After two long years, the war in Gaza is over — for now. The 20-point peace plan negotiated by President Donald Trump and his team has enabled the 20 remaining living Israeli hostages to return home, provided Gaza with the opportunity to rebuild, and charted a course for a future free from Hamas, the terrorist group that has brought death and ruin to Gazans and Israelis alike.
The peace plan is ambitious and far-reaching. Trump and his team achieved buy-in from a wide range of regional actors with different agendas. But, as always, the enemy gets a vote. And Hamas isn’t going away anytime soon.
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In the Middle East, perhaps more than any other part of the world, those who hold the guns hold the power. Although the plan calls for Hamas to disarm, it is extremely unlikely that the terrorist organization will do so. In the course of modern history, there isn’t a single instance of an Islamist movement willingly disbanding and peacefully accepting those who don’t share their twisted ideology. The Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Islamic State, among others, remain. The Islamists themselves are well aware of this, and their timeline for “victory” — that is, the imposition of a totalitarian brand of Islam and sharia law — is much longer than that of their opponents. They think in terms of centuries, not decades. Hamas is no different.
Per its 1988 covenant, Hamas is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine” and “Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” The group believes that “the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf,” or holy land, that is “consecrated for future [Muslim] generations until Judgement Day,” and “it or any part of it … should not be given up.” The group, per its own words, doesn’t believe in Israel’s right to exist.
Although some pundits have inaccurately claimed that Israel “created” Hamas, this is false. The group’s own charter notes that it has roots in Muslim Brotherhood cells operating in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. That is: Hamas predates Israel’s 1948 creation. Notably, the charter also hails Sheikh Izz ad Din al Qassam, a fiery cleric born in what is today Syria and killed in a battle with British police officers in 1935, as an inspiration. Qassam was a progenitor of today’s jihadists, traversing the Middle East from Libya to today’s Jordan to wage holy war. In short, Hamas doesn’t believe in the Western concept of nation-states any more than it believes in peace.
There are other ill tidings, as well. Hamas remains the best-organized and most well-armed group in the Gaza Strip. Within hours of the peace plan, Hamas began to execute and torture Palestinians whom it deemed “collaborators.” Notably, Hamas’s so-called “Arrow Unit” has been using violence to preserve the terrorist group’s control throughout the war.
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Gaza is a clan-based society, and some other clans have voiced their discontent with Hamas’s rule. But their future success and ability to defeat Hamas are very much open questions. It is entirely possible that they could, with a significant amount of support, trample the terrorists. But it won’t be easy.
By some estimates, Hamas controls less than half of the territory of the Gaza Strip. The group has been severely degraded, its top leadership eliminated, and its chief patron, Iran, chastened by Israel’s military. By holding territory, Israel will enhance its intelligence capabilities and its deterrence. But Hamas is a problem that Israel and its allies will be contending with for the foreseeable future.
Sean Durns is a senior research analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.