One Friday evening, nearly a year ago, I was up late, aimlessly toggling between headlines. As Friday night slipped into Saturday morning, disturbing photos and videos began to percolate into my feed. Limp bodies lying in pools of blood beside bus stops and cars. I started to see rumors that Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization based in the Gaza Strip, had infiltrated into southern Israel.
As the hours wore on, the horrifying picture out of Israel became clearer and a few realities set in. First, this was an assault unprecedented in both scale and depravity. Second, because of the nature of the attack, Israel’s military response would be extraordinarily severe.
Hamas and its allies murdered around 1,200 Israelis and internationals on October 7, 2023. Others would later be killed in captivity. A year out, 101 hostages remain unaccounted for in Gaza—many are feared dead. Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed roughly 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza—including thousands of Hamas militants.
There is a legitimate debate regarding a ceasefire: Will it end the bloodshed and provide much-needed relief to the besieged Gaza Strip and Israelis living under the specter of Hamas rockets? Or will it simply prolong an inevitable return to hostilities? Likewise, there are genuine questions as to whether continuing the war against Hamas is inimical to the goal of returning the remaining hostages alive.
But there is another way the war could end, even though it isn’t discussed as often: Hamas could surrender.
Hamas’s base in Gaza is physically ruined. Though it can still harass Israel, its warfighting capabilities are significantly diminished. After the initial Palestinian incursion into Israel, the war has been fought entirely on Hamas’s own turf in Gaza. Put simply: Hamas cannot win militarily.
Yet Hamas almost certainly won’t wave the white flag. And how the Islamist movement governs the Gaza Strip tells us a lot about why that is.
Not Just Terrorists
To state the obvious: Hamas is a terrorist organization. But it isn’t just a terrorist organization. In Gaza, the group also runs a fairly sophisticated regime.
When Hamas seized the coastal enclave from its rival Fatah in 2007, it inherited the organs of government left behind by the Palestinian Authority. While some services are outsourced to United Nations agencies and aid organizations, Hamas operates several ministries in Gaza with portfolios like health, social affairs, and education.
What kind of government does Hamas run? Unsurprisingly, an undemocratic one. Hamas’s Gaza statelet is cast in the same mold as its sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hamas received a plurality of the vote in the last Palestinian legislative election in 2006, but it has no mandate to run the Gaza Strip as its own private militarized fiefdom.
The group and its leaders have not faced an election in nearly two decades. In its most recent profile of the Gaza Strip, Freedom House reported that the Hamas authorities “intimidated, detained, or abused individuals in response to their social media activity or attendance at political events” and “significantly restricted freedom of assembly, with security forces violently dispersing unapproved public gatherings.” What passes for Gaza’s judiciary and law enforcement are subject to the control of a single-party state.
Of course, the Israeli military campaign following October 7 has completely upended life in Gaza. But even after a year of extremely destructive fighting, elements of Hamas’s administrative apparatus are still functioning. Now, the fact that Hamas oversees an authoritarian regime informs the outlook for war and peace in Gaza.
How Wars End for Dictators
The Hamas statelet in Gaza is run by Yahya Sinwar, and his regime is a dictatorship. What does that mean for the war’s trajectory?
There’s a wealth of political science literature about how dictators start wars. Democratic peace theory holds that democracies tend not to start wars with one another. Research shows that dictatorships are prone to start more perilous wars than their democratic counterparts for a variety of reasons, ranging from insular information ecosystems to differences in risk tolerance. In the case of Hamas, there is also a fanatical ideology.
Unsuccessful wars are more catastrophic for authoritarian states. The system often cannot absorb the shock of defeat. Compare this with a democratic system, which persists because disgruntled citizens can eventually replace the incumbent party or leader in a free and fair election. Americans did this in 2008, choosing Democrat Barack Obama in part due to frustration after five years of war in Iraq under a Republican administration. In Israel, Prime Minister Golda Meir lost her parliamentary majority following the Yom Kippur War and subsequently resigned in disgrace.
This kind of transition isn’t possible when the party or leader is the state. Every policy and action becomes a referendum on the system. Not every defeated dictator is toppled. But such governments and leaders often need to unleash considerable violence against their subjects in order to stay afloat after a defeat, as Saddam Hussein did following the Iran-Iraq War and Operation Desert Storm.
Many dictators who fail to win wars don’t just lose on the battlefield, they lose everything. Tsarist Russia’s failures in World War I sped up the onset of revolution. The communist regime created in that revolution collapsed in turn seventy-five years later, a development accelerated by the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. The juntas in Argentina and Greece fell from power after disastrous military adventures in the Falkland Islands and Cyprus, respectively.
Hamas’s Deadly Gamble
Palestinians in Gaza cannot organize a commission of inquiry to scrutinize Sinwar’s actions, nor vote for a leader who would terminate Iran’s parasitic involvement in their politics. In signing off on the October 7 operation, Sinwar gambled not only the success of the attack but also the viability of Hamas’s quasi-state in Gaza, to say nothing of his own life.
On the Israeli side, there is significant speculation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal interests inform his strategic calculus in Gaza and Lebanon. Like Golda Meir before him, the prime minister will face scrutiny when the war is over for the security failures that opened Israel up to attack. He could even wind up behind bars over unrelated corruption charges.
Yet whatever discomfort and ignominy Netanyahu faces in his postwar career, it is vastly preferable to Sinwar’s lot. Netanyahu will still be protected by the rule of law (ironically enough, since he has tried to weaken it).
As the conflict drags on, it is increasingly unlikely that Sinwar will make it out alive, whether he is killed by Israeli forces or taken out by one of his compatriots. Others among Hamas’s top brass likely fear a similar fate. There are few other off-ramps for a defeated leader who cannot be replaced at the ballot box. The only alternative for the wartime dictator is to keep fighting, consequences be damned.
Evan Gottesman is chief of staff at the Renew Democracy Initiative.
