Thursday, August 21, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
Mounting Casualties May Force Hamas To Use Adult Fighters
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Hamas has lost tens of thousands of fighters since their invasion of southern Israel in October 2023, putting serious pressure on the organization's manpower reserves, estimated before the war at about 30,000. Replacements have had insufficient time to train, relegating many of them to ancillary non-combat roles. If, as expected, Israel begins its Gaza City offensive soon, to put further pressure on Hamas to release the 50 remaining October 7 hostages and hostage bodies, Hamas will find itself forced to plug the line with adults, stated Hamza Ashraf.
"We are running out of front-line children," Ashraf admitted. "If you want front-line troops, you must recruit the most motivated candidates. But we have slim pickings now. As much as it pains me to say so, we might have to start putting adults in the line of fire, and maybe even adult males."
"In retrospect, we could have used fewer children in digging the tunnels," he observed. "Or, at the very least, we could have implemented some real safety protocols so we wouldn't lose so many. But that's water under the bunker. Right now, we have some agonizing decisions to make if we're going to resist this upcoming assault."
The challenge for Hamas commanders, analysts say, lies in conflicting interests: slowing or stopping Israel's offensive through the infliction of heavy casualties, which does not square with the strategic Hamas approach of putting children in harm's way to exploit the images of their death and suffering to demonize Israel and isolate the Jewish State internationally. While the strategic approach has enjoyed much success, it has not deterred Israel from a stated commitment to crush Hamas and permanently remove the threat of another October 7.
"We have always considered the Zionists weak, and weak-willed," explained a Khan Yunis operative who specializes in booby-trapping buildings to collapse on IDF soldiers. "Our expectations for the [October 7] Al Aqsa flood were that the Jews would start fleeing. That's our expectation after every operation, really. We have no other way of thinking about things. So we figure, enough dead Israeli soldiers and they'll stop fighting. Our allies in Qatar, Moscow, and NGOs are very good at fomenting 'domestic' opposition to continued fighting, and that's part of what happened in every previous round. Sure, the enemy is more determined this time, but we don't expect the dynamic to change in quality, only quantity. But if we only use children, we inflict fewer casualties and that would squander the opportunity to hurt Jewish morale."
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