It has been 15 months since Israel launched its war of mass destruction against Gaza, following Hamas’ Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on 7 October 2023.

Has it succeeded in achieving its stated military and political objective to eliminate Hamas and Hizbullah, which intervened on the Lebanese-Israeli front on behalf of the beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza? What is the current condition of Hamas and Hizbullah and what critical tests lie ahead for these resistance organisations?

Doubtless, Israel has sustained a political débâcle. Its intense hasbara (propaganda) campaigns have failed to impose its narratives on the international community as the world has watched, in horror, the Israeli massacres in Gaza unfold in real time.

As the grassroots outrage has mounted, the Western powers have found themselves in a moral and political dilemma. Many European countries have begun to temper their customary uncritical support for Israel and even to question long-accepted “truths” regarding the Israeli historical narrative.

Some countries, like Belgium and Spain, have called for an end to the aggression against Gaza and for the rapid establishment of a Palestinian state.  

Even the US, the main supporter of Israel and its aggression in Gaza, has felt compelled to voice concerns. On 12 December 2023, outgoing US President Joe Biden told participants at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Washington that Israel was losing support in Europe and elsewhere in the world because of the massive civilian losses from its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza.

He urged Israel to learn the lessons from US mistakes in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks in 2001. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must change his course, he said, adding that Netanyahu’s government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, was making things more and more difficult for itself. He urged Netanyahu to make tough but right choices.

While such statements mark a clear shift in the official Western rhetoric, they have not been translated into concrete actions to stop the Israeli slaughter in Gaza and set a process in motion to secure Palestinian rights and establish a Palestinian state.

On the other hand, the groundswell of public sentiment and protest movements in support of Palestinian rights and opposed to the ongoing Israeli occupation, coupled with some European countries’ decisions to recognise Palestine, are signs that Israel has not achieved its political goal, which is victory and a “day after” without Hamas as a political player.

The question of whether Israel has achieved its goals with respect to Hamas and Hizbullah logically entails discussing three subsidiary issues: first, the difference between victory and elimination; second, the organisational and ideological constitution of the resistance organisations; and third, the sociopolitical contexts in which they operate.

There is a radical difference between defeating and eliminating an adversary. The first depends on military and human capacities, strategic and tactical advances or retreats, and the overall developments on the ground in a direct military confrontation. Such factors are relatively easy to calculate in terms of human and material losses.

However, as easy as it may be to assess victory or defeat, this is not the ultimate determinant of the elimination or demise of political entities or groups.  Just because a group has suffered a military defeat does not mean it is no longer able to rally and make a comeback.

Elimination or demise, on the other hand, means precisely that – the entity has lost its material, organisational, and ideological ability to survive. Accordingly, when we consider the goal of the Israeli aggression, which is to eliminate Hamas and Hizbullah, we can only conclude that Israel may have inflicted a military defeat, in terms of calculations of military losses in lives and material, but it has not eliminated Hamas and Hizbullah.

In other words, it can claim a win, but it cannot claim a victory.

THREE REASONS:

There are three main reasons for this.

First, Hamas and Hizbullah can still carry out qualitative operations and inflict damage on the enemy despite their depleted capacities. Second, Hamas and Hizbullah remain rooted in their local environments.

Third, the chief motive for the rise and persistence of Hamas, Hizbullah, and other resistance factors still exists: Israel persists in its illegal occupation of Arab territories in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria and it still refuses to recognise Palestinian rights to self-determination and statehood 76 years after the Nakba.

Turning to the future, despite the unmitigated brutality with which Israel scored a military victory in Lebanon, Hizbullah and Hamas have not only survived, but the signs are they have the capacity to recover and grow again in coming years. On the other hand, they currently face a deep crisis that, if not addressed, could achieve Israel’s goal of their elimination. This crisis does not stem from Israel’s ability to weaken them militarily and organisationally. Rather, it is internal and involves four dynamics.

The first is the relationship between resistance and democracy. Most resistance movements suffer a disconnect between these things, which is ironic since the liberational aspirations of resistance movements spring from fundamental democratic concepts.

However, many resistance factions, including Hamas and Hizbullah, are not democratic in their internal behaviour and in their interactions with other resistance factions. Their tendency is to monopolise power and decision-making including with regard to the ideology and practice of resistance. This exclusivist approach could hamper not only their own continuity and growth, but also the realisation of their liberational aspirations.

