After the signing of the “Gaza Agreement” in Sharm El-Sheikh and the entry into force of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, senior Hamas figures rushed to declare “victory,” crediting themselves with a series of gains in the war.
Yet across the Arab world and inside Gaza, the mood is the opposite: the widespread sense is that Israel defeated Hamas.
From Hamas’s perspective, merely surviving as an organization in the Strip—despite the devastating blows the IDF inflicted on its military wing—is framed as a “victory,” achieved thanks to what Arabic calls sumud (steadfastness).
Hamas is quick to proclaim success to preempt criticism and to try to cement a new narrative in Arab public opinion, diverting attention from the harsh reality and discouraging internal self-criticism.
The movement inflates its achievements—most notably the return of the Palestinian issue to the global stage—as cover for the human, social, and economic devastation it inflicted on Palestinian society through the horrific massacre it carried out in the communities around Gaza on October 7, 2023.
A senior political source notes that successive Palestinian leaderships have chosen the path of terror and brought disasters upon their people. Still, the greatest disaster of all was the present war that Hamas forced upon Israel on October 7, 2023—a war that produced the largest Nakba in Palestinian history.
As of now, Palestinian fatalities in the Strip stand at some 65,000, with between 160,000 and 170,000 wounded.
Several thousand more remain missing, probably buried beneath the rubble of homes and tunnels.
The senior political source traces earlier national catastrophes back to Palestinian leaders: the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini is held responsible for the first Nakba in 1948; Yasser Arafat for the second Nakba in 2000, after launching the Second Intifada following the collapse of the Camp David peace process; and he places the responsibility for the largest Nakba on Yahya Sinwar, for the October 7, 2023 attack.
Both Arafat and Sinwar—each in his own era and for different reasons—presented themselves as rescuers of their people and as leaders destined for victory over Israel; in practice, the senior source argues, they led them to ruin.
Both ended their public lives during wars they initiated against Israel.
Their main common trait, he says, was a religious and historical aspiration: to free Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and to emulate the great Muslim commander Saladin, who in the twelfth century liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders.
Arafat and Sinwar shared a fervent, almost religious, attachment to Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem. Both were prepared to die for them and to be written into Muslim history as liberators.
Sinwar surprised Israel with a major terror operation—the “Al-Aqsa Flood”—on October 7, 2023, apparently aiming to coerce, ultimately, international recognition of an independent Palestinian state along 1967 lines as a first step toward his political goals.
Arafat, too, had a similar vision in 2000 when he launched the wave of violence known as the Second Intifada.
Both of those waves of terror failed catastrophically: Israel responded by occupying the Gaza Strip in Operation “Swords of Iron” and re-occupying the West Bank in Operation “Defensive Wall” (2002). Whereas Arafat attempted to pursue achievements through negotiation and policy as well, Sinwar sought to “restore lost Palestinian dignity” through blood and fire.
The October 7 massacre in the Gaza-periphery communities—whose aims included preventing normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, breaking the status quo, and returning the Palestinian issue to the center of international attention—ended in an unprecedented catastrophe.
The Gaza Strip was devastated, hundreds of thousands were uprooted from their homes, and Palestinians found themselves confronting a new Nakba—far more painful even than 1948—because it was born of the conduct of their own leaders rather than of an external enemy alone.
Hamas—the movement that was supposed to embody “resistance” and the spirit of the people—detached itself from the Palestinian public; it used civilians as a human shield and inflicted severe economic hardship upon them.
Arafat believed his campaign of violence would force the international system to help establish a state; Sinwar believed he could, with the support of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” seize Israel.
In the end, both men were held captive by slogans and symbolism; both refused to acknowledge the balance of power, and both brought the same outcome upon the Palestinians: destruction, displacement, and a loss of trust.
Senior security officials say the world has seen extremist and megalomaniacal leaders before, but not like these: Palestinians repeatedly choose leaders who destroy Palestinian society from within.
Generations of Palestinian leadership preferred death to life, symbolism to reality, and revenge to a future.
Tragically, there is currently no sign that Gazan society is about to recover from what it has endured over the past two years.
On the contrary, voices calling for jihad and chants of “Death to the Jews” (e.g., “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud”) are once again being heard in the Strip. Israel must draw the necessary lessons from the Gaza war and prepare thoroughly for the next conflict.
