Hamas is making a substantial comeback by recruiting new forces, Channel 12 reported and The Jerusalem Post confirmed on Wednesday night.Combined with forces from Palestinian Islamic Jihad together, Channel 12 said on Wednesday night that Hamas was up to between 20,000-23,000 fighters.Information obtained by the Post indicated that recently, numbers were closer to around 12,000.
The wild fluctuation in numbers becomes even more stark when compared to previous numbers put out by the IDF or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The IDF had last publicized that it killed between 17,000-20,000 Hamas and PIJ fighters throughout the war.
Over the last 15 months, there has been a gulf of a few thousand between the IDF and Netanyahu, casting doubt on the estimates.In June, the IDF said that between 14,000-16,000 Hamas fighters had been wounded.The Post has learned that over 6,000 Gazans have been detained by the military during the war. At least 4,300 remain in custody, and at most, 2,200 were returned to Gaza, deemed less dangerous.
Numbers don't add up
Given that in October 2023, the IDF said that Hamas’s full forces were 25,000, the numbers do not come close to adding up – unless one takes into account that Hamas has recruited almost an entirely new force, fully replacing its old one.Another alternative is that despite the initial IDF estimates of 25,000, estimates from before the war stood at 30,000, even up to 40,000.The Post was told on Wednesday night that the 40,000 number was more accurate.This could suggest that a majority of the Hamas fighters are still from their original force, and they have undoubtedly added thousands of new recruits.June heralded the first reports of a large Hamas comeback on the heels of the IDF withdrawal from northern Gaza in January-February, and the later withdrawal from Khan Yunis on April 7.If the Channel 12 report is correct, it would put 9,000 Hamas forces split between northern and southern Gaza, PIJ with another 4,000, and another 7,000-10,000 disorganized fighters spread out throughout the enclave.These figures would seem to contradict those presented in recent military briefings to reporters, which indicated that much of northern Gaza has been cleared of fighters.Alternatively, it could be that the Hamas numbers are closer to 12,000, with more fighters in southern Gaza than in northern Gaza. However, sources on Wednesday night backed up Channel 12’s numbers.Still, even Channel 12’s numbers had a significant gap and spectrum, such that IDF estimates may simply be more limited in a period when most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are displaced, have evacuated and moved around several times in this war, and are clustered in a few small humanitarian areas, with little ability to distinguish between terrorist and civilian.A source told the Post on Wednesday night that the total numbers remain unclear, but that the quality of new Hamas fighters receiving weapons is far inferior to the state it was in earlier in the war, given that many of them are untrained minors.