A decimated Hamas prepares for a new fight With Israel

The militant group’s armed wing has appointed new commanders and begun mapping out where to position fighters in the event of a return to war, according to Arab officials who talk with Hamas. The U.S.-designated terrorist group also has started repairing its underground tunnel network and has passed out leaflets to inexperienced new fighters on how to use weapons to mount a guerrilla war against Israel, these officials said.

The preparations come as Israel and the U.S. are pushing Hamas to extend the current truce in Gaza and release more hostages before entering thorny negotiations over a permanent end to the war.

The two sides remain far apart on the basic terms of a complete cessation of hostilities. Israel wants Hamas to disarm and give up any role in the governance of Gaza, but the militant group so far refuses to cede its guns or influence over the strip.

The U.S., a key mediator in cease-fire talks, has said it is committed to reaching a second stage of the truce that includes negotiations to end the war, but needs more time beyond the current cease-fire deadline of Saturday.

Hamas has signaled openness to an extension of the first stage of the cease-fire with Israel. But with the two sides currently deadlocked over the next step in its implementation, it continues to plan for another round of fighting, after 15 months of war that devastated the strip.

Israel and the U.S. are pushing Hamas to extend the current truce in Gaza.

Izz al-Din Haddad, Hamas’s military head in northern Gaza, met earlier this month with lieutenants to lay out how a renewed Israeli attack might unfold, warning that Israel would first move to retake a strategic corridor dividing the strip, the Arab officials said.

Hamas militants have repurposed unexploded ordnance into improvised explosive devices and scanned properties for listening devices left behind by the Israeli military to monitor their movement, the Arab officials said. The militant group has assigned fighters to monitor Gaza for spies and has tasked another unit with monitoring potential infiltration by Israeli forces, the officials said.

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

Israel killed thousands of its fighters and much of its senior leadership, and destroyed Hamas’s rocket-firing capabilities and swaths of its tunnel network. The Israeli military also beat back Hamas’s regional allies, cutting off its opportunity to rearm.

“Of course, somebody new is taking over," said Israel Ziv, a retired Israeli general who still talks to Israeli military officials. Hamas, he said, is “like a magazine: You shoot one bullet and another bullet comes up."

But Israel “destroyed Hamas as a military organization," he said.

Hamas’s position as an organization that is battered but not beaten has prompted debate among its leaders about its overall direction, the Arab intelligence officials said.

Hamas officials said they agree that the group will have to give up overtly ruling Gaza if the enclave is to be rebuilt with cash from foreign donors. But hard-liners within the group also want to remain as an armed force that can exert influence behind-the-scenes and potentially return to fighting Israel, the Arab intelligence officials and a Hamas official said.

The debate has become so intense that Hamas’s leadership based in Doha has considered breaking with the group’s cadres in Gaza, who were behind the decision to launch the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that sparked the war, the Arab intelligence officials and a Hamas official said.

Reflecting the internal tension, one of the officials based outside the strip, Mousa Abu Marzouk, expressed reservations about the attacks in an interview published Monday, telling the New York Times that it would have been impossible to back the assaults if Hamas understood the chaos they would cause in Gaza.

Soon after, a spokesman for Hamas based in Gaza issued a statement saying Hamas is committed to armed conflict with Israel, praising the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that killed 1,200 people and left another 250 held hostage as a pivotal moment in the Palestinian national struggle. The subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 48,000 people, according to Palestinian authorities who don’t say how many were combatants.

“Clearly, there is a divergence of views between those in Gaza who tend to be more hard-line and militant, and those in Doha who tend to be more pragmatic," said Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The group didn’t reply to a request for comment Tuesday.

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

Israeli military vehicles in Gaza earlier this month.

The internal debate is likely to influence the militant group’s thinking over extending the current cease-fire. Sixty-two hostages taken in the Oct. 7 attack have yet to be returned from Gaza; Israel believes at least 35 of them to be dead.

During the truce, Hamas has used hostage releases in Gaza to project a sense of power and boost its image among Palestinians. after freeing hundreds of prisoners from Israeli jails as part of the cease-fire deal. The group has paraded hundreds of armed militants in body armor and military fatigues across the strip and shown off dozens of pickup trucks and a stockpile of assault rifles, many manufactured in Israel and the U.S.

Hamas set up stages with loudspeakers and huge banners freshly printed with anti-Israel slogans making reference to recent events. Fighters have worn lanyards—more commonly seen at staid corporate events rather than on hardened militants—and Hamas media crews have filmed the exchanges, later broadcasting the propaganda on social media.

The group is also asserting administrative control over civilian matters. Hamas’s police forces are now securing the delivery by humanitarian organizations of aid, which has poured into Gaza during the current cease-fire. Israel accuses Hamas of redirecting food and other supplies to its members to boost support and recruit new fighters.

Hamas this month called on students and teachers to return to schools—unlikely, as the facilities have largely been repurposed as shelter for displaced families—and its housing ministry said it was conducting assessments of the number of homes destroyed during the conflict.

The Israeli military is ready to return to fighting if Hamas doesn’t step down, said Amir Avivi, a former Israeli military commander.

“The government, the army, the U.S. administration, everyone is aligned with the idea that Hamas can’t stay and the Gaza Strip needs to be cleaned of weapons," he said

So far, however, Hamas is showing no public signs of giving in to those demands, he said, making the chance of returning to fighting “very, very high."

Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com, Rory Jones at Rory.Jones@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com