Israel and Hamas Are Kidding Themselves

One year after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel, both sides believe they are winning. The war in Gaza appears poised to continue indefinitely and probably expand, to the apparent delight of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Each must be surveying the wreckage in the region and anticipating the dark days ahead with determination and confidence. Each must think he is playing a sophisticated long game that the other will lose.

This is hardly the first time that the designs of right-wing Israeli leaders have coincided with those of Hamas. Netanyahu has long seen Hamas as a useful tool for weakening Fatah, the secular nationalist party that dominates the Palestinian Authority and rules parts of the West Bank. As he allegedly explained at a Likud strategy meeting in 2019: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Netanyahu denies having said this, but it certainly reflects his actions.)

As an exercise in divide and rule, Netanyahu’s policy succeeded admirably. The Palestinian national movement was crippled by the disunion that Israel fostered like a hothouse orchid. But by foreclosing the possibility of Palestinian statehood or citizenship, the policy created the conditions for a violent backlash, as many Palestinians concluded that the only way to achieve their national aspirations was through armed struggle. In the months leading up to the October 7 attack, Hamas decided to prove that it, and not its rival on the West Bank, was worthy of leading such a movement.

On the evening of October 7, Netanyahu vowed a “mighty vengeance” for Hamas’s killing of 1,139 Israelis and kidnapping of about 250 more. That much Israel has achieved: Israel has now killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled ministry of health, which has published evidence suggesting that most of the dead were civilians, including thousands of children. Yet the war has failed to achieve much else. Netanyahu has vowed that Hamas would be “destroyed.” But this is quixotic; Hamas is more an idea among Palestinians than a collection of individuals or equipment. And Netanyahu’s call for the group’s destruction has allowed Hamas to declare victory simply by surviving.

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Israel has ravaged Gaza from north to south and wiped out almost everything of value to Hamas—nearly all of its known facilities, agents, associates, and aboveground assets. But the war is not over. In fact, Hamas has only just begun to get the war it really wants.

Hamas is far from being destroyed; its fighters are popping up in areas across the Gaza Strip that months ago the Israeli military had declared pacified and abandoned. Israel is now playing whack-a-mole with militants who emerge for quick attacks before disappearing. When Israel strikes back, it usually leaves a pile of dead civilians behind. Hamas can likely keep this dynamic going for a decade or two—and in doing so, stake its claim to Palestinian leadership by waving the bloodied shirt of martyrdom and preaching the virtues of armed struggle against occupation.

Netanyahu is doing his best to ensure that this happens. He has so far refused to discuss the next phase in Gaza, in which the Israeli military might withdraw and leave someone in charge other than Hamas. In the absence of any such plan, the Israeli military has been left to administer Gaza for the foreseeable future—a role it has begun to acknowledge by appointing one of its own to oversee humanitarian relief efforts. Through inaction, silence, and calculated inattention, Netanyahu has ensured the existence of only two possible candidates to run Gaza: Israel and Hamas.

Everything Netanyahu has done since October 7 has guaranteed Israel’s continuing presence in Gaza, which is exactly what Hamas was counting on. Israel could have declared victory and left after battling the last organized Hamas battalions in Rafah—but it missed that opportunity. Now it is fighting an amorphous and pointless counterinsurgency campaign, from which it can’t withdraw without appearing to throw away a hard-fought victory and hand power back to the enemy.

Hamas hoped for exactly this outcome when it attacked on October 7. It also wished to spark a region-wide, multifront war with Israel, in which other members of the Tehran-led “Axis of Resistance,” especially Hezbollah, would leap into action. The late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah essentially rejected Hamas’s plea, committing only to liberate two small towns still held by the Israelis, and to moderately step up rocket attacks over the border.

But Netanyahu decided to call Nasrallah’s bluff with continuous escalations, which culminated in recent weeks with the killing of numerous Hezbollah leaders, including Nasrallah himself. Israel has killed or maimed nearly 3,000 Hezbollah operatives with booby traps; destroyed much of the group’s heavy equipment, including missiles and rocket launchers; and launched its third major invasion of Lebanon, where a potential Israeli occupation would surely face another open-ended insurgency.

