How a battered Hamas may emerge stronger despite recent killings

Deif’s death, however, would represent the end of a years-long 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, with a long history of assassinating its foes, 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, ceasefire talks with Israel.

“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 hardline.”

Deif 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 ceasefire with Israel.

Israel’s decades-long targeted killing campaigns against its Palestinian and regional rivals have a contested record. Critics have long argued the tactic has simply created room for new parties or leaders to emerge as Israel’s main foes, often with ever more radical forces replacing them.

In the 1970s, Israel killed Wadi Haddad, the military leader of the communist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which led to that group’s collapse. A decade later, a new Palestinian foe had replaced it: Yasser Arafat’s nationalist force, Fatah. Israel killed its popular military leader, Khalil al-Wazir, but failed to cripple the group.

Hamas, founded in 1987, has intently studied the history of Palestinian militant groups in the hopes of avoiding their fates.

Since the early 2000s, Hamas has become the group seen by Palestinians as taking up the mantle of armed resistance to Israeli occupation while other groups’ military abilities have faded.

As peace talks broke down in the early 2000s, Hamas’ potency grew. Several Israeli assassinations of its leaders, including its co-founders, failed to derail the group.

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.

Perhaps the most important principle for Hamas’ survival, analysts say, is not being overly reliant on material support from its foreign backers.

Hamas so far appears to have maintained that self-reliance 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 October 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 Hamas observers believe that Hamas can survive the current pressures. Some analysts, such as Michael Stephens at the London-based 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 Al-Ayyam, said Hamas would emerge from this war badly damaged, not only militarily, but in terms of support in Gaza, the region that “has always been its centre of gravity.”

‘No one wants to go there because no one wants to own that problem. Who is going to own the Palestinian question?’

Palestinian analyst Michael Stephens from London’s Royal United Services Institute

Much of the popularity Hamas is perceived to have gained, he said, had come from outside Gaza, such as from fellow 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, would never be able to lead the Gaza Strip after Israel’s offensive ended. Not only Israel and its main backers in Washington would reject this, he said, but Palestinians too.

Yet even with that resolve, Hamas’ opponents had 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,” he said. “Who is going to own the Palestinian question? It looks bad for Hamas right now, but then what exactly are the alternatives?”

Mustafa predicts an extended period in which Gaza is trapped in a power vacuum, with Israel entering and withdrawing from pockets where Hamas militants re-emerge and disappear.

Even if Israel were to ultimately deal a decisive blow against Hamas, Atallah said, the only question would be who emerged next.

“As long as there is an occupation, Palestinians will keep fighting,” he said, “whether there is still a Hamas, or there isn’t.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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