Law, Power, and Justice

Israel
Hamas’s Goal in Gaza
The renewed centrality of Gaza raises imporqtant questions about Hamas’s senior leadership. Previously, it had been assumed that Hamas was largely run from outside the territory by its leaders located in Amman, Damascus, and Doha. But that understanding is long out of date. At least since 2017, when Yahya Sinwar took over Hamas’s Gazan leadership, Hamas has undergone an organizational shift toward Gaza itself. Along with making the territory more autonomous from Hamas’s external leaders, Sinwar has presided over a strategic renewal of Hamas as a fighting force in Gaza. In particular, he has aimed at taking offensive action against Israel and connecting Gaza to the larger Palestinian struggle. At the same time, he has adjusted the movement’s strategies to account for evolving developments in the West Bank and Jerusalem, including the growing tensions around the al Aqsa mosque. Paradoxically, instead of isolating Gaza, the Israeli blockade has actually helped put the territory back at the center of world attention.
But the primacy of Hamas’s external leaders was gradually called into question after Israel assassinated Sheikh Yassin, the movement’s spiritual head, in Gaza in 2004. Several factors enabled the Gazan organization to gain greater clout. One was Hamas’s victory in the 2006 elections and its formation of a government, both before and after it seized control of the strip in June 2007. Once Israel reinforced its blockade, the leaders of Gaza managed to generate revenue through trade via their clandestine network of tunnels, thus making the Gazan organization less dependent on the economic support of the diaspora.
I’m not saying that Gaza has overtaken the leaders based outside Gaza, but there is now a greater balance between the two.” Notably, despite the rupture in Syria, the Gazan leadership was able to maintain strong links with Iran. This was particularly true of senior members of the Qassam Brigades such as Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, who traveled to Tehran whenever possible.
The growing autonomy of Hamas’s military organization was also clear in the case of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was abducted and taken to Gaza in 2006. It was Ahmed al-Jabari, the leader of the Qassam Brigades, who ordered Shalit’s capture and who, along with Hamad, negotiated the much-discussed 2011 agreement for Shalit’s release. According to the deal, the Israeli soldier was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, and many Palestinians saw it as a major victory for Hamas in Gaza. Israel assassinated Jabari a year later, opening a new military offensive against the Gaza Strip known as Operation “Pillar of Defense.”
Israel’s recurring military operations in Gaza played their own role in strengthening the influence of the Qassam Brigades. On the frontlines in Gaza, these fighters could claim a central part in the struggle against Israel in contrast to the external leadership, which was increasingly marginalized. In recognition of the brigades’ growing importance, in 2013 three of its members joined the Hamas political bureau, giving the armed wing a new and direct role in political decision-making.
Sinwar soon proved he could get results. In 2018 and 2019, he was able to obtain a relative easing of the Israeli blockade by orchestrating the March of Return protests on Gaza’s barriers with Israel. Hamas quickly took advantage of these weekly protests, which drew tens of thousands of Gazans to the border to protest the blockade, to fire rockets and incendiary balloons toward Israel. In response to this pressure strategy, Israel ultimately entered into a series of agreements to allow the limited opening of several border crossings as well as increased Qatari funds to be delivered into Gaza to pay civil servants. Still, many Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank remained skeptical of Hamas, accusing it of using the marches to distract from growing criticism of its rule and wielding force only to defend its own interests in Gaza.
By entering these U.S.-brokered agreements—known as the Abraham Accords—these Arab countries made clear they were prepared to take such a historic step despite the looming prospect of an outright Israeli annexation of the West Bank
the decision to attack appears to have come from within Hamas’s Gazan organization and did not involve the movement’s external leadership.
Despite the Internet blackout of Gaza, intense Israeli bombing, and the destruction of telecommunications infrastructure across the territory, Hamas has continued to broadcast information from the battlefield, providing a continual counternarrative to official Israeli accounts of the war.
it has become increasingly clear that Sinwar and the rest of the Hamas leadership in Gaza disdain the members of the movement in Doha, who live at a comfortable and luxurious remove from the conflict.
Even if it has come at a high price, Hamas’s attack has made the liberation project concrete for Palestinians; and by provoking Israel to unleash its devastating invasion and massive killing of civilians, it has also brought extraordinary worldwide attention on the brutality of Israeli occupation and Israeli control of the Palestinian territories. These outcomes will probably have deep consequences for the future of the conflict.
despite a five-week onslaught by one of the most powerful armies in the world—one in which an overwhelming majority of Gazans have been forced to leave their homes and more than 17,000 have been killed—Hamas shows few signs of having been eradicated. Not only has it managed to maintain itself; it has also asserted its autonomy from the organization’s outside leadership as well as its Arab allies and Iran, which was not warned of the attack. The Gazan organization’s ability to remain a force even now, with a highly structured leadership, a media presence, and a network of support, calls into serious question all the current debates about the future governance of the Gaza Strip.
For the time being, as its forces have failed to fulfill its objectives in Gaza, Israel has stepped up military operations in the West Bank through daily raids, mass arrests, and sweeping crackdowns. Not only does this raise the prospect of a two-front war after years of Israeli efforts to separate the occupied Palestinian territories from the Gaza Strip. It also suggests that the Israeli military itself may help further Hamas’s own goal of reconnecting Gaza with the broader struggle for Palestinian liberation.