Under the cease-fire agreement struck last week, police overseen by Hamas will assume responsibility for managing law and order among Palestinians generally.... The police officers can carry weapons only when necessary and would be monitored by teams of Egyptian and other Arab observers.... The Hamas forces are supposed to wear distinct blue uniforms, and their numbers will vary based on the population densities of different areas.
I guess these these are some of the "necessary" weapons.
....A major point in the first phase of the cease-fire revolves around significantly increasing the amount of aid entering Gaza, with Hamas patrolling major routes and accompanying aid trucks and distributors.... “There have been security forces out on the streets, and they are more visible around the main junctions, which is something they have not been able to do without the risk of being killed for several months,” Sam Rose, a senior official with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the largest aid group in Gaza, said in a phone interview from the enclave.
So not only is Hamas still around, they get to build up popular support by going after gangs and producing enough law and order to allow aid trucks to enter and distribution centers to function.
Can Israel destroy Hamas faster than it can reconstitute itself? I wonder. It's hardly conceivable that any military group could suffer as comprehensive a defeat as Hamas, and it's equally inconceivable that Israel could conduct a war even more brutal. And yet, after 16 months Hamas seems no closer to giving up than ever.
32 thoughts on “Hamas is still running things in Gaza”
Salamander
Israel was never out to destroy "Hamas." They were out to destroy all the Palestinians. And, of course, in so doing, they've made innumerable new recruits to Hamas ... and to organizations that hate Israelis even more.
All part of the plan! Israel as the perpetual "victim"! Send more weapons!
rick_jones
And Hamas will undoubtedly contribute another October 7-esque attack for the cause.
KenSchulz
Rational actors on either side would conclude from decades of history that there is no military solution to the conflict. So both sides have striven assiduously to stamp out rational leaders.
Salamander
Both siderism. Really? This seems one step up from "they've been fighting each other for over 2,000 years."
rick_jones
I don’t know the answer, but who were at fault, the Hatfields or the McCoys? And decades in to the feud did it really matter?
Frankly, what I think the Palestinians need is a Gandhi, through whom they might dissolve the remaining vestiges of Israel trading off the Holocaust.
samgamgee
Well there won't be a Palestinian Gandhi cause Israel won't allow it and they'll continue to prop up opposing factions like they did with Hamas.
Israel holds all the strings. Alternate between grinding control and bouts of violence until all Palestinians are gone.
rick_jones
Then the Israelis need to put something in the Palestinian water supply, in Gaza at least, because the two main activities therein included making more Palestinians. Something like 50% of the population was 18 or younger before the October 7 event.
Statista puts Gazas population at 2.1 million in 2023 up from 1.13 million in 2020. So coming close to doubling in a generation.
Falconer
It's what happens when there is nothing to do, no work, no entertainment and no money...
rick_jones
Where does Islam (or it’s interpretation by Hamas anyway) stand on contraception and/or abortion?
gs
Not much different from the Catholics and the Mormons.
lawnorder
In this case, both-siderism is appropriate. I can remember back to the 1967 war, and in the decades since then both sides have committed so many atrocities that I've come to the conclusion that there are no good guys in this conflict; there are bad guys and worse guys, and which is which is not always clear.
Jasper_in_Boston
In this case, both-siderism is appropriate.
That's not remotely the case. Israel is illegally occupying and colonizing a swath of territory that does not belong to it. When they give that back and an independent Palestine comes into being, maybe then we can start considering both-siderism.
OwnedByTwoCats
If 30,000 deaths due to "collateral damage" is an appropriate reaction to 1,300 deaths due to an action, is not action causing 700,000 casualties an appropriate response to the "collateral damage"?
kaleberg
If you want Israelis to stop playing the victim card, convince Hamas to reject genocide. This war is about the generally accepted right everyone has to kill Jews. Israel was formed in response. Gandhi said that Jews should just commit suicide and declare a moral victory. I'm not sure who gets to declare this. I know a lot of people favor this solution, but this is one of the reasons pacifism isn't a good answer for Jews.
Jasper_in_Boston
...but this is one of the reasons pacifism isn't a good answer for Jews.
