Hamas in no-win situation as Israeli strikes resume

Israeli security forces carry away a protester during a demonstration against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and calling for an end to the war in Gaza on March 19, 2025. [AFP] Israel's renewed attacks on the Gaza Strip have put Hamas in a very difficult situation, experts believe, with the Palestinian Islamist movement left with few options. The group may be now pinning its last hopes on external international pressure being exerted against Israel and internal pressure forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war. The renewed attacks come with a deadlock in indirect talks on the second phase of the January ceasefire, with neither side prepared to budge from its position. Hamas has yet to respond militarily to the latest Israeli attacks and said on Wednesday it remained open to negotiations, urging the international community to "take urgent action". "Hamas is betting on mediators and internal divisions in Israel" to make the war end, Hamas expert Leila Seurat, a senior lecturer at SciencesPo in Paris, told AFP. Israel has said it will pound the Palestinian territory until Hamas releases the remaining 58 hostages held there, despite many inside Israel believing that this strategy will only endanger the captives' lives. Ghassan al-Khatib, a Palestinian political analyst and former Palestinian Authority minister, believes Hamas will only release hostages if it is given guarantees that Israel will uphold the terms of the stalled January ceasefire. "If the hostages are released under the pressure of the Israeli attacks, then Hamas will be (left) with no guarantees," he told AFP. "Hamas will not trust any word from Israel, but the guarantees should come from third parties" such as mediators Egypt, the United States or Qatar, Khatib added. 'Time for political options' Hamas now faces a militarily dominant Israel no longer restrained by its US ally. Khatib said fighting back is "not an option" for Hamas, "due to the difficult military reality on the ground" and because of diminished support from its allies Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah. All the while, Israel has the upper hand as it benefits from US President Donald Trump's backing for the war in Gaza. As the ceasefire talks stalled, Israel blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid and cut off power to a desalination plant in southern Gaza. "(The Israelis) are under much less pressure and therefore they don't feel that they need the second phase (of the ceasefire) and war is less costly for them," Khatib said. Under the second phase of the truce drafted under former US president Joe Biden's administration, Israel would have withdrawn from Gaza in exchange for more hostage releases. All this means that Hamas's "manoeuvering room is narrowing, that's why now is the time for political options", Khatib said. Echoing this, Seurat from SciencesPo pointed to the fact that Hamas cannot change the balance of power on the ground. She said Hamas can instead hope to fold proposals from Trump's special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff into the existing ceasefire framework. She said that beyond mediator pressure, Hamas is instead hoping that dissident voices within the Israeli military, or public pressure, bring an end to the war. Jamal al-Fadi, a political science professor at Gaza's al-Azhar University, noted in an editorial that Hamas, which believes in Palestinian liberation by armed struggle, once condemned mediation in interactions with Israel. Hamas has long criticised its rival movement Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank -- a separate Palestinian territory -- for its strategy of appealing to the international community. 'Fantasies' Palestinian affairs expert Michael Milshtein of Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center said that cornering Hamas militarily with no exit strategy would not force it to back down. He said Hamas wants precise guarantees from the United States over how and when the war would end and Israel will withdraw from Gaza. Without that, he said "Hamas prefers right now to continue the fighting but not to release hostages". As for Hamas's future after the war, the main sticking point remains the Islamist movement's militarisation. "They'll never back down on that," said Seurat. "It's a movement that calls itself a resistance movement." Milshtein agreed, saying that without a military wing "it's not Hamas, it's something else". He argued that the only two viable options are for Israel to occupy Gaza, which he says Israel lacks the motivation for, or a deal that would end the war and force Israel to withdraw. Anything short of that, including "all the ideas that we will convince the Egyptians to deploy their forces in Gaza" or that Israel will "create a kind of regime based on clans in Gaza", are "fantasies and nothing else", Milshtein said.

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