SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Adam Rasgon
Jerusalem: Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip has delivered devastating blows to Hamas: It has killed top Hamas leaders and thousands of militants, pummeled the militant group’s tunnel network and undermined its ability to threaten Israel with rocket fire.
When Hamas launched its October 7, 2023, attack against Israel, it had hoped to ignite a regional war that would draw in its allies and lead to Israel’s destruction. Instead, it has been left to fight Israel almost entirely alone. Its allies have been decimated in Lebanon, toppled in Syria and weakened in Iran. The Houthis in Yemen have only managed to inflict occasional rocket and drone attacks, most of which Israel has intercepted.
Members of the Qassam Brigades, a military wing of Hamas, pay tribute to Saeed Ali, a commander who the group said was killed alongside his wife and two daughters in an Israeli airstrike on their apartment in Tripoli, Lebanon in October.Credit: Diego Ibarra Sánchez/The New York Times
Despite its isolation, however, Hamas remains the dominant Palestinian power in Gaza even after 15 months of Israeli bombardment, holding sway in displacement camps and refusing to surrender. Although many Palestinians have criticised the group’s decision to carry out the October 2023 attack — unleashing a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and reduced cities to rubble — it has faced relatively little popular unrest.
Hamas has celebrated the provisional ceasefire agreement announced Wednesday as an “accomplishment,” but its future role in Gaza remains uncertain.
The deal calls for an eventual “cessation of military operations and hostilities permanently,” but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly suggested that he will resume attacking Hamas after some hostages held by militants are released.
Yet if the full, multistage agreement is carried out, it could allow Hamas to rebuild its ironclad control over Gaza or at least allow it to maintain an influential role in the territory. Analysts connected to Hamas believe that Israel will struggle to resume the war in the face of international pressure and that Hamas will play an important role in the future of Gaza.
“Hamas will be present in every detail in Gaza,” said Ibrahim Madhoun, an analyst close to the militant group who is based in Turkey. “Trying to bypass Hamas will be like burying your head in the sand.”
Madhoun acknowledged that Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, had suffered losses, but said it was still “standing on solid ground” and had recruited new people to replace those killed. Antony J. Blinken, the US secretary of state, said this week that American officials had assessed that Hamas has brought in almost as many new fighters as it has lost in the war.
Rearming will likely be more challenging for Hamas, having used up many of its munitions without an easy way to resupply stockpiles, especially given that its signature external supporters have been so severely weakened.
But if Israel decides to return to war, it could continue to weaken the group, taking out its new commanders and targeting what remains of its government.
Iranians follow a truck carrying the coffins of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard, who were killed in an assassination blamed on Israel.Credit: AP
Under such a scenario, Israel could find itself moving toward occupying Gaza, which may “cut off Hamas but antagonise everyone else in the public,” said Tamer Qarmout, a professor of public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar.
Some former Israeli security officials argued that the agreement leaves Hamas on stable footing regardless of whether Israel returns to the war.
“Hamas earned a lot of points with this deal,” said Michael Milshtein, a former military intelligence analyst specialising in Palestinian affairs. “They got the two things that they’ve been demanding all along written into the agreement: the end of the fighting and an Israeli withdrawal.”
And if Israel restarts the conflict, it will be entering “a war of attrition that has no light at the end of the tunnel,” Milshtein said. “Hamas is ready to drag Israel back into the mud of Gaza.”
Still, Hamas will likely need to offer some compromises if it wants enough aid to rebuild Gaza to flow into the territory. Until now, Hamas leaders have expressed readiness to give up civilian governance in Gaza but without dismantling its military wing — a dynamic that analysts have said would be similar to Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon before Israel battered it.
“I think everyone, including Hamas, understands that solving the people’s problems requires Hamas to stay away from the forefront,” Qarmout said, adding that it needed to reach an agreement with the internationally accepted Palestinian Authority to share power.
While Hamas supporters have conceded the October 2023 attack caused enormous suffering for Palestinians, they have refused to express regret about the assault that left 1200 people dead, mainly civilians. They have highlighted how Israel’s ensuing bombardment of Gaza has revived worldwide interest in the Palestinian cause and dented Israel’s reputation.
Saudi Arabia, which had been drawing close to sealing diplomatic ties with Israel before the war, has presented Palestinian statehood as a prerequisite for a deal.
Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. And the state is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. Israel strongly denies both charges, but its international reputation has been tarnished like never before.
“Before the war, no one was following what happened in Palestine,” said Fouad Khuffash, an analyst close to Hamas who is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “Now, everybody is watching,” he added.
In a speech Wednesday, Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’ top negotiator, called the October attack “a military accomplishment” that would remain “a source of pride for our people.”
For many civilians, a future with both Israel and Hamas in the picture is bleak.
“We’re talking about a people stuck between a state ready to act with total brutality and a group ready to provoke that state to act with brutality,” said Akram Atallah, a Palestinian columnist from Gaza.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