Oh brother. That's quite a straw man. Withdrawing from its illegal occupation and allowing a sovereign state of Palestine to come into being would not require Israel to embrace "pacifism." And nobody is calling on Israel to disband its military. Indeed, if an independent Palestine came into being next week following a complete Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands, Israel would still remain by far the region's greatest military power—a nuclear power at that.
raoul
So 45000 civilians died for absolutely no reason.
somebody123
45000 confirmed deaths so far. When they start clearing rubble and really counting, it’ll be at least twice that. My bet from the beginning was 150k, 7.5% of Palestians.
SeanT
no, they died so Bibi can stay in power
spatrick
Or they died so Hamas can to the world they still matter. That was an open question before October 2023.
middleoftheroaddem
I suspect, the long term viability of Hamas is tied to the control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the land between Gaza and Egypt.
Hamas historically controls the allocation of resources and had military might. IF Israel retains the Philadelphi Corridor, they likely block the smuggling tunnels. Hamas' viability is less clear without the tunnels.
spatrick
You're right but the key is the Egyptians. Honestly if I was the Israelis I would let them control Gaza just like they did from 1948-1967. Better someone you know who hates Hamas as much as much as you do and has an even more brutal security apparatus if that's even possible to control the territory. That would fix things greatly.
kaleberg
The Egyptians fought and won a war against Hamas in the Sinai shortly before the attacks. It didn't get much coverage in the US, but Egyptian media covered it. Gaza was offered to Egypt after the '73 war that returned the Sinai to Egypt, but the Egyptians were glad to be rid of it.
Lon Becker
If you are constantly surprised on a subject it is a good sign that you don't really understand the subject. That Hamas would be in charge of Gaza when this ended should not be a surprise Hamas is not a traditional army, it is a guerrilla group that draws its membership from the people. The Israeli devastation of Gaza increased the conditions that create guerrilla fighters, so of course Hamas survived the attack. I don't know if Israel intended this, they really do seem to be ignorant as to why the Palestinians are not willing to accept being non-citizens in a Jewish state. So in the same way we thought the Vietnamese would consider us the good guys for killing the Communists (and whatever Vietnamese happened to be nearby) Israel may actually believe that Hamas is an outside force that Gazans would be glad to get rid of. Israel did not invent this kind of stupidity.
Israel could have avoided simply handing the keys back to Hamas but putting in place an alternative government. But the people who would have taken over in Hamas' stead and tried to control the anger of the Gazans made clear they would only do so as part of a move towards peace, that is as a step towards a two state solution. But Israel hates the idea of peace (I mean a real peace in which all of the Palestinians are citizens of the territory in which they were born and reside) more than it hates Hamas, or at least the Netanyahu government does, but Labor governments have not been much better when they were in power. And so Hamas being in control at the end should surprise nobody.
Similarly killing the leader of Hezbollah is not likely to mean that Hezbollah will not play the same basic role going forward. Hezbollah was created in response to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Israel's attacks on Lebanon predictably just increased the support for somebody to play that role. They could in theory take a new name.
There is some question as to when certain things will happen. It was not necessarily predictable that the cease fire would come now. But it has been known what the ceasefire would look like for months. And the carnage since has played no purpose unless one wanted the carnage. Some in Israel did. Maybe as revenge for 10/7 a majority did, although I suspect most would have been happier if the carnage ended sooner so they got back their hostages sooner and with more of them alive.
gs
Here is the fundamental issue: Are the returning jews 100% entitled to 100% of the land in Palestine by virtue of the old testament? It is a waste of time debating this with a person who believes it, just as it's a waste of time trying to convince a person who thinks the Earth is 5000 year old and/or flat as a pancake otherwise.
The zionist writings of 100 years ago are very clear on the fact that the people living in Palestine at the time (i.e. 100 years ago) are the descendants of the jews who never left Palestine, but most Americans don't realize this. That the descendants of the jews who walked away from Palestine 2000 years ago feel they have the right to take the entire country away from the people who have owned it for the last couple thousand years just goes to show you how much damage can be done be religious self delusion.
Lon Becker
I get what you are trying to get at. But it really doesn't matter whether the Israelis want the entire territory for religious reasons or nationalist ones. Both factions exist in Israel.
