🇮🇱❌🇵🇸 A quick Israel-Gaza War thread on why dismantling Hamas as a military organization is quite hard, if not impossible:

This is an overly simplified illustration of the force structure of a Hamas battalion derived from reports as well as videos/imagery produced by the IDF, Hamas and others. Each green dot is a individual fighter, the blue boxes denote "tangible combat assets/kit", hypothetically located in fixed locations. Yellow rings around green circles denote individuals in leadership roles (who are presumably institutionally promotable).

Caveat emptor, the only organizations that actually have access to Hamas' Tables of Organization and Equipment (TOEs) are Hamas and the IRGC (maybe). The IDF and US IC can see fragments of it, but not the whole picture, so this thread is speaking purely in broad brushstrokes.

First and foremost, unlike in most highly bureaucratized militaries, Hamas (and it appears most of Gaza's other militant orgs) devolve a massively outsized share of both their organizational logistical responsibilities and their combat power down to the "cell" level.

Think of their cells as being akin to Western-style fireteams with a handful of guys (a quick aside, Hamas 'does' have a formal rank/structure hierarchy - i.e. cells → to squads → to platoons → companies → brigades). There are multiple cells in a squad (so the above graphic really should have 2 or 3 of the blue blocks per squad).

Every cell is supposed to maintain/have a semi-standardized allotment of kit. The most shoddily equipped units have a mixture of RPGs and AKs, but some (well... most apparently) cells have better/more niche equipment, e.g. EFPs and ballistic protection. There are also specialized anti-tank and sniper teams, but I haven't seen any footage of their caches being pinched. (...)

Hamas' military is fundamentally a devolved hierarchy with a bottom-heavy logistical structure. That is to say, their units are specifically designed to operate in a semi-autonomous fashion, as opposed to functioning in larger cohesive units. (...)

With organizations like Hamas, because they're not necessarily functioning as discrete units like most Westerners are accustomed to, neutralizing their battalion echelon and above leaders or blowing up their larger supply hubs, does not in and of itself render their units incapable of fighting or "destroy them."

That's why, reports of the "destruction" of Hamas battalions/brigades are usually dramatically overstated.

📎 Analytica Camillus

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