Israeli troops on the border with Gaza.
Right under Israel’s nose, hundreds of fighters from the Islamist group resist (and kill) IDF control: they would rather fight or succumb to hunger than surrender. Hamas denied ordering the surprise attacks.
In the middle of the territory controlled by Israel in Gaza, hundreds of Hamas militants, armed and resisting Israeli control, will still be trapped in tunnels. The presence of these fighters has already led to the death of three Israeli soldiers and is threatening the already fragile ceasefire reached between the two parties, according to the .
The most recent episode occurred last month, when an Israeli army engineering unit destroyed tunnels in the withdrawal zone. From one of the underground wells, Hamas militants launched a surprise attack with anti-tank missiles against a digger, killing two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.
The incident took place a few days after the one mediated by the United States, and was one of the reasons that led Israel to respond with a series of air strikes that caused dozens of deaths in Gaza.
Hundreds of Hamas fighters are trapped in tunnels under areas now controlled by Israel, with no escape routes and increasingly scarce food and ammunition reserves. The impasse has become one of the main obstacles in negotiations to consolidate the ceasefire, Israel argues.
Hamas demands that Israel allow the safe evacuation of fighters to areas under the movement’s control, while Tel Aviv insists on their surrender or elimination. But the Islamist group has already guaranteed its disarmament, provided for in US President Donald Trump’s peace plan to end the war.
“Israel’s objective in Gaza is clear: to destroy the tunnels and eliminate Hamas terrorists without restrictions within the area under our control,” said Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz in a publication on X.
Washington, for its part, is pressing to move quickly towards , which foresees the entry of an international stabilization force and the progressive disarmament of Hamas. However, both points continue to generate a lot of discord between Israelis and Arab partners.
According to estimates from Israeli and Arab sources, between 200 and 300 Hamas fighters remain in the tunnels; Hamas maintains that there will be around a hundred. Many may have already died of hunger, say Arab diplomats. The majority are in the city of Rafah, in the extreme south of Gaza, but there are also isolated groups in the areas of Khan Younis, Beit Hanoun and Shuja’iyya, still under Israeli control.
The attacks by these fighters have so far caused three known casualties among Israeli forces and several injuries. Subsequent retaliations resulted in more than 145 Palestinian deaths, according to local health officials, who did not clarify how many were civilians or militants.
O Hamas claimed to have lost contact with these fighters in March and denied having ordered the attacksalthough he admitted last Sunday, during new talks, that he had reestablished communications with the combatants. Israeli military personnel, however, guarantee that underground communications were never completely interrupted, claiming that the group could have ordered surrender if they so wished.
According to Arab mediators, Hamas had warned before the truce that its trapped men they prefer to fight and die or succumb to starvation instead of surrendering.
The issue of the fate of these fighters was recently returned to negotiations, after Washington suggested the possibility of granting safe passage under the supervision of the Red Cross. Israel even accepted, on condition that the militants laid down their arms and that the agreement was associated with the return of the bodies of dead Israeli hostages. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed down this Tuesday, after criticism from several deputies who considered the proposal unacceptable from a moral and security point of view.
Israeli forces guarantee that they continue to search for militants in the tunnels, and that they favor capture over elimination, for fear that mass executions will lead Hamas to suspend the return of the bodies of the seven hostages still held in Gaza. But, according to Israeli officials, voluntary surrenders have been rare since the start of the war two years ago.
