“No Nation is liberated without sacrifices.” Hamas' strategic Cul-de-Sac
While I make some reference to the agency of Israelis below, this essay presupposes my Digression of 8 October on Israel’s strategic cul-de-sac. That essay also makes explicit what my political orientation is in this conflict.
Hamas faces a professional military that has much more fire-power and that is embedded in an incredibly wealthy economy and (this is sometimes forgotten) a larger population. Israel also has the backing of many of the world’s most powerful nations. In addition, Hamas is mistrusted by the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah because of the brief Gaza centered civil war back in 2007. It also does not receive unambiguous backing from its Southern neighbor, Egypt, which mistrusts it because of its financial and military reliance on Iran.*
An alert reader may also note Israel’s near-total blockade of Gaza as obstacle. But I would argue that Hamas has benefitted from Israel’s blockade in three ways: first, it has made criticism of it in Gaza seem treasonous; second Hamas has been greatly enriched by it because it can benefit from smuggling operations (which are a monopoly on many goods entering Gaza); third the blockade has impoverished the local Gaza population, and thereby destroyed any local sector of society as a countervailing power or site of future resistance to Hamas.
Despite these obstacles, Hamas has managed to hold on in Gaza and (arguably, but this is outside my competence) developing its fighting and planning capability. On the latter, it managed to keep its coordinated surprise attack on Israel of oct 7 secret despite the many people involved in it. Thus, nobody should underestimate Hamas’ organizational skills.
Many commentators (including myself) have remarked that Hamas’s growth is, in part, the effect of Israel’s policy of divide and rule against the Palestinians. But as I noted above, the terms of the blockade have also made Hamas stronger in Gaza and, before October 7, giving it effective veto power over any possible peace plan. This seems to have been deliberate Israeli policy. For, as I noted in my piece on Israel’s strategic cul-de-sac, prime minister Netanyahu always assumed that his interests and Hamas were implicitly aligned against forces of moderation (it brought him first to power back in the day, in fact), and so he never made a serious attempt to undercut Hamas.
The October 7 attacks have, thus, also undermined one of the strategic pillars under Hamas’ stability and strength; in the future, no Israeli government will treat the endurance of Hamas as unquestionable part of its tactical plans. In particular, it cannot afford to ignore anymore Hamas’ persistent rhetoric that systematically denies Israel’s sovereignty.
The timing of the October 7’s attack has undermined Hamas in another way. It came on the eve of a near breakthrough in Israeli-Saudi relations that was itself fueled by Saudi’s sense of vulnerability toward Iran. In particular, the Saudis want access to the most advanced American military equipment and that requires peace with Israel. (As I have noted repeatedly, this reliance on the US’s willingness to protect its flanks is evidence of Zionism’s continued strategic weakness.) It’s natural to perceive the Hamas attack as an attempt to disrupt the development of the so-called Abraham accords. One danger to it, is, thus, that outsiders may come to the conclusion that it lacks genuine operational independence. In various interviews (more about it below) Hamas has made clear that it expected more military support from its allies (not the least Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon).
So much for set up. The Dutch scholar, Beatrice de Graaf, alerted me to an interview on the Saudi TV station Al Arabiya on October 19 by Rasha Nabil of Khaled Mashal, who won the Palestinian legislative election for Hamas in 2006 (thus far, the last one). He led Hamas’ politburo until the end of his term limit in 2017. You can find the interview with subtitles here on X. I have no idea if he has any influence on current Hamas policy (near the end of the interview clip he takes partial responsibility for it), but his statement provides a useful window into the strategic thinking to people close to its leadership.
When challenged by Nabil on the legitimacy of indiscriminately killing of civilians, and with the suggestion that this makes outsiders perceive Hamas in terms of ISIS, Mashal changes the topic and responds by saying that “nations are not easily liberated.” He notes that the Russians sacrificed 30 million to defeat Hitler, the Vietnamese 3,5 million to defeat the Americans, Afghanistan sacrificed millions of martyrs to defeat the USSR, and the US, the Algerians 6 million over 130 years. And then he notes that no “No Nation is liberated without sacrifices.” (In response, Nabil reminds him he hasn’t answered her question, and Mashal flatly denies targeting civilians.)
Mashal’s comments are instructive in three ways. (And, please reader, forgive me for not dwelling on the moral implications of his remarks.) First, all his examples involve the eviction of a foreign entity from a a national homeland. And so, they presuppose that Israel is a foreign or alien entity in Palestine, “which” (and now I quote from Hamas’ updated 2017 charter) “extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras al-Naqurah in the north to Umm al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit.” And so the idea is that with sufficient persistence and sacrifice Israel cannot just be defeated, but also removed from Palestine as a sovereign entity.
