TEHRAN - A political science professor explains why “Israel has not come close to fulfilling its stated aim of eliminating Hamas” despite two years of war in the Gaza Strip and killing “five to ten percent of” its 2.2 million population.

Robert A. Pape, director of the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, says despite mammoth destructive enterprise” Hamas still has significant appeal among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

“It may be diminished as a military force, but it can replenish its depleted ranks with new recruits—indeed, by some accounts, it has managed to bring in over 10,000 new fighters since the war began,” Professor Pape wrote in Foreign Affairs on August 7.

Following is an excerpt of the article titled “The Unparalleled Devastation of Gaza”:

After nearly 700 days of war, the death toll in Gaza has risen to extraordinary levels. Amid heavy bombardment that has turned the territory into a wasteland of rubble and stringent blockades that have led to mass hunger and even starvation, over 61,000 Palestinians have died and over 145,000 have been seriously wounded.

But the true number of the war’s casualties may far outstrip those figures, which do not include the thousands of bodies that remain under the rubble, the large number of dead that could not arrive at morgues, and the excess deaths from the destruction of infrastructure and the ensuing disease, famine, and lack of medical care. In February, the medical journal The Lancet published an extensive analysis based on a wide variety of sources (including obituaries) and estimated that the official death toll underreported the direct war deaths in Gaza by at least 41 percent and perhaps by as much as 107 percent, while not accounting at all for nontrauma-related deaths resulting from the impact of Israeli military operations on Gaza’s health services, food and water supplies, and sanitation.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza is the most lethal case of a Western democracy using the punishment of civilians as a tactic of war.

In sum, the authors of the study suggested that Israel’s campaign has caused at least an additional 26,000 Palestinian deaths and perhaps as many as over 120,000 additional deaths, with the true death toll possibly upward of 186,000. Taking that into account, as of late July 2025, Israel’s war in Gaza has led to the deaths of between five to ten percent of the prewar population of about 2.2 million. This represents an unprecedented slaughter. Israel’s campaign in Gaza is the most lethal case of a Western democracy using the punishment of civilians as a tactic of war.

Leaders and scholars have long assumed that democracy offered a solution to the worst pathologies of authoritarian states, especially the willingness of a government to subject populations to coercion, cruelty, and violence. Indeed, the United States and other Western democracies, including Israel, have insisted that democracy is crucial for the promotion of fundamental human rights, individual prosperity, and a more peaceful world. For Israel, a country that has long touted its democratic bona fides, to violate core democratic norms in such dramatic fashion cheapens the value of democratic government itself.

Israel’s defenders may insist that civilian deaths are inevitable in a conflict against a burrowed-in enemy. But it has been clear from Israeli actions—including the targeting of children by snipers, the relentless bombing of civilian infrastructure and residences, and the blockade and starvation of the civilian population—as well as the rhetoric of numerous Israeli officials that Israel’s war is not simply against Hamas but aimed at all the residents of Gaza. That is also the conclusion of numerous international institutions and human rights groups. Indeed, the notion that Hamas can be eradicated via military means is a “fantasy,” as former Shin Bet director Yoram Cohen said this week. As civilians continue to suffer in Gaza, Israel has squandered the moral high ground for no good strategic purpose.

Israel’s critics may demand that, based on its treatment of the Palestinians, the country should not be considered a democracy. That understates the full dimensions of Israel’s behavior in Gaza. The carnage in Gaza is not the work of authoritarians or demagogues but bears the imprimatur of democracy. Israel’s campaign thus has profound implications both for the long-term security of the country and the value of democracy around the world.

In my 1996 book, Bombing to Win, I studied every campaign in the twentieth century that employed airpower with the intention of inflicting harm on civilians: 40 campaigns in all, including the Spanish Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Only five of the 40 involved civilian deaths greater than one percent of the civilian population. These included four campaigns in and around World War II—Japan’s invasion of China from 1937 to 1945, Germany’s invasion of Poland from 1939 to 1945, the Allied bombing and invasion of Germany from 1939 to 1945, and the U.S. bombing and conquest of Japan from 1942 to 1945—and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1988. In proportional terms, Nazi Germany’s attack on Poland ranks as the deadliest of these campaigns, killing upward of 20 percent of the prewar population over six years.

