The continually shifting situation in Palestine makes any analysis of current events and future prospects particularly difficult. This conclusion is shared by Hamas, which today finds itself torn between two aspirations: the return of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Turkish project for the region, considering the development of the situation in Syria; or the pursuance - with some difficulty - of the “Axis of Resistance” project, which the movement has joined again following a cold spell in its relations with Iran1. If that axis collapses completely, Hamas will lose its capacity to carry on with its armed struggle...if it does not already envisage dropping that option.
This internal conflict harks back to the debate between the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and Fathi Shiqaqi, founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the early and mid-1980s. Fearing the competition of the latter movement, Hamas chose armed struggle from the moment it saw the light of day in 1987, thus becoming the last Palestinian faction to take up arms against Israel. In less than a quarter of a century, it became the most powerful organisation to confront Israel, to the point of carrying out an operation unprecedented in the whole history of the Israeli-Palestinian or even Israeli-Arab conflict.
Two competing internal currents
Several obstacles stand in the way of a decision to abandon armed struggle, not the least of which is the experience of Fatah, which has become so much weaker for having chosen that path. The Palestinian Authority (PA) - of which Fatah is the main component - soon became a kind of policeman for Israel and the United States, and today even a military agent as is shown by the double operation being carried out since 5 December against the resistance groups in the north of the occupied West Bank.
The current led by Yahya Sinwar, the brains behind the October 7th operation, mainly prominent in the Gaza strip, also represents an obstacle to the idea of abandoning armed struggle. Its ideologues and supporters are to be found in many of the inner workings which control Hamas’s activities in Palestinian territories and abroad, as well as in Israeli prisons. They are, however, less present in the West Bank where members of the organization are more likely to adhere to the current of Khaled Mashaal, who chaired the political bureau from 1996 to 2017.
So in order to understand Hamas, we must depart from the standard narrative which pits the Turkish-Qatari current against the Iranian-Hezbollah one, because the movement’s internal reality is much more complex. And the October 7th operation as well as Israel’s destructive war on Gaza which followed it have only added to the complexity after the major changes which took place within the movement after 2017.
One of the key changes occurred after the conflict between the “preaching” current (or da’wa), whose champions are known today within the movement as “the pragmatists”, and the military current, whose adherents call it the “radical current”. The veterans of the da’wa competed strongly with Yahya Sinwar in the last internal election in 2021. He only just managed to come out on top. The da’wa followers are mostly to be found among institutional workers. Taking after the Muslim Brotherhood, they emphasize theological studies and religious education. As for the military current, it can be described as a Palestinian and updated version of the Brotherhood. Deeply influenced by the writings of the Palestinian left and the Axis of Resistance, they place Palestine and its liberation at the core of their struggle.
While in the last few years the military wing ended up in the ascendant, the destruction of Gaza after October 7th and the extensive losses in the Hamas hierarchy have called just about everything into question. Consequently, the da’wa tendency has demanded that an assessment be made of the movement’s experience to date and that survival tactics be considered for the near future. But the ideas put forth by US President Donald Trump don’t leave them any leeway. A joke circulating among certain Hamas cadres says that even if Khaled Mashaal (second in command and head of foreign relations) and Izzat al-Rishq (head of the Hamas Office of Arab and Islamic Relations) made their pilgrimage to the White House and walked around it 7,000 times2, Washington would still exclude them from political solutions, all the more so now that Hamas is accused of being “like ISIS” and “Nazi”. It’s just a joke of course, but it says something about the real situation.
The importance of geography
The other essential change which took place within Hamas after 2017 has to do with the geographic and regional origins of its cadres. For Palestinians these are traditionally decisive when choosing their partners in life or in business and including political leadership. Nor is the importance of one’s origins specific to Hamas, it concerns all the Palestinian factions. In recent years, the internal conflict grew more acute around the transfer of power from the hands of the original leaders in the West Bank or the diaspora to Gazan hands after Ismail Haniyeh became head of the movement’s political bureau and Yahyah Sinwar head of the movement in Gaza.