The sociopolitical context in which they are operating in the third decade of the 21st century is very different from that in the 1950s and 1960s at the zenith of the Third World national liberation movements. Democracy has become not only a tool for achieving national liberation but also a crucial foundation of organisational stability and resilience during the pursuit of this goal. Accordingly, the relationship between the resistance movements and democracy will constitute a determinant of their sustainability and efficacy in the coming years.

The second is the resistance movements’ relations with regional powers. Recent events have demonstrated the direct impact of their foreign political ties on their sustainability and efficacy. This is not to suggest that resistance movements should not forge foreign relations and alliances. Rather, it is the nature of these relations and alliances that counts in terms of the policies of the partner countries and the degrees of mutual influence.

Hizbullah’s current situation is a case in point. Its close links with Tehran and the Syrian regime under former president Bashar Al-Assad encumbered the resistance movement with the domestic and foreign policies of both these states and the consequences of their policies.

Hizbullah’s involvement in supporting the Al-Assad regime following the outbreak of the Arab Spring illustrates this, and it is one of the factors that led to Israel’s qualitative superiority in its recent aggression against Lebanon. In the coming phase, Hamas and Hizbullah should reconsider their political ties, particularly regarding the degree of mutual influence between the resistance’s aims and the policies of their partners.

The third dynamic is ideological openness versus inflexibility. This will play an important role in the future of Hamas and Hizbullah as ideological resistance movements. Naturally, they should not be expected to renounce their aims and beliefs. However, much will depend on their ability to prioritise the national identity and liberational dimension over their ideological doctrine.

This is of particular importance to resistance movements with Islamist orientations, which should consider diversifying their organisational structure through the inclusion of components from outside their ideological frames-of-reference. This will foreground the national dimension and lend greater impetus to the national liberational cause than exclusivist ideological approaches.

The fourth is the relationship between the resistance and participation in government. Both Hamas and Hizbullah are involved in the administration of the daily affairs of people whether in Gaza or Lebanon. The consequent burdens of government and public responsibility place restraints on them as resistance movements.

Hizbullah illustrates this in the context of the organisation’s interactions with other Lebanese political forces, in which the calculations and pragmatics of party politics and government have affected its ability to act as a resistance organisation. The dilemma surfaced visibly during the Lebanese uprising in the autumn of 2019, when Hizbullah found itself as much an object of the demonstrators’ discontent as the other political forces in the Lebanese government, despite its role as a resistance movement.

Moreover, Hizbullah was compelled to respond to that crisis as a part of the government and ruling coalition, which in turn affected how it has positioned itself and its tactical choices during the recent confrontation against the Israeli aggression.

The same things have applied to Hamas in Gaza since 2006 when it announced its intention to take part in the general elections that year. Referring to Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005 due to pressure from the resistance and to the 2005 Cairo Declaration that legitimised Hamas’ decision to participate without binding it to the Oslo Accords, Hamas leader Mohamed Ghazal said that “Hamas’ participation in the parliamentary elections crowns the victory the resistance has achieved in Gaza by forcing the occupation to withdraw. It is participating on the basis of the Cairo Declaration, which supersedes the Oslo frame-of-reference, and in order to support the Palestinian Authority in the face of international pressures.”

Hamas, as we know, won the internationally monitored and validated elections, which made it the ruling authority in Gaza despite the Western powers’ refusal to recognise the results and subsequent attempts to unseat it.  

It has remained in that position for 18 years, and this, along with the fact that it is one of the dominant Palestinian factions, has placed numerous responsibilities on its shoulders, both domestically and with respect to its relations with regional powers.

This is not to suggest that the resistance movements should forego participation in government or cut themselves off from public affairs in their immediate environment. Rather, the point is that given the responsibilities and constraints of government, the resistance movements should give more careful thought to their objectives.

Is their goal to serve as a resistance movement? If so, they should approach government from the perspective of the support they need in their fight against the occupation and for liberation. Conversely, if they seek power in government, they should recognise that the responsibilities and burdens that come with it could weaken their sustainability and efficacy as resistance movements.

The four points above capture the structural, ideological, and organic dimensions of the crisis facing Hamas and Hizbullah at present. They, along with the other resistance factions, especially the Islamist-oriented ones, should reflect carefully on them and make the necessary adjustments to continue the struggle, rebuild their resilience and efficacy, and achieve national liberation.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 28 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly