These aren’t holdout Japanese troops isolated on some Pacific island, who didn’t know the war was over, and were determined to fight on for their Emperor, but simply trying to stay alive in the jungles. Rather, these are Hamas fanatics, who can, and will, and already have tried to continue the war. From The Wall Street Journal:

Hundreds of Hamas Fighters Are Stuck in Tunnels in Israeli-Controlled Gaza

The presence of the militants, who have killed three Israeli troops, is threatening to unravel the cease-fire

By Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv, and Summer Said in Dubai | Thursday, November 6, 2025 | 5:43 AM EST

A detachment of Israeli engineering troops was demolishing tunnels behind the withdrawal line in Gaza last month when Hamas militants sprang from a hidden shaft, fired an antitank missile toward their excavator and killed two soldiers.

A little over a week earlier, Israel and Hamas had agreed to a cease-fire. Israel responded to the deadly encounter with a round of airstrikes on Gaza that killed dozens of people.

The early test of the fragile truce pointed to a bigger problem: Hundreds of armed Hamas fighters are trapped in tunnels under the Israeli-controlled side of Gaza, and willing to take shots at Israel.

The situation is the result of Israeli efforts that began in May to flush out militants and destroy Hamas’s extensive tunnel system where the group has hidden fighters, hostages and weapons throughout the conflict. The strategy was to cut off sections of the underground web from one another. But Israel’s partial withdrawal under the U.S.-brokered cease-fire last month has left militants who remain behind the line trapped underground with no means of escape and dwindling supplies.

Don’t read that last sentence wrong. It does not mean that the Hamas fighters cannot get out of the tunnels; it means that they have no means of leaving and escaping capture by the Israel defense Force.

While Arab and Israeli guesstimates put the number of trapped Hamas fighters at between 200 to 300, Hamas negotiators claim that the number is closer to 100, and Hamas want the IDF to grant the fighters safe passage to ‘Palestinian’ controlled areas. Israel, on the other hand, wants them to surrender and be disarmed, or to kill them. But Israel doesn’t really have to do anything; if the terrorists don’t come out and surrender, they’ll eventually die of thirst or starvation. The IDF could simply seal them in, or flood the tunnels with sea water, but it’s simpler to just wait them out and let the Lord decide their fate.

According to the Kenya Times early Sunday morning, the IDF have already “eliminated dozens of Hamas terrorists and dismantled hundreds of the group’s infrastructure sites in the Khan Yunis area of Gaza over the past two months.”

The IDF also said the operatives are commanded by a Hamas deputy battalion commander from Rafah and that mediating countries have been able to communicate with the Hamas operatives, according to the military.

In recent days, IDF troops killed several Hamas terrorists attempting to cross the Yellow Line, the boundary separating ceasefire zones between Hamas- and IDF-controlled areas.

It’s simple: with the last remaining living hostages released, Hamas have no leverage at all. By any Western civilization logic, the trapped terrorists should surrender, surrender their weapons, and have a realistic hope that they’ll be allowed to rejoin their comrades on the other side of the ‘Yellow line.’ If they’re determined to keep killing Jews, they can at least hope that they could get back to that in a few years.

But Hamas’ logic, if we can stretch the meaning of the word, is that it’s better to hold out, and the trapped terrorists starve to death. I would guess that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is just fine with that. I just can’t seem to put into words just how sorry I feel for them.