Hamas’s Strategy of Failure

Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel has destroyed the already-crumbling Israeli approach toward the Palestinians. But will it actually help Hamas?

Answering this question requires assessing what Hamas hoped to gain from its unprecedented attack. We don’t have the minutes from meetings of Hamas’s military leaders or other definitive sources, but we can evaluate several plausible goals of Hamas today related to the attack. Hamas’s strike may help the organization in some areas, but for the most part, the attack is likely to set Hamas back and will prove especially devastating to ordinary Palestinians.

One goal of the attacks may have been to force an Israeli collapse. Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has pushed the idea that Israel is a fragile “spider web,” easily swept aside if a militant group is willing to fight, and die, in the cause. Here, Hamas may be aided by fierce divides in Israeli society that became apparent after the election of an extreme right-wing government and were exacerbated by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to push through controversial judicial reforms. Hamas leaders may believe that these divisions reflect Israel’s overall weakness, particularly as they spread to the Israeli military, with some reservists having pledged in recent months not to serve a government that they consider undemocratic.

But in this, the attack appears to have backfired, at least for now. Israelis have come together in the face of the bloodshed—including with the emergency creation of a unity government—and reservists quickly assembled for what appears set to become one of Israel’s largest military operations in decades. This rapid unity is characteristic of Israel, where external threats have promoted national solidarity despite many domestic disagreements. The extreme nature of the violence—particularly the atrocities committed against older adults and children—has proven particularly outrageous to Israelis.

Another goal may have been to shatter Israeli domestic support for the occupation of Palestinian territories. Before the attack, many Israelis might have rightly believed that they paid a small price for the growth in settlements in the West Bank, the lack of Palestinian self-government, and the severe restrictions on Gaza. Tareq Baconi, the president of the board of the think tank Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, argues that Hamas’s attack fundamentally undermined “Israel’s belief that it can maintain a regime of apartheid against Palestinians, interminably, with no cost to its population.”

The attacks both succeeded on this score and failed disastrously for what that realization means for Palestinians. On the one hand, no Israeli today can think that they can simply ignore the Palestinian issue: In this small country, everyone seems to have a family member or friend who is dead or wounded, and the coming military operation and reserve call-up involves huge parts of Israeli society. The attack also shattered any illusions about Israeli invincibility: The loss of life appears to be the largest of any single day in Israeli history.

On the other hand, the scale of the attacks and horrific nature of the violence will lead most Israelis to believe even more firmly in the idea that Palestinians cannot be trusted with self-rule. The Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which raged from 2000 to 2005, convinced many Israelis that negotiations with Palestinians would be met by violence; the latest Hamas attacks will reinforce this view and support the idea that more Palestinian autonomy means more violence.

Hamas may also have achieved some success in its competition with the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. That struggle is intense, with both sides crushing supporters of the other in their respective domains. The PA is in crisis, however. Its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is an 87-year-old chain-smoker and has no clear successor. The PA itself is corrupt and has little legitimacy. One of its biggest problems is that it helps Israel crack down on Hamas and other violent anti-Israel groups in the West Bank, essentially acting as Israel’s police force. As Baconi contends, the PA is “seen as inextricably linked with Israeli apartheid.”

Hamas was also suffering from legitimacy issues. Its rule over Gaza is authoritarian, and in part due to Israeli and international restrictions, has failed to deliver economically. To keep the past peace with Israel, it too cracked down on violent groups at times, leading to criticisms both within its military wing and from other, more radical groups.

The latest violence will restore, and greatly enhance, Hamas’s “resistance” credentials. The attack’s tactical success showed that it is a skilled organization, and the damage inflicted on Israel would hearten anyone who wants Israel to pay a bloody price for past killings of Palestinians.

Yet if the goal was to improve the situation in Gaza and demonstrate that Hamas can rule responsibly, that effort has failed disastrously. It will be hard even for Hamas allies such as Qatar and Turkey to portray the group as a responsible international actor. Many Israeli officials in the past negotiated with Hamas, seeing it as a necessary evil and preferring its rule to chaos in Gaza. Now it is just seen as evil.

Ordinary Gazans are already paying a price, faced with a massive Israeli bombing campaign and the denial of electricity, fuel, and other basic supplies. This price will only grow in the days and weeks to come as Israel’s military campaign goes into higher gear.

Hamas may have also sought to reshape the international environment as it pertains to Palestine and Israel. True, pro-Hamas rallies have erupted throughout the Arab world, but Arab regimes are skilled at channeling anti-Israeli anger rather than being forced by it to take action. Hamas leaders have called for other parts of the so-called resistance coalition—which largely consists of Iran and Iranian-backed groups such as Hezbollah—to join the fighting. So far, Hezbollah has only carried out limited solidarity attacks but has not engaged in all-out fighting. If it did, it would be a game-changer, as Hezbollah is far more formidable than Hamas. It is too soon to tell whether Hamas succeeded here.

Disrupting Arab states’ normalization with Israel may have been another goal of Hamas. Saudi Arabia, the ultimate diplomatic prize for Israel, has recently hosted numerous Israeli officials, and normalization appeared to be at least a possibility. For now, this is off the table. Aaron David Miller, a senior U.S. Middle East expert, argues that the chances for now are reduced to zero. Yet this is at best a partial success. The United Arab Emirates, one of the signers of the Abraham Accords, condemned the Hamas attacks. And although Saudi Arabia cannot move forward with Israel while Palestinians are dying en masse, the kingdom’s leaders may simply wait until headlines have moved on to resume negotiations.

If Hamas sought to disrupt U.S.-Israel relations, this too clearly backfired. The Biden administration has always been supportive of Israel, but it has expressed concerns in the past about Israel’s judicial overhaul and associated democratic backsliding. The administration and Israel also disagreed hotly on whether to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program.

Yet the attacks have brought the Biden administration to embrace Israel more fiercely than ever before, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveling to Tel Aviv in a show of solidarity and Biden giving a speech pledging strong support. He also addressed the issue of the conflict spreading: “To any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t. Don’t.”

It is possible that Hamas’s military leaders had only the vaguest strategic goals and instead lashed out due to anger and hopes of catharsis. Indeed, it appears that Hamas’s political leadership, much of which lives safely in Qatar, may not have been told of the attacks in advance. It is often easy to impute a strategy after an event, when in reality, the perpetrators may have had only unrealistic hopes and a strong desire for action. So the answer to “what was Hamas thinking?” may simply be that it wasn’t.

Whatever Hamas’s true strategic goals and the degree of their success, it is clear that the people of Gaza, and Palestinians in general, will lose.

Whatever sense of satisfaction some Palestinians or their supporters might feel for seeing Israelis in pain, in the weeks to come, the human toll of the Israeli response will be high. In the long term, the attack will sow more suspicion and reinforce Israeli fears and anger, making any lasting solution even more elusive.