Could October 7 happen now? The question at the heart of Biden’s ceasefire plan

On Friday US President Joe Biden announced an Israeli plan to end the war in Gaza and urged Hamas to take it up. The proposal, endorsed by Israel's war cabinet last week, would include the release of all the hostages. Israel would withdraw its forces from Gaza and release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Crucially, Biden said the plan was possible because Hamas was no longer capable of carrying out another mass attack like the October 7 invasion.

“The people of Israel should know they can make this offer without any further risk to your own security because they’ve devastated Hamas forces over the past eight months. At this point, Hamas no longer is capable of carrying out another October 7, [which] is one of Israel’s main objectives of this war and quite frankly a righteous one,” Biden said.

Asked for the basis of Biden’s assertion that Hamas can no longer carry out another attack like October 7, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Sunday that it was “based on an accumulation of our own intelligence assessments across the intelligence agencies".

He stressed, however, that the US was “not saying that Hamas has been wiped off the face of the map".

“We have not said that Hamas has no military capabilities,” Kirby said. “We have not said that they don’t still represent a viable threat to the Israeli people. Of course they do.”