The Al-Aqsa Flood operation, which was carried out by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, constituted a resolution between two tracks, which the movement tried to combine, namely resistance and assuming responsibility for the livelihood of the people of Gaza.
The occupation has made the humanitarian needs of the people of the Gaza Strip a permanent tool for political blackmail, which is what the movement tried to get out of through rounds of escalation, successive wars, the return marches, and national reconciliation efforts. However, none of these paths succeeded in getting the resistance and the Gaza Strip out of this impasse.
The Al-Aqsa flood came to open a comprehensive confrontation with the occupation, and held it responsible for the consequences of its occupation and siege, despite the great sacrifices that were involved.
Rule and resistance
The rule of the Gaza Strip provided an opportunity to build the military, security, and civilian power of Hamas and the resistance factions, but it imposed restrictions on them in using this power.
Civil rule entails the responsibility of providing calm and security to the population, and this demand contradicts the necessity of resisting the occupation and raising its costs in order to eliminate it, as calm under the occupation means prolonging the occupation and strengthening its power.
Moreover, the provision of living requirements of food, medicine, and freedom of movement was, for 17 years, dependent on the political decision of the occupation, and was managed on the basis of the resistance bargaining for calm and making political concessions.
These circumstances prompted the resistance to line up behind the PLO and accept the agreements it signed, which would constitute political suicide for Hamas if it did so, an undermining of its justification for existence, and a condemnation of its history of resistance and opposition to the path of political settlement based on the Oslo Accords.
Israeli politics
Successive occupation governments adopted a long-term policy of attrition and subjugation of the sector. They perpetuated its siege, made sure to keep it economically weak, and made any resistance action that emerged from it an excuse to tighten the siege. This is what brought it to the brink of social explosion many times, due to the stifling economic situation.
For many years, the occupation bet that these policies would push the people of the Gaza Strip to revolt against Hamas’s rule, which would weaken its field and political position and push it to give up some or all of its principles.
In the same context; Periods of calm during the continuation of the siege led to the erosion of the legitimacy of the Hamas movement, as it was forced to prevent the rest of the factions from clashing with the occupation, without these factions and the general population feeling the usefulness of calm in light of the continuation of the stifling siege, the Israeli attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and the violations against prisoners.
Attempts to get out of the impasse
In the face of this Israeli policy, the Hamas movement resorted many times to military escalation aimed at breaking the siege, and the titles of this file were present in the negotiations to end various previous wars, but the regional and international political environment did not help to break the siege, especially in light of the Israeli agreement to perpetuate it.
The occupation authorities were reneging on the understandings or refraining from implementing some of them, while the war was depleting the sector’s capabilities without the ability to fully restore them, which piled up the burdens of one war after another.
In light of this blockage came the idea of the return marches, as a civil act that puts pressure on the occupation without giving it a justification to launch a comprehensive war, and indeed the marches began from March 2018 until the end of 2019.
Tens of thousands of people from the Gaza Strip demonstrated on a weekly basis on the border, and crossed the border towards their lands occupied in 1948 several times. However, the human cost of these marches was high, as they resulted in the death of 215 martyrs and more than 19 thousand injured. They did not succeed in breaking the siege, but rather The occupation was satisfied with partial facilitations that it could withdraw from at any time, and this is what happened.
In parallel with these paths, the movement led what could be called a “reconciliation attack” with the Fatah movement, under which it made successive concessions in the field of governance. Since the 2014 Beach Agreement, under which she effectively abdicated the presidency of the government.
This was followed by several rounds in which it waived matters, including the management of the Gaza Strip’s crossings, and its traditional condition that the power elections coincide with the PLO elections, and this was during the Istanbul Agreement in 2020.
Despite this, this path ultimately collided with President Mahmoud Abbas’s requirement that Hamas recognize the agreements signed by the organization before reconciliation took place. This means, in the event that it occurs, that Hamas will acknowledge the error of its path since its inception, and give up more than 3 quarters of Palestine, and this means the absence of The justification for its existence and undermining the basis of the meeting of its cadres and supporters.
Endeavors and initiatives
Many international and regional parties sought to gradually attract the movement to this square, by demanding that it accept a state on the borders of the territories occupied in 1967, and pressuring it to reconcile with the Fatah movement and enter the Liberation Organization, and accept the Arab initiative and international resolutions that recognize the legitimacy of the establishment of the occupying state on the territories occupied in 1967. 48.