It certainly doesn't matter whether the Palestinians are descendants of the early Israelites. Buying into the idea that it matters seems to give too much credit to the idea of basing ownership rights on Biblical claims.
At some level it is clearly false that the Palestinians have owned the land for the last couple of thousand years since we know that the land has been in the hands of a series of rulers from outside of the region. But it is also the case that if the Palestinians were not the result of the natural influx and outflow of people over two thousand years this would be the only place in the world whose population was that static. It doesn't help the Palestinians to base their claim on bad history.
What you are correct to identify is the unreasonableness of the Israeli claim to a territory in which Jews represent a minority of the population. But in countering this you seem to accept some of the principles that are used to make the pro-Israeli claims.
rick_jones
The nine-dash lines of the Levant? …
gs
Oh, it certainly doesn't matter to me who's descended from whom. What I'm saying is that the settler movement is dominated by fundamentalists who believe they have an inherent, god-given right to all of Palestine. And sure, there are plenty of Israelis participating in the land grab out of simple greed.
I never meant to imply that the Palestinians owned the land because they were descended from the same group as the returning jews; I brought that up to highlight the fallacy of the biblical argument the Israeli settlers are using.
My general point is that there were people with long-established residency in Palestine (even if you only want to give them a couple hundred years) a hundred years ago and suddenly a buncha people from Europe - backed by the Brits - came in and said 'get the fuck out, because this land is now ours.'
kaleberg
The Jews didn't walk away from Palestine. They were kicked out by the Romans.
TheMelancholyDonkey
This isn't true. The Diaspora wasn't created in two waves of Roman expulsion, around 75 CE and 150 CE. It was a centuries long process that began in the 4th century BCE, and the large majority of those who left did so voluntarily.
gs
Correct. Anybody who thinks the Romans would completely empty Palestine is an idiot. The whole point of taking over that piece of land was to extract from it - money, food, cotton, able-bodies foot soldiers, whatever - and you need locals to gather all that stuff for you.
Palestine has always been a relatively poor area, and the smarter/richer/overachievers were leaving for Rome and other wealthy cities in the Mediterranean in a steady stream 2000 years ago to improve their lot. Most of the Palestinians never left and when the Muslims showed up in 637CE and said "convert or die" most converted, because most people aren't zealots willing to die for religion.
D_Ohrk_E1
I hear Bashar Al Assad was deposed, Israel subsequently eliminated 3/4 of military equipment and ammo within Syria, and for the time being, Iran does not have a guaranteed land corridor to resupply Hezbollah and Hamas. In the immediate aftermath, Hamas is in control, less because they're resilient* and more because there's a vacuum of leadership in Gaza and Palestine in general, without Israeli and Palestinian commitment to the PLA.
* - After all, we might not be able to get rid of cockroaches, but damn if they're able to get into my place, and if they do, them geckos running loose in my place will have food to eat.
Falconer
When is the last time a country got bombed into submission without an occupation?
Which is the one thing Israel doesn’t want to do, to many chances for it's soldiers to come home in pine boxes...
Israel was never out to destroy "Hamas." They were out to destroy all the Palestinians. And, of course, in so doing, they've made innumerable new recruits to Hamas ... and to organizations that hate Israelis even more.
All part of the plan! Israel as the perpetual "victim"! Send more weapons!
And Hamas will undoubtedly contribute another October 7-esque attack for the cause.
Rational actors on either side would conclude from decades of history that there is no military solution to the conflict. So both sides have striven assiduously to stamp out rational leaders.
Both siderism. Really? This seems one step up from "they've been fighting each other for over 2,000 years."
I don’t know the answer, but who were at fault, the Hatfields or the McCoys? And decades in to the feud did it really matter?
Frankly, what I think the Palestinians need is a Gandhi, through whom they might dissolve the remaining vestiges of Israel trading off the Holocaust.
Well there won't be a Palestinian Gandhi cause Israel won't allow it and they'll continue to prop up opposing factions like they did with Hamas.
Israel holds all the strings. Alternate between grinding control and bouts of violence until all Palestinians are gone.
Then the Israelis need to put something in the Palestinian water supply, in Gaza at least, because the two main activities therein included making more Palestinians. Something like 50% of the population was 18 or younger before the October 7 event.
