by Yonah Jeremy Bob
IDF said that Hamas has been reduced to a mode of survival as opposed to being able to do very much strategic or proactive attack plans.
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IDF intelligence has revealed Hamas's internal estimate of its forces in the once-powerful northern Gaza area of Shejaia.
According to previous secret information shown to the Jerusalem Post and some other media, the internal estimates show that Shejaia forces have dropped pre-war to 435 fighters from an initial 1,235 - a drop of around 66%.
In addition, the estimate was that Hamas rockets in Shejaia were down to 15 rockets from an original inventory of 63, a drop of over 75%.
This effectively ends most of the threat Hamas's forces could present using rockets from Shejaia.
Likewise, the volume of anti-tank missiles and rocket-propelled grenades had fallen to 134 from 652, though due to the larger initial volume of RPGs as opposed to the smaller number of rockets, this still left Hamas with a fairly large inventory of RPGs to conduct ambushes against IDF soldiers nearby.
Further, Hamas was down to 133 improvised explosives from a high point of 662, something which again has depleted long-term or strategic fighting but provides the capability to continue to sabotage nearby IDF soldiers for some time.
In the wider perspective, the IDF said that Hamas is down to between 1,000-1,500 rockets.
Pre-war, Hamas reportedly had around 15,000 rockets,
The IDF is still concerned that Hamas still has a small supply of long-range rockets that could strike Tel Aviv, and on July 1, the terror group showed it could still execute a complex operation in which it fired 20 rockets from the Khan Yunis area into Israeli Gaza border areas and communities.
But overall, the IDF said that Hamas has been reduced to a mode of survival as opposed to being able to do very much strategic or proactive attack plans.
Multiple IDF sources projected continued confidence that Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif is dead.
The Post witnessed videos and photos of visual observation of the target house, nearby makeshift roof-covered areas, and trees both before the IDF struck the area and after.
The explosion was of tremendous strength, and no survivors were seen exiting.
The remaining x-factors are the slight possibility that Deif managed to leave before the attack without surveillance noticing, though he had definitely been on location for some time, and the many times he had somehow rallied from severe injuries from prior IDF assassination attempts to emerge having survived.
Impossible to prove?
There were no signs that the IDF would be able to present new immediate evidence to prove his death in the near future.
Next, IDF sources described how 1.9 million Palestinian civilians have evacuated many areas and moved to the middle Gaza areas of al-Muwasi, Deir al Balach in central Gaza, as well as parts of Khan Yunis closer to central Gaza.
There are a mere 25,000 Palestinians left in Rafah out of the 1.4 million who were there in early May before the IDF invasion and a mere 250,000 Palestinians in northern Gaza, according to IDF estimates.
IDF sources said that while the main purpose of evacuating civilians is for their own safety when Hamas has embedded itself in safe zone areas, moving the civilian populace also adds exponential pressure to Hamas.
Moreover, IDF sources gave some surprising answers about the number of dead Hamas forces in the war to date.
Already in early May, some Israeli officials had said the IDF had killed 16,000 Hamas fighters.
Others at the time said the number was closer to 14,000.
On Tuesday, IDF sources said that the number remained at 14,000, but what was strange about the number was that the IDF said around 1,000 Hamas fighters had been killed in the last two weeks of fighting.
If true, that would mean that less than 13,000 Hamas fighters had been killed as of early July and possibly another 1,000 or so less back in early May.
Fog of war
The fluctuations in the number of estimated killed Hamas fighters show the continuing uncertainty in that area.IDF sources had no additional news to provide regarding the locations of hostages but were hopeful that the ongoing process of destroying Hamas’s tunnel network would force Gaza Chief Yahya Sinwar and other Hamas officials holding hostages into the open where Sinwar could be struck and hostages could be saved.
IDF sources strongly believe this was how they located Deif, regardless of whether he survived the attack.
Although IDF sources have said that destroying all of Hamas’s tunnels could take years, there was hope that an increased pace of eliminating tunnels could also compel Sinwar or others holding hostages to make an error and expose themselves.
Yonah Jeremy Bob
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-810555
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