The Wall Street Journal revealed in a report today, Wednesday, that the Palestinian resistance movement "Hamas" is regrouping and training its military forces in preparation for a possible return to fighting with Israel in Gaza, while mediators are working to save the ceasefire that expires at the end of next Saturday in the besieged Strip.

According to several reports from various sources, the movement’s military wing has appointed new commanders and begun mapping out where fighters will be stationed in case of a return to war, according to Arab officials who speak with Hamas. “These officials said the movement has also begun repairing its underground tunnel network and has distributed pamphlets to new, inexperienced fighters on how to use weapons to wage guerrilla warfare against Israel,” the newspaper reported.

The preparations come as Israel and the United States push Hamas to extend the first phase of a ceasefire (the current truce) in Gaza and release more hostages before entering into thorny negotiations on a permanent end to the war.

The two sides remain far apart on the basic conditions for a complete cessation of hostilities.

Israel wants Hamas to disarm and give up any role in governing Gaza, something Hamas completely rejects, and no one expects it to accept even mild demands for disarmament.

The United States, the third mediator in the ceasefire talks, said it was committed to reaching a second phase of the truce that would include negotiations to end the war, but needed more time beyond the current ceasefire deadline of Saturday.

Hamas has indicated it is open to extending the first phase of the ceasefire with Israel. But with the current stalemate between the two sides over the next step in its implementation, Hamas continues to plan for another round of fighting, 15 months after the war that devastated the Strip.

Arab officials told the newspaper that Izz ad-Din Haddad, Hamas’s military chief in northern Gaza, met earlier this month with lieutenants to explain how a new Israeli offensive might unfold, warning that Israel would first move to retake the strategic Netzarim Corridor that bisects the strip.

The Arab officials said Hamas militants reused unexploded ordnance in improvised explosive devices and scoured property for eavesdropping devices left behind by the Israeli military to monitor their movements. The militant group has assigned fighters to monitor Gaza for spies and another unit to watch for possible infiltration by Israeli forces, the officials said.

The Israeli military is aware that Hamas is regrouping and acknowledges that its enemy has recruited thousands of new militants during the war. But Israeli officials claim that Hamas’s military, despite recent public displays of force during the hostage handover, has been significantly weakened by the war.

Israel claims to have killed thousands of Hamas fighters and most of its top leadership, destroyed Hamas's rocket-launching capabilities and parts of its tunnel network, and "defeated Hamas's regional allies, cutting off its opportunity to rearm."

“Of course, someone new is taking over,” Israel Ziv, a retired Israeli general who still speaks to Israeli military officials, was quoted as saying. Hamas, he said, is “like a magazine in a gun: you shoot one bullet and another one comes out to replace it,” claiming that Israel “destroyed Hamas as a military organization,” he said. Arab intelligence officials said Hamas’s position as an organization that has been battered but not defeated has sparked debate among its leaders about its overall direction.

Hamas officials said they agree that the group will have to publicly relinquish control of Gaza if the territory is to be rebuilt with money from foreign donors. But hardliners within the movement also want to remain an armed force that can wield influence behind the scenes and potentially return to fighting Israel, according to Arab intelligence officials and a Hamas official. The newspaper claims that “Arab intelligence officials and a Hamas official said the debate has become so intense that the Doha-based Hamas leadership has considered breaking with the group’s Gaza cadres, who were behind the decision to launch the October 7, 2023, attacks that sparked the war.”

Reflecting the internal tension, one official based outside the Strip, Moussa Abu Marzouk, expressed reservations about the attacks in an interview published Monday, telling The New York Times that “it would have been impossible to support the attacks if Hamas had understood the chaos they would cause in Gaza,” according to the paper.

Shortly after, a Gaza-based Hamas spokesman issued a statement saying Hamas was committed to armed struggle with Israel, and hailed the October 7, 2023, attacks that killed 1,200 people, including 311 soldiers, and captured 250 others as a pivotal moment in the Palestinian national struggle. The subsequent war in Gaza killed more than 48,000 people, most of them women and children.

“There is clearly a divergence of views between those in Gaza who tend to be more hardline and militaristic, and those in Doha who tend to be more pragmatic,” claimed Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“Hamas is a unified movement at home and abroad,” Hossam Badran, a member of the group’s political bureau in Doha, said in an interview when asked about the divisions earlier this month.

During the truce, Hamas used the release of Israeli prisoners in Gaza to project a sense of strength and boost its image among Palestinians, after hundreds of prisoners were freed from Israeli jails as part of the ceasefire agreement. The movement paraded hundreds of militants in body armor and military uniforms throughout the Strip, and displayed dozens of pickup trucks and a stockpile of assault rifles, many of them manufactured in Israel and the United States.

Hamas set up platforms with loudspeakers and huge banners freshly printed with national slogans.

The movement also asserts its administrative control over civilian matters. Hamas police forces are now working to secure the flow of aid into Gaza through humanitarian organizations during the current ceasefire.

Hamas this month called on students and teachers to return to schools — an unlikely prospect, as the facilities have largely been repurposed as shelters for displaced families — and its Housing Ministry said it was assessing the number of homes destroyed during the conflict. Amir Avivi, a former Israeli military chief, told the paper that the Israeli military was prepared to return to combat if Hamas did not step down. “The government, the army, the American administration, everyone agrees that Hamas cannot survive and that Gaza needs to be cleared of weapons,” he said. But Hamas has so far shown no public signs of giving in to those demands, he said, making the chances of a return to combat “very high.”