This week, K. is sharing a Palestinian voice, that of Ihab Hassan, first published in the American magazine Liberties, who thinks in the only politically feasible terms: those of a conflict between two equally just national claims, pointing to the horizon of a two-state solution.
Minutes after the hostage agreement was signed between Hamas and Israel, the streets of the West Bank, several Arab capitals, and even some European cities echoed with chants celebrating Hamas’ “victory.” A “victory” paid for with the lives of at least 50,000 people, 110,000 wounded, and with the utter destruction of over seventy-five percent of Gaza — now uninhabitable. The Prime Minister of Israel just sat beside the most powerful leader in the world while that man speculated about the forcible removal of the entire population of Gaza, and its conversion into lucrative beach side property. I feel revolted, and heart broken, I mourn for my people, for the horror we have endured, and for the lightness with which that horror and its perpetuation are discussed by the men who oversaw it. “Victorious” was far from my frame of mind.
And so this response should be bewildering. Prima facie, one could be forgiven for assuming that Hamas and its supporters have misunderstood the meaning of the word “victory.” How else to explain its invocation? If this is what victory looks like, were we victorious on the 6th of October, 2023? Perhaps our triumph back then was far greater than this so-called victory, as it did not come at the price of so many lost loved ones, desecrated homes and houses of worship, and the specter of “mass transfer” now being openly discussed. Among the countless thousands who lost their loved ones in Gaza, one woman wrote after hearing of the ceasefire: “The war is over, Mama.” She addressed her message to her mother and entire family, all of whom were killed by an Israeli airstrike at the beginning of the war. In Ramallah, a grieving father, left bereft of his children and family, interrupted Hamas supporters’ celebrations, crying out: “What are you celebrating? The death of our children? The destruction Hamas has brought upon us? What exactly are you celebrating?”
But the question is worth asking: what about the last year and a half constitutes a victory for Hamas? And this question brings us to another, more fundamental one. We must again ask a question Hamas leaders have failed to answer: What was their goal in committing the atrocities of October 7th, 2023?
Hamas leaders are not in agreement on the answer to this question. As of this writing, they remain divided over the objectives of October 7th. Even after the ceasefire, Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk admitted that Hamas failed to achieve its stated goals, while Khalil Al-Hayya insists they had succeeded.
A pressing question continues to haunt the people of Gaza, many of whom are now living in tents amongst the detritus of Israel’s rockets: Will Hamas rule over us again? The very fact that Gazans are asking this reveals that it is possible for those on the ground in Gaza to assume that Hamas is not currently governing them. This assumption is only partially true.
Under no circumstances should the Palestinian people or the international community countenance the return of Hamas as the governing power in Gaza.
The dominant reality in Gaza is there there is no governance at all, there is simply overwhelming devastation — sixteen months of relentless Israeli airstrikes, children’s remains still buried under rubble, entire neighborhoods flattened beyond recognition, it is nearly impossible to institute anything like a governing order over such macabre mayhem. The north and south alike bear the scars of brutal battle. Under such conditions there is hardly time for public debate about the question of political control. Survival itself is the primary, overwhelming concern.
Many Gazans who attempted to return to their homes in northern Gaza found nothing but ruin and were forced back into the same tents they had fled to in the south. They describe the north as a ghost city — uninhabitable, lifeless, devoid of any sign of normal existence.
Despite Hamas’ attempts to assert control in some areas of Gaza, chaos reigns.
Hamas dreams of returning to rule Gaza, and since the war began, it has sought to secure this end through the terrorizing, killing, torturing, and abducting dissenting voices.
The people of Gaza need a protector, someone to hold Hamas accountable for the terrors they committed and invited against their own people. And the accountability for Hamas should not be limited to the crimes it has committed against the people of Gaza during the war. It must also extend to its decision to go to war, dragging 2.3 million people in Gaza into a massacre by savagely and grotesquely murdering Israeli men, women, and children.
Under no circumstances should the Palestinian people or the international community countenance the return of Hamas as the governing power in Gaza. And the reason for their disqualification should not be first and foremost one of political prudence or rivalry but of genuine concern for the Palestinian cause. If Hamas is permitted to return and to spread it is possible that it will invite Israel to repeat the same horrific desecration of Gaza on the West Bank, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of corpses. If the West Bank is rendered uninhabitable and ethnically cleansed, will Hamas and its supporters repeat again that what they have achieved is “Victory!’?