According to sources inside Hamas and based in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar devoted much effort over the three years before October 7th to getting a great many of the movement’s cadres out of the strip in order to break the decisional monopoly held by the veterans. These Gazans still constitute, to this day, a kind of parallel block preventing Hamas from yielding to the will of a certain number of Arab partners. At the head of this group is Khalil al-Hayya, described in the movement’s most recent press release as “the Hamas chief in Gaza” after having served as right-hand man and deputy to the Gaza leader. These Gazan operatives are also present in strategic sectors such as security, IT and finance.
In recent years, discussions in Sinwar’s entourage have dealt with central decision-making, which it was felt should emanate from the Gazan office considering the size of its personnel. It has also paid the heaviest price in the fighting and siege. It should also be pointed out that prominent Hamas figure Mousa Abu Marzook, though Gazan, is a follower of Khaled Mashaal and does not belong to the Sinwar current; in fact he left Gaza decades ago. However, from a close examination of the appointments and changes of spokespersons and Hamas representatives abroad since 2017, the importance of the geographical and regional origins of the various individuals is obvious. One observes that many Gazan officials have replaced, in external working committees, those from the West Bank or the diaspora.
When Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and then Abdulaziz al-Rantisi in 2004, the decision was taken to move the political bureau abroad in order to protect the movement’s leaders. Since then, and until the election of Haniyeh and Sinwar to the political bureau (2021), decision-making and finance were in Mashaal’s hands until the arrival of the Syrian revolution, which was supported by Hamas. This stance estranged Hamas from the Axis of Resistance and obliged Mashaal to leave Damascus.
Who takes decisions today?
According to sources within the ranks of Hamas but based abroad, the movement is headed today by a committee of five members: the chairman of the Hamas Advisory Council, Mohammad Darwish Ismail, who also chairs the committee; Khalil al-Hayya of the Gaza bureau, Yahya Sinwar’s former deputy; Zaher Jabarin of the West Bank bureau and Saleh al-Arouri’s former deputy3; Khaled Mashaal of the exterior bureau and deputy chairman of Hamas; and finally Mousa Abu Marzook, in charge of international relations.
However, this new formation remains fragile because of the diverging positions of its members; the Council chairman, Mohammed Darwish Ismail, sits halfway between Iran and Turkey; as for Abu Marzook, he identifies with the Turkish-Qatari current represented by Mashaal, whose right-hand man he has become in Turkey. And as for al-Hayya and Jabarine, they represent the Sinwar-Arouri current.
Right now, Hamas is mostly focusing on the issue of the hostages and the idea of an end to the war. They are putting off until later questions about the leadership, either internally, in Palestine (under the aegis of Hussam Badran) or in the Arab world (under the direction of Oussama Hamdan) or at the more general level of international relations, with Mousa Abu Marzook.
The post-war period is likely to see a polarisation between two lines. The first is that of the “Axis of Resistance” which Sinwar represented, in line with the expectations of the military council and the political bureau. It is a line shared by all the countries involved in the “Axis of Resistance” and also by those that can provide Hamas with weaponry. The other line is that of the Turkish-Qatari current, represented by Mashaal and by Abu Marzook, and which is aligned with that of the Quartet on the Middle-East4. By following the three framework principles laid down by the Quartet - rejection of the use of violence, recognition of the State of Israel, acceptance of previous accords - ending with the creation of a State of Palestine on the basis of the 1967 borders, Hamas would complete its integration into the system defined by both the Arab League and the United States. However, Mashaal and his current admit to not yet knowing the consequences of recent regional or international changes, with the election of Donald Trump and Ahmad al-Sharaa’s seizure of power in Syria.
What role for Turkey ?
The Turks for their part are also working on the institutionalisation of the movement and the naturalisation or granting of permanent residence permits to its non-military cadres. Ankara is also trying to persuade Hamas of the need to go through this stage in order to build a Palestinian state or at least to prevent the movement’s disappearance. To this end, the Turks would take Hamas under their wing in order to control it and use it to exert pressure on various regional issues. Some Hamas leaders even expect Iran to accept this step, because Tehran wants to ease the considerable pressure on itself while at the same time ensuring the survival of Hamas. However, a large part of the movement takes a jaundiced view of the Turkish plans and might easily turn to Tehran. This is especially true of those who believe the Palestine question cannot be resolved politically and that the solution lies only in continued resistance.
