{"id":216311,"date":"2025-01-16T02:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T02:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/16\/cease-fire-deal-with-israel-comes-as-hamas-is-severely-weakened\/"},"modified":"2025-01-16T02:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T02:18:07","slug":"cease-fire-deal-with-israel-comes-as-hamas-is-severely-weakened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/16\/cease-fire-deal-with-israel-comes-as-hamas-is-severely-weakened\/","title":{"rendered":"Cease-Fire Deal With Israel Comes as Hamas Is Severely Weakened"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/15\/multimedia\/15mideast-crisis-hamas-weakness-kqvl\/15mideast-crisis-hamas-weakness-kqvl-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Cease-Fire Deal With Israel Comes as Hamas Is Severely Weakened\" title=\"Cease-Fire Deal With Israel Comes as Hamas Is Severely Weakened\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Hamas may claim victory after a cease-fire with Israel that was announced on Wednesday, but 15 months of war have left the militant group severely weakened.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Israel\u2019s bombardment and invasion of Gaza, which began weeks after the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas, have decimated the 21 battalions that formed the main unit of the group\u2019s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, according to military analysts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The total number of Hamas fighters killed is unclear. In September, a spokesman for the Israeli military put the number at more than 17,000, including a number of senior commanders.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Hamas\u2019s ability to mount sustained and coordinated operations has also been greatly reduced, the analysts say. Israel has destroyed large quantities of Hamas\u2019s military hardware and disabled many of the tunnels it used to transport and store material.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Israel also seized a strip of land that runs along Gaza\u2019s southern border in May, depriving Hamas of a conduit to funnel military supplies and personnel into the enclave from Egypt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Hamas has lost many of its senior leaders. Israeli forces killed the commander of Hamas\u2019s military wing, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/08\/01\/world\/middleeast\/muhammad-deif-hamas-death.html\" title=\"\">Muhammad Deif<\/a>, in July; another top leader, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/07\/31\/world\/middleeast\/ismail-haniyeh-dead.html\" title=\"\">Ismail Haniyeh<\/a>, later that month; and the group\u2019s leader, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/10\/17\/world\/middleeast\/yahya-sinwar-dead.html\" title=\"\">Yahya Sinwar<\/a>, in October. Mr. Sinwar had emerged from two decades in Israeli prisons to help plot the Oct. 7 attack.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIsrael worked on the ground for 15 months with a massive force and managed to destroy much of what Hamas had there,\u201d said Ahron Bregman, a former Israeli military officer who is now a political scientist and expert in Middle East security issues at King\u2019s College London.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But he added that Hamas might still have reason to congratulate itself. \u201cIsrael has turned Gaza into dust but Hamas is still standing and they have not raised the white flag,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Iran-backed regional proxy network that has helped sustain Hamas has also been decimated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Israel stepped up its assault on the Lebanese militia Hezbollah starting in September, relentlessly targeting the group\u2019s personnel and infrastructure through airstrikes and killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah in September. That month, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/09\/17\/world\/middleeast\/hezbollah-pager-explosions-lebanon.html\" title=\"\">hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded<\/a>, killing or maiming many of the group\u2019s operatives \u2014 as well as civilians.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Days later, Israel launched an invasion of southern Lebanon.The invasion ended with a cease-fire in November under which Hezbollah agreed to stop its missile and drone attacks on Israel, which it had started in solidarity with Hamas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Last month, rebels toppled Syria\u2019s longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, who had been a key element in Iran\u2019s so-called axis of resistance, eliminating Tehran\u2019s main conduit to funnel arms to Hezbollah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/15\/world\/middleeast\/hamas-weakened-israel-ceasefire.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hamas may claim victory after a cease-fire with Israel that was announced on Wednesday, but 15 months of war have left the militant group severely weakened. Israel\u2019s bombardment and invasion of Gaza, which began weeks after the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas, have decimated the 21 battalions that formed the main unit of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/15\/multimedia\/15mideast-crisis-hamas-weakness-kqvl\/15mideast-crisis-hamas-weakness-kqvl-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7275,2294,80009,32652,5552,92603,28805,38,62811,45381,49186,66039,170610],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216311"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216313,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216311\/revisions\/216313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}