What Are Hamas' Military Options as Gaza War Resumes?

People sit as Palestinians make their way to flee their homes, after the Israeli army issued evacuation orders for a number of neighborhoods, following heavy Israeli strikes, in the northern Gaza Strip March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Gaza: Asharq Al Awsat

07:10-19 March 2025 AD ـ 19 Ramadan 1446 AH

Gaza: Asharq Al Awsat

07:10-19 March 2025 AD ـ 19 Ramadan 1446 AH

What Are Hamas' Military Options as Gaza War Resumes?

Until the final moments before Israel resumed its military operations against Gaza, Hamas continued to receive invitations to negotiate and assurances that Tel Aviv preferred a political path over a military one to secure the return of its hostages.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, backed by the United States, delivered a surprise blow to the Palestinian faction with a massive airstrike that targeted dozens of locations and killed hundreds.

Since the official expiration of the ceasefire on March 1, Hamas has instructed its leaders and members to take heightened security precautions, move cautiously, avoid using vehicles and modern communication tools, and revert to traditional methods of communication.

In the lead-up to the renewed offensive, Israel ramped up its intelligence operations in Gaza—a move Palestinian faction sources had previously confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat—aiming to update its target database.

This was reflected in the overnight strike, which hit senior and field-level Hamas figures across all its wings, as well as military leaders from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Tough Choices Ahead for Hamas

Despite Israel’s large-scale assault, Hamas and other Palestinian factions have yet to mount a military response. But what are their options?

Hamas now faces difficult choices regarding its response to the latest escalation.

Sources within the group told Asharq Al-Awsat that it is weighing all options, including a political course, to prevent a broader Israeli offensive in Gaza while allowing its armed wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the opportunity to reassert control and retaliate for what it described as “massacres.”

Hamas still retains some military capabilities to strike Israeli forces, sources told Asharq Al-Awsat. However, the decision on how and when to respond lies with the military leadership of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, depending on battlefield conditions and the progress of mediation efforts aimed at de-escalation, the sources said.

“We are in the holy month of Ramadan and approaching Eid al-Fitr. The movement has no intention to escalate, contrary to Israel’s claims before its attack, which were merely a pretext for its crimes,” one source said.

According to the sources, Hamas will determine its stance in the coming hours—whether to allow its military wing to set the “zero hour” for a response or to pursue mediation efforts that would ensure the immediate opening of border crossings and the entry of humanitarian aid without delay.

What Remains of Hamas’ Military Capabilities?

After 15 months of war, Hamas has suffered significant losses in its military capabilities, particularly its stockpile of long-range rockets once fired at Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and other deep Israeli cities. This decline has been evident over the past three months, with fewer rocket launches.

Despite these setbacks, the al-Qassam Brigades managed a partial recovery, producing a limited number of long-range rockets. On December 28, 2024—just 21 days before a ceasefire agreement—Hamas launched two rockets toward Jerusalem.

Notably, they were fired from Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza, where Israeli ground forces were operating at the time. The group has also continued to fire short-range rockets at Israeli settlements near Gaza, particularly from southern areas of the enclave.

Field sources, including some from Hamas, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades managed to retrieve manufacturing tools and equipment from tunnels and production sites targeted and destroyed by Israel.

The group rehabilitated some of the equipment and found certain devices intact despite Israeli airstrikes, the sources said.

According to the sources, Hamas' military wing had hoped the ceasefire would last longer, allowing it to resume producing rockets, explosive devices, and other weaponry. However, efforts were severely limited due to a shortage of raw materials.

The sources added that a significant number of rockets—including guided missiles such as Kornet anti-tank missiles and Yassin 105 shells—were recovered from storage sites, homes of Hamas commanders and fighters, and even tunnels, following extensive searches beneath the rubble.

On the personnel front, Hamas has been restructuring its military brigades and recruiting new fighters in preparation for a potential resumption of hostilities—an effort it had already begun amid the fighting in northern Gaza, the sources said.

Rats, Fleas Plague Gaza’s Displaced as Temperatures Rise

Garbage litters the ground next to makeshift shelters housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City on April 20, 2026. (AFP)

11:24-21 April 2026 AD ـ 04 Thul-Qi’dah 1447 AH

Rats, Fleas Plague Gaza’s Displaced as Temperatures Rise

Garbage litters the ground next to makeshift shelters housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City on April 20, 2026. (AFP)

As springtime temperatures rise in Gaza, a surge in rats, fleas and other pests has compounded the misery of hundreds of thousands of displaced people still living in tents after more than two years of war.

