This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Jonathan Shanzer, the Foundation for Defense of Democracy,

about Hamas after 13 months of war.

Hamas is no more what we saw, October 7th, no more what we saw through the fighting of this last year.

Hamas is characterized as broken. Jonathan Shanzer, more of this tonight.

Hamas is now a low-level insurgency funded by Iran and backed by Qatar and Turkey. I think we need

to understand this. This is not the terrorist organization that was able to mount 10-7. They don't have

above-ground infrastructure any longer other than hospitals that double as command centers.

The underground infrastructure is being slowly picked apart, only slowly because the Israelis

are still trying to locate hostages. The only reason why I think the

Israelis are even in Gaza right now is because they need to find those hostages. Otherwise, I think

they could just let this place wallow in misery and try to find, at least for a time, try to find

some patrons who might be able to help rebuild and reconstitute this territory.

But I think the hard fighting is done. Again, it was a seven front war. I like to think now that

it's kind of six or maybe six and a half if we think that this insurgency is still worth fighting.

But this is, I think, an achievement for the Israeli military. And I think that the Israeli people are actually rather proud of the work that's been done.

Again, though, the big challenge is getting back those hostages that remains a huge priority for the Israeli people.