This is exactly what the Israeli right-wing wants. They have no interest in a genuine peace partner, which is why they continue to negotiate with Hamas — the architects of the greatest tragedy in Israeli history — rather than legitimate the Palestinian Authority, which advocates for a two-state solution and peaceful coexistence. The Netanyahu regime prefers Hamas — a group with no real national agenda, driven by bloodlust and a power hungry ideology rather than prudent state-building — because its presence prolongs the war and sabotages any effort toward a Palestinian state.
This is Israel’s tested and safe strategy for squelching Palestinian statehood: propping up or tolerating extremist forces to weaken Palestinian nationalism, sowing division within the Palestinian community, and then using that division as an excuse to reject negotiations. Just as they once allowed Hamas to rise as a counterweight to the PLO, they now weaponize its existence to justify endless occupation, settlement expansion, and the refusal to engage in any real peace process. All while continuing to legitimate Hamas rather than sit down with Abu Mazen.
And this is no secret. For years, Netanyahu has openly boasted that anyone who wants to thwart the Palestinian state project must support Hamas, and the Israeli right-wing, particularly Netanyahu, has greatly benefited from Hamas’ draconian policies and actions. This sinister symbiotic relationship explains the leniency shown by Israel and the international community toward Hamas, which is classified as a “terrorist organization” by the United States. And it is also is why, between 2012 and 2018, Netanyahu permitted Qatar to transfer approximately one billion dollars into Gaza, most of which reached Hamas and some of which paid for the tunnels in which Hamas militants notoriously continue to hide.
And the support goes both ways. Hamas favored Netanyahu in the elections Israel held in 1996, in which Netanyahu’s rightwing Lilkud party barely managed (with less than one percent of the total vote) to unseat the center-left Labor party helmed by Shimon Peres. Each side feeds into the other’s agenda, enabling Netanyahu to further undermine the Palestinian Authority while Hamas achieves its dark ambitions.
No political faction — not Hamas, not anyone — has the authority to use the Palestinian people as pawns in their power struggles. But that is precisely what Hamas has done.
Frustration breeds desperation, and desperation fuels a constituency for terror. When people are stripped of hope, dignity, and political solutions, extremism finds fertile ground. Hamas thrives on Palestinian despair. It is in Hamas’ interest to perpetuate and deepen Palestinian immiseration. And so instead of trying to craft a livable future for its people, Hamas works to ensure that the cycle of violence and oppression continues — because in perpetual chaos, Hamas secures its own survival.
Former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon has pointed out that since Netanyahu’s rise to power in 2009, he has maintained an “unwritten agreement with Hamas” aimed at weakening the Palestinian Authority and its leadership. This strategy deepened the division between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, undermining President Mahmoud Abbas and preemptively killing any peace negotiations by claiming that the Palestinian Authority does not represent all Palestinians. Today, Netanyahu stands to exploit Hamas’ bloodlust in order to keep his stranglehold on the Israeli government. He expects that this strategy — which he has employed time and time again since that first election victory in 1996 — will secure a landslide victory for the right-wing since right wing Israeli extremism has surged in response to another bloody chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And so for Netanyahu and Hamas, this is what victory looks like. Our destruction secures their political safety. Both extremists can credibly claim that they have won. The losers, as ever, are the people who sustain the violence upon which the Netanyahu and Hamas regimes depend.
Palestinians, like all nations, have a right to life, freedom, and self-determination. No political faction — not Hamas, not anyone — has the authority to use the Palestinian people as pawns in their power struggles. But that is precisely what Hamas has done. This is no victory for my people. After sixteen months we find ourselves utterly defeated. And our defeat is measured not only in the scale of the tragedies we have endured, but also in the future which remains hijacked, held hostage by those who offer no vision, no path forward, no statecraft, or wisdom, or heart.
Hamas’ military parades during the release of Israeli hostages — staged amid the ruins, rubble, and destruction of countless homes — convey a grim and deliberate message: Hamas declares itself victorious, while the Palestinian people endure the true defeat. Israel, in turn, has secured its own victory through the systematic destruction of Gaza, the obliteration of its infrastructure, and the crushing of any remaining hope for a viable Palestinian state.
In every battle even the bravest must pause — not to surrender, but to rethink. We cannot keep walking in circles, dragged by militias that do not serve us. If we do not reclaim our future with clarity and purpose, we will remain trapped in a cycle where others decide our fate. It is time to stop, to look beyond the wreckage, and to ask: What kind of future are we fighting for? And who will lead us there?
Ihab Hassan
Ihab Hassan is a Palestinian peace and human rights activist, born and raised in Ramallah, West Bank. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in human rights from the American Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where he is currently based.