The problem for Hamas is that the relevant demographic numbers are not on its side in virtue of the fact that Israelis have nowhere else to go. And this leads me to the second point: Hamas’ attacks (temporarily) re-unify Israelis entirely. Not just that, even diasporic Jews that had grown disenchanted with Israel’s policies, are circling the wagons behind Israel again financially and emotionally. In so far as they are themselves vulnerable to dangerous forms of antisemitism this will actually drive at least some into the choice to move to Israel. There is nothing that reminds diaspora Jews of the value of Israel’s existence, warts and all, than to be surrounded by rhetoric and actions that systematically devalues the lives of Jewish victims.
Third, the mention of Algeria is especially significant. It is sometimes forgotten that decolonialization in Algeria (and North Africa and Arab world more generally) ended up inaugurating the ethnic cleansing of Jews from millennial old communities throughout the Islamic world. In fact, a plurality of (Jewish) Israelis descend from communities that ended their existence in the turmoil following decolonization, including Algeria because (and I quote Wikipedia) "the Algerian Nationality Code of 1963 excluded non-Muslims from acquiring citizenship."
This third feature also matters in a more important way. Many international academics treat Israel de facto as a product of European colonial expansion. (Recall this post on Fanon.) But they forget that Israel is also quite literally the product of decolonization, both in original independence and in its demographic growth starting with Operation On Wings of Eagles (bringing Yemenite Jews to Israel). Hamas, too, treats Israel in this fashion—explicitly understanding Israel in terms of European history:
While there is truth in the idea that original Zionism was intrinsically linked to European thought, the living Zionism of our age is in non-trivial fashion intertwined with the histories of the Arabs and Muslims (and other middle-eastern communities).
I view Hamas’ misperception on this score as crucial to its strategic weakness. For while undoubtedly it is familiar with Israeli politics (and let’s stipulate) brutality, it misunderstands its own enemy. Israelis do not identify with a European cosmopolitan center and, as I have noted before, do not have citizen-rights there (or, on the whole, elsewhere). And because even the most peacenik Israelis are now (after October 7) fully convinced (go read (my former colleague’s) Dana Mills’ moving newsletter, “Considerations in Crisis”) rightly or wrongly that Hamas has genocidal intentions toward them, they have no reason to offer it any benefit of the doubt going forward.+ (How important such benefit of the doubt about intentions is can be seen by the reactions of Palestinians whenever the Israeli army recommends evacuation of of areas ahead of an attack.)
Now, presumably before October 7, Hamas expected a ferocious Israeli response (hence Mashal’s and other Hamas spokespeople’s language of immense sacrifice). And presumably they are hoping that this will strengthen their hand in the Occupied Territories (where Palestinians are wealthier and have much more to lose). Since the current right wing Israeli government has armed settlers there and allowed them to attack villages, it is not impossible that more expansive fighting will break out.
In fact, ordinarily, I would claim that the longer the current round of fighting lasts the more likely it is that Hamas can claim a victory and indeed hope to strengthen their hand in the Occupied Territories. For, ordinarily Israel (in virtue of being the stronger party) loses goodwill (not the least through its tendency to inflict immense destruction to the life and property of innocent civilians without compensation or apology). In addition, Israel is fighting without a clear political plan which means it cannot end fighting unilaterally and come out ahead.
But this time I am not so sure. Were Hezbollah’s Nasrallah to announce today to expand the war with Israel on the Lebanese border (something Hamas has clearly been hoping might occur), this will only strengthen Israel’s resolve to go on fighting and resist outside pressure to halt or pause fighting in Gaza. But if Hezbollah wisely stays within the known red lines, then Hamas’ political and military situation will be rather starker yet. While it has received some support from Houthis fighting in Yemen, in practice it will be isolated on a small, vulnerable land-strip with a catastrophic humanitarian situation unfolding around it.
Because Hamas’ explicit ambitions are so maximalist it has left itself no viable road-map toward victory. It has, at times itself, signaled that it understood this because Mashal himself once floated a long-term truce (hudna), although foolishly insisted it would never recognize Israel. For, in fact, the world is also littered with numerous examples of independence movements that fail to achieve their aims despite enormous sacrifices (just ask the Turkish Kurds or Chechens).
It’s possible (I think likely) that October 7 was designed primarily to capture hostages as bargaining chips and to undermine Saudi-Israeli reconciliation. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Hamas leaders didn’t intend the massive number of innocent deaths that day (this is basically Ghazi Hamad’s position in the infamous BBC interview). That is, they wouldn’t be the first strategic agent to be victims of their own apparent initial military success. But now they are trapped in an annihilating fight without good options. (This is their cul-de-sac.)
In fact, Hamas’ only viable hope for survival is to rely on Israel’s current inability to imagine a partnership with Palestinians on mutually respectful terms. It has stopped controlling its own destiny.
*Qatar is also an important financial and political supporter of Hamas.