ISW goes on to assess:
"Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip have already shifted to this approach to target reconstituting Hamas units.
Hamas’ Rafah Brigade will likely survive with sufficient assets to reconstitute itself, given the time and space to reconstitute. Successful reconstitution requires a commander to disengage their force from combat. An Israeli war correspondent said that an unspecified number of Hamas fighters left the Rafah area when Israeli forces first entered Rafah.
This cadre of surviving Hamas fighters assigned to the Rafah Brigade could provide Hamas commanders in Rafah sufficient human capital to rebuild the Rafah Brigade over time absent sustained Israeli military pressure against the Rafah Brigade.
The IDF has discovered large numbers of Hamas fighters in previously uncleared areas during other operations (so it seems to be Hamas' mode of operating). Israeli forces found that three battalions—not the expected one battalion—had withdrawn into a previously uncleared area of Jabalia prior to early May, for example."
IDF controls the Philadelphi Corridor to cut off Hamas military resupply through Egypt, and is reducing the last two standing Hamas Battalions in Rafah.
We seem to be just weeks away from the end of Hamas as a standing military, and its return to being an undercover terrorist organization - a significant new phase of the conflict.
bkmk
Destroying a proxy of Islam will never suffice in the forever war.