The Israeli military has not managed to defeat even a single battalion or company of the Hamas Resistance forces in Rafah, a member of the Israeli Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee said on Saturday.

Amit Halevi's criticism came after the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) announced on Thursday that it had "defeated Hamas' Rafah Brigades," and that it now has “completed operational control over the entire urban area.”

Halevi, quoted by the Israeli Channel 7 website, stated that the army claims to have killed over 2,000 fighters in Rafah, however, the actual number is significantly lower, noting that the inflated figure "doesn't even represent 25%" of the Resistance's fighting force.

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He further highlighted that "Israel" had only destroyed a small fraction of the underground tunnels in Rafah, adding however that "even those (tunnels) were not all destroyed, but rather sealed, making it easy for Hamas to reactivate them."

The senior Israeli official noted that the Resistance in Rafah holds a massive stockpile of weapons, and the amount uncovered by the IOF is minimal in comparison. He emphasized that "Israel remains far from defeating or destroying Hamas."

Elsewhere in his criticism, Halevi described the messages coming from the Israeli army spokesperson as misleading for the public and the government.

"Every soldier who entered Khan Younis for the fourth time or the al-Zaytoun neighborhood for the fifth time knows that nothing has been defeated," he said in reference to the repeated Israeli incursions into these areas, despite previous declarations that they were "under control" and claims that the Resistance groups there had already been "defeated".

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"With the current operational methods, the matter will never be settled, because for every [Resistance fighter] killed, two more are born; for every injured [fighter], three new fighters are recruited; and for every piece of weaponry seized by the Israeli army, five more are produced underground in Gaza."

Halevi further remarked that the method the occupation army uses in the "war of shafts," as described by the head of Shin Bet, cannot lead to defeating Hamas in quantitative terms, referring to the number of fighters and the weapons they possess in Gaza.

Therefore, "Israel" has no strategic achievements but is instead in an "endless tunnel," according to Halevi.

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