The New York Times, in a report published today, Sunday, downplayed the effectiveness of the assassinations carried out against Hamas leaders, including the assassination of the head of the movement’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, noting that the history of the movement and the development of Palestinian armed factions over decades confirm that Hamas will not only survive, but will emerge from the bloodiest war against the Palestinians politically stronger.

A number of regional analysts and experts believe that the recent strikes on Hamas, including the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, bring the Israeli occupation forces a short-term victory at the expense of long-term strategic success. Tahani Mustafa, a prominent Palestinian analyst at the International Crisis Group, said in an interview with the newspaper that Israel had given Hamas a winning card after it had hoped that military pressure would push the population in the Gaza Strip away from Hamas, but the recent strikes will have the exact opposite effect to what Israel wants.

The ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip since October 7 has displaced more than 90 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip, in addition to massive destruction of infrastructure, extremely difficult humanitarian conditions, and the martyrdom of more than 39,000 Palestinians. Despite this, the New York Times says that the movement is still recruiting new fighters inside and outside Gaza, and its militants have begun to leave the areas from which the occupation forces have withdrawn. According to the newspaper, simply surviving the face of a more powerful army gives Hamas a major symbolic victory, according to the logic of rebellion.

Last Wednesday, the occupation forces announced the killing of the leader of the Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif, in a raid carried out in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis on July 13, which led to the martyrdom and injury of hundreds. The announcement of the confirmation of Deif’s assassination came only one day after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh.

Commenting on Haniyeh's assassination, Khaled Elgendy, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said that the message he intended to send was that "negotiations do not matter," stressing that there are many indications that the movement's leadership will be more hardline, after Haniyeh was seen by many analysts as the most moderate and the main negotiator pushing for ceasefire talks despite their stumbling.

Regarding the futility of assassinations, the newspaper recalls prominent assassinations of symbols of the Palestinian movement over the decades, and confirms in this context that Mohammed Deif himself, whom Israel considers the architect of Operation “Noah’s Flood,” replaced Ahmed al-Jaabari, who was assassinated by Israel in 2012 and was leading negotiations to reach a long-term truce with Israel. It also points out that the assassination of the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Wadie Haddad, in the seventies led to a military collapse in the group at the time, but it also points out that the assassination of the leader of the Fatah movement, Khalil al-Wazir, did not succeed in paralyzing the activity of the Fatah movement. The newspaper also confirms that Israel has assassinated 12 prominent leaders over the past years, including its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, without Israel succeeding in derailing the movement.

Analyst Tahani Mustafa points to one of the most important reasons that may contribute to the survival of Hamas, which is the lack of excessive reliance on financial support from foreigners, an aspect that Israel exploited by fighting the Palestine Liberation Organization and exhausting it during periods of military combat. Regarding the resistance’s failure to decline despite months of war, Mustafa says that Hamas fighters have the expertise and engineers to exploit and remanufacture anything they find on the ground, including the remains of the occupation army or unexploded bombs.