The invasion of thousands of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, “was for us, and for the vast masses across the world, not merely a military event but a moment of glorious birth and an emergence of a liberated consciousness free from deception or falsification,” Hamas wrote in English and Arabic in a formal document released on Dec. 24.
The dictatorship still ruling most Gazans after two years of war, sparked by its incursion into the northwestern Negev, butchering roughly 1,200 people and abducting 251 more, has signaled no willingness to disarm—a demand stipulated in Phase 2 of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan.
The Israel Defense Forces hold about 54% of Gaza’s territory, east of the so-called Yellow Line that runs through the Strip. The start of the second phase of Trump’s plan was announced last week and is set to involve an interim “technocratic” Palestinian administration to govern the territory under Israeli control, along with the full demilitarization of Gaza.
In the paper published online by its media propaganda wing, the Hamas Media Office, the terror group frames the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 men, women and children in southern Israel—dubbed the Al-Aqsa Flood—as a calculated and “natural response” to Israel’s supposed oppression; hails Gaza’s “steadfastness” as a testament to its victory; boasts of the stalling of Israel’s normalization with Arab and Muslim states; calls for intensified legal pressure on Israel in the global arena; and presents its plans for the future, including expanding its rule to Judea and Samaria.
Gilad Ach, CEO of Israeli NGO Ad Kan, told JNS that the growing confidence expressed in the Hamas manifesto “reveals a troubling strategic reality that extends far beyond the Gaza Strip.
“It shows that while a sense of conclusion and victory has taken hold in Israel, from the perspective of Hamas and other Islamist organizations, [the two-year war] is merely another phase in an ongoing struggle against the State of Israel—a struggle being waged simultaneously from Gaza and from Judea and Samaria,” he said.
Meir Ben Shabbat, head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, and a former Israeli national security adviser, told JNS on Tuesday that although Hamas suffered a significant setback during the war, “It is not a fatal blow.
“Hamas is no longer in a position where it feels its very existence is under threat; it remains the primary power in the Gaza Strip, deeply embedded in the population and in Gaza’s civilian systems. It skillfully exploits humanitarian aid and supplies entering the Strip for its own purposes,” Ben Shabbat said.
The Islamist group has rejected calls to lay down arms on a number of occasions. In December’s document, it defiantly dismisses the possibility.
“Attempts to isolate Hamas contradict the right of peoples to armed resistance and their right to freely choose their representatives,” Hamas writes in the paper titled “Our Narrative … Al-Aqsa Flood: Two Years of Steadfastness and the Will for Liberation.”
Two-faced Hamas
Ad Kan (“It Stops Now” in Hebrew), a group dedicated to exposing anti-Zionist organizations, released a document in Hebrew on Jan. 11 analyzing Hamas’s propaganda paper.
The paper is a calculated appeal to the international community, the Israeli NGO says. Its use of terms such as “justice,” “freedom” and “human rights,” while largely avoiding religious jargon, frames the Palestinian cause as a universal national struggle for liberty; Islam is sidelined as a secondary cultural ingredient.
The document’s main objective is to confer international legitimacy on Hamas as the unquestionable ruler of the Palestinians, while at the same time to justify its war against Israel by appealing to international law and United Nations resolutions, according to Ad Kan.
Hamas’s latest manifesto, the NGO continues, builds on a similar paper published in January 2024, yet is more ambitious in scope. If the 2024 paper conveyed an apologetic tone, just three months after the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, the new one aims to redefine the public discourse, portraying Hamas as an integral component of Palestinian society, rooted in its “national fabric.”
In contrast, another Hamas document, published internally in Arabic in July 2024, is steeped in religious language, replete with quotations from the Quran, and calls for a unified Islamic front against Israel, Ad Kan notes.
A poll carried out between Oct. 22 and 25, conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, found that 78% of Arabs in Judea and Samaria object to Trump’s demand to disarm Hamas, even if it meant the renewal of active warfare, with 55% of respondents in Gaza saying the same.
Figures such as these, Ben Shabbat told JNS, “clearly demonstrate who we are dealing with. The Palestinian public in Gaza was not kidnapped by Hamas; a large portion of it supports it.
“These figures are a slap in the face to anyone talking about a Palestinian state. They require us in Israel to be sober-minded, not to be seduced by illusions, to act on our own to defend ourselves, and to watch morning and night the footage from Oct. 7 and the high levels of Palestinian public support for that horrific massacre,” Ben Shabbat said.
The Hezbollah model
“The deliberate evolution of Hamas’s rhetoric over the years, strategically adapted to the international arena and Western audiences, reflects a clear-eyed understanding that winning minds and legal battles may advance its strategic objectives as much as, or even more than, armed struggle,” Ad Kan states in its analysis of the “Our Narrative” paper.
A part of Hamas’s evolution is its agreement to a Palestinian technocratic government to run civilian matters in the Gaza Strip.
