A Gaza ceasefire is expected to go into effect by the end of the week, leading to the gradual release of the remaining Israeli hostages in return for heavy Israeli concessions to Hamas. The bigger problem is that Gaza remains a military threat to southern Israel, something everyone from Jerusalem to Washington promised would not be the case.

“The threat of a wide-scale raid like the one that occurred on Oct. 7 exists, but in low probability,” an IDF intelligence officer said last week at a gathering of security coordinators for Israeli communities along the Gaza border, as reported by Channel 12.

That “low probability” qualifier is temporary. True, Hamas can’t pull off another Oct. 7 right now. But the terms of the ceasefire are such that Hamas can and almost certainly will rebuild its military might. At the same time, the large deployment of Israeli forces in the south will be gradually reduced.

If the war ends this week with the threat of a Hamas invasion still existing in “low probability,” then in 10 years it will still exist with “near certainty.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that already Hamas is reconstituting its ranks with thousands of new young recruits, and despite being heavily battered has managed in recent weeks to launch 20 rockets at southern Israel. And all this with the IDF still deployed and operating in Gaza.

“We are in a situation where the pace at which Hamas is rebuilding itself is higher than the pace that [Israeli forces are] eradicating them,” retired Israeli general Amir Avivi told the Journal.

This effort is being led by Mohammed Sinwar, younger brother of former Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces in October of last year.

It is the younger Sinwar and Hamas’s current local military chief Izz al-Din Haddad who are now running the show in Gaza, and who have the final say over whether or not the ceasefire proceeds and is successful.

They have managed to bolster Hamas’s ranks by promising food and medical supplies to those who join, and to their suffering families. And they can do this at scale because Hamas is stealing nearly all of the humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

See related: Hamas reaped hundreds of millions off Gaza aid since Oct. 7