The IDF are advancing rapidly across Gaza City, taking minimal casualties and exploiting their overwhelming firepower, manpower, and air superiority to render all resistance suicidally futile.
As in previous instances when Hamas had the opportunity to stand and fight against the IDF, their forces are collapsing entirely. Once again, the casandras who warned of a quagmire have been proven wrong. Those who claimed Hamas had recruited 25,000 new men and returned to their pre-war strength—relying entirely on pro-Hamas propaganda—should remember their mistake next time. There were many indications not only that Hamas had failed to rebuild, but that they had been reduced to just a few thousand armed men, with ample evidence that they were also short of weapons and ammunition. They have been entirely cut off from resupply for 2 years now.
The war will not end with Hamas losing Gaza City—which, at the current pace, will happen within weeks—but Israel will then be able to establish an internal perimeter and freeze the situation. Hamas may still hold hostages, but Israel will hold the stronger hand. With their capital lost forever and largely destroyed, no one will credibly claim Hamas as the victors.
Israel could easily and justifiably declare the Gideon’s Chariots operation concluded within weeks and shift to a purely counter-terror posture against Hamas remnants hiding among the civilian population in the humanitarian zone. Fighting out of that zone, or from the few remaining towns in the center of the strip, is far less advantageous for Hamas than making a stand in Gaza City. The logical conclusion is that they didn’t fight there because they couldn’t—or because their remaining fighters largely melted away.
A side note: there is a certain comedy in the prospect that the Greta-branded Jihadi-Marxist flotilla, currently meandering fractiously across the Mediterranean, may reach Gaza only to find the IDF firmly in control of the port. At the present pace, it’s a race to see who gets there first.