With meager shelter and almost no sanitation, Palestinians told AFP the vermin are invading their makeshift homes, biting children and contaminating food, in what aid agencies warned was a growing public health threat.

"My children have been bitten. One of my sons was even bitten on the nose," said Muhammad al-Raqab, a displaced Palestinian man living in a tent near the southern city of Khan Younis.

"I am unable to sleep through the night because I must constantly watch over the children," the 32-year-old construction worker, originally from Bani Shueila, told AFP.

With shelters erected directly on soft sand by the Mediterranean Sea, rodents can easily burrow under tent walls and wreck havoc inside, where people have established makeshift pantries and kitchens.

"The rodents have eaten through my tent," Raqab said.

Nearly all of Gaza's population was displaced by Israeli evacuation orders and airstrikes during the war with Hamas that began after the group's attack on Israel in October 2023.

According to the UN, 1.7 million of Gaza's 2.2 million inhabitants still live in displacement camps, unable to return home or to areas that remain under Israeli military control despite a ceasefire that began in October 2025.

In these camps, "living conditions are characterized by vermin and parasite infestations", the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Action (OCHA) said after field visits in March.

Hani al-Flait, head of pediatrics at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, told AFP his team encounters skin infections such as scabies daily.

- 'Flooded with sewage' -

"The severity of these skin infections has been exacerbated by the fact that these children and their families are living in harsh conditions that lack basic public sanitation, as well as a complete absence of safe water," he told AFP.

Sabreen Abu Taybeh, whose son has been suffering from a rash, blamed the conditions in the camp.

"We are living in tents and schools flooded with sewage," she told AFP, showing the rash covering her son's upper body.

"I have taken him to doctors and hospitals, but they are not helping with anything. As you see, the rash remains."

"The summer season has brought us rodents and fleas," Ghalia Abu Selmi told AFP after discovering mice had gnawed through clothes she had prepared for her daughter's upcoming wedding.

"Fleas have caused skin allergies not only for children but for adults as well," she said, sorting through garments riddled with holes inside the tent she now calls home in Khan Younis.

The 53-year-old said her family has been displaced 20 times since October 2023 and has yet to return to their home in the town of Abasan al-Kabira near the Israeli border.

Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to control all access points into Gaza, with tight inspections and frequent rejections of aid deliveries, according to NGOs and the UN.

This has caused shortages in everything from medicine and fuel, to clothing and food.

Airstrikes and firefights between Israel's military and what it says are Hamas fighters still occur near-daily.

According to the territory's health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority, at least 777 people have been killed by Israel's military since the start of the ceasefire.

The military says five of its soldiers have also been killed in Gaza over the same period.

Features

Chornobyl First Responder Says Few Survive 40 Years on

Petro Hurin, 76, one of hundreds of thousands of "liquidators" brought to clean up the aftermath of the explosion that tore apart reactor Four of the Chornobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine on April 26, 1986, reflected in a mirror as he stands in his house in the village of Khutory, Cherkasy region, Ukraine April 7, 2026. (Reuters)

09:07-21 April 2026 AD ـ 04 Thul-Qi’dah 1447 AH

Chornobyl First Responder Says Few Survive 40 Years on

Petro Hurin says his health has never been the same since he was sent 40 years ago to clear the Chornobyl site in the wake of the world's worst nuclear accident.

He was among hundreds of thousands of "liquidators" brought in to clean up after the explosion at reactor four of the Chornobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine on April 26, 1986. The disaster sent clouds of radioactive material across much of Europe.

Thirty-one plant workers and firemen died in the immediate aftermath, mostly from acute radiation sickness. Thousands more have since succumbed to radiation-related illnesses, such as cancer, although the total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.

At the time, Hurin worked for a business that supplied diggers and construction vehicles, which sent him to the Chornobyl exclusion zone in June 1986. Of the 40 people sent by his company, only five are alive today, he said.

"Not a single ‌Chornobyl person is ‌in good health," the 76-year-old said. "It's death by a thousand cuts."

Soviet authorities strove to ‌conceal ⁠the extent of ⁠the Chornobyl disaster, refusing to cancel the May 1 parade in Kyiv, around 100 km (60 miles) to the south. Ukraine's current government has highlighted the Soviet authorities' bungled handling of the accident and attempts to cover up the disaster.

