Analysis | Hamas Lost Its Senior Leadership, but Palestinians in Gaza Still Don't See an Alternative

Residents agree that only an internal Palestinian agreement will decide who controls Gaza, but with both Hamas and the PA in deep distress, it will either be impossible to reach an agreement or impossible to implement one. In practice, the party controlling everything right now is Israel

Jack Khoury

Last week's killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar raises questions about the future of the organization's control of the Gaza Strip and to what extent it still has this capability.

Hamas supporters in Gaza agree that Sinwar's assassination in itself isn't a reason for Hamas to lose control of the territory. But this is just one of many killings of members of Hamas' political and military chains of command, on a scale unprecedented since the organization seized control of Gaza in 2007.

Palestinian supporters of Hamas in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere said in conversations with Haaretz that Hamas' military and political wings both have considerable experience with assassinations and damage to their infrastructure, as this has happened many times over the years. Yet each time, the organization has been able to recover, replace slain leaders and commanders and beef up its mechanisms of administrative and military control.

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Nevertheless, they added, the scale of the events of the past year in every field raises questions about what comes next.

Gazans who aren't Hamas supporters still have trouble identifying any other player that could control the territory, unless the various Palestinian parties agree on such a government. A former senior Palestinian Authority official who was ousted from his position in Gaza after Hamas took power in 2007 said that despite what has happened over the last year, Hamas is still paying salaries to its own government officials, even if they are only partial or belated.

Over the years, he continued, Hamas has managed to fill a great many positions with people who aren't its own members, but are merely bureaucrats, in some cases professionals. Consequently, he said, Gaza's administrative spine will remain in place in any case. That is true in medicine, education and many other fields, even policing.

"The question now, to which there is no answer, is how well this system will be able to function on the day a cease-fire is declared," he added. "Nobody knows."

A senior official in Hamas' political wing told Haaretz that Hamas now has several options. It can resume functioning as an underground while attempting to repair its military apparatus and transferring the movement's leadership overseas. Alternatively, it can try to restore its position in Gaza. But Israel will try to prevent that at any price, so it isn't clear how things will develop, he added.

At the leadership level, this official said, Sinwar's assassination isn't the main problem. Hamas can deal with that just as it has dealt with assassinations in the past, and it still has a functioning political leadership overseas. It also still has thousands of fighters in Gaza. And more importantly, many more Gazans still identify with its path of resistance.

What Israel doesn't understand, he continued, is that if it doesn't offer the Palestinians a realistic political horizon, there is no option other than resistance. And in that case, Hamas remains the most significant resistance organization.

"I hope Israel won't make the mistake made by the Americans in Iraq," he said. "They came, they occupied, they destroyed the regime, and then tens of thousands of bureaucrats became members of the Islamic State or all kinds of other militias that no one controls. That's what will happen in Gaza if there is no orderly plan."

"In the end, only an internal Palestinian agreement will decide who controls Gaza," he added. "And Hamas will have to be a party to any such agreement."

Nevertheless, some Gazans voiced great skepticism about Hamas' ability to regain exclusive control.

"In the media, everyone is looking at Sinwar's killing," said a Gaza resident who used to work in one of Hamas' financial institutions. "But in practice, the significant damage is the damage to its financial and economic infrastructure. The moneychangers and merchants who were the organization's main donors have been wounded or killed or lost their source of income."

At this stage, he said, nobody knows to what extent Hamas has replacements for them or who will provide its economic infrastructure going forward. Today, Hamas is still giving money to its own members and its bureaucrats but isn't financing services in Gaza. Consequently, for now, it is still managing to survive.

The question, he added, is what will happen once the war ends and who will fill the vacuum – "Israel, the PA, Arab states in some format or other, no one knows."

Researchers who study Palestinian society, including Hamas, said that every past agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas included an agreement in principle on either joint administration or technocratic administration of both Gaza and the West Bank. But there was never any progress beyond that, because neither side was willing to give up the control it had – Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank.

Now, both of them are in deep distress, the researchers added. But absent a clear plan with an Arab and international umbrella, it will either be impossible to reach agreements or impossible to implement them, because in practice, the party controlling everything right now is Israel. Thus, as long as there has been no announcement of the end of the war and of what Israel and America plan, it's impossible to know where things are headed, they concluded.