Media coverage
Al-Manassa · 2025-07-28
Al-Manassa examines Hamas’s future in the vacuum of post-war Gaza. Omar Shaban, director of PalThink, expects a proposed technocratic committee to be a facade Hamas could control, and does not rule out Hamas eventually giving up its weapons under conditions such as full reconciliation or arms held by Arab states: “there is no final decision”.
Al-Manassa examines Hamas’s future in the vacuum of post-war Gaza. Omar Shaban, director of PalThink, expects a proposed technocratic committee to be a facade Hamas could control, and does not rule out Hamas eventually giving up its weapons under conditions such as full reconciliation or arms held…
Since launching its military operation at dawn on October 7, 2023 against Israel, up to the moment when the war of extermination against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is approaching its second year, Hamas has undergone profound organizational, political, and military transformations amid internal pressures battering its ability to manage the daily lives of the population, and the end of the regional support and military backing that had been provided by Iran and Syria alongside the Lebanese Hezbollah.
After the movement demonstrated high combat and organizational capabilities, with its fighters carrying out the broad Al-Aqsa Flood operation, it suffered heavy human losses in the first, second, and third ranks of its military leadership. The only surviving member of al-Qassam’s military council among those who planned and carried out the operation is Izz al-Din al-Haddad, commander of the Gaza Brigade, while the fate of Raed Saad, head of the operations division, and Mohammed Shabana, commander of the Rafah Brigade, remains unknown to this day.
The transformations the movement is undergoing were not merely reactions to the devastating Israeli strikes alone; because the geopolitical changes witnessed in the region, with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the assassination of Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, have redrawn the map of alliances in a way that has placed Hamas in an existential predicament between holding out without a horizon beneath the rubble, or surrendering to conditions that appear to be political suicide.
With a large part of its infrastructure for weapons manufacturing and missile development destroyed, the military performance of the resistance factions shifted fundamentally toward a war of attrition, in “response to field developments and the scorched-earth policy adopted by the occupation,” according to Palestinian researcher specializing in the military affairs of the resistance, Rami Abu Zubaydah.
Abu Zubaydah explains to Al Manassa that “the organizational structure of al-Qassam, which begins with small combat groups made up of three fighters, all the way to brigades comprising 6,000 to 8,000 fighters, allowed it to transform into a network of small decentralized cells, where each cell became capable of deciding to engage or set up an ambush based on its own field assessment.”
Dr. Islam Atta Allah, a researcher in the National Security Research Unit at the Palestinian Planning Center, affirms the flexibility of this structure, but in his remarks to Al Manassa he points out that adopting the decentralized cell pattern “was not so much a strategic choice as it was a compulsory result imposed by the destruction of command and control centers.”
Atta Allah believes, based on his presence in Gaza and his direct experience of the situation on the ground, that this pattern reduced the effectiveness of coordination between the different fronts and weakened the ability to carry out parallel complex attacks, noting that “the remaining current cells are operating under high pressure, and suffering from a decline in supply and communication.”
Nevertheless, this strategy proved effective in inflicting painful losses on the occupation army. Since the resumption of the war last March until mid-July of the current year, 44 Israeli soldiers were killed in multiple areas of the northern and southern Strip, in performance that witnessed an escalation. While the occupation army did not lose any of its forces during March, the resistance killed three of its soldiers in April, eight in May, 21 in June, and 13 soldiers up to July 15 of the current year.
Israel Ziv, former head of the operations division in the Israeli army, points out that Hamas carefully studied the army’s methods and exploited its weaknesses. Israeli analysts also spoke of the tactical advantage that the rubble granted the resistance, and how it created an “above-ground tunnel.”
Major General (res.) Yitzhak Brik agrees with that, casting doubt on what the occupation army announces: “Around the clock they repeat fantastical figures about the number of Hamas dead after every operation, and this is something that did not actually happen. The size of the forces and their deployment in Gaza are far less than what is being said because of the very low conscription rates, and there is no one to deploy in the first place.”
Abu Zubaydah points out that “attrition is not measured only by the number of soldiers killed or immediate withdrawal, but also by the erosion of the army’s ability to maintain field control, achieve its military objectives, keep the home front stable, and convince its public of the usefulness of the war. All of these fronts are witnessing noticeable decline.”
But Atta Allah, whose research focuses on national security and political transformations in the Middle East, believes this impact has been exaggerated in the media, explaining the importance of placing Israeli statements in the context of internal political polarization, because “what the media does not convey is that the occupation’s response to every ambush is usually harsh; it does not suffice with targeting the site of the incident, but pursues everyone suspected of participating in it, supporting it, or even approaching the vicinity of the operation.”
