The Gaza war is far from over

On October 15, the office of Israeli Defense Minister Katz threatened that if the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) did not abide by the terms of the ceasefire, Israel would resume military operations. On the same day, U.S. President Trump declared that if Hamas did not disarm on its own, “we will disarm them.” What Israel meant was that after Hamas released, as agreed, the last 20 living detainees, it had not yet fully handed over the bodies of the deceased; what the United States meant was Hamas’s refusal to completely lay down its weapons in the future.

Israel’s demand is the first-phase goal of the U.S.–Israel side, while the U.S. demand is the second-phase claim of the U.S.–Israel side. Only one week after Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu together with Trump announced in Jerusalem that “the Gaza war has ended” and ostentatiously convened an “Egypt Peace Summit,” Trump impatiently slapped himself in the face, betrayed the promise of peace, prepared to restart the Gaza fighting, and even threatened to have U.S. forces take the field in person.

Israel has left heavy forces in Gaza ready to move, and it and Hamas accuse each other of not abiding by the first-phase terms of the ceasefire. Together with Trump’s show of force on Israel’s behalf, this indicates that the Gaza fighting, delayed for two years, is far from over.

These latest war remarks came one week after Trump missed out on the Nobel Peace Prize he longed for, fully proving that he has never been a lover, maker, or keeper of peace, but a fame-seeking and inconsistent war-monger, the absolute defender of Israel’s security interests, the supplier of ammunition and fuel to Israel’s war machine that ravages the Middle East, especially the Gaza Strip, and also the initiator of provoking conflict between the United States and Iran. Sincere thanks are due to the Nobel Peace Committee; it still has conscience and a bottom line and did not give the Peace Prize to this White House master who brags that he “ended seven wars.”

Trump is more eager than Netanyahu to disarm Hamas and has also let down Egyptian President Sisi’s award to him of the “Order of the Nile,” representing Egypt’s highest honor. Sisi’s “commendation” of Trump’s so-called peacemaking efforts now appears to have only paused the flames of war and allowed Hamas and Israel to complete the limited goal of a “prisoner exchange,” essentially bailing out the Netanyahu government. By getting back the surviving detainees and the bodies of the dead and easing domestic anti-war pressure, the Netanyahu government could in the second phase act against Hamas without scruple, set about completely eliminating Hamas’s armed forces, let Gaza once again sink into a sea of blood, and allow Palestinians to continue to suffer slaughter in a genocidal process in which 75,000 have died and nearly 200,000 have been maimed.

Trump’s latest war threat has also humiliated many leaders in the Western, Arab, and Islamic worlds who took the stage for him, supported him, and applauded, because the so-called Egypt Peace Summit was nothing but a “political catwalk.” Thankfully, calm observers all understand that the slogan “the Gaza war has ended” is only a pause mark at the two-year node since the outbreak of the “Sixth Middle East War,” a brief intermission in Gaza’s long war, a double act by Trump and Netanyahu: letting Israel use the prisoner-exchange opportunity to adjust military and readiness deployments, win more public support, and continue by means of war to eliminate a Hamas that insists on armed struggle or to leave room for a Hamas that surrenders and hands over its weapons, thereby completing the established strategic goals of “de-Hamasification, demilitarization, and de-extremization.”

In the coastal areas of the Gaza Strip where the Israeli occupation forces have slightly pulled back and somewhat loosened controls, Hamas resurfaced like an “indestructible cockroach” and took to the streets. Its armed members not only safely, orderly, and efficiently brought out from deeply concealed tunnels and returned the 20 living Israeli detainees and successively handed over nine bodies of the dead; they also began to restore comprehensive control over the Gaza Strip, demonstrating that they are the legitimate and sole rulers of this land of slaughter. These measures include but are not limited to: clearing the ruins of war, organizing the distribution of humanitarian supplies, ordering civilian armed groups to turn in their weapons, hunting down those who loot in times of chaos, publicly executing “traitors” who had cooperated with Israel, and even, on the pretext of settling accounts with “traitors,” wiping out new agents supported by Israel.

According to Xinhua News Agency, on October 16, Hamas representatives in Cairo discussed with Egyptian officials post-war security issues in the Gaza Strip and matters such as implementing a ceasefire agreement with Israel, including deploying 1,000 Palestinian security personnel who had been trained in Egypt and Jordan to maintain order in the Gaza Strip under the supervision of the Palestinian National Authority, as well as issues such as Hamas possibly withdrawing from Gaza’s security institutions and disarming in accordance with the U.S. “20-point plan.”

After the Trump administration introduced the “20-point plan” peace proposal and forced the Israeli government to accept it, Hamas, which was bearing all the pressure, announced very flexibly that it would cooperate immediately and stated that it would not seek to participate in the post-war governance of Gaza, but it resolutely refused to lay down its arms, saying this is a national right to resist illegal occupation. This alone means that Hamas and the United States and Israel have formed structural and irreconcilable contradictions, and it also means that the Gaza conflict will inevitably restart as the first phase of the ceasefire agreement ends, namely upon completion of the “prisoner exchange.” The heavily armed Israeli forces, which still control 53% of the Gaza Strip’s area, will launch a final general offensive against Hamas’s remaining forces, and may even receive assistance from U.S. troops.

At the beginning of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” sweeping Israel, Israel’s intelligence services estimated that Hamas had about 20,000 combatants. After two years of war, only then did the remaining Israelis held in detention regain freedom, and Hamas’s guerrilla warfare amid the ruins never ceased, indicating that Hamas still has a considerable force size and resilience; it can even be said that Israel has not completely destroyed Hamas’s labyrinthine tunnel-warfare system. According to reports, during this ceasefire Hamas mobilized as many as 7,000 armed personnel to maintain order in the streets, while how many fighters it actually has who can go into battle is likely difficult to grasp accurately even for Israel’s all-seeing intelligence services.