Ad Kan writes that this “is a tactical deception. The organization makes clear that it will not accept disarmament or any foreign foothold. The implication is that any governing body established in Gaza without the destruction of Hamas will be a puppet government, operating under the patronage of a terrorist organization that will continue to strengthen itself under the cover of international reconstruction.”
Ben Shabbat told JNS that Hamas’s stance is not new. Its willingness to relinquish civilian governance would “free [it] to rebuild its military capabilities” while benefiting “from resources raised by the new administration for Gaza.”
The former national security adviser compared this initiative to the Hezbollah terrorist organization’s modus operandi in Lebanon. “Hamas knows how to operate effectively even when formal power is in other hands. The Hezbollah-ization of Gaza under such circumstances is not a far-fetched scenario,” he said.
“Hamas will not truly disarm,” he continued. “It may stage some sort of show, reach understandings about integrating its armed operatives into enforcement mechanisms, or agree to other absurd arrangements—all of which share one common denominator: Hamas would retain military capabilities,” he said.
Past vows by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to disarm Hamas must be translated into a timetable and a clear, binding definition of what “disarmament” entails. “We must show determination and complete the mission in Gaza until all the [war] objectives we defined are fully achieved,” Ben Shabbat said.
Next, Judea and Samaria
Eyal Ofer, a former Israeli government adviser and an expert on “Hamas economics,” told JNS on Wednesday that the Hamas paper treats the Oct. 7 onslaught as a roaring success that changed the course of history.
From a situation where the world has largely lost interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Oct. 7 “has set history back on a path that, in [Hamas’s] view, leads to the destruction of the State of Israel,” said Ofer.
Materially, the terror group needs external funding to reconstruct Gaza, train a new generation of fighters and find new ways to smuggle arms into the Strip, “but Hamas views these as technical problems, which will be solved with time,” he added.
While Israelis focus on the military aspect of the war, preventing Hamas from ever again executing another Oct. 7-style invasion, “from Hamas’s perspective, it already carried out Oct. 7. Now they’re looking at the next stage,” Ofer said.
“What we see as the destruction of Gaza, the dismantling of tunnels and rockets, targeted assassinations of [senior] Hamas officials—they see as something different: a strategic shift.
“The [‘Our Narrative’] paper discusses how they created a situation in which the Abraham Accords and the normalization process, including global legitimacy for Israel, have been completely turned around. Today, the world views Israel as a pariah state; a state that, from their angle, commits genocide, starves a population, and stands on trial in The Hague. As far as they are concerned, they have isolated Israel and have united not just the Palestinians but the entire Arab and Muslim world to their side,” Ofer said.
In the paper’s “Current Stage Priorities” section, points Nos. 5 and 9 underline the importance Hamas places on strengthening ties with Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, the countries that brokered the Gaza truce. China, Russia and Algeria are also mentioned favorably for their role in curbing pro-Israel initiatives in the U.N. Security Council.
A complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the establishment of a Palestinian administration to handle the reconstruction efforts are listed as Hamas’s two most urgent priorities.
Ofer says that Hamas welcomes an alternative authority in Gaza so it can work behind the scenes toward the next stage, which is to take over the Palestinian Authority, i.e., Judea and Samaria.
“Eventually, there will be elections,” Ofer said. “From the world’s perspective, if Gaza becomes a normal state that is being rehabilitated, then the next step will be to hold elections. … So [Hamas is] looking how in 15 years it will take over [all the Palestinian territories], while, globally speaking, viewing its situation today as much better than it was on Oct. 6, [2023].”
‘Complete the mission’
Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Winner, a research fellow at the Israel Center for Grand Strategy and former head of the operational planning team in the IDF Southern Command, told JNS that “Hamas is trying to project a more favorable reality, much like the Iranians are now trying to project that they are threatening the United States and Israel.”
Since Oct. 7, “Hamas has been hit across every dimension. It has lost most of its capabilities, most of its senior commanders, and most of the territory of the Gaza Strip—yet it remains undefeated. Why has it not been defeated? Largely because of us,” Winner said.
“Ultimately, the IDF’s campaign was deficient for several reasons: the hostage issue, a reluctance to confront the question of civilian governance, and the unavoidable fact that terror and guerrilla forces embedded in civilian environments cannot be defeated without control over resources and administration,” he said.
And yet, despite Israel’s mistakes, “We have reached an agreement that is not bad at all for us and not good at all for them. … The [ceasefire] deal stipulates clearly that there won’t be an armed [Hamas], a [Hamas] government, a behind-the-scenes [Hamas] government modeled after Hezbollah—this won’t be,” he underscored.
Since the Islamist group will not voluntarily lay down its weapons, and since no external force other than Israel will forcefully disarm it, “within the next two months, which is the deadline that Trump gave them, we will have to act and complete the mission,” Winner said.
Ad Kan’s Gilad Ash sounded a cautious note, saying that “a comprehensive decisive strategy” is required to defeat Hamas and its ideology in all arenas.
“Without a deep shift in strategic conception and determined action in Judea and Samaria as well, Israel will continue moving from one round of conflict to another—until the next disaster,” he said.
