Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
Among the least appreciated realities in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations in Cairo is the evident political peril facing Hamas. Their softening on some issues, such as the duration and permanency of any ceasefire, demonstrates the profound pressure the Palestinian Islamist group is feeling – representing a major opening for the West, Arab countries and Israel.
In the view of the Gaza-based Hamas leadership, the war itself is going well. When insurgent groups engage in spectacular overkill, they are typically hoping to goad the more powerful opponent into a self-defeating overreaction. Hamas knew Israel would react harshly to the Oct. 7 attacks, having experienced the IDF’s tradition of disproportionate retaliation over the years. The purpose of Oct. 7, then, was to lure the Israelis into not merely a direct conflict, but a protracted military presence on the ground to serve as a lightning rod for a long-term insurgency, launching a new phase in the organization’s efforts to seize full control of the Palestinian national movement from secular nationalists. And Hamas got what it wanted, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a “mighty vengeance” after the attacks.
The bloody shirt is the most potent political banner that any national community can produce. Hamas seeks to show itself fighting daily against Israeli occupation forces over control of Palestinian land. If Israel obliges by remaining in any part of Gaza, Hamas may get its protracted insurgency.
However, that strategy is extremely risky. Hamas did not consult, warn or prepare to protect the innocent Palestinians of Gaza. Hamas boasts that they restored the Palestinian issue to international attention, and that “we are called a nation of martyrs,” but in recent months, the devastated Palestinians of Gaza have been assaulted by Israel more brutally and thoroughly than any civilian population in the 21st century, especially on a per capita basis. At least 35 per cent of standing structures in Gaza and more than 70 per cent of homes have been badly damaged or destroyed, and at least 35,000 of 2.2 million Palestinians there, mostly civilians and especially children, have been killed; an unknown number are still buried under rubble. Virtually the entire population is displaced. A serious man-made famine is spreading.
This devastation has invited Palestinians to ask: What did Hamas think it was doing? What happened to my family, my home, my job, my food, my drinking water? What is to become of us? What have you done? These questions were delayed as Palestinians rallied around the flag and focused their rage on Israel’s cruelty. But they are emerging.
Palestinians celebrated, especially in Gaza, when they’d heard initial reports that Hamas had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal backed by the United States. Their ecstasy faded quickly when Israel rejected it. Yet it’s noteworthy that Gazans celebrated Hamas abandoning its demand for a total end to the war.
This major capitulation reflects a new level of political weakness, reflected by reports of deep concerns about the progress of the war among Hamas leaders earlier this year; at the time, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, insisted everything was going according to plan. Hamas was also in a political crisis before the war: One poll conducted at the time found Hamas’s popularity in Gaza at a mere 27 per cent, with 67 per cent saying they had no or not a lot of trust in Hamas. Support initially spiked after Oct. 7, but increasingly, voices of anger have been growing louder despite Hamas’s intolerance of dissent. In late April, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that the group’s popularity had fallen to roughly where it was before the war.
This weakness offers a crucial opening. Fatah leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas have sensed it, lambasting Hamas for unilaterally plunging Palestinians into a catastrophe “worse than 1948.” The group’s enemies must now seize on its incipient crisis through a rapid and thoroughgoing Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and urgently strengthening the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization and their continuing commitment to counterterrorism and a negotiated peace agreement with Israel. Mr. Netanyahu and his government, however, appear dead-set against any such policy transformation. That’s utter folly.
Hamas was hoping for a big political win despite incurring a huge military defeat in the initial part of the “permanent war” with Israel. Yet support for their rivals could take potent advantage of Hamas’s political vulnerability because of the calamity they foisted on Gazans. Persisting in disregarding Palestinian politics while treating all Palestinians as essentially the same would be unforgivable political malpractice.