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WASHINGTON (CNN) — Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas passed Sen. John Kerry a letter for President Obama while Kerry visited Gaza on Thursday, senior State Department officials said. The letter for the president is in the hands of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, the officials said Friday.

Kerry, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, toured the devastation in Gaza and met with officials from the U.N. Works Relief Agency, the main provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza. Frederick Jones, the committee’s communications director, told CNN at the end of Kerry’s meeting with UNRWA chief Karen Abu Zayed that “she handed [Kerry] a letter addressed to the president of the United States along with other materials.”

The U.S. considers Hamas a terrorist organization and has no contact with the organization.

Kerry, D-Massachusetts, first learned that the letter was included in the materials, Jones said, after he left Gaza for meetings in Israel, when reports began to emerge that he had a letter from Hamas. Video Watch Kerry tour the Gaza devastation »

Without elaborating, Abu Zayed told BBC radio that Hamas had handed over a letter.

Kerry’s visit was part of a delegation including Reps. Brian Baird, D-Washington, and Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Congress.

Although Kerry also visited Gaza separately from the two congressmen, according to an official who was traveling with the senator, none of the U.S. lawmakers visited representatives of Gaza’s Hamas leadership.

The Gaza visit was the first by U.S. officials since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007, effectively splitting the Palestinian government.

Jones said that because the letter was not addressed to Kerry but to Obama, the senator did not open it.

“Kerry turned the letter over to the consul general in Jerusalem this morning to handle through appropriate channels,” Jones said Friday.

Fawzi Barhoum, a Gaza-based spokesman for Hamas, denied that the organization had sent a letter to Obama via the United Nations and Kerry, saying that if Hamas chose to speak with the American administration, this is not the method it would employ.

But senior State Department officials told CNN that after reviewing the letter, the consulate determined that it was indeed from Hamas. Consulate officials are discussing the matter with the State Department and White House.

Consulate spokeswoman Mica Schweitzer-Bloom would say only that Kerry handed consulate officials a letter for the president and “it will be handled by the appropriate channels.”

Obama has not ruled out talks with Hamas but said the group must first renounce violence, recognize Israel and abide by previous agreements successive Palestinian governments have reached with the Israelis.

Cyprus is awaiting UN guidance on what to do with a Cypriot-flagged ship that is docked off Limassol, amid Israeli and US charges it is carrying illegal Iranian weapons for Hamas.

“Due to the origin of the cargo it needs to be examined whether this specific shipment falls within any specific (UN) resolution ban, and it’s from here we expect UN guidance,” Foreign Minister Marcos Kyprianou told reporters. “Depending on the UN reaction, we shall take decisions and act accordingly,” he added.

The government announced it has twice inspected the Russian-owned cargo ship Monchegorsk on January 29 and February 2. A report on those findings was submitted to the “competent UN Security Council sanctions committee” on Iranian weapons exports. The Committee is examining the report and a response could be issued to Nicosia as early as today.

Cyprus has released few details of its investigation into what it has called a “sensitive and delicate” affair after the ship entered Cypriot waters last week. The Foreign Minister denied that Cyprus had come under any pressure from Israel to seize the cargo from the ship or the Russians to do the opposite.

“No government has told Cyprus what to do or request Cyprus do more than follow international law…there has been no pressure or intervention.” He also said that “almost everything written or published was wrong.”

Last week, President Christofias said the island was obliged to accept the boat as the shipment was in “contravention of (UN) Security Council resolutions,” although Nicosia has tried to soften this categorical stance. However, Christofias seemed to contradict his minister yesterday when conceding he had been “annoyed” by the “interference from some country” which he did not name.

The US Navy reportedly forced the ship to dock off Limassol over suspicions that it was carrying Iranian arms. The US military said it boarded the ship more than two weeks ago in the Red Sea and discovered Iranian munitions, then alerted the Cypriot authorities to search it after the cargo ship entered Cyprus waters.

Washington cited “legal reasons” for not confiscating the suspect shipment in open waters. Israeli news reports, said the Monchegorsk was carrying a shipment of Iranian arms for Gaza and was detained in Cyprus following a request by the US and Israeli authorities.

Some reports suggested that the Russian-owned ship was travelling from Iran to Syria with weapons destined for Hamas. There has been no official confirmation on what exactly is on the boat. Cyprus enjoys close ties with Syria and Iran but reportedly agreed to search the ship as a “favour” to newly elected US President Barack Obama.

WAITING GAME: The ship with a hot cargo remains moored off Limassol while diplomacy unfolds

As Israel prepared to launch its assault into Gaza in late December, it braced for substantial casualties among its own troops. Commanders warned their men of Hamas’ suicide commandos, missiles that could smash tanks and knock helicopters out of the sky, and long-range rockets that could reach deeper into Israel. Yet, when the dust had settled, the Islamist militants’ primary military achievement had been to maintain its rocket fire into Israel throughout the 22-day conflict. Of the 10 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza, four were victims of friendly fire accidents.