The chaotic state caused by “unknown enemy conditions,” the wartime pattern of Hamas hiding its forces among the people, and the ground form of “jungle warfare” with mountains of ruins all indicate that Israel’s future strategic general offensive against the Gaza Strip will be extremely brutal, meaning that Hamas—which dealt heavy blows to the “world’s fourth military power” and, within a limited airspace, confronted and maneuvered against it for two years to create a “military miracle” for a non-state actor—will face even more unrestrained, three-dimensional, annihilating strikes from Israel.

However, Hamas is not the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is based on secularism and nationalism and, after decades of bloody struggle, finally announced it would abandon the claim of national independence and was willing to surrender and disarm to the central government, because the Kurdish issue in Turkey is, after all, a domestic political issue, a minority-rights issue. Hamas, by contrast, is a legitimate resistance organization founded on the bases of theocracy and nationalism. It represents an occupied people whose ancestral land and generational lawful rights have been seized by an alien ethnicity through war and aggression, and it possesses a very strong anti-Israel public-opinion base and a cultural gene of resistance.

Therefore, since its establishment in 1987, sacrificing one’s life for religious faith and national rights has been the entire mission and reason for being of Hamas members. Over 38 years, few core Hamas cadres have clung to life or turned back to “seek” the shore, let alone defected or joined the enemy; on the contrary, most Hamas members have died for the cause, one after another. At the same time, Hamas’s public-opinion base has shifted from thin and marginal to solid and central; its strength has repeatedly been encircled and struck by Israel yet has grown larger the more it fights and stronger with each battle, with supporters and participants cut down in one crop only to grow back in the next.

For this reason, a “Hamas-ization” has appeared as a feature of the times in Palestinian society: in 2007 the Gaza Strip saw a change of regime and became “Hamastan”; the West Bank, which had long been the base and headquarters of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah), has also come close to falling into Hamas’s hands; a certain Fatah cadre even turned to Hamas after leaving an Israeli prison; and Palestine has not held general elections for many years, one important reason being that every poll shows Hamas winning handily, while Fatah, the long-time competitor that has controlled the PLO for more than 40 years, cannot match it.

Even though the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack brought an inhuman catastrophe to the Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians still do not believe that Hamas bears political and moral responsibility. On the contrary, Palestinians who identify with Hamas’s line and strategy still make up the majority, while Fatah, which advocates compromising with Israel and seeking negotiations to resolve disputes, remains at a disadvantage in public opinion.

Based on a comprehensive analysis of recent overseas sources and credible polling data, Palestinian public favorability toward the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack and confidence that Hamas will win the war are both continuing to decline. But most still believe that the attack and the subsequent “Sixth Middle East War” made the Palestinian issue the focus of global attention. This precisely shows that this war is a political and public-opinion victory for Hamas and even for Palestine, won by Hamas through suicidal resistance and at the cost of the Palestinian people paying a “purgatorial calamity.”

Related polls show that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians oppose Hamas disarming, do not believe that releasing hostages can end the war, and even think Hamas will continue to control Gaza after the war. Even if in Gaza’s demonstrations supporters and opponents of Hamas are roughly half and half, most people believe outside forces are involved. Although Hamas’s popularity once dipped, Fatah has not become more popular. Palestinian support for the “two-state solution” has not changed, but in terms of means, armed struggle is declining and negotiation is rising, while armed struggle is still the preferred way to establish an independent State of Palestine.

Most Palestinians believe the United States and Israel bear primary responsibility for Gaza’s worsening humanitarian disaster. Palestinians who support the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack do not necessarily mean they support Hamas, nor do they support any killings or atrocities against civilians. A slim majority of Palestinians want a ceasefire as soon as possible, and most still think Hamas is the winner and will yet prevail. The idea of deploying Arab security forces in Gaza to assist the Palestinian Authority’s security forces is opposed by nearly two-thirds of Palestinians.

Moreover, although Gazans have mixed feelings toward Hamas, the vast majority believe that releasing hostages and disarming Hamas will not necessarily bring Israeli withdrawal and peace, and therefore they oppose Hamas disarming or its military leaders leaving Gaza. Most importantly, although Palestinian satisfaction with Hamas continued to decline during the war, it is still clearly higher than satisfaction with the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, and its leader Abbas.

These complex Palestinian polling results show that even if Israel exhausts all its strength, it cannot eradicate Hamas unless it exterminates or expels all 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and 3.4 million in the West Bank. From this perspective, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be ended through violence and war, but only through a “two-state solution.”

On October 16, Palestinian Prime Minister Mustafa announced that Egypt would hold a Gaza reconstruction conference in November and said that restoring effective governance and administration of the Gaza Strip is very important. The key now is that the future of the Gaza Strip will be decided not by Egypt and the Palestinian National Authority, but by Israel, the United States, and Hamas. Before Hamas accepts demilitarization, war will be inevitable, because this concerns the survival of Israel’s coalition government and Netanyahu’s political future and even personal freedom.

If the claims by Trump and Netanyahu that “the Gaza war is over” do not count, and the Egypt Peace Summit witnessed by Trump and leaders of more than 20 other countries cannot guarantee peace in Gaza, then how can a Gaza reconstruction conference be convened, and even if convened, what could it achieve? (Researcher Li Xinggang of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Zhejiang International Studies University, also contributed to this article and is hereby thanked.)

Prof. Ma is the Dean of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (ISMR) at Zhejiang International Studies University in Hangzhou. He specializes in international politics, particularly Islam and Middle Eastern affairs. He previously worked as a senior Xinhua correspondent in Kuwait, Palestine, and Iraq.