On 18^th August 2025, Hamas accepted a new ceasefire proposal for Gaza. The agreement submitted by Egypt and Qatar largely echoed previous United States proposals — which Israel had first supported without approving them. It envisaged the release of ten of the 20 Israeli hostages still alive, in exchange for a 60-day truce. Unlike previous proposals, Hamas requested no modifications to the document and accepted it within hours. So far, Israel has not followed up on this offer.

Change of Tactics

Many observers interpreted this immediate approval by the Palestinian side as a mark of weakness, even desperation. According to this reading, after nearly two years of incessant bombing and siege conducted by Israel on Gaza, the assassination of Hamas’s principal leaders and massive attacks against its allies in the region, including Iran and Hezbollah [1], Hamas now has very few cards in hand.

Nevertheless, the rapid acceptance of the agreement could be as much a strategic manœuvre as a signal of distress. Certainly, Hamas’s political organisation has suffered heavy losses and its authority over Gaza in ruins is fragile. Yet despite the growing destruction, its fighters have remained active. Since spring 2025, they have intensified attacks against Israeli forces across the strip, including a large-scale offensive against an Israeli base on 20^th August, as well as other operations in June and July that killed several Israeli soldiers. At the same time, they have increased their coordination with other armed groups in Gaza and strengthened their ranks, whilst famine has become widespread among the population.

Disappointed Hopes

Hamas’s resilience rests on an evolution of its approach to war, which has raised the stakes even further. It could transform Israel’s new campaign to seize Gaza City into a military as well as humanitarian disaster.

To understand Hamas’s survival strategy, it is necessary to trace the mutation of its objectives. When it ordered its 7^th October attacks, Hamas’s leadership in Gaza thought the operation would rapidly draw its regional allies into war and provoke a generalised Palestinian uprising, or even Arab public uprising. In sum, it expected a repetition on a larger scale of May 2021, when Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem [2] had triggered an unprecedented collective response: uprisings in the West Bank [3] and Israeli cities, rocket fire from Hezbollah and other allies from Lebanon and Syria, and a massive barrage of rockets by Hamas from Gaza. The 7^th October was meant to reproduce this “unity of fronts,” but on a much larger scale.

After nearly 700 days of war, these objectives have been disappointed. Following Hamas’s unilateral attack from Gaza, Palestinians in Israel hardly mobilised, whilst those in the West Bank were subjected to intense Israeli repression. Most of Hamas’s regional allies stayed on the sidelines. Hezbollah, despite its powerful arsenal in South Lebanon, sought to contain rather than expand the conflict; then, in September 2024, it was decapitated by the Israeli “pager operation” [4]. In December 2024, the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime [5] cut crucial military supply routes.

The collapse of these external fronts was added to the difficulties encountered in Gaza. After the ceasefire breakdown in March 2025, Israel initially concentrated its efforts on aerial bombardments, limiting ground incursions. The absence of urban combat prevented Hamas from taking the initiative, often reducing it to the role of helpless spectator to massacres. Meanwhile, Israel reoccupied a large part of the strip. Combined with the total blockade of aid imposed in March 2025, this new Israeli offensive worsened the population’s distress.

Tactical Reassessment

Hamas forces then changed approach. On 20^th April 2025, a small group of fighters organised an ambush from a tunnel in Beit Hanoun [6], in the north of Gaza, in a “buffer zone” controlled by Israel. Using rocket launchers and improvised bombs, they overturned an Israeli military vehicle, killed one soldier and wounded several others. Since then, similar groups have multiplied these actions across the strip. On 24^th June, the Al-Qassam Brigades [7], Hamas’s armed branch, killed seven Israeli soldiers in Khan Younis [8], in the south of the enclave. On 7^th July, again in Beit Hanoun, they attacked a tank convoy just metres from the border, killing five soldiers and wounding fourteen. On 15^th July, in Jabalia [9], still in the north, three other soldiers were killed in an ambush targeting a team of Israeli engineers. On 22^nd July, in Deir Al-Balah [10], an operation targeted a military convoy and a Merkava [11] combat tank.

These attacks have intensified and grown bolder. In mid-August, as the Israeli army resumed its incursions into residential areas, Hamas operations multiplied in eastern Gaza City, notably in the Tuffah, Zaytoun and Shajaia neighbourhoods. On 20^th August, 18 fighters conducted a coordinated attack against an Israeli military encampment in Khan Younis, using rockets and short-range machine guns — a large-scale operation, possibly intended to capture soldiers, which required considerable preparation and coordination.

These actions are part of Hamas’s tactical reassessment, which seeks to transform Israel’s expanded objectives into opportunities. Despite the Israeli state’s crushing military superiority, the organisation banks on asymmetric warfare and its fighters’ determination. As Israel reduced its urban incursions, it began targeting soldiers in the “buffer zones”.

