Far From Global Attention, Hamas Attempts To Revive Military Power

Hamas, just more than 1000 days after it threw the Middle East into region-wide war, is attempting to recuperate its losses, reclaim control of Gaza, and cash in on sympathy for the terror organization on Western streets and around the Arab world.Gaza, and the fate of the Palestinians, are capturing the imagination of ideologues and the misinformed. The coach of Egypt’s team to the World Cup, Hossam Hassan, dedicated last Friday’s historic victory over Australia to “Palestine.” It created a world-wide buzz. At the same time, Gaza has all but disappeared from the global agenda. Under last October’s American-led ceasefire, Israel was to control just over half of Gaza territory. Since then, the Israel Defense Forces has widened that area, and it now controls some 63 percent of the strip, where it is destroying Hamas attack tunnels, killing key terror organization operatives and hunting down October 7 massacre participants. Outside pressure, though, is amassing on Jerusalem to allow Gazans into the areas the IDF controls. For now President Trump is busy elsewhere and is yet to join these calls.Eager to change the dynamics, Hamas announced on Monday that it would dissolve its wartime “emergency council” in favor of a government of Palestinian “technocrats,” headed by Gaza-born Ali Shaath. Hamas claims the move complies with a provision of the October ceasefire that created the Board of Peace, a group presided by Mr. Trump. According to the terms of the ceasefire, though, Hamas needs to disarm first — before a government is formed and before Gaza rehabilitation begins. Yet “Hamas has two principles it would never compromise on: No foreign control of the strip, and no laying down of arms,” a former IDF intelligence officer, Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, tells the Sun. Hamas’s decision would be judged by “actions, not promises,” the Board of Peace said in a statement Monday. The board’s chairman, former United Nations Gaza envoy Nikolay Mladenov, has made clear that Hamas disarmament must precede other steps, including Israel’s withdrawal from the strip.The latest Hamas maneuvering is “designed to prevent its own disarmament,” Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, writes on X. “A technocratic administration would be responsible for garbage collection and other municipal services,” he writes. Yet “as long as Hamas retains its weapons, any civilian government will of course operate as Hamas dictates.”Meanwhile an impasse over what comes first — the disarmament chicken or the Gaza rehabilitation egg — intensifies suffering in the strip. There, Gazans live under the heavy-handed oppression of Hamas armed men as well movement restrictions imposed by the IDF.International aid for Gazans cannot be tied to disarmament, an adviser to the Board of Peace, former UN official Sigrid Kaag, told Al Arabiya last week. “If you look at the facts on the ground, I think nobody could suggest a significant progress has been made” in Gaza, where “living conditions are hell on earth,” she said. After Hamas’s commander, Yehyeh Sinwar, initiated the 2023 massacres that ignited a Mideast-wide war, though, Israeli attitudes changed about those who seek its destruction. Politicians of all stripes vow to ensure the safety of towns and kibbutzim around Gaza. Those, and towns on the Lebanese border, would never be exposed to atrocities again. October 7: Why Did Hezbollah Equivocate?The IDF recently uncovered documents in Gaza on the deliberations that preceded the Hamas invasion in the spring of 2023. As first detailed by the Army Radio military correspondent, Doron Kadosh, the documents detail tight coordination between Sinwar and Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah, as well as Iranian officials.One of the war’s biggest mysteries has long been why Hezbollah declined to employ its full force to join the Hamas invasion. Had it done so, the former IDF Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, who was at the helm on October 7, said, it could have ended the Jewish state.A heavily armed, battle-tested Hezbollah’s Radwan force could have invaded the Galilee. Most of northern Israel, including Haifa, would then have fallen even as southern Israel was bleeding.So why did Nasrallah, who was killed by the IDF in September 2024, reduce his support of Hamas to almost symbolic mortar attacks against northern Israeli towns? Was he deterred by past IDF operations? Did he believe conditions were not ripe for a full-fledged war. “Nasrallah, a Shiite, wouldn’t allow Sinwar, a Sunni, to be the conqueror of Jerusalem,” Mr. Halevi, a former IDF intelligence officer, tells the Sun. “In Nasrallah’s view, Hezbollah would take the leadership, not Hamas. A Sunni would never be allowed to lead Israel’s demise.”Can an Islamist Jihadist Change?On the eve of Mr. Trump’s Ankara trip for this week’s summit of North Atlantic Organization Treaty leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on an American media blitz, including back to back interviews on Fox News. The Israeli premier’s main message was his opposition to the sale of advanced combat jets, F-35s, to Turkey, a country that is increasingly seen as a threat to Israel. The Israelis “have become a burden that humanity can no longer bear,” Turkish foreign minister, Hasan Fidan, said last week. “Humanity cannot carry this burden any longer. The human conscience cannot bear it. Political systems cannot sustain it, and economic systems cannot sustain it.”President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “is set to eliminate Israel, but like other Islamists, he wants to first make sure that he has all the necessary military power to do so,” Mr. Dahoah Halevi says. Meanwhile Hamas officials reside in Turkey and enjoy Ankara’s full support. Mr. Erdogan is itching to gain contracts in Gaza once the reconstruction there is set to begin. While Mr. Trump considers the Turkish strongman an ally, Israel does not. Mr. Erdogan is eager to widen Turkey’s influence across the region and beyond. With Turkey’s help Hamas could become a Sunni Islamist lynchpin in the fight against Israel, erasing all the losses the terrorists suffered since launching the 2023 war.

Far From Global Attention, Hamas Attempts To Revive Military Power

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