The war that Hamas ignited on October 7, 2023, has since expanded far beyond Gaza, drawing in Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. But as Israel found itself under attack from multiple fronts in recent months, the group that started the conflict has been strikingly absent from the battlefield, largely holding fast to a ceasefire that halted fighting in October.

That absence, however, should not be mistaken for defeat, experts warn. Despite two years of sustained Israel Defense Forces operations and months of diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the war for good, Hamas remains armed and in control of most of Gaza’s territory east of the ceasefire line.

“On their side of the Yellow Line, [Hamas has] a monopoly on force,” Jonathan Ruhe, a military expert at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told The Times of Israel. “That feeds into their whole strategic concept, which, at this point, is to show that they won the war because they survived.”

When US President Donald Trump unveiled his 20-point plan to end the conflict eight months ago, disarming Hamas was one of its central pillars, paving the way for an International Stabilization Force tasked with securing the Strip during a transitional postwar period.

But footage circulating online since the ceasefire took effect in October appears to show the terror group reasserting its presence across parts of Gaza, with armed operatives patrolling streets, staging public displays of force and seeking to demonstrate that its military wing remains intact.

At the same time, Hamas has refrained from launching any significant attacks on Israeli territory since the ceasefire came into force.

The relative quiet has persisted even as the IDF continues to carry out near-daily strikes in Gaza, which Israel says are aimed at thwarting threats to its forces or responding to violations of the truce.

Hamas’s last known attempt to fire a rocket at Israel came in January, when the IDF reported detecting a failed launch from the Gaza City area.

Unable, not unwilling

According to Samuel Ben-Ur, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the absence of rocket fire should not be mistaken for a change in Hamas’s intentions.

“If they could carry out another October 7-style attack today, they would,” Ben-Ur said. “Their strategy is to inflict as much pain as possible on Israel… and force it into a concession.”

Instead, he argued, Hamas’s restraint is more likely a reflection of its current capabilities than its ambitions.

That position is backed up by Israeli military officials, who said in March that while the terror group has likely been attempting to rearm amid the ongoing ceasefire, it is nowhere near attaining the strength it had before the war, when it and other terror organizations would regularly fire rockets from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel.

The IDF assessed that Hamas’s........

© The Times of Israel