But what if the Turkish regime happened to change? And what, in any case, can Ankara possibly obtain for the Palestinians? A state? And in what form? The war on Gaza was a perfect example of the Turks’ limited room for manoeuvre: they succeeded neither in putting an end to that war nor in obtaining a truce. Worse still, Ankara did not even completely cut its trade channels and maritime supply lines with Israel because of the presence within its borders of private Israeli companies ensuring the production and extraction of water and the transportation of foodstuffs and gas. In the same way, the Turks cooperate with international mining and gas companies whose owners have Israeli partners.
In point of fact, many Hamas activists inside Gaza, especially those who distrust the Turks, reject the notion of adopting a new political programme and laying down arms. In their view, this would contradict the organisation’s raison d’etre as a resistance movement. The followers of this tendency believe that the survival of Hamas depends on its being armed, and that too much faith should not be placed in the propositions of the Gulf states or even the US. True, there is a degree of resentment towards the “Axis of Resistance”, but these activists see no future for the Palestinian resistance without those countries which support it militarily.
However now that Sinwar is dead, those voices are beginning to fade, giving way to a determination to preserve what is left of the movement and its grassroots base. The other part of this current envisages on the contrary turning to Iran and Yemen to strengthen their positions while maintaining at the same time Hamas’ presence in Turkey and Qatar, with political cover. This strategy also involves the pursuit of activities in “promising areas” such as Indonesia and Malaysia.
Overall, Hamas considers itself to be in an extremely difficult phase which may force it to make enormous concessions to Fatah against its will, at a time when the issue of merging Hamas’ arsenal into the PA’s security apparatus is being discussed in certain cercles. It may well indeed be obliged to make some concessions, depending on the turn of events, and on what Trump can do or impose on Arab countries, including those which have normalised their relations with Israel or are about to do so.
Chances of survival
In the meantime, no one is in a hurry to be anointed chairman of the political bureau. After the assassination of Haniyeh, Mashaal was rumoured to be the front-runner, but the job finally went to Sinwar. Since the latter’s assassination, nobody in Hamas speaks of the chairmanship. According to a source inside the organisation:
“Everybody knows it isn’t so much a chairman’s seat as an execution seat. Assassination can happen at any moment. The tensions within the movement can also prevent the appointment of a chairman, since to open such a competition is to risk dividing the movement into two factions or even more.”
Which leads us to a real question: how is it that Hamas has been the only Palestinian organisation which has never known any schisms, unlike all the others, whether secular, left-wing or even Islamist? Some prominent individuals have left the movement and found refuge in other organisations, others have withdrawn from politics; but none has created another movement.
The answer lies in the movement’s elections, which in fact should normally be held this year, but which will probably be put off, in view of the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. These two-round elections are held every four years and have always been the best way to ease the organisation’s internal tensions and head off any dissidence. They also make it possible for each current to make a show of its strength and the pertinence of its political analysis. This is why everyone does their best to avoid wrangling over the chairmanship of the bureau before election day so that the decision will rest with the votes and the subsequent endorsements.
This is what a Hamas leader has to say:
"The Axis of Resistance is going through its most difficult period and there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with its handling of the war against Israel. Yet this option remains less risky than turning completely in the opposite direction, that of compromise. Turkey will act according to its interests under American-Israeli protection....What we fear most of all is a war inside Hamas and a conflict between its two currents.”
He concludes :
“Freedom must be given to political action and to those areas in which Mashaal, the Turks and others will operate, but without touching a single bullet of our arsenal, because that would mean death for us all.”
Translated from French by Noël Burch.
1Editor’s note: This chill in relations with Iran resulted from Hamas’ decision to oppose the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad after the Syrian revolution broke out in 2011.
2Editor’s note: Allusion to the Mecca pilgrimage where the pilgrims go seven times around the Ka’aba.
3Editor’s note: One of the founders of the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades and former deputy chairman of the Hamas politburo, assassinated in Beirut’s southern suburbs on 2 January 2024.
4Editor’s note: The international committee set up at Madrid in the wake of the second Intifada, comprising the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN. Its mandate was to act as mediators in the “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians.