US and Israeli estimates differ on number of fighters remaining with Hamas

US intelligence officials told members of Congress this week that Israel had degraded Hamas’s fighting capabilities but was not close to eliminating the group, the principal war aim of the Israeli government, American officials said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, speaking after a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, emphasized again on February 7 that his goal was to destroy Hamas.

Those war aims are divisive in Israel, where parts of the Israeli public have criticized the government’s decision to prioritize the complete defeat of Hamas over securing the release of hostages.

The closed-door intelligence briefing to members of Congress did not include a discussion of how many Hamas fighters may have been killed, nor did it contain refined estimates of civilian casualties, New York Times reports.

American intelligence officials have refrained from offering specific estimates of how many Hamas fighters have been killed, arguing that such estimates are neither accurate nor meaningful.

Mr. Netanyahu said last month that Israel had destroyed two-thirds of Hamas’s fighting regiments. American officials say privately that their estimates are lower, and perhaps only a third of Hamas fighters have been killed. Before the war, estimates of Hamas’s fighting strength ranged from 20,000 to 25,000.

But American officials also emphasize that the United States has learned in war after war that counting the number of enemies killed in an insurgency or counterterrorism operation is a fool’s game.

Operations that kill militants often radicalize others, swelling the ranks of enemy organizations. And US officials say death counts of fighters do not give an indication of whether a government has addressed the core issues driving the war.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian enclave's government information office said direct losses in Gaza as a result of Israel's military action had exceeded $15 billion.

Israel's destruction of buildings in the Gaza Strip along the border to create a so-called "buffer zone" is a war crime, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on February 8.

"The Israeli Defence Forces are reportedly destroying all buildings in the Gaza Strip within a one-kilometre radius of the fences between Israel and the enclave," Türk said in a message posted on the X social network.

"Israel's large-scale destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out illegally and wantonly, constitutes a grave violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and amounts to war crimes," he stressed.

More than 27,700 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian health officials. Many thousands more are buried in the rubble.

Swathes of Gaza have been destroyed and 1.9 million of its 2.3 million people have been displaced.

Senior military officials have said the offensive could last for many more months, even into 2025.

Demobilised Israeli reservists have described how they deployed massive fire power in a brutal, complex and often one-sided war of sporadic but intense clashes that has reduced much of Gaza to ruins.

“The destruction is massive,” said one noncommissioned officer (NCO) who was in Gaza for two months with an infantry unit. “What really blew my mind was that there is nowhere for anyone to come back to. There aren’t even three walls connected. It looks like a scene of a zombie attack or something. It’s not a war zone. It’s a disaster area, like out of Hollywood.”

A recently returned veteran said: “It’s not like how you see in the media. It’s not like a computer game. There are days and days when nothing happens and you never see the terrorists then it all goes crazy for an hour or so then nothing again.”

 

Israel launched the offensive after a bloody surprise attack by Hamas into Israel on 7 October that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians in their homes or at a music festival. About 240 hostages were taken back to Gaza by the group.

 

None of the reservists interviewed doubted that Israel’s offensive and the tactics employed were justified. “Everyone in my unit knew someone who was a victim on 7 October. Any war is bad but we were there for a good reason,” said one.

Another reservist said that, as an Israeli citizen, it was his duty to take up arms when necessary. “We were attacked, so we have to fight, so I fight,” he said. “If they ask me to do it again, I’ll go back and do it again.”