Publish date30 Jan 2025 - 12:12
Story Code : 665863

Hamas: strategic political objective

By: Dr Haroon Aziz
The Al-Aqsa Flood of 7 October 2023 caught a highly militarized Israel by surprise. It was a nodal point in a 75-year history of resistance that uniquely interpenetrated the three phases of a people’s war (strategic defensive, strategic stalemate, strategic counter-offensive); the three organizational forms of armed forces (people’s militia, regional troops, regular troops); and the three fighting forms (guerilla warfare, mobile warfare, positional warfare).
Hamas: strategic political objective
Hamas: strategic political objective
By Dr Haroon Aziz, South Africa


‘The Israeli army failed in its mission to defend Israel.’
Resignation letter of IDF Commander-in-Chief Lt.Gen. Herzi Halevi
‘What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.’
Sun Tzu in ‘The Art of War’ (475-221 BCE)

A nodal point in history

The Al-Aqsa Flood of 7 October 2023 caught a highly militarized Israel by surprise. It was a nodal point in a 75-year history of resistance that uniquely interpenetrated the three phases of a people’s war (strategic defensive, strategic stalemate, strategic counter-offensive); the three organizational forms of armed forces (people’s militia, regional troops, regular troops); and the three fighting forms (guerilla warfare, mobile warfare, positional warfare).

Hamas created a new original model of people’s war and added a practical exegesis to literature on military theory and practice: The Art of War by Sun Tzu (China); On War by Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz (1832); and the modern military writings of Mao Zedong (China), Nguyen Van Giap (Vietnam), Che Guevara (Cuba), and Amilcar Cabral (Cape Verde Islands, Africa).  

Von Clausewitz denuded war of all its draping and emphasized the necessity of its strategic political objective.

Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, the militarist

Mr Netanyahu, the militarist, who has no legal command over IDF was shell-shocked by The Flood and reacted in a showmanship of anger – without a strategic political objective. This was the beginning of the defeat of IDF, which the Halevi epigram confirms.

The militarist went wild with irrationality and engaged not Hamas soldiers in armed combat – body-to-body – but in urbanicide warfare bombing buildings with the aim of genociding the mass support base of Hamas – the Gazans – over a prolonged period of 471 days.

Being without a politico-military strategy the militarist deployed ad hoc tactics, which led the soldiers into ambushes. This made the task of Hamas easier in very difficult war conditions. Hamas had an enemy, which lacked a strategic political objective, as postulated by the sagacious Sun Tzu.  

The Knesset faultline for genocide in Gaza

The Knesset is constructed on the false sub-historical assumption that it is a standalone institution of Western ‘democracy’ in Palestine that excludes the vast majority of Arabs and Christians in historical Palestine.

It uses the proportional representation (PR) electoral system, in which the strength of each faction in the Knesset matches their apparent popularity in Israel that includes coalition government. Lenin described coalition government as a bourgeois tactic to retain control of political power by the bourgeoisie.

Sub-historically, the Knesset had a single party majority only twice. For the rest, there have been antagonistic Zionist factions in coalition governments. This system gave rise to the unintended new phenomenon of the tyranny of majoritarian ‘democracy’, in which the executive prime minister becomes an all-powerful authoritarian leader or a ‘democratic’ dictator. Although the prime minister is not legally the commander-in-chief of the army and country but the prime minister can use executive political authority to manipulate the de jure commander-in-chief to bend to institutional political and economic will. This will of sub-imperialist Israel has created space for its militarism and genocide in Gaza as a means to overcome its systemic crisis of an artificial state.    

Hamas have their own strategic political objective

In contrast, Hamas have a strategic political objective of defeating the misanthropic political ideology of Zionism, which is physically embodied by IDF soldiers who at age 18 years become conscripted soldier-civilians like the White soldier-civilians were under Apartheid South Africa. Hamas remained cool and dictated the pace, place, time, terms, and conditions of the ensuing war. They held triumph without triumphalism in their gentle but firm hands. They acted with the en masse strength of the Gazans who are tissued with sumud (perseverance), patience, time, and truth. The Gazans were yet again to reconfirm their noble character and collective heroism as a regional ‘nation’ like a Bantustan under Apartheid South Africa.

Che Guevara and martyrdom

Che Guevara has written that incorrigible belief in a noble cause is a necessary (subjective) condition for victory. Before his execution in 1967, after his capture, he said to his Bolivian executioner, ‘We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it…Shoot, coward, you are only killing a man.’ What he powerfully left unsaid, ‘You are not killing an idea.’ (Victor Hugo – d.1885 - in his The Future of Man has written, ‘Not all the armies…is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.’)   
Hamas’s rigorous scientific planning of The Flood and its aftermath  

In the period 1-6 October 2023 the military leadership got into a constant session finalizing the time, place, pace, terms, conditions; the onerous taking of prisoners of war (POW) according to the Geneva Convention on POW (1929) though Hamas was not signatory to it; surveillance of the entire Gaza border; gathering objective information on the ground; monitoring Israeli officers (including the capture of Colonel Asaf Hamami); possible ambushes; deploying Yahya Sinwar to lead operations in Rafah and other areas; identifying key Israeli military sites such as ‘Yiftah’, Nahal Oz’, and ‘Kissufim’; coordinating and boosting the morale of the Al-Qassam Brigades fighters in fierce battles; filtering gathered information; holding the element of surprise beyond the ear of IDF; and converting reliable information to useable intelligence for a complex strategic attack. Long before the attack they indulged in a strategic deception of IDF, lulling them to believe that they would not respond to IDF provocation in Gaza and the West Bank.   

The secret Military Order of 5 October 2023

Mohammad Deif who was the overall commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades signed the secret Military Order on 5 October 2023, which specified the time of the attack as 6.30 AM on 7 October 2023.  

