In past due February 2025, senior Hamas chief and ex-chairman of its politburo, Mousa Abu Marzouk, stated he shouldn’t have supported Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel had he recognized how damaging Israel’s reaction would were.
That remarkably frank admission takes on renewed relevance now, simply weeks later, after the resumption of Israel’s brutal bombing marketing campaign. Airstrikes since March 18 have already claimed masses of Palestinian lives and formally ended a tenuous ceasefire deal.
As a professional on Palestinian politics, I consider the go back to lively conflict within the Gaza Strip speaks – at the Palestinian facet of the equation – to the continued gross energy imbalance of Hamas’ army place vis-a-vis Israel, and the gang’s loss of strategic foresight in failing to look forward to the plain willingness of Israeli Top Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go back to preventing.
Asymmetrical ‘peacefare’
It’s no secret that Netanyahu and his coalition companions confirmed no interest in totally imposing the ceasefire deal that was once partly brokered through Donald Trump’s Heart East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and signed on Jan. 19.
The deal was once break up into two primary levels adopted through a post-conflict reconstruction segment.
Within the first spherical, Hamas freed Israeli hostages in go back for the discharge of Palestinian prisoners held through Israel and the resumption of help into Gaza. After that, a 2nd spherical of negotiations was once meant to peer the discharge of all last Israel hostages in Hamas custody in trade for the entire withdrawal of Israel’s forces from Gaza – and an finish to the conflict.
A fireplace breaks out in an rental after the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza’s Bureij Refugee Camp on March 19, 2025.
Moiz Salhi/Anadolu by the use of Getty Photographs
However from the start, there have been well-liked considerations that Netanyahu would now not have the ability to ship on the second one segment of the ceasefire deal – and hypothesis that he had no private or political intentions of doing so.
The Trump management necessarily took the similar place. Statements through the U.S. president expressing a want to take over Gaza – with the accompanying implication that Palestinians dwelling there must go away – underscored the loss of dedication to the second one segment of the ceasefire.
Hamas was once conscious about those realities. However the militant governing authority reputedly felt it had little different possibility than to pursue the phrases of the ceasefire whilst protecting onto the one supply of leverage it nonetheless had – the remainder Israeli hostages, believed to include about 59 folks with possibly not up to part of them nonetheless alive. Certainly, that leverage was once tied to seeing thru the second one level of a ceasefire.
In fact, a part of Hamas’ hobby within the ceasefire was once that it introduced the gang the danger to stay in energy whilst turning in to Hamas the potential for boasting that it had secured the discharge of hundreds of jailed Palestinians.
A loss of strategic foresight
However regardless of Hamas’ evident disadvantages all through the ceasefire, it’s essential to concentrate on how the gang considerably failed to realize a number of exterior elements.
For one, Hamas leaders seemed to consider, for a variety of causes, that they’d extra time to barter than they did. That trust relied partly at the figuring out that Israeli public opinion polls indicated {that a} majority of the general public favors an finish to the conflict in trade for releasing all Israeli hostages in a single package deal.
Additionally, Adam Boehler, Trump’s hostage envoy, had lately unfolded an instantaneous verbal exchange channel between the U.S. and Hamas – one thing that hadn’t came about for many years – over the discharge of twin U.S.-Israel citizen Edan Alexander.
And within the days working up the resumption of preventing, Hamas and Israel officers have been assembly with U.S., Qatari and Egyptian opposite numbers, the place they had been discussing an offer to increase the primary segment during the finish of Ramadan whilst negotiations persisted over the general level.
But others had been reputedly mindful that the ceasefire was once on borrowed time. U.S. envoy Witkoff, in blaming Hamas for allegedly balking on the extension proposal – one thing Hamas denies – explicitly famous on March 14: “Hamas is making a very bad bet that time is on its side. It is not.”
Section one of the most ceasefire plan noticed the discharge of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Hani Alshaer/Anadolu by the use of Getty Photographs
Hamas additionally seemed to have miscalculated the political scenario in Israel. It reputedly learn an excessive amount of into the fractures throughout the Israeli safety established order, together with Netanyahu’s intent to fireside the executive of Israel’s inside safety company, Ronen Bar – seeing in those tendencies indicators that Gaza was once immune from any quick resumption to the preventing amid inside Israeli splits.
However some distance from signaling a momentary weak spot, Netanyahu’s safety shake-ups have simply got rid of dissenting voices.
After all, Hamas let its personal restricted good fortune cross to its head. It emerged from the preliminary ceasefire in a position to provide the gang as triumphant as a preventing power that had nonetheless now not been vanquished and may power Israel to the negotiating desk. That was once on complete show thru its media device all through the six weeks of handovers of Israeli hostages, during which Hamas’ repeated propaganda presentations all through hostage handovers angered Israeli public opinion, in addition to Israeli political and safety officers.
Rising rift
The place issues cross from right here is tricky to expect. For now, Netanyahu seems all too glad to go back to a full-scale conflict that assists in keeping his far-right coalition individuals glad, makes new elections much less most likely and assists in keeping him protected from the looming felony fees he must face as soon as out of place of business.
But for the entire struggling for bizarre Palestinians that conflict promises, Hamas seems extra adrift than ever. There stays a transparent rift between its political management – primarily based in Qatar and Turkey – who’re extra involved in international relations, and the pinnacle of the army wing in Gaza, Mohammed Sinwar, whose brother Yahya – mastermind of the Oct. 7 assaults – was once killed through Israel closing fall.
However apart from a want for revenge towards Israel and last the principle energy dealer in Gaza, Hamas has constantly struggled to articulate an achievable long-term technique for relieving the struggling of Palestinians in Gaza. The resumption of the conflict is not going to switch that.
