As a ceasefire brought calm to Gaza’s ruined towns, Hamas was quick to come out of hiding.
The militant group has not only survived 15 months of war with Israel – among the deadliest and most destructive in recent memory – but it also maintains firm control of the coastal territory that now resembles an apocalyptic wasteland. With an increase in humanitarian aid promised under the ceasefire deal, the Hamas-led government said Monday it would coordinate distribution to Gaza’s desperate population.
For all the military might Israel deployed in Gaza, it failed to oust Hamas from power, one of its main war objectives. That might make a return to fighting more likely, but the results could be the same.
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There was an element of theater in the handover of three Israeli hostages to the Red Cross on Sunday, when dozens of masked Hamas fighters wearing green headbands and military fatigues paraded before cameras and held back a crowd of hundreds people surrounding the vehicles.
Scenes elsewhere in Gaza were even more remarkable: thousands of uniformed Hamas-led police reappeared, making their presence known even in the most heavily destroyed areas.
“The police were there all the time, but they didn’t wear their uniforms” to avoid being targeted by Israel, said Mohammed Abed, a father of three, who returned home to Gaza City more than seven months after fleeing the area.
“They were among the displaced people in the tents. This is why there were no thefts,” he said.
Other residents said police maintained offices in hospitals and elsewhere throughout the war where people could report crimes.
Israel has repeatedly blamed Hamas for the heavy civilian death toll and damage to infrastructure, as the group’s fighters and security forces have holed up in residential neighborhoods, schools and hospitals.
A deeply rooted movement
Opinion polls consistently show that only a minority of Palestinians support Hamas. But the Islamic militant group – which does not accept the existence of Israel – is deeply rooted in Palestinian society, with an armed wing, political party, media and charities dating back to its creation in the late 1980s.
For decades, Hamas operated as a well-organized insurgency, capable of launching hit-and-run attacks against Israeli forces and suicide bombings within Israel itself. Many of its top leaders were killed – and quickly replaced. He won a landslide victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections, and the following year he retook Gaza from the Western-backed Palestinian Authority during a week of street fighting.
Hamas then established a full-fledged government, complete with ministries, a police force and a civilian bureaucracy. Its security forces quickly brought Gaza’s powerful families into line and crushed rival armed groups. They also silenced dissidents and violently dispersed occasional protests.
Hamas remained in power through four previous wars with Israel. With Iran’s help, it has gradually improved its capabilities, extended the range of its rockets and built deeper and longer tunnels to hide from Israeli airstrikes. On October 7, 2023, it had an army of several tens of thousands of people divided into organized battalions.
In the surprise incursion that started the war, its fighters attacked southern Israel by air, land and sea, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Hamas-led militants kidnapped another 250.
A war like no other
In response, Israel launched an air and ground war that has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and reduced entire neighborhoods to fields of rubble. Around 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, often multiple times.
Almost every day of the war, the Israeli military announced that it had killed dozens of fighters, eliminated a mid-level commander, dismantled a tunnel complex or destroyed a weapons factory. Israeli forces killed Hamas’s top leader, Yahya Sinwar, and most of his lieutenants. But the exiled leadership is largely intact, and Mohammed Sinwar, his brother, is believed to have taken on a greater role in Gaza.
The army claims to have killed more than 17,000 fighters, about half of Hamas’s estimated ranks before the war, but has not provided evidence.
What Israel called carefully targeted strikes frequently killed women and children and, in some cases, wiped out entire extended families.
The army blamed the civilian losses on Hamas. But survivors of the bombings, crammed into tents after their homes were razed, were a breeding ground for potential recruits.
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a prepared speech that Hamas had recruited almost as many fighters as it had lost during the war.
Michael Milshtein, an Israeli expert on Palestinian affairs and former military intelligence officer, said Hamas no longer has the capacity to launch an October 7-style attack, but has returned to its insurgent roots, using creative tactics like harvesting unexploded Israeli ordnance to make homemade bombs. .
“Hamas is a chameleon. It changed color depending on the circumstances,” he said.
“The war ends with a strong perception of success for Hamas,” he added. “The enlistment capacities will be crazy. They won’t be able to handle this.
Israel assures there is no alternative
Palestinian critics of Hamas have long asserted that there is no military solution to the Middle East conflict, which predates the militant group’s birth by decades.
They say Palestinians would be more likely to break with Hamas if they had an alternative path to ending Israel’s decades-long occupation that was further strengthened during the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state, assured that this was not the case.
He rejected proposals from the United States and friendly Arab countries for a reformed Palestinian Authority to govern both Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank ahead of eventual statehood. Instead, he pledged to maintain unlimited security control over both territories.
Avi Issacharoff, a veteran Israeli journalist – and co-creator of the hit Netflix series “Fauda” – said Netanyahu’s refusal to plan for tomorrow was the “biggest debacle of this war.”
“Israel wakes up from a nightmare and finds itself in the same nightmare,” he wrote in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot. “Hamas will remain in power and will continue to build more tunnels and recruit more men, without the emergence of a local alternative. »
Netanyahu has threatened to resume war after the first six-week phase of the ceasefire if Israel’s goals are not met, while Hamas has said it will not release the dozens of remaining prisoners without a lasting truce and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
There is no reason to believe that another military campaign would result in a different outcome.
In early October, Israeli forces sealed off the northern towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya, barring almost all humanitarian aid, forcing thousands to flee and destroying almost every structure in their path, including schools and hospitals. shelters, according to witnesses who fled.
The army had already carried out major operations in these three locations, but the militants regrouped. At least 15 Israeli soldiers have died this month alone in northern Gaza.
When residents returned to Jabaliya on Sunday, they found a vast scene of devastation with only a few shells of buildings tilted in a sea of gray rubble.
Dozens of Hamas police officers watched over their return.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
