January 21, 2025: The Palestinian Hamas militia force in Gaza has survived over a year of attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces or IDF. Hamas fires an occasional rocket towards Israel but these rarely cause any damage or casualties. Israel still has their Iron Dome rocket defense system to shoot down any rockets headed for a populated area. The IDF has thousands of troops in Gaza searching for Hamas members and capturing or killing them. The IDF is also searching for hostages, most of them Israelis, who were seized in late 2023.

Hamas has been around since the 1980s and is a perennial loser in its battles with Israel. One exception was the October 2023 surprise attack that had three thousand armed Hamas members leave their Gaza hiding places and attack unprepared Israelis. Over a thousand Israelis and foreigners in the area for a music festival were killed. This was the largest number of Jews killed in a single incident since the World War II Nazi German efforts to eradicate all Jews. The Nazis killed six million European Jews and six million non-Jewish anti-Nazis from Eastern Europe. That is the origin of the Israeli motto, “never again.”

Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank were long-time rivals for Palestinian leadership. Neither was able to overcome the other or form a lasting united Palestinian government. That changed with the October 2023 attack where Hamas took the initiative but failed get into Israel or to overcome Fatah’s nominal government in the West Bank.

How many Palestinians belong to Hamas has always been a guessing game. October 2023 confirmed that there were at least three thousand active Hamas members. The problem is that Hamas recruiting is very informal, and effective. Any Palestinian can walk into a known Hamas location, which can be a café or some retail establishment, announce their willingness to join Hamas and offer, if necessary, to fight and die for the cause. Hamas will often hand the new recruit a weapon. These are usually AK-47 assault rifles and RPG rocket launchers. Both of these weapons are regularly featured in Arab language movies, TV shows and propaganda films. By the time Palestinian children are teenagers, they know all about these weapons and how to use them. If there is a crisis, the Palestinians on the Hamas membership list go to a location and get their rifle or rocket launcher.

This enables Palestinian leaders to call up a large number of armed members on short notice. More organized operations, like the October 2023 attack, required a lot of planning. Many of these Palestinian gunmen had received some specialist training, just in case. Hamas leaders did their work and then used the standard Hamas mobilization system to quickly organize a force of armed Hamas members from the local Palestinian population. Hamas members don’t wear uniforms. They are armed civilians. When Western journalists report that many Palestinian civilians were killed by the IDF, many, if not most, of the dead were Hamas members.

Many of the Palestinian gunmen for the October 2023 attacks were not aware of a major attack until they were called out by their Hamas leaders. Some Hamas fighters had been assigned to get vehicles to take down fences and get Hamas gunmen somewhere fast.

Hamas turned pre-planned improvisation into a formidable tactic that caused a lot of Israeli casualties but ultimately failed when the better trained, armed and led IDF showed up, The IDF quickly killed a lot of the Hamas irregulars and the October 2023 offensive faded away.

Surviving Hamas members back in Gaza spent more time in the tunnel network they had built during more than a decade-long effort. Hamas used foreign aid sent by the United States and other nations to build and then rebuild their tunnel system under Gaza. Years of effort has produced hundreds of kilometers of tunnels. Many of the tunnels were wired for electricity. Power was obtained from above ground generators or simply by plugging into home or commercial business supplies. Many Palestinians made a career of working in and on the tunnels.

When the IDF recently set out to destroy the tunnel system they were shocked at how extensive it was and how resistant it was to attack. In some tunnels there were blast doors to protect against the IDF use of explosives to reach a blocked portion of a tunnel. The Israelis were also surprised at the comfortable quarters for Hamas personnel and leaders. There were tunnels equipped as administrative offices and others were meeting rooms or offices for senior Hamas leaders.

The Israelis soon realized that there was a Hamas town and military installation under Gaza which was difficult to destroy. The IDF is, as of early 2025, still fighting their way through the Hamas tunnel network under Gaza. IDF troops were trained for house to house fighting and had to adapt those tactics for the underground battles in the tunnels. Destroying the tunnel network is not impossible. The Israelis have decades of experience fighting in detecting fighting inside of and destroying tunnel systems. It is slow and tedious work. The IDF will stay in Gaza until the tunnel network is destroyed but destroying Hamas is another matter. There are two million Palestinians in Gaza, including several hundred thousand potential Hamas members. Not all armed Palestinians belong to Hamas. There are some Islamic terrorist factions and several armed criminal groups. Their favorite prey is the food and other aid sent to Gaza by various foreign aid organizations. The gangsters will steal this aid and sell it in local markets. Sometimes the IDF provides armed guards for the aid convoys so Palestinian civilians get this food. Without the food aid, many Palestinians would starve. There are few jobs in Gaza because since late 2023 Gaza has been a war zone. There are some markets, mainly for food, but business is done under wartime conditions. Merchants either hire their own security and arm themselves or pay some of the armed groups to protect them. Life goes on, even in a war zone.