Statista puts Gazas population at 2.1 million in 2023 up from 1.13 million in 2020. So coming close to doubling in a generation.
It's what happens when there is nothing to do, no work, no entertainment and no money...
Where does Islam (or it’s interpretation by Hamas anyway) stand on contraception and/or abortion?
Not much different from the Catholics and the Mormons.
In this case, both-siderism is appropriate. I can remember back to the 1967 war, and in the decades since then both sides have committed so many atrocities that I've come to the conclusion that there are no good guys in this conflict; there are bad guys and worse guys, and which is which is not always clear.
In this case, both-siderism is appropriate.
That's not remotely the case. Israel is illegally occupying and colonizing a swath of territory that does not belong to it. When they give that back and an independent Palestine comes into being, maybe then we can start considering both-siderism.
If 30,000 deaths due to "collateral damage" is an appropriate reaction to 1,300 deaths due to an action, is not action causing 700,000 casualties an appropriate response to the "collateral damage"?
If you want Israelis to stop playing the victim card, convince Hamas to reject genocide. This war is about the generally accepted right everyone has to kill Jews. Israel was formed in response. Gandhi said that Jews should just commit suicide and declare a moral victory. I'm not sure who gets to declare this. I know a lot of people favor this solution, but this is one of the reasons pacifism isn't a good answer for Jews.
...but this is one of the reasons pacifism isn't a good answer for Jews.
Oh brother. That's quite a straw man. Withdrawing from its illegal occupation and allowing a sovereign state of Palestine to come into being would not require Israel to embrace "pacifism." And nobody is calling on Israel to disband its military. Indeed, if an independent Palestine came into being next week following a complete Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands, Israel would still remain by far the region's greatest military power—a nuclear power at that.
So 45000 civilians died for absolutely no reason.
45000 confirmed deaths so far. When they start clearing rubble and really counting, it’ll be at least twice that. My bet from the beginning was 150k, 7.5% of Palestians.
no, they died so Bibi can stay in power
Or they died so Hamas can to the world they still matter. That was an open question before October 2023.
I suspect, the long term viability of Hamas is tied to the control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the land between Gaza and Egypt.
Hamas historically controls the allocation of resources and had military might. IF Israel retains the Philadelphi Corridor, they likely block the smuggling tunnels. Hamas' viability is less clear without the tunnels.
You're right but the key is the Egyptians. Honestly if I was the Israelis I would let them control Gaza just like they did from 1948-1967. Better someone you know who hates Hamas as much as much as you do and has an even more brutal security apparatus if that's even possible to control the territory. That would fix things greatly.
The Egyptians fought and won a war against Hamas in the Sinai shortly before the attacks. It didn't get much coverage in the US, but Egyptian media covered it. Gaza was offered to Egypt after the '73 war that returned the Sinai to Egypt, but the Egyptians were glad to be rid of it.
If you are constantly surprised on a subject it is a good sign that you don't really understand the subject. That Hamas would be in charge of Gaza when this ended should not be a surprise Hamas is not a traditional army, it is a guerrilla group that draws its membership from the people. The Israeli devastation of Gaza increased the conditions that create guerrilla fighters, so of course Hamas survived the attack. I don't know if Israel intended this, they really do seem to be ignorant as to why the Palestinians are not willing to accept being non-citizens in a Jewish state. So in the same way we thought the Vietnamese would consider us the good guys for killing the Communists (and whatever Vietnamese happened to be nearby) Israel may actually believe that Hamas is an outside force that Gazans would be glad to get rid of. Israel did not invent this kind of stupidity.
Israel could have avoided simply handing the keys back to Hamas but putting in place an alternative government. But the people who would have taken over in Hamas' stead and tried to control the anger of the Gazans made clear they would only do so as part of a move towards peace, that is as a step towards a two state solution. But Israel hates the idea of peace (I mean a real peace in which all of the Palestinians are citizens of the territory in which they were born and reside) more than it hates Hamas, or at least the Netanyahu government does, but Labor governments have not been much better when they were in power. And so Hamas being in control at the end should surprise nobody.
Similarly killing the leader of Hezbollah is not likely to mean that Hezbollah will not play the same basic role going forward. Hezbollah was created in response to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Israel's attacks on Lebanon predictably just increased the support for somebody to play that role. They could in theory take a new name.