Hurin said some colleagues produced medical certificates to excuse themselves from serving in Chornobyl, but he was willing to help.

"I realized that, however small my contribution might be, I was doing my bit to help tame this atomic beast," he said.

HEADACHES, CHEST PAIN, BLEEDING

Working 12-hour shifts, Hurin used an excavator to load dry concrete mixed with lead – shipped to the site by river barge – onto trucks ⁠for transport to the reactor, where it was mixed to build a massive sarcophagus ‌to contain the radiation.

"The dust was terrible," Hurin recalled. "You'd work for half ‌an hour in a respirator, and it would end up looking (brown) like an onion."

After four days, Hurin said he ‌began experiencing severe symptoms, such as headaches, chest pain, bleeding and a metallic taste in his throat. Doctors treated ‌him but after another shift, he could barely walk. He feared he had "a day or two" to live.

"I was brought to the hospital, and the doctors did a blood test first," Hurin said. "They pricked all my fingers and a pale liquid came out, but no blood."

Soviet doctors refused to diagnose radiation sickness, a finding he said was not permitted at the time. Instead, he was told he ‌had vegetative-vascular dystonia, a nervous disorder often linked to stress.

Before the disaster, Hurin had never taken sick leave, but afterwards he spent around seven months going from ⁠one hospital to another to ⁠receive treatment, including a blood transfusion.

He says he has been diagnosed with anemia - often linked to radiation sickness - angina, pancreatitis and a series of other conditions.

By the standards of his countrymen, Hurin has lived a long life. According to the World Health Organization, average life expectancy for men in Ukraine stood at 66 in 2021, having declined during COVID.

Now retired, Hurin lives with his wife Olha in central Ukraine's Cherkasy region. Although he suffers from health problems, he still plays the bayan – a type of accordion - and writes songs and poems.

He says he is fighting to access a special disability pension for "liquidators" of the nuclear disaster.

Another catastrophe - Russia's 2022 invasion of his homeland - has come to dominate his life. He and his wife Olha regularly visit a memorial in nearby Kholodnyi Yar dedicated to their grandson, Andrii Vorobkalo, a Ukrainian soldier, who was killed three years ago in the war, aged 26.

After his daughter had left to work in Europe, Hurin and his wife raised Andrii from the age of four. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Andrii quit his job in Greece.

"He left everything behind and came to defend Ukraine," Hurin told Reuters, standing near the memorial stone dedicated to his grandson. "We think of Andrii all the time."

Features

Driven by the Pressures of War, Iran Gives Its Field Commanders More Power Over Factions in Iraq

Members of the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral for colleagues who were killed in a US airstrike in Anbar, in Najaf, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP)

08:23-21 April 2026 AD ـ 04 Thul-Qi’dah 1447 AH

Driven by the Pressures of War, Iran Gives Its Field Commanders More Power Over Factions in Iraq

Members of the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral for colleagues who were killed in a US airstrike in Anbar, in Najaf, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP)

Iran has granted its commanders greater autonomy over armed factions in Iraq, allowing some groups to carry out operations without Tehran’s approval, a shift driven by the pressures of the war, three faction members and two other officials told The Associated Press.

Many Iran-backed factions are funded through the Iraqi state budget and embedded within the security apparatus, drawing criticism from the United States and other countries that have borne the brunt of their attacks and say Baghdad has failed to take a tougher stance.

Despite mounting pressure from the US, Baghdad has struggled to contain or deter the groups. The most hard-line factions now operate under Iranian advisers using a decentralized command structure, the five officials told AP, each on condition of anonymity to speak freely about sensitive matters.

“The various forces have been granted the authority to operate according to their own field assessments without referring back to a central command,” said one faction official, who didn't have permission to speak publicly.

The war in the Middle East has exposed the fragility of Iraq’s state institutions and their limited ability to restrain these groups. A parallel confrontation between Washington and the factions has deepened the crisis, with factions acting as an extension of Iran’s regional campaign and escalating attacks on US assets in Iraq before a tenuous ceasefire deal was reached in April.

Even if the ceasefire agreement holds, Washington is expected to intensify efforts against the groups militarily and politically, particularly as they gain latitude to operate more independently, officials and experts said. On Friday, the US imposed sanctions on seven commanders and senior members of four hard-line Iran-backed Iraqi armed groups.

