A day after reports that Hamas was making a come back through an intense recruitment push, Defense Minister Israel Katz held a meeting on Thursday with a ministerial group for talks on how best to destroy Hamas’s governing capacity in Gaza.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Missions Minister Orit Strock, Ze’ev Elkin, a minister within the Finance Ministry, and other senior officials in the defense establishment were in attendance.
According to Katz, the meeting presented all of the strategies employed to date to undermine Hamas’s political rule in Gaza.
The committee reviewed various additional moves that could be used to destroy Hamas’s governing abilities, its infrastructure, and its ability to carry on military and civilian operations.
Given that little has been heard about its impact on the war to date, it was unclear what power or role this committee would have, and it was unclear if and when a resolution would be proposed.
The problem of how to undermine Hamas politically has plagued Israel, even as it mostly defeated Hamas’s original 24 battalions back in June.
Involvement of the PA
The defense establishment, the US, and the EU have suggested replacing Hamas as a political entity with a hybrid of the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, the UAE, the CIA, and other Western allies while retaining some overarching security role for Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected any role for the PA and suggested that Egypt, the UAE, and other Arab states take on Gaza in a trusteeship capacity. Still, these countries have refused to get involved without the PA.
Israel has also toyed with the idea of using the IDF or private companies to take over handing out food to Palestinians to wrest control of the food supply away from Hamas.
But, all of these possibilities were faced with a mix of diplomatic condemnation and legal objections, given that aspects of these plans could be misconstrued as furthering an extended Israeli military occupation of Gaza, which much of the world opposes.
It is also unclear what actions the IDF or such private companies would be allowed to take if they encountered theft of food or other lower-grade law enforcement issues short of terrorism.
Absent a political strategy, reports on Wednesday said that Hamas may have recruited sufficient new forces to replace most of its losses, even as the quality and coordination of those forces is far below what Hamas was in 2023.
For example, in 2023, it took five IDF divisions, including tens of thousands of soldiers, to tame Hamas fighters in a given neighborhood or city, whereas now, this can be done by a single brigade of around 1,000 soldiers or even less.