The militants continue to fire rockets: On Tuesday, a medium-range Grad missile struck the Israeli port city of Ashkelon in what may be Hamas’ closing shot before an Egyptian-brokered truce finally takes effect. Hamas and its supporters have claimed victory as a result of simply being able to survive the fierce Israeli onslaught. And, as a result, Hamas says, Israel lost the political battle; — its pummeling of Gaza and the heavy civilian death toll inflicted has offended many former supporters, while Hamas’ political position has been strengthened. But in battle, Israel clearly held the upper hand. During the conflict, very little of Hamas’ force of 15,000 fighters appeared, and neither did its feared arsenal of Iranian-supplied weapons.

Several senior Israeli officers provided TIME with a detailed account of the military campaign. “There was never a single incident in which a unit of Hamas confronted our soldiers,” one Israel Defense Forces official says. “And we kept waiting for them to use sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles against us, but they never did.” Israeli military reported only four attempts by suicide bombers instead of the dozens they had feared from Hamas’ special kamikaze unit.

So what happened to Hamas? Israeli military officials offer a triumphalist explanation in which the Islamist militants simply wilted in the face of Israel’s overwhelming firepower. By this reasoning, Israel had over-inflated the Hamas threat. The militants are able to lob dozens of crude, badly aimed rockets into southern Israel, but that may be the limit of their abilities. And Israeli officials are congratulating themselves for their tactics. “Hamas and [Lebanon's] Hizballah are worried that Israel has broken the DNA code of urban fighting,” says reserve Brig. Gen. Shalom Harari, while cautioning that Hamas’ military planners are probably already at work planning ways to block the military’s next assault if fighting breaks out again in Gaza, as it undoubtedly will.

Not surprisingly, Hamas disputes the Israeli account. One Gaza commander in Hamas’ fighting force, the Izzedin al-Qassam brigades, said the Islamists’ plan had been to draw Israeli troops into the crowded urban neighborhoods of Gaza City, where the Israelis would lose the protection of helicopter gunships circling overhead. “We were fighting a modern 21st century army, and we’re just a guerrilla resistance movement,” he notes. “What did you expect — for us to stand in a field and wait for the Israelis to mow us down?” Indeed, in the classic guerrilla playbook, the insurgent army avoids going toe-to-toe with a conventional force armed with vastly superior weapons, armor and air support. If he has a choice, the guerrilla seeks to survive to fight another day, and allows his adversary’s momentum to work against him in terms of the war’s political impact.

Israel halted its advance on the edges of Gaza City, calling a ceasefire on Jan. 17, and Hamas’ guerrillas — if indeed they were waiting in ambush — went unchallenged. Still, Israeli war strategists are at a loss to explain why Hamas failed to use the anti-aircraft missiles that Israeli intelligence was sure that Iran had provided. “It’s an enigma,” one IDF officer says. “The air over Gaza was thick with drones, helicopters and F-16s, and Hamas didn’t fire a single missile at them.” Two possible explanations: either Israeli intelligence was wrong and Hamas simply didn’t have the weapons, or the militants are saving them for the next round.

Israel may have confounded Hamas plans to defend Gaza by entering Gaza from three directions, avoiding the main roads which Hamas had mined and booby-trapped. Officers say that Hamas and other Gaza militant groups had prepared a defensive wall using “hundreds of explosives, mines and booby-traps.” But for the most part, the Israeli forces were able to go around it, cutting straight to the coastal road and moving down toward Gaza City, and then methodically dismantling Hamas’ defenses.

Once they had established positions inside Gaza during the first 48 hours of the ground assault, the Israelis then launched forays against targets but largely kept to the edges of crowded refugee camps and neighborhoods where Hamas might be lurking. Each battalion commander, using the vision provided by a pilotless drone overhead, advanced his men slowly, working out what one officer described as “micro-tactical solutions” as they moved along. In house-to-house searches, soldiers avoided entering through doorways, which might be booby-trapped. Some Israeli human rights organizations claim that soldiers used Palestinian detainees to clear houses. But usually, the soldiers crashed through walls. Troops were also ordered not to enter Hamas’ tunnels; dogs and little robots were sent down instead. And, as one officer explains, “Everything suspicious was bombed.” Civilians were urged beforehand to flee, but casualties swiftly mounted as the Israeli juggernaut rumbled through Gaza. Over 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the offensive, nearly half of them civilians.

By the end of the conflict, Hamas was still firing rockets, but far fewer. Its rocketeers made easy targets. Within less than a minute after Hamas fired a rocket, the Israelis were able pinpoint and destroy the launch site. As one senior Israeli officer says, “Everyone is digesting the lessons of the Gaza war — us and them.” And neither side expects last month’s showdown in Gaza to be the last.

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