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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
That sound is from a video by the Israel Defense Forces. It shows armed Hamas militants moving through tall tunnels, which the IDF calls Gaza's metro.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
PFEIFFER: It's an innocuous name for a vast network of tunnels that spans hundreds of miles. And for a decade or more, Hamas has used them to wage a fight against Israel.
DAPHNE RICHEMOND-BARAK: They are humid and suffocating, and they are incredibly scary. So when you walk in them, you would be disoriented, for sure, but also incredibly afraid.
PFEIFFER: That's Daphne Richemond-Barak, a specialist on tunnels at Tel Aviv's Reichman University.
RICHEMOND-BARAK: This is where they keep their ammunition, their weapons, their rocket launchers. This is where they have their command and control centers.
PFEIFFER: Because of that, those tunnels have been a key focus of the Israeli military since it launched a retaliatory attack on Gaza after last year's October 7 attacks. In the more than five months since, the IDF has fought in those tunnels, pumped seawater in those tunnels and...
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PFEIFFER: ...Tried to blow them up, as you can hear in this IDF video.
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PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Our soldiers are systematically destroying the massive underground terror tunnels. Hamas believed this was an impregnable network, yet our brave soldiers are now physically inside these tunnels.
PFEIFFER: That's Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking in early February about the war.
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NETANYAHU: Our security and the prospects of peace in the Middle East depend on one thing - total victory over Hamas.
PFEIFFER: Which Netanyahu said, in February, was close.
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NETANYAHU: A total victory of Hamas will not take years. It will take months. Victory's within reach. And when people talk about the day after, let's be clear about one thing - it's the day after all of Hamas is destroyed.
PFEIFFER: Destroying all of Hamas is a goal many people think may be hard to reach. CBS' Margaret Brennan asked Netanyahu about that on "Face The Nation" last month.
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MARGARET BRENNAN: You said that victory is within reach, but U.S. intel says the IDF has only destroyed 30% of Hamas leadership and that the amount of tunnels that Hamas uses have really only been tiny in terms of what has been destroyed by the IDF. When your closest ally is telling you things like this and telling you that you need to reconsider a strategy, isn't it worth considering?
NETANYAHU: Look, I think that the U.S. is - agrees with us on the goal of destroying Hamas...
BRENNAN: Yes.
NETANYAHU: ...And on the goal of releasing the hostages. The decisions of how to do that are left with us and with me and the elected cabinet of Israel. Our soldiers are in the tunnel network. We don't have to take apart hundreds of kilometers of tunnels. We are taking apart the missile production factories that are underground, the weapons that are there and the ammos that is there. We're doing that methodically. So we're doing the war, and we're doing it very responsibly.
PFEIFFER: CONSIDER THIS - Israel's prime minister says, quote, "total victory over Hamas must happen before Israel's war in Gaza can end." But as Gaza is on the verge of famine and U.S. support for the war is wavering, how close is Israel to eliminating Hamas?
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PFEIFFER: From NPR, I'm Sacha Pfeiffer.
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PFEIFFER: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. Next week, representatives of the Israeli government are scheduled to fly from Tel Aviv to Washington, D.C. When they arrive, they'll head to the White House, where they'll meet with representatives of the U.S. government. On the agenda - the next steps in Israel's war against Hamas.
The meeting comes as famine is imminent for roughly 300,000 Palestinians in northern Gaza. At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be losing U.S. support. Still, Netanyahu insists that Israel won't stop until it has achieved, quote, "total victory." But what does that mean? And how close is Israel to achieving that? Those were questions I put to Daniel Byman. He's a professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the center for Strategic and International Studies. Professor Byman, thanks for your time.
DANIEL BYMAN: My pleasure.
PFEIFFER: Starting with a very big-picture question - we just heard Prime Minister Netanyahu say that Israel is months away from victory. How believable is that?
BYMAN: A lot depends on how Israel defines victory. Destroying Hamas is an exceptionally ambitious and difficult target, and that's not going to happen in a few months. But Israel has inflicted a lot of damage not just on Gaza, but on Hamas. So if Israel is willing to lower its sights and say that it's hit Hamas hard, then it can declare victory and at least reduce the scale of its attacks.
PFEIFFER: So, ultimately, will it become difficult to determine whether total victory has been achieved?
