A year after the Al-Aqsa flood, the effects of the path initiated by the operation on the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Palestinian issue are clearly evident, after the normalization project and the formation of an Arab-Israeli alliance was the one that imposed the rhythm of politics in the region for previous years.
The flood returned the movement project to its original form, when it was launched as a resistance movement that adopted armed struggle as the main way to confront the occupation, raise its costs, and prevent its comfort.
This is the path that imposed itself on the region, with the military clash extending from the West Bank and Gaza to Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, and their neighboring bodies of water.
In parallel, Hamas’ popularity is increasing in Palestine and the world, its relationship with countries and forces opposed to American hegemony in the world is strengthening, and its political standing is strengthening despite the Israeli strikes its military and organizational structure has been subjected to in the Gaza Strip.
The project is turning around where it started
The Al-Aqsa Flood Operation constituted a decision to decide between the options of governance and resistance after the attempt to combine them reached a dead end, due to the international rejection of the election results and the sustained Israeli blackmail of the Gaza Strip by trying to barter the humanitarian needs of the people of the Gaza Strip for calm, political concessions, and abandoning the rest of the files of the Palestinian issue.
Hamas employed all the power and resources it had accumulated during its rule of the Gaza Strip to inflict the greatest possible damage on the occupation, and then to exhaust its army over the course of an entire year.
This was reflected – albeit after a while – in the West Bank, which became in a state of widespread confrontation with the occupation, as well as the case in the northern Palestine front, where the Lebanese Hezbollah entered a state of war with the occupation, after a year of attrition.
The Ansar Allah Houthi group found a way to engage in the confrontation, by trying to impose a naval blockade on the occupation and putting pressure on its allies, as was the case, to a lesser extent, for many Iraqi factions, and finally by Iran entering into a direct military confrontation with Israel.
This situation contributed to weakening Israel’s status and international and regional image, and exhausted it politically, economically, militarily and socially.
The program imposes itself
The sum of these developments constituted a change in the direction of the political path of the region from what it was before October 7, as this broad clash depicts the scene of Palestinian, Arab and Islamic rejection of the survival of Israel and its crimes that have continued for 76 years.
This is instead of the path of normalizing its presence and the Arab alliance with it and shifting the compass of rejection and hostility towards the sectarian division in the region, which is a historical division that cannot be resolved, and its escalation is capable of exhausting the peoples of the region for generations to no avail.
As a result of this role, which expressed the need of the Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic nation, the popularity of the Hamas movement rose exceptionally in Palestine and outside it, as indicated by the huge marches that were launched in hundreds of countries around the world, and what opinion polls in Palestine and outside of it indicate, but the movement is clearly not succeeding. In investing in this overwhelming popular support for it, and incorporating it in a sustainable and organized manner in confronting the occupation.
Between West and East
On the other hand, the official position of the countries sponsoring the occupying state became more stringent towards the Hamas movement, especially in the first half of the year of the flood. However, the continuation of the occupation’s crimes and the increasing popular solidarity with the Palestinian cause and with the movement that took the lead to confront the occupation led to a relative decline in the level of extremism towards the movement. -And the position on war in general – even though the Western bet on taming it and integrating it into the system of peace settlement has apparently fallen indefinitely.
On the other hand, Hamas’s political relationship with Russia, China, and Iran has developed, due to the movement’s increasing regional influence, and due to the escalation of the conflict between these countries and the United States, making it increasingly concerned with challenging American policy in the region.
This appeared in the declared political positions towards the conflict and in Russia’s use of its veto against a draft resolution in the Security Council describing the Hamas movement as a terrorist, in addition to adopting a position similar to its position on various Western draft resolutions regarding the war in Gaza.
China has also become more open to holding high-level meetings with Hamas, and inviting it and the rest of the factions to a reconciliation meeting in Beijing.
While intense political contacts continued between the movement and Qatar, Turkey, Iran, Malaysia, Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, and Lebanon.
However, the decision of the International Criminal Court to arrest three Hamas leaders is considered an escalation in the international legal position towards the movement, even if the occupation is the most harmed by these decisions, as they also affect its officials, who are representatives of a state whose international propaganda is based on oppression and the claim of moral superiority in an environment “ savage”.
