December 1987. An Israeli truck driver collides with parked vehicles in Jabalia on the outskirts of Gaza City and kills four Palestinians.
At this point, the Gaza Strip has been under Israeli occupation for over 20 years. In the refugee camp in northern Gaza, established by the UN for Palestinians displaced by the founding of the state of Israel, the situation is already near boiling point. The incident becomes the spark that ignites the first Palestinian uprising, the intifada. Just days later, Hamas is founded. The resistance movement's goal is to eradicate Israel in order to form a Palestinian state instead.
Today, Jabalia lies in ruins, just like most of the Gaza Strip. For almost two years – since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people – the bombs have been falling incessantly. Israel has avenged itself by killing over 60,000 Palestinians, including a long list of high-ranking Hamas members. Large parts of the movement's infrastructure have been destroyed and economic support from countries such as Iran and Qatar has been cut off.
Hamas is a shadow of its former self, notes Joas Wagemakers, professor of Islamic studies at the University of Utrecht and an expert on Hamas and Palestinian nationalism.
Popular support
The war is extremely asymmetric now. Israel drops 200-kilogram bombs while Hamas sets homemade explosive devices in Israeli tanks and mines buildings. Every now and then, Israeli soldiers are killed and injured in the Gaza Strip.
A new October 7 attack is unthinkable now, says Wagemakers.
Israel's continued bombing can therefore not be explained solely by self-defense, he believes. The obvious, and also stated, goal is to eradicate Hamas.
Israel wants to destroy Hamas completely. It's becoming more and more clear. Israel has long given the impression that they want to take back the Gaza Strip – but they don't want the Palestinians. As long as the war continues, it seems increasingly likely that that's how it is.
The question is what remains of Hamas. Israel claims to have killed around 25,000 fighters in Gaza, but the figures are uncertain and difficult to verify. At the same time, the war is believed to have created thousands of new extremists: young, angry men willing to take up arms for their cause. In the spring, the Israeli military estimated that Hamas still had around 40,000 fighters – roughly the same number as before the outbreak of the war, according to anonymous military sources cited in Israeli media.
And the support among the population is still great. Opinion polls are becoming increasingly difficult to conduct, but as recently as May this year, a survey by the PCPSR opinion institute showed that Hamas has the greatest support of all Palestinian factions. An overwhelming majority also opposed the disarmament of Hamas.
No alternatives
The terrorist-stamped movement is estimated to have lost most of its arsenal, which before the outbreak of the war is believed to have consisted of up to 30,000 rockets and more or less reliable rockets.
They don't even have any rockets that can reach Tel Aviv anymore, says Michael Milshtein, head of the Israeli think tank Moshe Dayan Center and former adviser to Cogat, the Israeli authority responsible for, among other things, humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
The question of Hamas' position in today's Gaza is a political minefield in Israel, he notes. As a researcher, he tries to put politics aside and approach the issue professionally.
From all aspects, it is a much weaker organization today than before October 7. But – and this is important to understand – they are still the most prominent, dominant actor in the Gaza Strip. There are no alternatives to Hamas, no new actors who represent a new idea or a new system.
Milshtein has, like most Israelis, served in the army. In the early 2000s, before Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and Hamas later won the parliamentary elections in 2006, he was stationed there for several years. Today, he doesn't know if he would recognize the area, he says.
It was a completely different time, before Hamas brainwashed the Palestinians – especially the younger generations.
Compare to cancer
Milshtein touches on a larger, more complex issue: what Hamas really is and what they represent for the Palestinians in Gaza. Almost 20 years of hard-line Islamist rule, combined with diplomatic isolation, continued Israeli oppression, and recurring wars, have made Palestinian nationalism take root deeper than bombs can reach.
It's an ideology, an idea. It's not something you can erase from people's minds, he says.
Michael Milshtein is one of the Israelis who has long criticized the government's policy and warfare in Gaza. Now the country is at a crossroads. He sees two possible ways forward – in his eyes, both catastrophic.
The least bad option is an agreement and an end to the war. The other is to occupy Gaza indefinitely, which would be the only way to possibly, completely get rid of Hamas.
He pauses and corrects himself.
Killing all Hamas members in Gaza is impossible. It's absurd to think that we can change or reconstruct the Palestinians' minds.
Joas Wagemakers is on the same track. He compares Hamas to cancer, a disease that grows from the body's own cells. Even if the Palestinians in Gaza are relocated, they do not disappear, he says – and neither does the foundation of today's conflict: Palestinian nationalism born of displacement and Israeli occupation.
It's something that can't be removed without something else growing in its place. Regardless of whether it's Hamas 2.0 or something else.
TT
Mia Holmberg Karlsson/TT
Facts: The war between Israel and Hamas
TT
The war in Gaza broke out after the terrorist-stamped Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The perpetrators killed nearly 1,200 people and around 250 were taken hostage.
About 140 of the hostages have been released alive through negotiations and eight have been rescued by Israel's military, according to a compilation by the news agency AP. Around 50 are still in captivity in the Gaza Strip, but only about 20 of them are believed to be alive.
Israel's bombings have killed over 63,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled area's health department, whose figures are often cited by UN agencies and international organizations.
In the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, a lawsuit has been ongoing since December 2023 in which South Africa accuses Israel of genocide.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued international arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and now deceased leaders within Hamas. The charges concern war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Source: ICJ, AP, UN
Hamas was founded in 1987 from the Palestinian branch of the Sunni Muslim fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2006, the terrorist-stamped movement won over the secular al-Fatah in a parliamentary election in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas wanted to form a broad coalition with al-Fatah and other parties, but when they refused, Hamas formed its own government and established its own security force in Gaza.
Soon, bloody clashes broke out between supporters of Hamas and al-Fatah. Attempts to reach an agreement failed and in 2007 Hamas threw al-Fatah out of Gaza and took over the administration and police activities.
Since then, the Palestinian areas have had separate governments: Hamas has ruled Gaza while the Palestinian Authority, under the leadership of al-Fatah, has been responsible for the limited self-government on the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
When Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, Israel launched a blockade against the area. Egypt has also treated Gaza more restrictively than before.
Militant Palestinian groups and Israel have fought several devastating wars since then, with the current one being the one that has claimed by far the most lives.
Hamas' original charter stated that Israel should be eradicated to make way for a Palestinian state. Later revisions, however, strike a slightly softer tone, and in 2008, the then-leader Ismail Haniya stated that Hamas was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the borders that applied before 1967, when Israel, in connection with the Six-Day War, occupied, among other things, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
