Most people still don't understand Hamas' strategy.
Ultimately, the terror group’s most significant weapon is not rockets or fighters, but its capacity to endure and adapt.
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This is a guest essay written by Andrew Fox, a former British Army officer and current think tank research fellow focusing on defense, the Middle East, and disinformation.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
When conducting military tactical planning, the first question for most armies is a variation of “What is the enemy doing, and why?” to determine the enemy’s likely course of action.
The IDF is preparing to strike at the heart of Hamas’ stronghold in Gaza City. To anticipate what lies ahead, it is necessary to think like Hamas’ commanders: to ask what they value most, what options they perceive, and what actions they are likely undertaking now to ensure their movement survives.
Hamas’ aim, most generally, is survival. Hamas does not expect to win on the battlefield against a much stronger enemy. Instead, its strategy will focus on surviving as a movement, manipulating the battlefield to increase Israeli costs, and preparing to continue as an underground insurgency even if it is pushed out of open control of Gaza. Understanding this viewpoint helps explain why Hamas acts as it does, why Gaza City has become a fortress, and why the eventual fall of the city may not bring about the end of the conflict.
Hamas’ primary goal is to ensure its organisational survival. In conventional warfare, armies fight to hold territory or achieve decisive military victories. Hamas’ priorities differ. Its objectives in the current phase can be broken down into six key elements.
Preserve leadership and organisational continuity. As long as some senior leaders and cadres remain intact, the movement can reconstitute itself, even in exile. Hamas is not confined to Gaza. They have cells in Syria, Lebanon, and the West Bank (where they poll a 70-percent approval rating). Their leadership sits in Qatar. Killing every Hamas member in Gaza does not destroy Hamas.
Maximise the civilian death toll. Hamas sees civilian casualties as leverage. Hamas hopes it can generate international pressure on Israel to halt operations, or, just as good, delegitimise Israel, and cement its pariah status on the world stage.
Delay Israeli advances. Every day bought through negotiation or tactical defence gives Hamas time to consolidate and increases the chance of diplomatic intervention.
Embed for insurgency. If it loses its governing role in Gaza, Hamas intends to remain present as a shadow network and resistance movement.
Eliminate rivals. Hamas has a long record of suppressing dissent through intimidation and assassination. As pressure mounts, it is likely tightening its grip by removing those who might collaborate with Israel or challenge its legitimacy.
Exploit hostages. Captured Israelis remain Hamas’s most valuable bargaining chips. Beyond negotiation, hostages can be executed if Israel pushes too hard, serving both as a deterrent and as psychological warfare.
This ruthless approach indicates that Hamas’ survival strategy targets not only Israel outwardly, but also its rivals internally, and even the hostages.
Israel has spent years hunting Hamas’ senior leaders, and in this war, it has devoted enormous resources to successful “decapitation” strikes, yet Hamas has prepared for this. Its leadership is decentralised. Command and control is deliberately redundant, with communication nodes dispersed and authority shared across multiple figures. Hamas is likely no longer a centralised authority, but multiple smaller groups across the Strip, acting to a shared intent.
Hamas’ government departments are still in operation. The apparatchiks at its Ministry of Health have been Hamas’ single greatest weapon during this war and still push out their lies to a gullible world. These are not neutral civil servants who will flex to follow whoever is the next administration in Gaza. Hamas spent years ruthlessly purging government systems within Gaza. These administrators might make all the right noises, but be in no doubt: They are Hamas loyalists to the core, and they will ensure that Hamas’ influence continues to pervade Gaza’s governance systems.
The kicker: Remove them, and every governance system in Gaza collapses. The next administration will have no choice but to retain them.
Hamas has examined Hezbollah’s example in Lebanon, which has survived multiple Israeli campaigns due to a similar organisational structure. The principle is the same: Absorb the attrition, survive, and hope to regrow in the long term (even if it takes decades). From Hamas’ perspective, the risk of destruction is reduced when command is decentralised. Consequently, even if Gaza City is overrun, parts of the leadership are almost certain to remain capable of hiding and waiting things out, or regrouping elsewhere.
No aspect of Hamas’ strategy in Gaza has been more murderous than its use of civilians. From the earliest days of the conflict, Israel urged civilians in Gaza City to evacuate southwards. Hamas responded by encouraging residents to stay in their homes. Mosque loudspeakers and official spokesmen portrayed evacuation as a trick aimed at permanently displacing Palestinians, echoing memories of the 1948 “Nakba.”
This tactic serves Hamas in multiple ways. The presence of civilians complicates Israeli operations, constraining the IDF’s use of firepower. High casualties attract international attention, feeding global campaigns to halt Israel’s offensive. By tying civilians to the terrain, Hamas ensures that any advance through Gaza City is slow, bloody, and politically costly for Israel.
So far, reports indicate that out of 1.3 million people, between 10,000 and 40,000 Gazans have left Gaza City. If these figures do not increase, attacking Gaza City could result in the highest civilian death rate since the war began. I would even suggest that a major assault might not be feasible unless more civilians evacuate. The cost would be too great to justify militarily.
