Hamas will continue to exploit the conflict with Israel throughout the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal process.
The terrorist group has thrived for 40 years on being underestimated. When it was founded in the late 1980s, its goal was to challenge the leading Palestinian group, Fatah, and fill a void that it had identified in Palestinian politics.
Hamas succeeded in the late 1980s and 1990s by being underestimated and thrived because it was often able to convince some in Israel that it was a positive alternative to the others.
Sometimes, it preyed cynically on this tendency in Israel to want to balance Fatah and the Palestinian Authority with Hamas.
Hamas has always been a genocidal terrorist group. It has always used massacres as a means to prevent peace. However, no matter the body count and the level of its crimes, it has been able to lull Israel and the region into acceptance.
It accomplishes this in several ways, including partnering with countries that back the Muslim Brotherhood or political Islamism. Because Hamas has its roots in this ideology, it has gained close ties to Turkey and Qatar.
At times, Hamas has also been seen favorably by others who view it as an alternative to Fatah in Palestinian politics, despite its bloody past.
Hamas has also successfully angled for Iranian support over the years. Despite being a Sunni group closely linked to other Sunni Islamic groups, it has been able to secure Iranian support because of its war against Israel.
Hamas thus benefits from both “sides” of the different ideological regional strains. It receives support from Iran, which backs groups like Hezbollah, and also from Turkey, which has backed extremist groups in Syria.
Sustained rule in Gaza
Another way that Hamas has thrived over the years is by getting Israel to buy into its sustained rule in Gaza. Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza in 2005. Jerusalem may have been surprised by the rise of Hamas in Palestinian politics and elections in 2006, but it watched as Hamas took over Gaza by force in 2007.
Even though Hamas immediately began launching rockets at Israel and had also kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006, Israel chose to appease it. Hamas kept Shalit captive for five years and built up a terror army in Gaza.
It then killed three Israeli teens in the West Bank in 2014 and fought another war with Israel, kidnapping the bodies of two soldiers. To this day, the bodies of soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, and two live civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, remain in Hamas captivity.
After 2014, when Israel cut a deal for two bodies of soldiers and two civilians, Hamas understood that it had benefited from Israel constantly believing that it was weak and deterred.
Every time Hamas and Israel fought short conflicts, Hamas would walk away without many losses, but Israel would claim a major victory. Hamas played into this, encouraging Israel and the region to underestimate it.
The terror group pretended to be deterred and defeated, even as it gathered a massive arsenal and built hundreds of miles of underground tunnels.
Hamas understood Israel preferred precision wars with a low death toll, and it obliged. In 2021, a short war saw Hamas lose nothing, but Israel concluded that it had set the terror group back years.
Meanwhile, Hamas was fine with encouraging this view and grew in power and strength.
Hamas’s main goal after 2021 was to knit itself into the Iranian axis and also to convince its partners in Qatar and Turkey to pave the way for wider international acceptance of it.
This is the context in which the October 7 massacre took place.
Hamas assumed it could get away with the attack because it had closely watched Israel’s elections in 2022 and its domestic politics. It knew that it would be in the interests of the Israeli Right to downplay the Hamas threat, that politics was increasingly chained to haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties whose men don’t enlist, and that they were growing in power.
The diagnosis was that Israel was entering a point of extreme weakness, internationally and domestically. Hamas assumed it could draw Israel into a long war in Gaza, and leverage this to take over the West Bank.
Taking large numbers of hostages – including women and children – was key to the Hamas plan. Hamas has seen that Israel’s leadership – which hadn’t changed much for two decades – didn’t mind waiting to do a deal for a male soldier: Five years for Shalit, 10 years, and nothing was done for the two soldiers’ bodies kidnapped in 2014, and for Mengistu and Sayed.
It knew that Israel wouldn’t trade for male soldiers or male civilians, but it might be encouraged to do a deal for hundreds of hostages, many of them women, children, and elderly.
Hamas assumed Israel wouldn’t abandon IDF women in Gaza, babies, or elderly Holocaust survivors. A country founded on “never again” would likely want to save Holocaust survivors or Jewish children.
After October 7, Hamas chose to follow its usual tactic of hiding in schools and hospitals and changing into civilian clothes, vanishing among the population. Hamas knew Israel wouldn’t replace it in Gaza because it saw how Israel left the region in 2005 and how the country was worried about getting stuck in Gaza again.
Hamas assumed if Israel did stay in Gaza, it could engage in a slow insurgency to weaken the country while it made plans to take over the West Bank.
Hamas knew that holding hostages would also keep it in power because the IDF wouldn’t want to engage in risky rescue operations. It knew it wasn’t facing Ariel Sharon or the kind of Israelis who went to Entebbe; it was facing a known quantity of Israeli leaders who had waited five years to bring Shalit home.
Hamas knew, under these circumstances, it would have to massacre a huge number of people to launch a massive history-shifting war and that it would need to take a large number of hostages to keep Israel in Gaza for years to come via endless hostage talks.
Now, Hamas is preparing for a new phase where it hopes to be underestimated. It knows Israel will need to sell any hostage deal to its public, and it hopes that part of the narrative Israel’s leaders tell people will be that Hamas is “defeated” again. Hamas will thrive as Israel portrays it as having only “two battalions” of fighters left. Yet, the terror group has far more than two battalions. It continues to easily control most of Gaza and knows there is no plan to replace it.
Hamas is ready to be portrayed as defeated and deterred again. It will then rebuild its forces and begin the process of trying to take over the West Bank. Its leaders live in Doha and there they will begin to angle for reconstruction funds to strengthen the terror group. New leaders will emerge.
Hamas has thrived for 40 years on being underestimated, and it assumes this will happen again. It assumes as well that it can kill large numbers of Israelis and kidnap as many people as it wants, and get away with it – it has done this in the past and has always been rewarded.
It knows that Israel’s leadership does not view it as a threat.
The only question that Hamas may be asking itself is if it will have to kill more than 1,000 people and kidnap more than 250 in the next massacre since it already killed more Jews than at any time since the Shoah, and Israel continues to underestimate it.