Challenges and risks
There is no doubt that the structure of the movement and its popular incubator were severely harmed by the scale of the occupation’s crimes, which left about 50,000 martyrs and about 100,000 wounded, and which aimed to undermine the structure of the movement in the first place, and push the people to rise up against it.
While the occupation sought to undermine the political and military chain of command through large-scale assassinations, which targeted the movement’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, his deputy, Saleh al-Arouri, and a number of members of the political leadership and members of the military council of the Qassam Brigades, despite this, the movement’s organizational structure continues to operate without apparent defect, and roles continue. Control and control inside and outside Palestine.
The movement agreed to choose Yahya Al-Sinwar as a new president, despite the war conditions that impose great difficulties on traditional organizational procedures in cases like these, and the Al-Qassam Brigades recruited thousands of new fighters.
On the security level, the confrontation was intense throughout the year, as the occupation sought to recover its prisoners by military force, which generally failed, as death was the fate of most of those it tried to liberate, while the majority of the prisoners remained out of its reach.
Assassinations were another arena for security confrontation, in which the occupation was able to inflict partial damage on the movement, but the continuation of the hierarchical structures of work naturally leads to the selection of alternative leaders one by one.
According to media reports, the majority of the Al-Qassam Brigades operating in Gaza have remained in a state capable of fighting, and they are constantly renovating their capabilities and developing their tactics in accordance with the requirements of confrontation, which is proven by the continuation of military operations in various areas of contact with the occupation forces.
Missile arsenal
While the missile force, which was launching hundreds of missiles in the first days of the war, appears to have declined, and was limited to mortar shells for most of the days of the past months, which indicates that it appears to have been severely damaged, whether due to attrition resulting from the long duration of the fighting, or due to the large scale. to Israeli bombing, and Al-Qassam may not want to initiate the launch of its available missiles to avoid escalation of Israeli bombing of civilians.
In this context, videos released by the Al-Qassam Brigades show that they resort to recycling unexploded occupation rockets and bombs, which provides a source that partially compensates for the military consequences of tightening the siege on the Gaza Strip since October 7.
While the enormous human suffering in the Gaza Strip constitutes the greatest targeting factor for Hamas, due to the accumulation of the effects of the blockade, and the efforts of the occupation and Palestinian and regional parties to create internal Palestinian fighting in the Gaza Strip, and to spread an atmosphere of chaos in a way that breaks the people’s ability to manage their affairs with the limited resources available.
This is what the movement was relatively successful in confronting, as factional agreements were reached regarding urgent relief, which is achieved to some extent in places where there are no occupation forces.
While the entry of Hezbollah and Iran into the confrontation on a broader basis represents a morale boost for the residents of the Gaza Strip, even if it threatens to reduce the focus on them, which reduces the level of political and humanitarian responses to Israeli crimes in the future.
In conclusion, the sum of these factors indicates that the political weight of the movement is rising, which makes it likely to play a greater role in the future of the Palestinian issue.
Substantial risk
There is no doubt that the flood decision taken by the movement placed it in a fundamental political and military risk, and the risks still exist, but the aforementioned opportunities are equal to or greater than them.
This assessment is strengthened if the matter is evaluated from a broad spatial and temporal perspective. In exchange for attrition on the Palestinian and Lebanese sides, the occupation is exposed to attrition in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and across the air and sea, and it is also depleted on the level of international legitimacy.
At the temporal level, it is noteworthy that the Palestinian people have been under occupation for more than 100 years, and that they have tried many methods for liberation, none of which succeeded, and the most recent of which was entering elections and trying to bet on the existence of a reasonable opportunity for fairness in the international system, to which the international response was a blockade. Gaza and political blackmail for 17 years.
This was supported by Hamas’ assessment when it took the flood decision that stopping the process of liquidating the Palestinian issue in its various aspects without such a risk was most likely not possible, which is reinforced by the nature of revolutions against the occupation, which often do not succeed without causing severe harm to the occupation, which is what many people respond to. Violence, until, if his resistance continues, he is forced to withdraw.