Azeem Ibrahim
Hamas won’t be defeated until Palestinians see a genuine path to self-determination.
After nearly a year of unrelenting bombardment and devastation in Gaza, Israel’s government insists that it is “determined to complete its victory” even after signing a ceasefire last week. Yet the facts on the ground tell a very different story. Out of the ruins of Gaza, an estimated 15,000 Hamas fighters have re-emerged, most of them fully armed and already attempting to reassert control. Reports from the enclave indicate that these men have begun hunting down suspected collaborators and executing them in the streets. Far from being eradicated, Hamas has survived, bloodied, fragmented, but unbroken.
This outcome should surprise no one. Every credible counterterrorism expert has long warned that Hamas cannot be destroyed through military means alone. The group is not merely a network of fighters or tunnels; it is an entrenched political and ideological movement with deep roots in Palestinian society. As the United States learned with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, you can kill leaders, dismantle infrastructure, and occupy territory, but you cannot bomb away an idea.
The stated Israeli objective of total victory was always a mirage. Hamas’s command structure has certainly been degraded, but it continues to operate in cells and local militias. The Israeli campaign has devastated Gaza’s civilian population, killed tens of thousands, displaced over a million, and reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble. Yet the core conditions that gave rise to Hamas, despair, disenfranchisement, and statelessness, remain firmly in place. In fact, they are worse than ever.
It is important to recall how Hamas rose to power in the first place. In the early 2000s, the Palestinian Authority under Fatah had become synonymous with corruption, cronyism, and incompetence. After years of failed peace talks, economic decline, and Israeli settlement expansion, ordinary Palestinians lost faith in the PA’s ability to deliver even the most basic services or any credible path to statehood. Hamas capitalized on this disillusionment. It presented itself as a clean, disciplined alternative, a movement of resistance and social justice.
When Hamas won Gaza’s 2006 legislative elections, it was a protest vote against the stagnation of Fatah, not an endorsement of Islamist extremism. But once in power, Hamas followed a familiar authoritarian script. It consolidated control by force, expelled rival factions from Gaza, cancelled future elections, and built up a heavily militarized statelet. Its leaders diverted vast resources toward the construction of tunnels, rockets, and a standing army rather than the welfare of the population they governed.
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