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Did Israel Eliminate Hamas After Six Months of War?

Children stand in the rubble of a collapsed building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 9, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
Children stand in the rubble of a collapsed building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 9, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
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Did Israel Eliminate Hamas After Six Months of War?

Children stand in the rubble of a collapsed building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 9, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
Children stand in the rubble of a collapsed building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 9, 2024. (Photo by AFP)

After six months of bloody fighting in the Gaza Strip, it remains unclear if Israel has achieved its goal of wiping out Hamas and its control of the Palestinian enclave.

As the conflict continues and Israel withdraws from some parts of Gaza, the crucial question arises: Will Hamas be ousted? Can Israel step in to fill the void?

Before the pullback, Israel promised a new government, but doubts grew when Hamas quickly regained power in certain areas.

Residents in Gaza who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat doubt Hamas will go unless it willingly hands over control to the Palestinian Authority, which won’t be easy.

The Palestinian group has managed to keep its administrative structure intact during the ongoing conflict.

It continues to oversee security, police, ministries, and institutions, even paying partial salaries to its employees.

Despite Israeli attacks on its economic assets, Hamas has distributed financial advances to its members.

According to sources within the Hamas government, the movement’s financial arm has worked to ensure salaries for government employees and operatives, despite Israeli strikes on money storage sites.

Employees, like A.S. from the Hamas police force, receive constant instructions to maintain security. The internal security apparatus has arrested collaborators with Israeli forces.

A.S. and their colleagues have also received limited financial disbursements since the onset of the conflict.

“We receive semi-daily instructions focused on maintaining security, monitoring markets and commodity prices, and ensuring protection for aid entering for distribution to citizens,” A.S. told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Hamas activists, operating individually, are gradually regaining control in Gaza, challenging Israel’s objectives. However, Israel finds it difficult to target Hamas’ entire security apparatus.

Although the group has suffered significant losses, including headquarters and personnel, it remains standing. Israel claims to have killed many Hamas members but faces skepticism from Palestinians.

Ridwan Maqbul, a political science graduate from Al-Azhar University in Gaza, believes Hamas’ leadership still maintains control and scoffs at the idea of a tribal alternative government.

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Climate Change Imperils Drought-Stricken Morocco’s Cereal Farmers and Its Food Supply

A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)
A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)
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Climate Change Imperils Drought-Stricken Morocco’s Cereal Farmers and Its Food Supply

A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)
A farmer works in a wheat field on the outskirts of Kenitra, Morocco, Friday, June 21, 2024. (AP)

Golden fields of wheat no longer produce the bounty they once did in Morocco. A six-year drought has imperiled the country's entire agriculture sector, including farmers who grow cereals and grains used to feed humans and livestock.

The North African nation projects this year's harvest will be smaller than last year in both volume and acreage, putting farmers out of work and requiring more imports and government subsidies to prevent the price of staples like flour from rising for everyday consumers.

"In the past, we used to have a bounty — a lot of wheat. But during the last seven or eight years, the harvest has been very low because of the drought," said Al Housni Belhoussni, a small-scale farmer who has long tilled fields outside of the city of Kenitra.

Belhoussni's plight is familiar to grain farmers throughout the world confronting a hotter and drier future. Climate change is imperiling the food supply and shrinking the annual yields of cereals that dominate diets around the world — wheat, rice, maize and barley.

In North Africa, among the regions thought of as most vulnerable to climate change, delays to annual rains and inconsistent weather patterns have pushed the growing season later in the year and made planning difficult for farmers.

In Morocco, where cereals account for most of the farmed land and agriculture employs the majority of workers in rural regions, the drought is wreaking havoc and touching off major changes that will transform the makeup of the economy. It has forced some to leave their fields fallow. It has also made the areas they do elect to cultivate less productive, producing far fewer sacks of wheat to sell than they once did.

In response, the government has announced restrictions on water use in urban areas — including on public baths and car washes — and in rural ones, where water going to farms has been rationed.

"The late rains during the autumn season affected the agriculture campaign. This year, only the spring rains, especially during the month of March, managed to rescue the crops," said Abdelkrim Naaman, the chairman of Nalsya. The organization has advised farmers on seeding, irrigation and drought mitigation as less rain falls and less water flows through Morocco's rivers.

The Agriculture Ministry estimates that this year's wheat harvest will yield roughly 3.4 million tons (3.1 billion kilograms), far less than last year's 6.1 million tons (5.5 billion kilograms) — a yield that was still considered low. The amount of land seeded has dramatically shrunk as well, from 14,170 square miles (36,700 square kilometers) to 9,540 square miles (24,700 square kilometers).

Such a drop constitutes a crisis, said Driss Aissaoui, an analyst and former member of the Moroccan Ministry for Agriculture.

"When we say crisis, this means that you have to import more," he said. "We are in a country where drought has become a structural issue."

Leaning more on imports means the government will have to continue subsidizing prices to ensure households and livestock farmers can afford dietary staples for their families and flocks, said Rachid Benali, the chairman of the farming lobby COMADER.

The country imported nearly 2.5 million tons of common wheat between January and June. However, such a solution may have an expiration date, particularly because Morocco's primary source of wheat, France, is facing shrinking harvests as well.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization ranked Morocco as the world's sixth-largest wheat importer this year, between Türkiye and Bangladesh, which both have much bigger populations.

"Morocco has known droughts like this and in some cases known droughts that las longer than 10 years. But the problem, this time especially, is climate change," Benali said.