Gallant says Hamas looking to replace Sinwar as Khan Younis Brigade ‘has been defeated’

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says Hamas’s leadership abroad is looking for a replacement for its Gaza Strip leader Yahya Sinwar, as the terror group’s battalions in Khan Younis have been dismantled and an offensive in Rafah is looming.

“Hamas does not trust its commanders, this is a very, very noticeable thing,” Gallant says following an assessment with the chief of the IDF Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman.

“The Hamas-Gaza station does not answer, there is no one to talk to as leadership on the ground,” he says, adding that the Hamas leadership abroad is looking for new leaders in Gaza. “That means there is a tender for who will manage Gaza,” he says.

In Khan Younis, Gallant says some 200 terror suspects surrendered to troops at Nasser Hospital and dozens at Al-Amal Hospital, which he says indicates the loss of Hamas’s “fighting spirit.”

“People who had RPGs, weapons and guns reached the moment of truth and did not fight. This indicates something about their understanding of the power relations, that they understood that their fate would be to surrender or die — there is no third option,” he says.

Gallant says Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade has been “defeated and does not function as a military entity in any way.”

“Hamas is left with marginal [forces] in the central camps and with the Rafah Brigade, and what stands between them and a complete collapse as a military system is a decision by the IDF,” he says.

“There is no one here to come to their aid, no Iranians, no international aid,” Gallant says, vowing that the IDF will dismantle the remaining six Hamas battalions — two in central Gaza and four in Rafah.

“We have no right to stop as long as there are 134 hostages” held by Hamas, he adds.