Israel has achieved all that it can militarily in the Gaza Strip, according to senior US officials, who say continued bombings are only increasing risks to civilians while the possibility of further weakening Hamas has diminished.

With the Biden administration racing to get ceasefire negotiations back on track, a growing number of national security officials across the government said that the Israeli military had severely set back Hamas but would never be able to completely eliminate the group.

In many respects, Israel’s military operation has done far more damage against Hamas than US officials had predicted when the war began in October.

Israeli forces can now move freely throughout Gaza, the officials said, and Hamas is bloodied and damaged. Israel has destroyed or seized crucial supply routes from Egypt into Gaza. About 14,000 combatants in Gaza have been killed or captured, the Israeli military said last month. (US intelligence agencies use different, more conservative methodologies to estimate Hamas casualties, though the precise number remains classified.)

The Israeli military also asserted that it had eliminated half the leadership of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, including top leaders Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa.

But one of Israel’s biggest remaining goals — the return of the roughly 115 living and dead hostages still held in Gaza after being seized in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks — cannot be achieved militarily, according to current and former US and Israeli officials.

Over the past 10 months, “Israel has been able to disrupt Hamas, kill a number of their leaders and largely reduce the threat to Israel that existed before October 7” said General Joseph L. Votel, the former head of US Central Command. Hamas is now “a diminished” organisation, he added. But he said the release of the hostages could be secured only through negotiations.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces, said in a telephone interview that “the IDF and its commanders are committed to achieving the goals of the war to dismantle Hamas and bring home our hostages, and will continue to operate with determination to achieve them”.

The latest US assessment comes as an array of administration officials are fanning out across the region to try to nail down a Gaza ceasefire deal and possibly avert a retaliatory attack by Iran and its allies in response to the recent Israeli assassinations of senior Iranian-backed proxy leaders, US officials said.

William Burns, the CIA director, is due in Qatar. Brett McGurk, President Joe Biden’s West Asia coordinator, has headed to Egypt and Qatar. Amos Hochstein, a senior White House adviser, landed in Lebanon. One of the messages the officials are expected to deliver is that there is little more Israel can accomplish against Hamas.

On Tuesday, defence secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Israeli defence minister
Yoav Gallant as the two prepared for possible retaliatory strikes by Iran or Hezbollah in Israel.

Tensions within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government exploded into public view again this week after the news media reported that Gallant had questioned the prime minister’s goal of a “total victory” over Hamas in a closed-door meeting.

Austin and other officials in the Biden administration share Gallant’s view that a ceasefire agreement that returns the hostages is in Israel’s best interest.

New York Times News Service