In its war in Gaza, Israel faces a very different Hamas soldier than it has faced before: a far tougher, stronger and more professional warrior.

In an article titled “Analysis: A Hard Look at Hamas’ Capabilities,” Haaretz outlines the capabilities of the new jihadist military and what the Israel Defense Forces (idf) is up against in the Gaza Strip. Hamas now controls around 15,000 armed Palestinians, and would probably be aided by a few thousand troops from other militias in any conflict with Israel.

“For two years,” Haaretz says, “Hamas, with Iranian assistance, has been working hard on developing its military power, using Hezbollah as a model.” Like Hezbollah, it has made preparations to break the will of the Israeli people through rocket and mortar attacks while digging in to slow down the idf advance.

“Hamas is transitioning from a terror group to a paramilitary guerrilla organization,” reports Haaretz. “The transition includes improvements to the command and control structure, the acquisition of better weapons and the creation of a training program.”

Hamas’s core unit is Iz al-Din al-Qassam, a well-organized, well-disciplined and well-trained force of around 1,000 men. This elite unite is expected to do most of the fighting. Haartez details:

Palestinian sources say Iz al-Din troops undergo rigorous military training as well as participating in ideological classes held in mosques. Hamas forces do six months of basic training that includes live-fire exercises in which they learn to fire rockets, antitank missiles and mortar shells.They undergo urban warfare training, including exercises simulating an assault on a settlement complete with covering machine-gun fire and antitank fire prior to the assault. Some of the instructors were trained in Iran and Lebanon. In recent years, dozens of Gazans have traveled to training camps run by terror organizations and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.idf soldiers who have fought Hamas cells in the Gaza Strip in the past two years report an impressive improvement in their discipline and in their equipment.

Hamas has thorough defensive plans. It has built an underground network of bunkers, tunnels and booby-trapped structures. It has shown that it can destroy tanks and armored personnel carriers using high-grade explosives. In fact, Hamas has even acquired antitank missiles, though analysts do not know in what quantity or quality.

As theTrumpet.com has reported, Hamas’s missiles are improving also. Analysts believe that Hamas has over 1,000 rockets. Haaretz sources in Gaza report that “Hamas’s ‘military industry’ is working overtime to manufacture rockets, and that the organization can easily fire 80 rockets a day, as it did on Wednesday.”

The Popular Resistance Committees, a group of militants aligned with Hamas, have threatened to kidnap a female Israeli soldier in the event of an Israeli invasion of Gaza. A spokesman for this group claimed, “We have more than 10,000 missiles. Some of them are Russian-made, and others are anti-aircraft missiles. … We have the ability to neutralize Israel’s tanks, and we can also drop martyrs from the sky into Tel Aviv and its suburbs.”

Hamas has grown far stronger over the past few years. And Israel facilitated it by giving up the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip is now an outpost of Iran.

The analysts point out that Israel could defeat Hamas in Gaza if it wanted to. But Israel doesn’t have the will to do so. It may take a few feet of land, maybe the kilometer-wide Philadelphi Route, or bomb a few sites, but it won’t win a decisive victory. Hamas will fester on. Israel simply doesn’t have the stomach for the kind of war it would need to destroy Hamas.

Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight—it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” Israel is a big dog compared with Hamas, but it has only a tiny fight. Hamas, on the other hand, has plenty of fight. Douglas Adams succinctly stated this principle: “They care, we don’t. They win.”

But Israel is not fighting just Hamas. It also has to deal with Hamas’s fellow puppets, like Hezbollah, and the puppet master—Iran. These two are gaining in power.

Once upon a time, Hamas was weak. Then Israel gave it Gaza. Hamas got stronger. Israel gave it a ceasefire. Now it is stronger still. Soon Hamas, backed by Iran, will try to take what it has wanted all along—Jerusalem.

For more information, read our booklet Jerusalem in Prophecy.