Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a two-part series about Hamas' future in Gaza. This part considers the implications if Hamas emerges victorious from its current conflict with Israel. The first part, about the differing strategic goals and constraints on both sides' actions, can be found here.
In part one, I argued that the political structures of both Israel and Hamas make it more likely that Hamas will achieve political victory in their conflict. Since that publication, nationwide protests in Israel have highlighted the Israeli government's structural disadvantages vis-a-vis Hamas. Though a conclusive outcome of the Gaza War remains distant, it is worth considering what a political victory — one that sees Hamas maintain a formal position in Gaza — would mean for Hamas and the broader Palestinian national movement, as well as for Israel and its neighbors. In most cases, this will also shape the pattern of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, though the low chance remains that a political victory results in a more moderate Hamas and opens the door to a resumption of two-state talks.
Hamas' immediate goal is to withstand Israel's military assault and demonstrate that, through armed resistance, it can impose significant costs on Israel for its policies toward the Palestinians without being forced out of Gaza. This would mark a substantial political victory in and of itself, likely resulting in a surge of public support, which would help Hamas replenish lost recruits and rebuild economically. Hamas is not, however, solely aiming to return as the de facto government of Gaza: Hamas seeks to lead Palestinians everywhere else, replacing Fatah as the chief representative of the Palestinian movement. This movement exists not only in Gaza and the West Bank but also in refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, in villages and refugee camps of Jordan, and in the remaining Palestinian diaspora across the globe.
Assumptions
A handful of assumptions beyond the one that Hamas will be able to retain a position in Gaza for these scenarios undergird our thinking. First, Hamas' ideological aspirations would not change as a result of victory; it would remain a right-wing irredentist movement that wants to replace Israel with an Arab, Islamist state. Second, Hamas would not simply return to being the de facto government of Gaza; rather, its leadership would overtly shift to a broader struggle led from the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, with no serious political challenge from Fatah. And third, Israel would not have a government that wants to restart negotiations; it would remain hawkish as its current one is, preferring a one-state solution by fiat. Should any of these assumptions change, it would significantly alter the probable postwar scenarios for Israeli-Palestinian relations. But given the current behavior of the primary actors, they do not currently appear likely to change.
With those assumptions in mind, a victorious Hamas would have three broad scenarios for its leadership of the Palestinian movement: de jure leadership, partial leadership and de facto leadership.
The first, de jure leadership, sees Hamas use the institutions of the Palestinian movement to advance itself. Through Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, Hamas could enter the Palestinian Liberation Organization as an equal, potentially paving the way for elections in the Palestinian Authority that allow Hamas to participate in governance in the West Bank. Here, Hamas leverages its increased popularity to assume control of established Palestinian political institutions.
The second is one of partial leadership, de jure and de facto leadership in the Palestinian movement. In this scenario, Hamas gains a role in the PLO (from which it is currently excluded) but remains outside of the Palestinian Authority. This could occur if the Palestinian Authority resists Hamas for fear of losing financial backing from the West and Arab states, yet — either due to being too weak to resist or due to tacitly supporting Hamas — gives it some leadership role. Doing so would give Hamas political prestige without the responsibilities of governance.
The final path is that of de facto leadership. Here, Hamas fails to formally join both the PLO and the Palestinian Authority but uses its groundswell of popular support to render both organizations politically irrelevant. As Palestinians turn to Hamas for leadership, the Palestinian Authority and PLO could become vestigial, with Hamas emerging as the de facto leader of Palestinians broadly.
Each of these paths has different implications. If Hamas enters the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, it would likely increase the legitimacy of both institutions domestically as its popularity — which would only rise if it is widely seen as emerging victorious from war with Israel — is transferred onto them. It would also, however, immediately face international backlash that would likely undermine such gains. Hamas remains a terrorist organization under U.S. and EU law, and its Islamist leanings alarm most Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As a result, a future version of Hamas as a formal part of the PLO and Palestinian Authority would draw sanctions and isolation from the West and the Gulf Arabs. Meanwhile, Israel would see Hamas' ascendency to these positions as proof that militancy had hijacked the Palestinian movement entirely; it would likely react with not only an end to security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, but probably would escalate military campaigns against it. Violence, in other words, would surge in the West Bank, and the prospect of Israel fighting destructive, Gaza-style campaigns there would become significantly more likely. Should such an outcome come to pass, it would significantly increase the chances of refugees in the West Bank pushing on the Jordanian border, an outcome that would strain the kingdom's ability to manage the fallout.
In the second scenario, where Hamas gains a leadership role in the PLO but not the Palestinian Authority, Israel would still be able to maintain ties with the Palestinian Authority given it had officially continued to exclude Hamas. But Hamas would steadily be able to undermine the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and the Palestinian Authority would strain to survive the popular upswing in support for Hamas that would come with entry into the PLO. The Palestinian Authority would become even more of a proxy force for the Israelis than it already is, becoming totally reliant upon their taxes and weapons to maintain coherence and any semblance of law and order in the West Bank. While this outcome would not necessarily result in escalated violence between Israel and West Bank Palestinians in the near term, on a long enough timeline, Hamas would eventually undermine the Palestinian Authority to the point of irrelevance — leaving it much diminished security forces unable to maintain order on behalf of Israel. Such a scenario would turn the West Bank into a larger version of Gaza, with thousands of Israeli settlers and soldiers trapped there in escalating violence.
In the third scenario, Hamas's delegitimization of the Palestinian Authority and PLO without formal entry into either organization would create a fractured Palestinian national movement. This increases the risk of civil war between supporters of the Palestinian Authority and PLO on one side and Hamas on the other. Israel, along with the United States, Europe and Gulf Arab states, would likely back anti-Hamas forces, which could restrain Israel's role in the West Bank but still lead to significant violence and militant clashes. Amid this clash, Israel would likely expand its settlements, and the risk of Palestinians moving out of the West Bank and Gaza to third countries would increase as the conflict continues. There would, in other words, be little of a formal Palestinian movement for Israel, or anyone else, to negotiate with.
And if Hamas Grows Dovish?
There is one final scenario worth considering, provided we abandon a key assumption about the future of the Palestinian movement. A final and perhaps more long-term outcome of a Hamas political victory in the Gaza war is that the group would face rising expectations from Palestinians to improve living conditions and find a way out of the cycle of violence. While many Palestinians may support violent resistance for a time in the wake of Hamas' survival in the wake of the Gaza War, such support cannot last indefinitely. As war weariness sets in, Hamas could face strong public pressure to moderate; its charter to replace Israel could formally moderate to one that favors a two-state solution. This step would require Hamas to face down its hard-liners and to weaken ties with its close ally, Iran. But if Hamas wanted to retain its leadership position at the top of the Palestinian movement, it would have to do so, just as Fatah under Yasser Arafat once did after decades of armed resistance. Should that take place, Hamas' pariah status internationally would diminish and its diplomatic position would strengthen; while it might lose hard-line supporters, it would also gain more moderate ones. And as a result, it would anchor itself as the central force in the Palestinian national movement, potentially supplanting Fatah.
This final scenario, however, requires Hamas to come away from the Gaza War with the conclusion that armed resistance is ineffective at advancing its political goals — a conclusion that Hamas does not seem likely to make in the near term, given that it is poised to withstand the war diminished but still extant. Instead, Hamas's ascendency toward leadership of the Palestinian national movement seems more likely to portend new cycles of violence and new major military operations — and with it, another long chapter in the decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
