Hamas’s Goal in Gaza: The Strategy That Led to the War—and What It Means for the Future by Leila Seurat
▻https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/hamass-goal-gaza
Article passionnant dont je copie ici les derniers paragraphes conclusifs
In the weeks since Hamas launched its attack, much international attention has focused on the unprecedented massacre of Israeli civilians. Far less noted has been what the assault revealed about strategic shifts within Hamas itself. By forcing Israel to launch a huge war in Gaza, the October 7 operation has overturned the prevailing understanding of Gaza as a territory that had been liberated from Israeli occupation and whose status quo as an isolated enclave could be sustained indefinitely. However great the cost to the Gazans themselves, for Hamas, the war has already achieved the goals of positioning Gaza as a key piece of the Palestinian liberation struggle and of bringing that struggle to the center of international attention.
In turn, for the Palestinians, the war has reconnected Gaza to some of the central traumas of their historical experience. Presented by Israel as an emergency humanitarian measure, the forced displacement of Gaza’s populations to the southern end of the coastal strip—as well as plans mooted within the Netanyahu administration to relocate Gazans to the Sinai Desert—has reframed the situation in Gaza within the much longer history of Palestinian expulsion that has unfolded since 1948. These current efforts to displace or remove the Gazans are all the more significant since most of those being forced to move come from families who were already refugees from the 1948 crisis. For many of them—including hundreds of thousands who have refused to leave the northern part of the strip—the situation is repeating these earlier upheavals. As they see it, the only way to avoid the risk of a second nakba (or “catastrophe”) is to remain in Gaza, no matter how great the destruction.
With Gaza once more under intense shelling after the collapse of the seven-day cease-fire, Israel and the United States have been discussing various scenarios for the “day after.” Although the two countries disagree on many issues, including the possibility of government by the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, which Israel rejects, both countries are adamant about the total eradication of Hamas. But this goal itself may be based on an understanding of the organization that does not take account of its current reality. So far, despite a five-week onslaught by one of the most powerful armies in the world—one in which an overwhelming majority of Gazans have been forced to leave their homes and more than 17,000 have been killed—Hamas shows few signs of having been eradicated. Not only has it managed to maintain itself; it has also asserted its autonomy from the organization’s outside leadership as well as its Arab allies and Iran, which was not warned of the attack. The Gazan organization’s ability to remain a force even now, with a highly structured leadership, a media presence, and a network of support, calls into serious question all the current debates about the future governance of the Gaza Strip.
For the time being, as its forces have failed to fulfill its objectives in Gaza, Israel has stepped up military operations in the West Bank through daily raids, mass arrests, and sweeping crackdowns. Not only does this raise the prospect of a two-front war after years of Israeli efforts to separate the occupied Palestinian territories from the Gaza Strip. It also suggests that the Israeli military itself may help further Hamas’s own goal of reconnecting Gaza with the broader struggle for Palestinian liberation.