Hamas may emerge battered but not beaten by Israel’s latest blows
First came the killing of its top leader abroad, Ismail Haniyeh, by a bomb planted in Tehran, Iran. Then came Israel’s announcement that only weeks earlier, it had killed Hamas’ most elusive and revered military leader. All of this as Israel continues to wage the deadliest war Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip have ever faced.
At first tally, the latest score in the 30-year struggle between Israel and Hamas looks like a devastating one for the Islamist movement, one that throws its future into question. Yet the history of Hamas, the evolution of Palestinian militant groups over the decades and the logic of insurgencies more broadly suggest that not only will Hamas survive, but it also may even stand to emerge politically stronger.
Analysts and regional observers in contact with Hamas leaders see the latest blows it has suffered — including Haniyeh’s assassination, widely believed to be at Israel’s hand — as offering Israeli forces a short-term victory at the cost of long-term strategic success.
“Instead of creating the disconnect they’d hoped for, one that would make people fearful or completely defeated, this will have the opposite effect,” said Tahani Mustafa, a senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, which provides policy analysis on ending conflicts. “Israel just dealt them a winning hand.”
The military campaign Israel has waged in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks has displaced some 90% of Gaza’s 2 million residents, razed swaths of the enclave’s cities and killed 39,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its casualty counts.
Despite that, Hamas not only remains operational, but it also is recruiting new fighters in Gaza and beyond, local residents and analysts say. Militants have also begun to reemerge in areas from which Israel had driven them months before.
For Hamas, the logic of insurgency means that simply surviving in the face of a far more powerful military provides a symbolic victory. With that comes a chance at staying power that outlasts any pain Israel has inflicted.
On Wednesday, Israel’s military said that a strike it conducted on July 13 had killed Muhammad Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing, who is seen as an architect of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Hamas has yet to confirm the killing. Deif’s death, however, would represent the end of a yearslong Israeli effort to kill the man who is effectively the second-most senior leader after Israel’s most-wanted man, Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza.
Israel’s announcement of Deif’s killing came on the day that mourners were gathering to bid farewell to Haniyeh, who was killed while on a visit to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president. Iran and Hamas have accused Israel of being behind his death.
His loss, too, will be difficult for Hamas. Haniyeh was seen by regional analysts as a more moderate figure within the Islamist movement, acting as a bridge between its rival factions. He was also seen as a leader willing to push for mediation — including the continuing, if faltering, cease-fire talks with Israel over the war in Gaza.
“You take him out and the message is: Negotiations don’t matter,” said Khaled Elgindy, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
“I don’t see a reason to conclude Hamas could become irrelevant,” he said. “The question is: How does Hamas change after this? And I think there is a very strong argument to be made that the leadership becomes more hard-line.”
Deif himself replaced Ahmed al-Jabari, the military leader Israel killed in 2012 with a targeted strike on his car. At the time, he was leading Hamas’ side in a mediation effort to reach a long-term cease-fire with Israel.
Israel’s decades-long targeted killing campaigns against Palestinian and regional rivals have a contested record: Critics have long argued that the tactic has simply created room for new parties or leaders to emerge as Israel’s main foes — often with ever more radical forces.
Haniyeh’s life story provides a different lesson in the unintended consequences of some of Israel’s attempts to incapacitate Hamas. He was among
400 Palestinians expelled by Israel from Gaza to southern Lebanon, then under Israeli military occupation. Instead of being sidelined, figures like Haniyeh gained further popularity — and a broader regional reach.
Perhaps the most important principle for Hamas’ survival, Mustafa, the analyst, said, is not being overly reliant on material support from the movement’s foreign backers — a dependency that allowed Israel to deplete the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s and
1980s, she said.
Hamas so far appears to have maintained that selfreliance even amid Israel’s tightened siege on Gaza. Iran is a major source of Hamas’ money and weapons — its attack drones were used by Hamas on Oct. 7. But now Iran is also struggling to keep itself from being dragged into a regional war.
Hamas militants have their own engineers who know how to make use of whatever they can find on the ground — from supplies looted from Israeli bases or ambushes on Israeli vehicles, or from extracting materials from unexploded ordnance and fallen drones.
“They got a lot of external support in terms of finance and training, but in terms of their logistics, a lot of that is homemade,” Mustafa said. “Which is why, even now, almost 10 months in, you haven’t seen the resistance wane.”
Not all observers of Hamas think it can survive the current pressures. Some analysts, such as Michael Stephens at the Londonbased research group the Royal United Services Institute, believe the strikes will cause enough temporary damage to force Hamas into more concessions.
Akram Atallah, a Palestinian political analyst at the Arabic newspaper AlAyyam, said Hamas would emerge from this war badly damaged, not only militarily, but also in terms of support in Gaza.
Much of the popularity Hamas is perceived to have gained, he said, is outside Gaza, such as among Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
“That is understandable for one obvious reason: It’s the residents of Gaza who are paying the price,” he said.
Hamas, he said, will never be able to lead the Gaza Strip after Israel’s offensive ends. Not only Israel and its main backers in Washington would reject
‘‘ I DON’T SEE A REASON TO CONCLUDE HAMAS COULD BECOME IRRELEVANT. Khaled Elgindy, Middle East Institute
this, he said, but Palestinians themselves also would.
Yet even with that resolve, Hamas’ opponents have done little to ensure that anyone could replace Hamas, Stephens said.
“No one wants to go there, because no one wants to own that problem. Who is going to own the Palestinian question?” he said. “It looks bad for Hamas right now — but then, what exactly are the alternatives?”