The movement maneuvered in dealing with all of this, while trying not to get involved in undermining its principles upon which it was founded, which are the preservation of the entire land of Palestine, including its holy sites, and the return of refugees to it. Thus, it formed the 11th Palestinian government in 2007 in partnership with the Fatah movement and other factions along the lines of The basis for establishing a Palestinian state on the 1967 territories, without reference to recognition of the occupying state.
This was followed by the issuance of a political document in 2017 that stated that it “considers that the establishment of an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, on the lines of June 4, 1967, with the return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes from which they were expelled, is a common national consensus formula.” It rejected “any alternative to the complete liberation of Palestine, from its river to its sea.”
However, pressure from various parties continued, as many countries made reconciliation with the Fatah movement a gateway to dealing with Hamas, while the Fatah movement raised in its face the condition of recognizing the occupying state and rejecting armed resistance.
After nearly two decades of this stagnation, the Al-Aqsa Flood decision came to decide the choice towards a comprehensive clash with the occupation, and the resistance employed all the strength it had accumulated during the years of its rule to strike the occupation and inflict on it the greatest possible pain.
This changed the environment of the conflict, and made the option of containing the movement and coexisting with it unthinkable for the occupation. Rather, the decision of the occupation government and its army is to wage an existential war with Hamas, aiming to uproot it or weaken it to the maximum possible degree.
The future path of Hamas
In light of these facts, attempts to turn back the clock, revive a political settlement process and integrate the Hamas movement into it seem far-fetched, as the two-state solution is no longer a possible solution, due to the extremism of the occupation and the facts it imposed in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Such as settlements and the separation wall.
It is also unlikely that the Palestinian people, in their various locations and resistance factions, will be willing to make concessions that affect the essence of their cause after they have made this amount of sacrifices and after the extent of the brutality and criminality of the occupation has become clear to them and to the world, which will motivate future generations of resistance to the occupation throughout the region. And the world.
In this context, it does not seem that any statements issued by the resistance or attributed to it regarding acceptance of international resolutions as a basis for resolving the conflict express an authentic position of the resistance. Rather, despite the harm they cause to its position and the cohesion of its bases, they are nothing more than attempts to reduce the severity of the political and military attack on it and on the sector. . It should be noted that subsequent statements were issued confirming the movement’s commitment to liberating Palestine from the sea to the river.
Therefore, the political path that the Hamas movement will follow will likely be closer to the path on which it embarked upon its inception, which is waging an existential war with the occupation, and insisting on rejecting the legitimacy of its existence in the first place, a position that has gained global momentum due to the months of war.
This path will have an impact on the nature of the movement’s political relations, as it will likely strengthen its connection with the parties that can tolerate this political ceiling of confrontation with the occupation, especially those that can participate directly in the confrontation with the occupation, or provide military and economic support and political cover for such a confrontation. .
This support will likely increase; Due to the clarity of the movement’s seriousness and effectiveness in clashing with the occupation, raising its costs, obstructing its efforts for regional hegemony, and eliminating the Palestinian cause.
Popularity of the movement
The rise in Hamas’s popularity, the decline in the popularity of the Palestinian Authority, and the role of the Authority’s agencies in neutralizing the West Bank from participating in the confrontation with the occupation will also have a role in pushing the Hamas movement to perpetuate the strategy of revolutionizing the West Bank and Jerusalem. It will also be difficult for it to rapprochement with the head of the Authority or the movement that leads the coordination. Civil and security, with the occupation therein.
At the same time, the huge amount of martyrs, wounded, and destruction, and the strict international position on the movement, will push it to avoid monopolizing the rule of the Gaza Strip, even if this option were available.
The movement will – most likely – resort to partial participation in any political arrangements for the future of the Gaza Strip, in a way that does not hold it responsible for the people’s livelihood on the one hand, and in a way that hinders the transformation of any authority in the Gaza Strip into a party hostile to the resistance or affiliated with the political agenda of the occupation, the American administration, or any regional countries. .
The main determinant of whether or not this trend in the movement’s path is likely is its continued resistance to the occupation and clashing with it, regardless of the extent of the damage the occupation inflicts on its military and civilian structure.
This is the likely trend; Due to the intellectual basis of the movement, which is reinforced by the effects of the battle, from the crimes of the occupation and evidence of its brutality and extremism, which makes the success of political settlement projects with it further with each new day.