people who never said anything lightly. He would have thought long and hard about Islam, and the ruin that it was wreaking upon the world, and had wreaked. He had observed the ubiquity of taqiyya – fraud – and Mohammedan refusal to abide by agreements made with non-Muslims. And he cuts right to the chase, when he sees that if a system – a war-cult – makes its core principle ‘subjugation of others by the sword’ then it must be countered by force.
And that is what the IDF is doing in Gaza… and may they be granted an overwhelming victory.
The entire non-Islamic world, instead of shrieking accusations and weeping tears for Jihad Fortress/ Armed Camp Gaza – which is nothing other than a Forward Operating Base of Jihad – should be passing the ammunition to Israel! And countries like india should be manning up to vote with Israel, in the UN, and to supply whatever help they can. If Gaza is flattened, all its jihad fortifications, weapons factories, arsenals, etc, reduced to dust, and the mohammedans evicted into Egypt (from whence not a few of them originated, in the first place!), it will send a message to the entire ummah: wage jihad? *LOSE* TERRITORY.
gravenimage says
Spot on, DDA.
OLD GUY says
I for one sincerely hope the IDF finishes the job. They then need to take a long hard stance with the countries that supported HAMAS and these other groups that represent foreign countries hiding behind them. Any country that supports one of these terrorist groups is the perpetrator, lets stop beating around the diplomatic bush and hold these countries responsible.
gravenimage says
The IDF Has Hamas Operating In Survival Mode
……………………………………
So good to hear!