Until Gaza, the worst civilian punishment campaign by a Western democracy was the bombing and ground invasion of Germany in World War II, which killed approximately two to four percent of the population, outpacing even the U.S. nuclear attacks and fire-bombing raids on Japan, which killed about one percent of the population. Those estimates from Germany account for deaths caused by both Soviet and Western forces, as well as direct and indirect deaths (as in The Lancet’s study on Gaza).

Whether it is called a “genocide” or not, no sensible observer could look at Israel’s war in Gaza and miss the stunning levels of devastation that Palestinians have endured. Beyond the mass death and suffering, the level of physical devastation is remarkable: satellite analysis by credible independent media outlets, such as The Economist and the Financial Times, reveals that at least 60 percent of all the buildings and 90 percent of homes in Gaza have either been severely damaged or completely destroyed. All 12 of Gaza’s universities, 80 percent of its schools and mosques, and numerous churches, museums, and libraries have also been demolished. No hospital in Gaza is fully functioning, and only 20 out of 36 hospitals are partially functioning.

And yet despite this mammoth destructive enterprise, Israel has not come close to fulfilling its stated aim of eliminating Hamas. The group still has significant appeal among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It may be diminished as a military force, but it can replenish its depleted ranks with new recruits—indeed, by some accounts, it has managed to bring in over 10,000 new fighters since the war began. The extreme brutality Israel has inflicted on the Palestinian people has not produced the strategic gains that Israeli officials promised.

The moral case for harming civilians is always dubious even when such violence serves a strategic purpose. When that strategic purpose does not exist, however, the moral case evaporates altogether. Israel now finds itself in a morally untenable situation. Rather than incur the world’s growing wrath, increased economic pressure, and the greater likelihood of future violence, Israel must reverse course and pursue alternatives to its campaign of mass death in Gaza.

Throughout history, states have repeatedly punished civilian populations harshly to try to compel local communities to turn against governments and militant groups. But even intense civilian punishment rarely achieves these goals. Instead, it often leads to what I have termed the “Pearl Harbor effect”: growing support among the assailed civilian community for its government or for the local group.

In January 2025, U.S. officials revealed that according to their estimates, Hamas had recruited around 15,000 new fighters since the start of Israel’s military operations in 2023.

In June 2024, I argued in Foreign Affairs that at least in one way, Hamas was stronger then than it was before October 7, 2023. To be sure, Israeli attacks had devastated the group’s leadership and smashed much of its infrastructure. But according to the most reliable polling information available at that point in time, Palestinian support for Hamas had remained the same or risen in Gaza and the West Bank. Overall, the taproot of Hamas’s power—its ability to recruit new fighters to replenish losses—had actually increased. In January 2025, U.S. officials revealed that according to their estimates, Hamas had recruited around 15,000 new fighters since the start of Israel’s military operations in 2023, more than making up for the 11,000 to 13,000 losses that U.S. intelligence estimated the group had suffered.

Much has happened since the start of this year: the end of a two-month cease-fire in March, the escalating Israeli siege and the tightened blockade on food and humanitarian goods entering the territory, the humanitarian crisis affecting Gaza’s entire population, and Israel’s announced intention to conquer at least 75 percent of Gaza—along with the overt consideration by some Israeli leaders that they should expel all Palestinians from the territory. For its part, Hamas seems to be stepping up its guerrilla tactics of ambushes and bombings targeting Israeli soldiers in Gaza, but the group has not been able to meaningfully defend the territory and its population from Israeli attacks.

Media reports in recent months have revealed sporadic demonstrations in Gaza against Hamas, suggesting that some Palestinians are fed up with the group and its actions. But according to recent polling, Hamas remains broadly popular among Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Hamas’s relative power cannot simply be measured the same way one would measure the military balance between Israel and its state rivals. In contests between states, the military balance between opponents is of paramount importance. Their militaries usually engage in direct, large-scale battles to take and hold territory, control the skies over territory, or secure access to contested territory. The success of these operations is determined by key indicators, such as the numbers of fighters, stocks of weapons, and levels of economic support. If such factors determined the nature of combat between Hamas and Israel, the war would have been over long ago, since Israel far outpaces the group on all the usual indicators of military strength. That the war has continued for nearly two years and Hamas retains sufficient governing authority in Gaza to hide the remaining Israeli hostages and inflict casualties on the Israeli security forces strongly suggests that the true power of Hamas cannot be found in the traditional metrics of the military balance.