Addressing the operation commanders, he said, ‘We must change the course of history.’

Azeddine al-Haddad, a member of the Al-Qassam Brigades’ General Military Council and the commander of the Gaza Brigade foretold that the Israeli occupation with the support of the USA and the West would eventually have no choice but to comply with Hamas demands to halt the aggression and withdraw fully from Gaza. Prophetic, indeed!  

(Citation: Special Episode of ‘What is Hidden is Greater’: aired by Al-Jazeera Arabic Channel and republished by the Palestine Chronicle: January 24, 2025)

The historical context of the planning

The people’s war in Palestine was, generally, in the strategic defensive phase with a subtle stalemate but the planning shifted the phase to one of strategic counter-offensive with a measure of positional warfare combined with mobile warfare and urban guerilla warfare. They took the war of attrition to over-armed soldiers and the fearsome Merkava tanks under super-heavy bombing that miscreated a surreal landscape.

The creative interpenetration of the strategic phases, organizational forms, and fighting forms under the military pressures of fighting real time genocide against the all-powerful USA and Western armies through their surrogate IDF has made the Hamas politico-military model unique and original in the world history of warfare. It holds the essential lesson to fight for truth, justice, and freedom with belief, perseverance, patience, and focus.

The effective and efficient execution of the seminal Al-Aqsa Flood proved to be one of the most daring attacks not only in Palestinian but also in world military history.

Hamas: “Phoenix Gaza Action Initiative” for Governance

Yahya al-Sarraj, head of the Gaza Strip Municipalities Union launched the “Phoenix Gaza Action Initiative for the Reconstruction and Sustainable Development of Gaza”.

Its main goal is the recovery from post-war casualties, losses in infrastructure and services, and the development of human and social capacity. It aims to preserve the historical and cultural identity of Gaza through community participation. Its roadmap encompasses the concepts of reconstruction, economic development, and sustainable development.  

Its immediate priorities include formalizing displacement camps, repairing hospitals, clearing rubble, and restoring law and order.

Its long-term plan includes tourism, a green belt, and even Dubai-style artificial islands. It includes the underground inter-city transportation network.

The public works begin

The Gaza City municipality has begun preparing twenty sites in its vicinity for temporary shelters like tents and caravans, of which one has already been set up on 23 January 2025. The sites were chosen because of their close proximity to medical facilities and the relatively low levels of groundwater pollution. More than 95% of Gaza groundwater contains levels of nitrates, which WHO considers as unsafe.

Gaza has 100000 meters of destroyed pipes. About 70% of water sent through them is lost to leakage. Israel has denied the entry of metal pipes, heavy machinery, generators, solar panels, building materials, timber, and tent poles into Gaza.

Israel has either destroyed or rendered Kamal Adwan Hospital, Beit Hanoun Hospital, Indonesian Hospital, and Sheikh Hamad Hospital out of service in North Gaza. There is only one functioning hospital in North Gaza. WHO has reported that 18 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are out of service. With the return of about 1-million displaced people from the south to the north – over a distance of 10-40km – there will be a super-surge in demand for medical care. There are no intensive care units, oxygen units, and incubator beds after the destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital. Four generators and two oxygen units at the Indonesian Hospital were destroyed. It will take months for schools to be reopened. Even some damaged schools are being used as shelters. About 88% of schools have been damaged. In North Gaza 100% of the schools have been damaged. Children are being enrolled in tent schools. One parachute that dropped aid is being used as a tent school. Its founder Abu Riziq, a teacher, has expanded it into five schools providing education and psychological support to 2000 children aged five to 14.
Import restrictions are still enforced by Israel.

By other means

The Extraordinary Arab and Islamic Summit in Riyadh on 11 November 2024 accepted the proposed coordination of Hamas, Fatah, and Palestinian factions acting in unison for the consensus-based governance challenges in the post-war period.
 
Osama Hamdan of Hamas politburo said, ‘We want a national consensus government to be the gateway to managing Palestine affairs in this transitional phase until the Palestinian people decide to choose their leadership.’

Citations:

The Hamas-backed plan for Gaza’s future: Ben v.d. Merwe & Keith Tosh: Sky News: 24 January 2025  
Gaza reconstruction initiative announced: Azon Global: 23 January 2025

PA Pledges Reconstruction Efforts in Gaza as Local Authorities Prepare for Governance: Palestine Chronicle: January 20, 2025

Hamas seeks formation of ‘national consensus government’ in Gaza: Hamdan: Press TV: January 7, 2025

Postamble: The strategic political objective continues
With the downfall of the Syrian government USA imperialism has incorrectly assumed that Russia and Iran have been irreparably weakened in the Middle East or West Asia and this has created fresh space for it to reassert its hegemony through Arab collaborators. It misperceives Russia-Iran strategic unity in their physicality and not in their ideology, which is inherently anti-imperialist. Hamas has proven itself as a critical ideological force of decoloniality and of the Global South or Global Majority and as a mobilizing force for international solidarity against declining imperialism, propped up by paper money. The cost of maintaining Zionism as a killing toy is a burden too much on the USA taxpayers. Imperialism will sooner or later discard its toy as it builds its economic relationships with its sub-imperialist Arab collaborators.
 
To mobilize them into a new ‘credible’ power it needs a renewed enemy, which it has identified as Russia/Iran that is extendable to eastern Europe where NATO, after its humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, operates over-stretched, economically and militarily.

Imperialism and Big Oil are symbiotic in their interests in the Middle East and eastern Europe while facing a formidable China in the South China Seas and Russia in the Arctic region.

Hamas strategic political objective as a tested vital force is tissued in decoloniality and the Global South.
28 January 2025
https://taghribnews.com/vdcd9k09syt09j6.em2y.html