As Israeli officials have acknowledged, Hamas has reconstituted its forces, even in sectors the army thought it had “cleaned.” Today, as Israel seeks to seize large portions of Gaza City, it must face urban guerrilla warfare in terrain Hamas knows by heart. These tactics could be particularly effective in the labyrinth of Gaza City’s ruins, where Hamas still has a vast network and where Israel had until now avoided major incursions.

Another Form of Power

Despite external isolation and growing pressure, Hamas fighters have shown remarkable resilience. The movement’s ability to renew its ranks is an old characteristic: it has always managed to maintain a strong footing in Palestinian society despite heavy losses. The current war is no exception. The death of major leaders — Yahya Sinwar [12], Hamas leader in Gaza and architect of the 7^th October attacks; Mohammed Deif [13], military chief; and Marwan Issa, his deputy — has had little visible impact on its operational capacity.

The exact number of fighters remains unclear. In mid-2024, Israel claimed that 17,000 militants had been killed since October 2023, including “half the military leadership.” But in May 2025, Israeli sources cited in a database revealed by The Guardian and online magazine +972 only acknowledged the death of 8,900 fighters (from Hamas and Islamic Jihad [14]) identified by name. American services even estimated that Hamas had been able to recruit up to 15,000 new fighters since the start of the war. If these figures are correct, more than 80% of the 53,000 deaths recorded in May 2025 since October 2023 are therefore civilians [15].

Paradoxically, Israeli escalation feeds Hamas’s resilience. The growing despair of Gaza civilians has provoked anti-Hamas protests, notably after the total aid blockade in March. The Palestinian organisation has sometimes tolerated these demonstrations, sometimes repressed them. But Israel has also sought to exacerbate divisions by arming an anti-Hamas militia in Rafah [16] led by Yasser Abu Shabab, a notorious trafficker who escaped from prison and has links to Fatah [17]. According to the UN, this militia diverts aid convoys, fuelling the idea that Hamas steals food — a divide-and-rule strategy that aims to prepare the “day after” in Gaza.

However, this approach has also strengthened popular resistance: many Gazans now perceive the war as an enterprise of extermination. Abu Shabab’s militia is so unpopular that his own family has called for his death. At the same time, untrained young Palestinians are increasingly joining the Al-Qassam Brigades to conduct guerrilla actions. Despite the bombing and fragmentation of the territory, armed action capacity is not eradicated.

Another essential asset of Hamas remains its tunnel network. Even after months of bombing and the use of advanced technologies, Israel has not managed to destroy this “underground state,” which allows hiding hostages, protecting fighters and launching attacks. This incapacity is the mark of the conflict’s asymmetry: on one side, sophisticated and expensive weapons systems, on the other, improvised rockets and tunnels.

Isolated, But Not Alone

Although Hamas had hoped for regional support after 7^th October, its organisation in Gaza has always acted autonomously. The group did not share details of the attack with its “axis of resistance” [18] allies and was manifestly its sole instigator. In compensation, it has tightened its links with other factions in Gaza, notably Islamic Jihad with which it has long collaborated. Their joint operations room, created in 2006, now coordinates a dozen Palestinian organisations.

Recently, however, cracks have appeared in this coalition: some factions have asked Hamas to end the war and criticised its slowness to accept a ceasefire — which could explain the immediate acceptance of the 18^th August 2025 proposal. But the determination to continue fighting remains shared: for the Al-Qassam Brigades, only military pressure can force Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [19] to accept a lasting ceasefire.

Israel Between Hamas and the Anvil

After two years of war, Hamas’s strengths and weaknesses are almost the inverse of Israel’s. The latter has immense military resources but struggles to mobilise enough troops for its invasion of Gaza City; Hamas, despite massive losses, continues to recruit. As it intensifies its operations, Israel loses more soldiers on the ground and encounters difficulties bringing in its reservists.

The 18^th August ceasefire proposal was not new. Inspired by a previous plan from US envoy Steve Witkoff, it envisaged total withdrawal of Israeli troops and allowed Israel to resume war after two months’ halt. Hamas had already accepted similar versions before. Netanyahu, however, approaches these proposals not as negotiations, but as a means to obtain through politics what Israel could not obtain by force. At the end of August, he demanded an “all or nothing” agreement that mediators judge unrealistic.

Netanyahu is now trying to push the army to enter Gaza City’s tunnels, despite opposition from military officials who estimate such an operation would take more than a year and be extremely dangerous. Having failed to achieve its objectives against Hamas, Israel has intensified its attacks in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and even against Iran, to divert attention from its failure in Gaza. Thus widens a gulf between the image of war the Israeli government wants to project and the reality on the ground.

About the Author

Leïla Seurat is a researcher at the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies in Paris (CAREP), associated with the Centre for Sociological Research on Law and Penal Institutions (CESDIP).