The Wall Street Journal published a report prepared by Jared Maslin and Anat Peled in which they said that the rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel, and the recent battles in Gaza City, indicate a long-term war.

On Monday, Hamas and Islamic Jihad said that they fired rockets at Israel, and the Israeli army said that the rockets were intercepted and that they did not cause damage, and determined their launch location from platforms in Khan Yunis, the city into which Israel entered and launched a devastating operation. , ended in April.

 The newspaper comments that the barrage of missile attacks has increased the challenges facing Israel, at a time when it is adopting a counter-insurgency strategy against militants who still have a missile arsenal, mortar bombs, and the capabilities to launch them, about 9 months after the start of the Israeli attack on Gaza.

The military operations came at a time when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “heralded” on Monday that the end of the military operations was near: “We are approaching the end of the phase of destroying the Hamas terrorist army, and we will target its remnants and prevent them from advancing.” This indicates progress towards the next stage.

Netanyahu said that he would not stop the war until he achieved “final victory” over “Hamas,” at a time when the army contradicted him, saying that eliminating “Hamas” completely was an unachievable goal.

The newspaper says that the army operation in Shujaiya near Gaza, which continued throughout the past week and displaced families, reveals the difficulty of the army achieving the goals of the government that wants to crush Hamas.

The operation in Al-Shuja'iya is considered the last of the operations in which Israeli forces returned to areas announced in the past to be cleared of fighters, because Hamas regrouped its forces and confirmed its presence.

Hamas said it was confronting the Israeli incursion, and on Sunday, it released a video showing its fighters firing batches of mortar bombs against Israeli forces.

Israel returned to Jabalia, in northern Gaza, and the “Al-Shifa” Hospital, which it left in ruins, at a time when military analysts say that Israel is in danger of being plunged into a long-term war with “Hamas,” which revealed its ability to survive, as it was able to rely on the support of the population. Gaza.

“It is a quagmire, and it will be a low-key war,” said Joost Hiltermann, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Crisis Group.

 He added: “Operations may be used to push back Hamas from several armies, but they will eventually return through the tunnel network and above the ground.” “They will get new recruits, and young men who have lost their families will join.”

After the missile attacks, on Monday morning, the Israeli army warned Palestinian civilians in large areas in southern Gaza, and asked them to evacuate, including Khan Yunis and Rafah, apparently in preparation for a military operation, and areas that the army controlled at the beginning of the war.

Despite what Israel says about the decline in Hamas’ capabilities, the group has demonstrated permanent capabilities to continue fighting, direct strikes at Israeli forces, and use hit-and-run tactics, and the organization has an arsenal of weapons, according to the US intelligence assessment revealed by the Wall Street Journal.

In a separate report from the Office of the Director of US Intelligence, in February, it was stated that Israel “will face armed resistance from Hamas for several years to come.”

Israel says it is currently stifling Hamas' ability to smuggle weapons into Gaza across the border with Egypt. The fighting took place in Al-Shuja'iya, a neighborhood that Israel controlled at the beginning of the war, and coincided with its announcement of the imminent end of military operations in southern Rafah. Netanyahu kept repeating that the operation in Rafah was necessary to achieve victory over Hamas.

After Rafah, the army was planning to shift towards military operations at a low pace, including raids based on intelligence information.

An Israeli military official said that the goal of the operations in Shujaiya was to prevent Hamas from regrouping its forces. The army says it killed numbers of Hamas fighters, identified booby-trapped areas, and raided weapons storage and manufacturing areas.

An Israeli official from inside Shujaiya said: “We will continue to maneuver again and again, and at any moment we see an attempt to regroup, an attempt to restore governance, or an attempt to bring in new types of weapons.”

The official said that “Hamas” is trying to attack the army from this area, and “we will not allow this to happen,” adding: “I would not have gone if I had not had information.”

The army says it destroyed tunnels, including a one-kilometre-long tunnel in central Gaza.

 Israeli forces returned once again to areas devastated by the beginning of the war, ordering about one million people to evacuate from areas north of Gaza to the south.

Muhammad Assaf, the father of four children, said that he and his family fled from Shujaiya, hours after a raid struck near his building, on Friday: “We were told that the tanks that advanced in recent days would enter, and that is why we fled with only the clothes we were wearing, and my only dream is to get water.” “For my family.”

On June 27, the army issued instructions to residents of Gaza City to leave, as between 60,000-70,000 residents fled.

The Shujaiya neighborhood witnessed intense fighting at the beginning of the war, and the army there faced its bloodiest operations, after 9 of its soldiers were killed in an ambush in December. The army also killed 3 prisoners it believed were fighters.

Military analysts say that Hamas moved its fighters from one place to another, avoiding, for the most part, direct confrontations and continuing to stay until the end of the war.

Retired General Assaf Orion says: “I do not think that Hamas is going into a direct battle in which it will mobilize all its forces and wait for us to finish them off,” and “they are moving and trying to avoid a wide confrontation because they want to survive.”