Hello again dear readers,
I hope all is well and that the cold is manageable wherever you may be. In light of US President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Gaza and remarks made by analysts throughout the October 7 War, I wanted to write a quick blog post regarding why Hamas survived the most brutal round of the Israel-Palestine “conflict” since the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the 1940s, known as the Nakba. Something that was said many times by both US officials and commentators in the last 500 days or so is that Hamas could survive as an “idea.” This was often said as a reason why Israel would ultimately fail to defeat the group, but I think this misses the point.
As I wrote explicitly in the headline of this post, Hamas survived as an armed group, not an idea. What I mean by this is that Hamas’s organizational structure was simply not damaged to a sufficient extent to prevent the group from being able to function. Hamas survived because it was built to survive, not because its ideology is uniquely suited for protracted conflict with Israel. Perhaps one could argue that the group’s ideology and organizational structure are deeply intertwined, but, ultimately, the group’s structure is what brought it across the finish line.
I understand why officials, including Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari, would make such statements, either to dissuade Israel from a long war in Gaza or to excuse the military’s failures in defeating the group. However, this sentiment creates an unnecessary mythology that is not really tied to reality. As I have written throughout the war, Hamas’s organizational structure has been purposefully adapted to address Israel’s military might. That is why the group’s leadership is spread across multiple countries and is made up of so many members. It is also why the group is segmented so that even if many of its leaders are killed it can still launch regular attacks on Israeli forces as if no structural damage was incurred.
The idea that Hamas is an idea, though certainly true to an extent, also misses the fact that an armed group’s legitimacy is not built upon its ideology or “ideas” but by hard power. As I have written recently regarding Hezbollah and has been demonstrated in other conflicts, power grows out of the barrel of a gun, to quote Mao Zedong. Hamas’ legitimacy among Palestinians does not come from the fact that it is an Islamic movement. Rather, its legitimacy is derived by the fact that, compared to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which is now the Palestinian Authority (PA), it is less corrupt and has something to show for its armed struggle. While the PLO made peace with Israel and received very little in return, Hamas continued the fight, arguing that its armed campaign is what forced the Israelis to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. Though this narrative is quite flawed for several reasons, on the surface, Hamas can still say that it guns are what liberated Gaza.
As an extension of this, Hamas’s hard power also ensures that Palestinians who oppose it are unable to effectively organize or agitate against the group. Recently, videos came out of Hamas fighters executing Gazans accused of collaborating with Israel. Hamas gunmen also allegedly arrested some merchants who unfairly raised prices and shot them in the feet as punishment. This is power. Hamas’s Islamic credentials, though, of course, important in the wider context of the rise of Islamic movements in the Arab world over the last half century, is irrelevant to the fact that, even after over a year of brutal warfare, the group can still project hard power, both against Israel and other Palestinians.
Now, regarding Trump’s comments about Gaza, his notion of “cleaning out” the strip is actually somewhat unsurprising. Indeed, Trump would not be the first to suggest that insurgent forces must be separated from the population from which their power grows in order to “beat” the insurgency. In fact, the Biden administration also suggested this idea before abandoning it. “Cleaning them out” was done against the Boers in South Africa by the British and against the Vietnamese by the Americans. I even wrote about this in the early months of the war. Of course, Trump is couching this not-so-veiled attempt at ethnic cleansing in humanitarian terms, but the point is the same.
First and foremost, one should point out that such a plan would probably not be feasible for a multitude of reasons. Sure, many Palestinians would leave Gaza if given the opportunity, but enough would likely stay for Hamas to maintain some sort of popular base among the population. It also would not necessarily curb militant movements, as Hamas itself was built in part by Palestinian professionals in the diaspora like Khalid Mashaal, who grew up in Kuwait after leaving Palestine in the 1960s. Overall, it seems that Trump is simply trying to stir the pot before he moves onto what he actually wants. The idea that US forces would deploy to Gaza to annex the territory just seems too absurd to seriously consider or analyze.
Nonetheless, Trump does seem to understand that Hamas is an armed group, not an idea. Armed groups cannot survive without the population, as the people give said groups legitimacy, support, and cover. If you remove the population, the armed group loses its foundation. This does not necessarily mean that the counterinsurgent will win as the Soviets learned the hard way in Afghanistan after ethnically cleansing millions of Afghans from their land only to still lose the war. Indeed, the population must be given concrete incentives to stop supporting the insurgency, and that simply is not the case here.
I should note, however, that reducing the population still makes the “problem” somewhat more manageable, a concept Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has relied upon as part of his political program regarding security. Still, Hamas’ organizational structure would be able to withstand such a challenge, and, as I have written over and over, the group will live to see another day regardless.
As I hope I have made clear, Israel technically could destroy Hamas. It would need to essentially kill most of the Palestinian population, intervene in several regional countries — including Qatar and Turkey — and claim sovereignty between the river and the sea, which is just not in the realm of possibilities. Trump can say what he wants about Gaza, but he too will have to deal with the realities of the situation and the region. Palestinian groups like Hamas will continue to adapt to the circumstances around them and derail any plan in which they are not included. The show will go on.
Til next time.
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