Why is Hamas so Confident that it’s Winning?

September 19, 2024

by: Jonathan S. Tobin ~ JNS

Thursday, 19 September 2024 | After nearly a year of suffering and grievous losses, most Israelis and Palestinian Arabs will likely observe the anniversary of the war started by Hamas on October 7 with sorrow. But not everyone. An interview the New York Times conducted with Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’s “political wing,” in his luxurious living quarters in Doha, Qatar, revealed he thinks the war has gone just fine.

As the Times put it, Mashaal thinks that Hamas is “winning the war” and is confident that the genocidal Islamist organization will, despite the battering it has received from the Israel Defense Forces [IDF], play a “decisive” role in Gaza in the future.

It takes an extraordinary amount of chutzpah [extreme self-confidence or audacity] to sit in a comfortable place of exile where you are protected by Qatar—an ally of Iran and Hamas—while the Gulf State also pretends to be friendly with the US. It’s odd for a “political” leader to be so blithe about a conflict that has, despite the inflated statistics of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip produced by Hamas, certainly inflicted tremendous harm on his own people. By hiding from the IDF in a warren of tunnels the size of the New York subway system underneath civilian homes, they set in motion a confrontation that guaranteed that much of the Strip would be destroyed. And Hamas itself has been severely hurt. Reportedly, 17,000 operatives have been killed, and all of its organized military formations are no longer combat-effective. The same is true of its ability to send long-range missiles into Israel.

Survival Equals a Hamas Victory

By any normal definition of victory or defeat, it’s hard to argue that in the aftermath of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnappings and wanton destruction in Israel on October 7, Hamas hasn’t been beaten.

But Mashaal disagrees, and it’s hard to find fault in his reasoning.

While most of us have understandably focused on the fighting in Gaza as well as the way Hezbollah terrorists have been able to essentially de-populate a portion of northern Israel with its indiscriminate fire on civilians, one of the key fronts in this war is not in the Middle East. It’s in the US.

Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel and oppose Hamas, the political battle over the war in Gaza has been going pretty much the way the terrorists wanted it to. That’s reflected in Mashaal’s confidence, as well as Hamas’s negotiating tactics and its strategy in Gaza. After October 7, the terrorists have been doing nothing but playing for time. And they expected that the time they needed to outlast the Israeli offensive would be provided to them by Israel’s closest ally.

Biden’s Flip-flops Helped Hamas

President Joe Biden’s initial response to the October 7 massacre was to join Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in saying that the only proper response to this atrocious crime was for Hamas to be “eliminated.” But almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Biden began to slowly back away from that position.

Over the next several months as Israel’s counter-offensive into Gaza began, the US played a double game. On the one hand, Washington continued to supply Jerusalem with munitions badly needed by the IDF. Eventually, however, it was reported that the Pentagon slow-walked its delivery to maintain leverage over the Israelis.

Biden was heavily influenced by the open revolt against a pro-Israel policy from lower-level administrators and congressional staffers. With the Democrats’ left-wing base similarly outraged by his initial position of stalwart backing for Israel and the war on Hamas, he realized that it might imperil his chances of re-election. As a result, statements about the war soon were more about its impact on the Palestinians rather than the need to eliminate the terrorists who committed the largest mass slaughter of Jews since World War II and the Holocaust.

Rather than push back against the left’s demand for an immediate ceasefire that would essentially save Hamas, the administration began echoing it and pushing for a deal that would end the war at virtually any price, even if it didn’t result in freedom for all of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.

And when Israel forced Hamas’s fighters back into their last enclave in southern Gaza, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were just as vocal about demanding that Israel not enter Rafah as the antisemitic demonstrators on America’s streets and college campuses.

Combined with the post-October 7 surge in antisemitism made obvious by the pro-Hamas encampments at elite universities, it gave Hamas every reason not to negotiate seriously for a hostage release deal. As Mashaal told the Times, Hamas viewed all of this as encouragement for its plan to simply hunker down in its remaining tunnel strongholds, and hold out until US and international pressure—heightened by the anti-Israel bias of the mainstream media—forced Israel to stand down and allow the Islamists to emerge as the victor in the war.

Claiming US ‘Recognition’

But above all, Hamas views American pressure on Israel as its ace in the hole. As Mashaal pointed out, the way that the hostage negotiations have been handled by Washington has amounted to American “recognition” of Hamas as a diplomatic partner as opposed to a despised and outlawed terrorist organization. He’s right about that.

While it’s not clear just how closely they are observing the presidential election or counting on one outcome over another, they obviously prefer Harris’s stand in favor of an “immediate ceasefire” to former President Donald Trump’s comments, which amount to a green light to Israel to “finish the job” of eliminating the terrorists.

Hamas’s military position inside Gaza is not completely eliminated, but it is a shadow of its pre-October self. And there are even reports now starting to circulate about Gazans drawing some obvious conclusions about the high cost of letting Hamas lead them into disaster after disaster. Even as Israel’s focus is increasingly turning towards its northern border and the imperative to stop the Hezbollah fire that has depopulated a large area in the direct line of terrorist fire, the need to continue the work of demolishing tunnels and rooting out remaining Hamas elements is not over. It may take years—something that discourages Israelis, and that infuriates Biden and Harris. But the notion that there is any realistic alternative to continue fighting that would ensure Israeli security—whether in the form of a ceasefire/surrender or bringing international forces into Gaza to stop Hamas—is a pipe dream.

The Reality of Palestinian Politics

As the Times article makes clear, Hamas will never budge from its demands that Israel hand back Gaza to them. And as long as they are useful to their cause, they will hold onto many of the hostages, despite the belief among some Israelis that it is Netanyahu’s stubbornness or political ambition that is the obstacle to their freedom. Moreover, Hamas leaders are right to believe, despite the understandable anger in Gaza, that the basic equation of Palestinian politics remains unchanged. Over the last century, Palestinian groups and leaders have always gained credibility primarily by shedding Jewish blood. Hamas thinks that it will eventually reap a great benefit from the atrocities of October 7 in the form of broad support that will enable it to topple and replace PA  leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party in Judea and Samaria as well as Gaza. All they have to do to cash in on that is to survive the war, and they think they’ve found the formula to enable them to do just that.

If left to carry out its tasks without foreign interference, the IDF will eventually eliminate Hamas, though that task will not be accomplished easily or quickly. It can certainly prevent it from returning to power in Gaza, thus ensuring that its reign of terror over Israel as well as Palestinians is over. Still, Mashaal and the rest of the terrorist group are counting on feckless American politicians, ideologically motivated leftist demonstrators and political activists, a media that is always prepared to demonize Israeli efforts at self-defense, as well as war-weariness and anguish about the hostages inside Israel to guarantee their survival. We may hope that they are wrong about that, but it’s easy to understand why the terrorist leader is confident that he can outlast the Israelis…with American help.

Posted on September 19, 2024

Source: (Excerpt of an article was originally published by the Jewish News Syndicate on September 18, 2024. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

Photo Credit: Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images/jns.org