By Qamar Bashir
On October 7, 2023, I warned in my first article that the Hamas attack on Israel—both brutal and calculated—would trigger a retaliation that would be overwhelming, unrelenting, and catastrophic for the people of Gaza. That grim prophecy has become reality. What followed was not just another military operation—it was a campaign of sustained annihilation, carried out by one of the most sophisticated military powers in the world, backed fully by the might of the United States. Israel, with access to the world’s most advanced drones, artificial intelligence-driven surveillance, satellite imagery, cyber-intelligence, and real-time data support from Washington, unleashed hell upon Gaza. By the end of 2024, over 39,000 Palestinians were reported dead, nearly 70% of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
And yet, despite this two-year-long war, a paradox stands tall and unshaken: Why has Israel still failed to defeat Hamas? This is not a rhetorical inquiry, nor a philosophical one—it is a fundamental question that casts doubt on the stated goals of the war. A movement so heavily besieged, cut off from food, water, electricity, and fuel, its leadership hunted down by Israeli precision strikes, somehow continues to function. Hamas still negotiates. It still holds hostages. It still strikes military targets. In a region under total aerial surveillance and technological lockdown, this endurance defies not just military expectations but the very laws of modern warfare.
One explanation is that Hamas may, in fact, have already been dismantled as a conventional military force, but Israel continues the war to fulfill deeper, unspoken objectives. This would suggest that the real aim is not security, but territorial transformation. The idea of a “Greater Israel,” whispered in ultra-nationalist circles and championed by some in the ruling coalition, involves permanently erasing Palestinian political claims and turning temporary occupation into irreversible annexation. Israeli policy analyst Gideon Levy warned in Haaretz in early 2025 that “the war is no longer about eliminating Hamas; it is about eliminating Palestinian geography.” In this scenario, Hamas served as the pretext, but the end goal is demographic—evacuation, resettlement, and colonization under the guise of national defense.
Still, another possibility may be more unsettling: that Hamas was never fully eliminated and has instead adapted, evolved, and outmaneuvered Israel’s conventional military superiority. Hamas now operates more like a decentralized resistance force—cell-based, secretive, and ideologically driven.
Leaders are replaced seamlessly. Communications may be carried out using human couriers and analog systems. Even more confounding to Israel’s war planners is how Hamas continues to replenish weapons and munitions. U.N. reports have frequently documented suspicions of illicit supply lines through southern Gaza tunnels and across the Sinai desert. Reuters, in a 2025 exposé, cited Egyptian intelligence sources admitting that “some border guards have been compromised, and material support slips through in exchange for bribes.” Black-market suppliers, cryptocurrency transactions, and even 3D-printed drone parts have all been speculated as sources.
But supply alone does not explain resilience. The human intelligence network within Gaza—its people—plays a crucial role. Entire neighborhoods have become extensions of Hamas’s operational framework. Fighters blend into the civilian population, and Israeli surveillance struggles to differentiate between a doctor and a militant. When hospitals are struck and schools are bombed, Hamas does not wither; it gains sympathy and ideological power. In a 2024 speech, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh declared, “Each Israeli missile builds another brick in the wall of resistance.” Whether one sees this as propaganda or strategic truth, the reality is clear: Hamas survives not just through weapons, but through narrative strength.
A third explanation, far less discussed but gaining traction among international observers, is that neither Israel nor Hamas seeks total victory. The war may now serve as a kind of controlled chaos—a strategic stalemate that benefits both power structures. For Israel, the ongoing conflict ensures domestic political unity in the face of deep internal fractures. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government, under pressure from both moderate centrists and radical settlers, uses the war as a shield to deflect judicial corruption charges, economic decline, and growing anti-war protests within Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Hamas uses the war to maintain its symbolic leadership over the Palestinian resistance, sidelining rivals like Fatah and presenting itself as the only credible voice of defiance.
This cynical arrangement creates a spectacle of endless suffering—where each side performs its role to keep its base intact. In this brutal theater, the people of Gaza are reduced to pawns. Ceasefires are negotiated only to be broken. Aid convoys are discussed only to be delayed. Civilians die in the thousands, while leaders speak in abstractions of deterrence, legitimacy, and survival. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both described this war as a “calibrated humanitarian disaster”—a term which, chillingly, suggests calculation, not chaos.
So where does this leave us? After two years of war, the world must confront the possibility that the war is no longer about defeating Hamas—it may never have been. Instead, it may be about redefining the borders of morality and sovereignty, about how far a state can go when backed unconditionally by the world’s superpower. The real failure, then, may not be military—it may be ethical. Israel’s inability or unwillingness to end the war reveals more about its strategic ambitions than about Hamas’s operational capacity.
In 2025, The Guardian published an op-ed noting, “Israel has won every battle but lost the war for legitimacy.” That legitimacy is eroding faster than bombs can fall. From campus protests in the U.S. to international court cases at The Hague, Israel is losing ground where it matters most: in the court of global conscience.
History may not remember who won the last airstrike, or who negotiated the next ceasefire. But it will remember that a nation with unmatched power failed to silence a besieged resistance—and in doing so, may have exposed the limits of violence as a strategy. If Hamas still exists, what sustains it? If it no longer does, then why is Gaza still being reduced to rubble?
Perhaps the most disturbing answer is that Israel does not want peace—at least not yet. And in that delay, the West becomes not just an enabler, but an accomplice. Victory has been replaced by vengeance. Strategy has been eclipsed by spectacle. And the end, if it ever comes, will not be a declaration of peace—but a realization of what was lost when war became a permanent state of being.
By Qamar Bashir
Press Secretary to the President (Rtd)
Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France
Former MD, SRBC | Macomb, Michigan, USA
