{"id":216692,"date":"2025-01-16T13:06:05","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T13:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/16\/hamas-after-cease-fire-weakened-but-still-the-dominant-palestinian-power-in-gaza\/"},"modified":"2025-01-16T13:06:05","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T13:06:05","slug":"hamas-after-cease-fire-weakened-but-still-the-dominant-palestinian-power-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/16\/hamas-after-cease-fire-weakened-but-still-the-dominant-palestinian-power-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamas After Cease-Fire: Weakened but Still the Dominant Palestinian Power in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/16\/multimedia\/16mideast-crisis-hamas-assess-vmwl\/16mideast-crisis-hamas-assess-vmwl-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Hamas After Cease-Fire: Weakened but Still the Dominant Palestinian Power in Gaza\" title=\"Hamas After Cease-Fire: Weakened but Still the Dominant Palestinian Power in Gaza\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza has delivered <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/15\/world\/middleeast\/hamas-weakened-israel-ceasefire.html\" title=\"\">devastating blows to Hamas<\/a>: It has killed top Hamas leaders and thousands of militants, pummeled the militant group\u2019s tunnel network and undermined its ability to threaten Israel with rocket fire. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel, it had hoped to ignite a regional war that would draw in its allies and lead to Israel\u2019s destruction. Instead, it has been left to fight Israel almost entirely alone. Its allies have been decimated in Lebanon, toppled in Syria and weakened in Iran. The Houthis in Yemen have only managed to inflict occasional rocket and drone attacks, most of which Israel has intercepted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Despite its isolation, however, Hamas remains the dominant Palestinian power in Gaza even after 15 months of Israeli bombardment, holding sway in displacement camps and refusing to surrender. Although many Palestinians have criticized the group\u2019s decision to carry out the October 2023 attack \u2014 unleashing a war that has killed tens of thousands of Gazans and reduced cities to rubble \u2014 but it has faced relatively little popular unrest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Hamas has celebrated the provisional cease-fire agreement announced on Wednesday as an \u201caccomplishment,\u201d but its future role in Gaza remains uncertain. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The deal calls for an eventual \u201ccessation of military operations and hostilities permanently,\u201d but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly suggested that that he will resume attacking Hamas after some hostages held by militants are released. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Yet if the full, multistage agreement is implemented, it could open the door to Hamas rebuilding its ironclad control over Gaza, or at least allow it to maintain an influential role in the territory. Analysts connected to Hamas believe that Israel will struggle to resume the war in the face of international pressure, and that Hamas will play a key role in the future of Gaza. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cHamas will be present in every detail in Gaza,\u201d said Ibrahim Madhoun, an analyst close to the militant group. \u201cTrying to bypass Hamas will be like burying your head in the sand.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Madhoun acknowledged that Hamas\u2019s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, had suffered losses, but said it was still \u201cstanding on solid ground\u201d and had recruited new people to replace those killed. Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said this week that American officials had assessed that Hamas has brought in almost as many new fighters as it has lost in the war.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But if Israel decides to return to war, it could continue to weaken the group. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Resuming the war would not only be a disaster for the Palestinian people, but also Hamas said Tamer Qarmout, a professor of public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Under such a scenario, Mr. Qarmout said, Israel could find itself moving toward occupying Gaza, which may \u201ccut off Hamas but antagonize everyone else in the public.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/16\/world\/middleeast\/hamas-gaza-cease-fire-palestinian-future.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza has delivered devastating blows to Hamas: It has killed top Hamas leaders and thousands of militants, pummeled the militant group\u2019s tunnel network and undermined its ability to threaten Israel with rocket fire. When Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel, it had hoped to ignite a regional war [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/16\/multimedia\/16mideast-crisis-hamas-assess-vmwl\/16mideast-crisis-hamas-assess-vmwl-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7275,4427,43,32652,5552,27480,19606,1209,19637,8527,2974,66039],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216694,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216692\/revisions\/216694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}