From Hamas’ perspective, the civilian population is not just a shield but also a weapon in the information war. The more the conflict is portrayed worldwide as a humanitarian disaster, the more Hamas hopes Israel will face pressure to cease. In this context, Hamas’ fighters are not isolated; they are surrounded by strategically valuable human terrain.
Hamas has consistently sought to draw out the conflict through negotiation. Temporary ceasefires, typically tied to hostage exchanges or humanitarian access, serve not only humanitarian purposes but also military ones. Each pause allows Hamas to regroup, resupply, and reposition. Each day of delay increases the chance of external pressure on Israel. I would not be surprised to see a ceasefire-for-hostage-release agreement in the near future. Hamas will want to buy time wherever possible.
Hostages are central to this strategy. They are bargaining chips to trade for Palestinian prisoners and political concessions, and they are also a deterrent. Hamas has openly threatened to kill captives if Israel advances too far or too quickly. From the group’s perspective, hostage execution serves two purposes: punishing Israel for its actions and shaping Israeli public opinion by turning each advance into a potential death sentence for compatriots held underground.
For Hamas, negotiation and hostages are two sides of the same coin. Both are means to buy time and to exert psychological leverage. From the enemy’s perspective, they are not humanitarian matters but tactical weapons.
Perhaps the most crucial element of Hamas’ planning is its acceptance that it may lose Gaza City. If it cannot hold the terrain, Hamas will intend to survive underground as an insurgency. Fighters can drop their weapons, melt into the civilian population, even evacuate to humanitarian areas, and re-emerge once Israeli forces withdraw (or conduct insurgent attacks on occupying troops).
At the same time, Hamas will take steps to ensure that if its political rule collapses, no rival faction can take its place. This has historically meant intimidation, arrests, and targeted killings of suspected collaborators or members of rival groups. Assassination is a tool of internal dominance. In the chaos of battle, such actions are likely accelerating, as Hamas closes ranks and eliminates figures or groups who might threaten its underground continuity.
In parallel, Hamas will maintain shadow governance structures. Hamas infests every element of life in Gaza. Its police, charities, and administrators can operate quietly, ensuring that even if overt authority collapses, its influence in daily life persists.
In the longer term, Hamas may rebrand itself, as other militant organisations have done, to escape international pressure. What matters is not the name but the continuity of networks, ideology, and capability. From Hamas’ point of view, insurgency is not failure but adaptation — a way to ensure that it remains relevant and that no post-war order in Gaza can ignore it.
Drawing these elements together, Hamas’ probable course of action in Gaza City is clear. It will not seek decisive battle, but will aim to:
Survive as a movement by dispersing leadership and cadres.
Impose maximum civilian and military costs on Israel to shape global opinion.
Delay operations through negotiations.
Exploit hostages for leverage, including execution if pressed.
Suppress rivals internally to prevent any alternative Palestinian leadership from emerging.
Transition to insurgency.
From Hamas’ perspective, this course of action offers the best chance of ensuring that it outlasts the Israeli campaign. Even if Gaza City falls, Hamas can still claim victory if it survives and undermines or subverts any replacement authority.
For Israel, this presents a sobering reality. The fall of Gaza City will not necessarily mean the defeat of Hamas. The group has structured itself to endure precisely this scenario. Its leaders expect to outlast Israel’s offensive and to re-emerge, whether in Gaza’s ruins or abroad, as the core of continued resistance.
The broader implication is that military success alone may not achieve Israel’s strategic objective of eliminating Hamas. Unless a credible political and governance alternative emerges, Hamas will likely persist, whether openly or underground, as a central actor in Palestinian politics and armed resistance.
From the enemy’s perspective, survival equals victory. Hamas knows it cannot succeed in conventional terms, but believes it can prevent Israel from achieving a decisive result. This belief underpins all its current actions in Gaza City: from urging civilians to stay in place, to negotiating, to assassinating rivals.
Ultimately, Hamas’ most significant weapon is not rockets or fighters, but its capacity to endure, adapt, and rebuild.
This was a fine piece of analysis. There is no point in trying to alter world opinion. It is only important to have world support with military supplies. Clearly the world remains nazified and now with fresh support from radical Muslim antisemitism that is already entrenched in the west. An Arabic-Muslim peacekeeping force in Gaza sounds like the best way to keep things quiet. Moderate Arabs may have a problem with terrorists. Peace serves the interest of the countries nearby that see the great economic benefit of a peaceful relationship with Israel. Count on Qatar-Iran-Hamas to try to undermine that. They are more interested in Islamic jihad than in the benefit to their citizens and they never stopped at killing their own people.
Honestly, nothing new here. Hamas’s strategy from day one has remained the same; survive in some shape manner or form so as to be able to regenerate itself and make sure Israel suffers the maximum amount of PR and international political damage in the process.
Problem is that the Israeli government insists on fighting this war as a traditional war which just plays into Hamas’s hands. And we will continue to play into Hamas’s hands until the Israeli government understands implementing the “day after” plan has to be part of the strategy for defeating Hamas. The only thing that will defeat Hamas is an alternative future being created in the ground.