The researcher notes that the pursuit does not affect only those potentially involved in the attacks, but also extends to trained elite members within the ranks of the resistance, “cadres that are difficult to replace under the conditions of the ongoing war, and amid Israel’s efforts to prevent the rebuilding or rearmament of the factions’ military structure. Accordingly, the equation on the ground has not witnessed a radical transformation.”
The crises facing Hamas in the Gaza Strip are not limited only to its military structure, but also extend to its eroding ability to govern the Strip and manage the daily lives of its residents, which has prompted some clans to cooperate with the occupation and confront its authority.
Researcher in political history Aziz al-Masri reads this cooperation as “an indicator of Hamas’s weakness, although it does not currently pose an existential danger to it.” The greater danger lies in the “erosion of its legitimacy internally.” This situation has imposed discussions within the movement about its future.
## The Israeli Vacuum in Gaza
This Hamas predicament coincides with an Israeli predicament on the other side, related to the inability to destroy Hamas’s capabilities and military structure, and the failure to create the conditions for replacing it as a governing entity, in a continuation of the question of the day after the war.
The Critical Threats Project, a project launched by the American Enterprise Institute in 2009 to confront the “threats” facing the United States and “its way of life” from Iran and Salafi-jihadi groups, warns that Israel’s failure to define a “final political situation” in Gaza means that the Strip will remain without an alternative governance structure, “which will allow Hamas remnants to attempt to restore their influence.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously affirmed that he would not allow Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to govern the Gaza Strip on the day after the war. The technocrats committee whose option of administering Gaza was raised in the ceasefire negotiations being held in Cairo and Doha through American-Egyptian-Qatari mediation is also viewed as a front that Hamas could control, as Omar Shaban, director of the Palestinian center PalThink, considered likely.
But researcher in sociology Bahaa Shahira offers, in his remarks to Al Manassa, a different interpretation, as he believes that the goal of the war based on the principle of extermination is to prevent any organized Palestinian order, civilian or military, in the Gaza Strip. “Therefore there are many voices that embrace direct army intervention as an option for administering the Strip. And this is the closest scenario for the coming months.”
Some Israeli governing circles are indeed inclined to place the burden of governing the Strip on Arab states, such as opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid, who proposed Egyptian administration of the Strip for a transitional period.
Whereas the newspaper *Haaretz* quoted an official as saying that what Israel calls a “humanitarian city,” in which it would gather the Strip’s residents in its south, aims to push the UAE and Saudi Arabia to administer the Strip under the banner of freeing it from the Israelis, “in a way that gives them legitimacy and does not make them appear collaborative.”
Israeli analyst Nadav Eyal questions Netanyahu’s slogan that “the war will not end until Hamas is disarmed,” considering it merely a cover.
He adds, “If Hamas agreed to disarm tomorrow, would that happen? Who would enforce it? Only the Israeli army is capable of that, by imposing its full military control over Gaza. No Emirati or Egyptian will walk through the alleys of Deir al-Balah collecting every AK-47 rifle.”
He concludes that “Hamas’s agreement to disarm would most likely be merely a ruse unless Israel fully occupies the area, which would render any agreement with Hamas null and void. So why is Israel demanding this then?!”
While the movement insists in the ongoing negotiations on holding on to its weapons, Omar Shaban does not rule out the possibility that Hamas may ultimately relinquish its weapons under conditions: “Some see that as possible under conditions, including a comprehensive national reconciliation, while others propose placing the weapons in the custody of Arab states, and there are those who reject giving them up altogether. There is no final decision.”
On the other side, Yezid Sayigh, the former Palestinian negotiator and expert at the Carnegie Middle East Center, believes “that Hamas and the other factions are simply trying to survive militarily, so that they are not eliminated politically.”
Researcher Islam Atta Allah agrees, elaborating that “the ideological and organizational structure on which the movement is built considers weapons a central part of its existence and identity, not merely a temporary tool that can be negotiated over or relinquished. Giving up weapons means, in the movement’s logic, dismantling itself. It could lead to divisions and splits that refuse to abide by it.”
But he believes that what Israel is putting forward regarding the weapons—most of which have become light arms and no longer represent a strategic capability—“is an illogical justification and a suggestion that Hamas still possesses major capabilities threatening Israeli security, in order to prolong the war, even though the facts do not support this claim. Light weapons do not threaten the entity of a nuclear state.”
Accordingly, the ambiguity surrounding the future of the Strip and its residents may not be an Israeli failure but a goal in and of itself, or, as Shalom Lipner, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, put it in describing Netanyahu’s plan, “the day after is the present day.” But “so long as both Gaza and Lebanon remain without a day after, Israel too will not have a politically meaningful day after,” Yezid Sayigh indicates.
Text © Al-Manassa — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source