Iran responded to Nasrallah’s killing by sending a barrage of missiles into Israel on October 1. Most failed to cause damage, but the attack has buoyed Hamas’s hopes for a regional war nonetheless. Even the Biden administration, which has sought to restrain escalation in Lebanon, recognizes that Israel will retaliate against Iran. Washington is trying to persuade Israel not to strike Iran’s oil-production facilities or nuclear installations, but these warnings may be in vain, as Israel feels flush with victory and may imagine that it can reshape the region through force.

And so both Israel and Hamas seem to believe that they are on the brink of unparalleled success. Hamas endured the battering in Gaza, and appears confident that it will ultimately assume the Palestinian national leadership. Looking at the same set of facts, the Israeli government apparently believes that it has struck back decisively against the architects of the October 7 attack and reduced Hamas to virtual irrelevancy, beyond being a ragtag nuisance in Gaza. Now Israel is fighting the war it wanted to fight—against Hezbollah in Lebanon—with dramatic early success.

[Read: Lebanon is not a solution for Gaza]

Some in Israel have begun talking about subduing not just Hamas but the whole Axis of Resistance, including Iran itself. Even if Israel doesn’t strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, it may seek to compel the United States to attack those installations in Israel’s defense, or to finish a job that Israel will have started. Netanyahu has long argued that an American military strike is necessary to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. If he can’t bring that about today, additional opportunities will surely arise to steer the U.S. into an armed confrontation with Iran, no matter who is in the White House when the time comes.

The Israeli leadership imagines a new Middle East—one where Iran’s nuclear program is eliminated and its regional influence greatly reduced; where Israel becomes part of an alliance of pro-American Arab states, including Saudi Arabia; and where, fantasy of fantasies, the Iranian regime is overthrown. Americans should find something familiar both in this vision of a pacified region and in Israel’s post–October 7 doctrine of “peace through strength” and “escalation to de-escalate.” Washington embraced similar ideas after 9/11, and they met a bitter end in Iraq.

Both Israel and Hamas are probably kidding themselves. Sooner rather than later, Palestinians will come to resent Hamas’s brutal recklessness, which has led to more Palestinian bloodshed even than the catastrophe of 1948. The attack on October 7 did incalculable damage to the Palestinian national movement and prospects for statehood. And if Hamas dreams that it can ever take over the Palestine Liberation Organization and speak for its people at the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, the group has not comprehended how radioactive it has become internationally. Playing the long game of insurgency may win the sympathies of many Palestinians, but overcoming the stigma of October 7 will require renouncing terrorism—something that Hamas can’t do without completely transforming its ideology and leadership.

Israel, too, may be facing a rude awakening. Its degradation of Hezbollah, which Iran sees as its forward defense force, may persuade Tehran to sprint toward nuclear weaponization. Attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities could set this process back a year or two, but Iran will surely succeed if that becomes the regime’s single-minded goal. Neither Israel, the United States, nor Arab countries can do much to force regime change in Iran if domestic conditions are not ripe for it—and there’s no sign that they are. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has made clear that it will not normalize relations with Israel, let alone enter into a partnership, unless the Palestinian issue is resolved. No amount of Israeli military success will change that.

Netanyahu’s war of vengeance in Gaza has ensured that yet another generation of Arabs regards the Palestinian cause as a collective responsibility—one that may give rise to or strengthen extremist groups. Yet Israel appears more hostile to Palestinian statehood than ever, as it steadily annexes much of the West Bank with no plan for what to do with the Palestinians there.

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After October 7, Israel unleashed its military in search of greater security, and many Israelis appear to feel that the project could hardly be going better. But Israel now finds itself fighting one insurgency to its south, in Gaza, and marching briskly toward another such quagmire to its north, if it occupies Lebanon. Its hostility toward the Palestinian Authority and violent clashes with armed youth in Palestinian cities suggest a third insurgency developing to its east. If that’s a formula for security, it’s hard to imagine what insecurity would look like.

One year on from October 7, Hamas and Israel both think events are moving in their direction. Any appreciation of the old adage about being careful what you wish for was, perhaps, one of the most significant victims of October 7.