Poll Shows 35% of Israelis Think Hamas Won Gaza War
Only 27 percent of Israelis think their government has defeated Hamas in its military onslaught on the Gaza Strip that started a year ago, according to a new survey.
The poll, conducted by Israel's national broadcaster KAN News and the Kantar Institute, interviewed a sample of 653 Israelis.The results show that 35 percent think Israel has lost the war against Hamas, while the rest are unsure.Asked if they would be willing to move to one of the communities in Southern part of the occupied territories close to the besieged enclave after the war ends, only 14 percent said they would consider living there, while 86 percent said they were unwilling.Former and current Israeli military officials say they are losing the war on Gaza and Hamas is winning.It came as Israel has failed to eliminate Hamas or destroy its tunnels in the Gaza Strip and has nothing more military to achieve in the besieged enclave after one year of war.The latest American assessment is that Israel's military campaign has reached the end of the line and that the possibility of weakening Hamas further has diminished.According to a report, a growing number of US national security officials believe Israel would never be able to completely eliminate Hamas despite severely damaging its capabilities in the fighting.While Israel has tried to damage Hamas' tunnels, it has failed to destroy them, American officials believe.The tunnel network has proved "much larger than Israel anticipated" and remains "an effective way for Hamas to hide its leaders and move around fighters", according to the report.
Citing a recently written the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) assessment, Channel 12 news has recently reported much of Hamas tunnel network in Gaza is still in a “good functional state” in many parts of the besieged enclave, and the Palestinian group still has the capacity to organize attacks close to the border and possibly even across it.Tunnels in Gaza City are in a medium to good state, and enable Hamas to gain proximity to the border, it said.Overall, were the war to end now, the report noted, “Hamas still has the capacity and capability to organize an incursion close to the border and perhaps even across it, [albeit] not on the scale of the past.”Senior Israeli defense officials in January assessed that Hamas’s Gaza tunnel network was between 350 and 450 miles long, an astounding figure given that the enclave is only some 140 square miles in total size.
Monday marks one year since the start of Israel's war on the besieged enclave, which followed a multi-front attack by Hamas-led fighters in Southern part of the occupied territories.The Hamas attack killed almost 1,200 people, and more than 250 were taken into Gaza as captives, nearly 100 of whom are believed to be still in the blockaded territory.Current and former American and Israeli officials say that returning the captives cannot be achieved militarily.The subsequent and ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 people, the majority of them women and children. Multiple ceasefire proposals have been rejected by Israel over the past year, including a United Nations Security Council resolution, as Israel insists on eliminating Hamas rather than reaching a political end to the conflict.
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