Hamas Blunders Again
In their scrupulous, finely detailed planning for the October 7 attacks, a process that took as long as two years, deep underground, the Hamas leadership was convinced that they had found the precise means to spark the region-wide war that would destroy Israel and anoint their group as the rulers of all of Palestine “from the river to the sea.”
The attacks were to be so heinous, so rife with slaughter, dismemberment, burning children alive, and rape, that Israel would be forced to respond with a ferocity that drew both Hezbollah/Iran and West Bank insurgents into the conflict. But, because of hostages held in the network of bunkers and tunnels that Hamas had diverted aid money to build—old men, women, and small children whose lives Israel would never, ever put at risk—even the murderous Netanyahu would soon be forced to back down. Israel’s counterattack could thus effectively be blunted by the threat to publicly execute hostages if Gaza were bombed or shelled.
With all this, however, in addition to casualties among their own fighters, many Gaza civilians would surely die, but they would do so willingly to attain martyrdom and advance their fervently shared objective.
One can almost see the Hamas leadership congratulating itself on its brilliance, salivating as the moment approached when the incursion would be launched. Victory would soon be theirs.
Only it wasn’t. Hamas miscalculated on every front. Nothing has worked out the way they planned and instead of triumph, they created only disaster, mostly for the people in whose name they had undertaken their attack.
The invasion of Israel did not come close to igniting a regional war. Iran and Hezbollah have stayed pretty much on the sidelines, offering nothing more than token participation. (A friend who knows the Middle East intimately told me that if Hamas had informed Iran of what they were planning, the politically savvy Iranians would have had a fit.) Nor did the West Bank erupt.
The most serious misjudgement was that Israel would be deterred in hunting down Hamas leaders by the presence of the hostages. Instead, Israel made the agonizing decision that it must move forward even if it cost every hostage his or her life. And so, they pulverized Gaza City, attacking every location where Hamas fighters might be located, displacing hundreds of thousands of Gazans in the process and creating both a humanitarian catastrophe and a public relations nightmare.
Ironically, that misread of their enemies handed Hamas the only card they could play and, for a time, they played it well. Images of Gazans whose lives had been ruined, and were without food, water, shelter, or fuel transfixed the media and prompted protests around the world.
Despite Israel’s every attempt to keep focus on the unprovoked, unspeakable atrocities committed by Hamas against babies and grandmothers, public sentiment could not be moved off the plight of helpless Gazans. Israel’s protests that there would have been no humanitarian crisis without Hamas’s long-held strategy of hiding in the midst of woman and children and in hospitals and mosques fell increasingly flat.
For a time, Israelis were portrayed as heartless bullies and even their most loyal allies began to urge restraint. Incredibly, after one of the most vile terrorist attacks in history, among large swaths of the world’s population, Hamas had actually claimed the moral high ground.
Then, totally in character, they gave it back.
With Israel’s unexpected and relentless commitment to eliminating them at any cost taking its toll, Hamas leaders seemed to realize, doubtless with some shock, that they were losing. Lacking support from supposed allies and in the absence of a wider war, Israel was making inexorable progress, and every Hamas commander, embedded in the civilian population or not, could be killed at any moment. (Evidently, martyrdom was desirable for their followers and noncombatants, but not for them.)
As a result, with mediation by Qatar, and likely some serious back channel urging by Iran, Hamas decided to alter its strategy. In the guise of caring about those they had betrayed, they agreed to release some hostages in return for a “humanitarian pause”—ludicrous coming from them—and the release of woman and teenagers from Israeli jails.
After a good deal of jostling, the deal was put in place and the hostages began to come home. With each release, Hamas paid dearly for abducting innocents. Heartrending images of freed Israeli women and especially young children, including a four-year-old girl whose parents had been murdered in front of her, have dominated the headlines.
Every day, this piecemeal process has reminded the world of Hamas’s barbarity and, even worse for them, has somewhat pushed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza off the front pages. Whether anti-Israel protests have decreased is not clear—they seemed to have, especially in the United States—but mainstream media is not covering them, except as footnotes. In addition, the exchange process has also allowed Israel to revisit the scene of the attack and remind the world of the horrors that happened there.
By limiting the release to a steady drip of only ten hostages a day, Hamas has ensured these images will not fade from the public consciousness. As such, Israel is now in the best position it has been in since before it attacked Gaza City. Not exactly what Hamas had in mind.
Where does that leave Hamas after the fighting stops? Whether the cease fire is extended, which seems likely, or ends and the fighting is renewed, Hamas has damaged itself, likely fatally. They will survive as the terrorist organization they are, of course, but their masquerade as a legitimate governing body is over.
In addition, the loathing that many, perhaps most, Gazans feel for Hamas and their totalitarian rule cannot be underestimated. They were widely despised before this disaster, a sentiment unlikely to wane.
The task of rebuilding Gaza is immense, this in an area that is among the most densely populated on earth. Unclear is who will oversee that effort, both physically and politically, and govern in Gaza.
But it will not be Hamas.
They can’t blame Israel for that.