There is some question as to when certain things will happen. It was not necessarily predictable that the cease fire would come now. But it has been known what the ceasefire would look like for months. And the carnage since has played no purpose unless one wanted the carnage. Some in Israel did. Maybe as revenge for 10/7 a majority did, although I suspect most would have been happier if the carnage ended sooner so they got back their hostages sooner and with more of them alive.
Here is the fundamental issue: Are the returning jews 100% entitled to 100% of the land in Palestine by virtue of the old testament? It is a waste of time debating this with a person who believes it, just as it's a waste of time trying to convince a person who thinks the Earth is 5000 year old and/or flat as a pancake otherwise.
The zionist writings of 100 years ago are very clear on the fact that the people living in Palestine at the time (i.e. 100 years ago) are the descendants of the jews who never left Palestine, but most Americans don't realize this. That the descendants of the jews who walked away from Palestine 2000 years ago feel they have the right to take the entire country away from the people who have owned it for the last couple thousand years just goes to show you how much damage can be done be religious self delusion.
I get what you are trying to get at. But it really doesn't matter whether the Israelis want the entire territory for religious reasons or nationalist ones. Both factions exist in Israel.
It certainly doesn't matter whether the Palestinians are descendants of the early Israelites. Buying into the idea that it matters seems to give too much credit to the idea of basing ownership rights on Biblical claims.
At some level it is clearly false that the Palestinians have owned the land for the last couple of thousand years since we know that the land has been in the hands of a series of rulers from outside of the region. But it is also the case that if the Palestinians were not the result of the natural influx and outflow of people over two thousand years this would be the only place in the world whose population was that static. It doesn't help the Palestinians to base their claim on bad history.
What you are correct to identify is the unreasonableness of the Israeli claim to a territory in which Jews represent a minority of the population. But in countering this you seem to accept some of the principles that are used to make the pro-Israeli claims.
The nine-dash lines of the Levant? …
Oh, it certainly doesn't matter to me who's descended from whom. What I'm saying is that the settler movement is dominated by fundamentalists who believe they have an inherent, god-given right to all of Palestine. And sure, there are plenty of Israelis participating in the land grab out of simple greed.
I never meant to imply that the Palestinians owned the land because they were descended from the same group as the returning jews; I brought that up to highlight the fallacy of the biblical argument the Israeli settlers are using.
My general point is that there were people with long-established residency in Palestine (even if you only want to give them a couple hundred years) a hundred years ago and suddenly a buncha people from Europe - backed by the Brits - came in and said 'get the fuck out, because this land is now ours.'
The Jews didn't walk away from Palestine. They were kicked out by the Romans.
This isn't true. The Diaspora wasn't created in two waves of Roman expulsion, around 75 CE and 150 CE. It was a centuries long process that began in the 4th century BCE, and the large majority of those who left did so voluntarily.
Correct. Anybody who thinks the Romans would completely empty Palestine is an idiot. The whole point of taking over that piece of land was to extract from it - money, food, cotton, able-bodies foot soldiers, whatever - and you need locals to gather all that stuff for you.
Palestine has always been a relatively poor area, and the smarter/richer/overachievers were leaving for Rome and other wealthy cities in the Mediterranean in a steady stream 2000 years ago to improve their lot. Most of the Palestinians never left and when the Muslims showed up in 637CE and said "convert or die" most converted, because most people aren't zealots willing to die for religion.
I hear Bashar Al Assad was deposed, Israel subsequently eliminated 3/4 of military equipment and ammo within Syria, and for the time being, Iran does not have a guaranteed land corridor to resupply Hezbollah and Hamas. In the immediate aftermath, Hamas is in control, less because they're resilient* and more because there's a vacuum of leadership in Gaza and Palestine in general, without Israeli and Palestinian commitment to the PLA.
* - After all, we might not be able to get rid of cockroaches, but damn if they're able to get into my place, and if they do, them geckos running loose in my place will have food to eat.
When is the last time a country got bombed into submission without an occupation?
Which is the one thing Israel doesn’t want to do, to many chances for it's soldiers to come home in pine boxes...