BYMAN: Total victory is going to be measured really in several years by - how strong is Hamas in Gaza? If a year from now, two years from now, Hamas resumes power in Gaza, then Israel has not come close to total victory. On the other hand, if there's a new government in Gaza that is keeping Hamas out or at least reduced, then Israel can claim that Hamas is much weaker and unable to do an attack comparable to what it did on October 7.
PFEIFFER: We mentioned that U.S. intelligence officials doubt that the IDF has achieved the gains it claims it has achieved. What is your sense of whether the war is going as well as Netanyahu says it is?
BYMAN: I think you can measure the war in four dimensions. The first is how many Hamas fighters have been killed. And here, Israel has made progress. We don't know exact numbers, but roughly a third of Hamas' military seems to have been taken out. That's progress. But that means there are a lot of fighters left.
Another is to look at Hamas leadership, and Israel has killed some senior commanders. But two of the most important figures behind October 7 remain at large.
And then the third is Hamas' military infrastructure, including tunnels. And here, Israel has done a lot of damage, but that can be rebuilt.
Probably the most important, though, is the support Hamas has in Gaza and who might take its place. And there doesn't seem to be an alternative to Hamas being developed right now for the next few years.
PFEIFFER: And who might take Hamas' place?
BYMAN: We don't have good answers to this. The Biden administration proposes the Palestinian Authority, which rules in the West Bank. This, in many ways is the best option, but it's the best of a bunch of bad options. The Palestinian Authority is weak. It's corrupt. It lacks legitimacy in Gaza. And on a day-to-day basis, it would depend on Israeli military forces to ensure security. But other alternatives are an indefinite Israeli occupation - and that is costly to Israel and not something that's sustainable politically as well as something intolerable to all Gazans - and an international force. And there's no appetite of Arab states or the United States or other international partners to have forces in Gaza. So we end up with a bunch of bad options.
PFEIFFER: I want to get your thoughts on the upcoming meetings that we mentioned in Washington D.C., between Israeli and U.S. officials. A big issue there will be Israel's plans to cross into Rafah. So a two-part question for you - crossing into Rafah would meet intense ground-level combat. How big a task would that be for Israel?
BYMAN: The ground combat in Rafah would be fierce. In addition, there are huge numbers of ordinary Palestinians in Rafah. And there's a real question of - where would they go? They've been slowly pushed or actually quickly pushed to places like Rafah, away from their homes. And is there a safe place for them to go, and could they go there without Hamas fighters hiding in their midst? So it's a double question for Israel. There's the inherent military difficulty, and then there's the question of trying to ensure that civilian casualties are minimized. And both are quite difficult.
PFEIFFER: And what do you think the answer is? Is there a safe place for civilians to go?
BYMAN: There could be safer places created, but that would have military trade-offs. It would allow - at least potentially allow Hamas fighters to mix with civilians and to make their escape. And we've seen this in past conflicts. The United States faced similar things in Iraq, for example. And we haven't seen much evidence that Israel is preparing these safe corridors and areas for large numbers of Palestinians who are facing severe health and nutrition challenges to go to. So it is certainly a possibility, but it's a difficult one, and I don't see much preparation for it.
PFEIFFER: Part two - a question about the meeting in Washington coming up - and this deals with comments from the U.S. intelligence community, which has said that even if Netanyahu can bring about an end to the war - and this is a quote - "Israel probably will face lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come, and the military will struggle to neutralize Hamas' underground infrastructure." What did you think when you heard that?
BYMAN: That is, I would say, an accurate assessment. And the question, though, is how severe are the lingering attacks? But the real question then becomes - how strong is Hamas going to be, and where can it attack? And a lot of the attacks are going to be on the Israeli military presence, especially in Gaza. So this, to me, suggests the difficulty of going after an organization like Hamas, which has, you know, thousands of people working for it, thousands of fighters, and, you know, of course, far many more supporters. And so this sort of thing doesn't simply happen by turning off a group. You have to replace it with something else. And, to me, that's the biggest flaw of Israeli policy - is they're not thinking about what replaces Hamas. And how can that entity, which has to be Palestinian to have legitimacy - how can that entity become strong over time? And Israel should be prioritizing that.
PFEIFFER: That's Daniel Byman. He's a professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thank you for your insights.
BYMAN: Thank you for having me.
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PFEIFFER: This episode was produced by Megan Lim with audio engineering by Kwesi Lee. It was edited by Courtney Dorning and Andrew Sussman. It contained reporting from Jackie Northam and Greg Myre. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.
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PFEIFFER: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Sacha Pfeiffer.
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