Cycle of Futility

Israel’s strike on Hamas’ top leaders in Qatar, even as they weighed a ceasefire proposal, captures both the audacity and futility of its campaign. Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its unprecedented attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed nothing short of “total victory.” Yet, nearly two years later, the cycle of violence has only deepened. Thousands of Hamas fighters and nearly all of its top Gaza-based leaders may have been eliminated, its administrative machinery shattered, and its arsenal of longer-range rockets destroyed. But the group has survived worse in the past and continues to endure. Its hostages — around 20 of them still alive — remain leverage, and its ability to embed itself within Gaza’s population makes its elimination nearly impossible. Hamas has mastered the art of re-emergence, with small, decentralised cells carrying out hit-and-run attacks and recruiting new fighters even amid the ruins. Meanwhile, the costs of Israel’s war have become staggering: tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed, Gaza City reduced to famine and rubble, and Israel’s once-robust standing among allies now eroded. Even friendly Arab states now view its actions as destabilising, while global opinion has shifted against what many perceive as indiscriminate collective punishment. Tactical strikes, whether in Doha or Gaza City, cannot mask the reality that force alone has failed to secure the political end Netanyahu keeps promising.

The war’s most significant unintended consequence has been the collapse of governance in Gaza without the collapse of resistance. Israel now controls roughly 75 per cent of the territory, much of it reduced to fields of rubble, yet Hamas continues to operate in the very enclaves where the displaced population of over two million Palestinians has sought refuge. Where Hamas police once operated openly, they now function in the shadows — plainclothes raids against looters, selective enforcement of order, and partial payment of civil servants’ salaries to preserve an illusion of authority. But the real center of gravity is no longer administration; it is the armed wing, which, under Ezzedin al-Haddad, has tightened control over hostages, built booby-trapped strongholds, and perfected guerrilla tactics. Around 50 Israeli soldiers have been killed since March, largely through ambushes and bombs, despite Israel’s overwhelming firepower. The Israeli military estimates that 20,000 Hamas fighters have been killed since the war began, but U.S. officials suggest the group has recruited nearly as many. Even as its formal government crumbles, Hamas’ idea survives in the anger of a population that has known only destruction, siege, and displacement. This is the paradox: each Israeli advance intended to erase Hamas’ sows the seeds for its replenishment, while each civilian death fuels a narrative of resistance. For Palestinians, Hamas represents defiance when all else has failed. For Israel, every battlefield gain is offset by deepening international isolation and the slow erosion of domestic support, as Israelis grapple with the toll of 450 soldiers killed and rising public pressure to secure the hostages through negotiation.

This is why Israel’s stated objective — to destroy Hamas permanently, disarm it, and prevent its reconstitution — is a recipe not for victory but for endless war. Hamas is not merely a hierarchy of leaders who can be killed or a bureaucracy that can be dismantled; it is an ideology forged in occupation, siege, and grievance, one that has outlived assassinations, invasions, and withdrawals since its emergence in the late 1980s. The logic of “total victory” rests on the fantasy that Hamas can be bombed into oblivion while Palestinians remain without a political horizon. But history shows otherwise: Hamas grew stronger after Israel withdrew in 2005, after it crushed the rival Fatah in 2007, and after each subsequent war that left Gaza in ruins. What Israel calls tactical success only entrenches strategic failure. The alternative is not surrender, but imagination — a ceasefire that allows for genuine Palestinian self-determination, political structures beyond Hamas, and guarantees for Israel’s security without perpetual occupation. Without such a horizon, Hamas will always find recruits, always survive underground, and always emerge as long as the occupation defines Palestinian life. The survival of Hamas amid devastation is not just a tactical challenge; it is a political indictment of a war strategy that has no endgame. For Israel, for the Palestinians, and for a world weary of this endless bloodletting, the lesson is stark: total victory is an illusion, and only a political settlement can prevent perpetual conflict. Until then, Israel’s strikes — whether in Gaza or Qatar — will remain powerful in spectacle but empty in outcome.