Israel's military campaign to eradicate Hamas in retaliation for the Oct 7 attack has weakened the Gaza faction by killing several of its leaders and thousands of fighters, and by reducing swathes of the territory it rules to rubble.
But the Palestinian group has not been crushed outright, and a year on from its unprecedented attack on Israel, an end to its hold over Gaza remains elusive.
Hamas's Oct 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures. Vowing to crush Hamas and bring the hostages home, Israel launched a military campaign in the Gaza Strip from the land, sea and air.
Gaza's Health Ministry said the war has killed more than 41,000 people, most of them civilians.
In one of the biggest blows to the movement since it was founded in 1987 during the Palestinian intifada, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran on July 31. Both Hamas and its backer Iran accuse Israel of killing Haniyeh, though Israel has not commented.
After Haniyeh's death, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, whom Israel accuses of masterminding the Oct 7 attack, as its new chief.
On the Gaza battlefield, Israeli forces have pursued Sinwar and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, whom Israel says it killed in an airstrike.
"Commander Mohammed Deif is still giving orders," a source in Hamas armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades told AFP on condition of anonymity.
A senior Hamas official, who also asked not to be named, described Sinwar as a "supreme commander" who leads "both the military and political wings".
"A team is dedicated to his security because he is the enemy's No. 1 target," the official said.
In August, Israeli officials reported the dead in Gaza included more than 17,000 Palestinian fighters.
A senior Hamas official acknowledged that "several thousand fighters from the movement and other resistance groups died in combat".
Despite its huge losses, the source in the group's armed wing still gloated over the intelligence and security failure that the Oct 7 attack was for Israel.
"It claims to know everything but on Oct 7 the enemy saw nothing," he said.
Israel has its own reading of the state of Hamas. In September, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas "as a military formation, no longer exists".
Bruce Hoffman, a researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Israel's offensive has dealt a "grievous but not a crushing blow" to Hamas.
Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2007, after winning a legislative election a year earlier and crushingthe rival Fatah faction.
Now, most of Gaza's institutions have either been damaged or destroyed. Israel accuses Hamas of using schools, health facilities and other civilian infrastructure to conduct operations, a claim Hamas denies.
The war has left no part of Gaza safe from bombardment: schools turned into shelters for the displaced have been hit, as have healthcare facilities.
Hundreds of thousands of children have not gone to school in nearly a year, while universities, power plants, water pumping stations and police stations are no longer operational.
By the middle of this year, Gaza's economy had been reduced to "less than one-sixth of its 2022 level", according to a UN report that said it would take "decades to bring Gaza back" to its pre-Oct 7 state.
The collapse has fuelled discontent among Gaza's 2.4 million people, two-thirds of whom were already poor before the war, according to Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a political researcher at Al-Azhar University in Cairo.
"The criticism is harsh," he told AFP. His colleague Jamal al-Fadi branded the Oct 7 attack as "political suicide for Hamas", which has now "found itself isolated".
Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim dismissed the assessment.
"While some may not agree with Hamas' political views, the resistance ... continues to enjoy widespread support," said Naim.
A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in June showed that 67 per cent of those surveyed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank believe that Hamas will defeat Israel. In Gaza, that figure is just 48 per cent.
* The writer is from AFP