“The US is still going to feel it has the freedom of action to hit Iraqi factions,” said Michael Knights, head of research for Horizon Engage, a geopolitical risk consulting firm, and an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “That may well play out into an effort to try and guide a less faction-dominated government formation.”

Decentralized control

Days into the war sparked by US and Israeli strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, an Iranian delegation arrived in Iraq’s Kurdish region and delivered a blunt message: If faction attacks escalated near US military bases, commercial interests and diplomatic missions, Iraqi Kurdish authorities should not come to Tehran with complaints, as there was little they could do about it.

“They said they’ve devolved authority to regional Iranian commanders,” a senior Iraqi Kurdish government official said on condition of anonymity, citing the subject's sensitivity.

In the past, Kurdish leaders in Iraq would call Iranian officials after attacks to ask why they had been targeted. “This time, they wanted to preempt that by saying, ‘We can’t help you with the groups in the south right now,’” the official said.

This shift reflects lessons drawn from the 12-day war in June, the official said. Faction officials corroborated the claim. During that war, operations were tightly centralized. In its aftermath, greater autonomy was granted in the field.

A spokesperson for Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, among the Iran-backed armed groups that have attacked the US in Iraq, said there was “coordination” with Iran in launching attacks but didn't give details.

“Since we are allies of Iran, we have coordination with our brothers in Iran,” Mahdi al-Kaabi said.

In the recent war, key Iraqi faction leaders appeared to step back from the latest phase and didn't appear to be directly involved in operations, Knights said. US strikes largely killed mid-level commanders, according to faction officials.

“None of the first-line leaders have been killed,” said a second faction official, who wasn't authorized to brief reporters.

Rather than targeting top figures, the US also focused on Iranian Revolutionary Guard advisory cells, said Knights, who tracked the attacks. In one strike in Baghdad’s upscale Jadriya neighborhood, three Guard advisers were killed at a house used as their headquarters during a meeting, according to the second faction official.

Pressure on Iraq is intensifying

At the heart of government efforts to rein in armed groups lies a paradox: The factions the government says it cannot control are tied to political parties that brought it to power.

The Coordination Framework, an alliance of influential pro-Iran Shiite factions, helped install Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as prime minister in 2022. He now serves as caretaker premier amid a prolonged political deadlock.

Faction forces carrying out attacks on US targets aren't rogue actors; they're part of the state’s Popular Mobilization Forces, created after the fall of Mosul in 2014 to formalize volunteer units that were critical in defeating the ISIS group.

The PMF has evolved into a powerful force, with fighters receiving state salaries and access to government resources, including weapons and intelligence. The result, critics say, is a deep contradiction: Certain state-funded groups operate in line with Iranian priorities, even when doing so undermines Iraq’s national interests.

Al-Sudani’s office didn't respond to the AP’s requests for comment on the decentralized control of armed groups.

The US is focused on curbing the power of these groups in Iraq, the senior Iraqi Kurdish official and a Western diplomat said, which will put increasing pressure on the government, still functioning in caretaker status. The diplomat also spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't permitted to brief reporters.

Last week, Iraq’s ambassador to the US was summoned to Washington to hear US condemnation of attacks by Iran-backed factions on American personnel and diplomatic missions, according to State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Bigot.

“The Deputy Secretary affirmed that the United States will not tolerate any attacks targeting its interests and expects the Iraqi Government to take all necessary measures immediately to dismantle Iran-aligned armed groups,” Bigot said in a statement.

Factions resist steps from Iraq's government

Al-Sudani has taken limited steps to curb faction influence, including further institutionalizing the PMF and occasionally removing commanders who act outside state authority. The efforts have met significant resistance from armed groups.

Further institutionalizing them has deepened their entrenchment within the state. The US may seek to isolate the most hard-line factions — including Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada — from others more embedded in Iraq’s political system. “The bad factions from the worse factions,” the senior Iraqi Kurdish official said.

Harakat al-Nujaba spokesperson al-Kaabi offered a dual framing of the group’s position, stressing both its alignment with Iran and its claim to Iraqi state legitimacy.

“To put it bluntly, we are allies of Iran,” he said. He described the group as part of Iran’s regional “axis” alongside Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthis in Yemen.

At the same time, he insisted the group operates within Iraq’s political order, supporting the state and government when they serve national interests.

“It’s true we’re not affiliated with the government or the prime minister, but we respect the law and the constitution,” he said.

What Are Hamas' Military Options as Gaza War Resumes?

What Are Hamas' Military Options as Gaza War Resumes?

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