The brief weekend conflict over Gaza had a starkly familiar result: dozens of Palestinians were killed, militant leaders as well as children, and dozens of homes damaged or destroyed, most by Israeli airstrikes, but some by Palestinian misfires.
But one thing was different from the usual fighting: Hamas, the de facto civilian government in Gaza, remained on the sidelines. A smaller Islamist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, took the lead in firing rockets — more than 1,000 of them — and was hit hardest by Israeli airstrikes, which began Friday in anticipation of what Israel says is an imminent attack by Islamic Jihad.
While not unprecedented, Hamas’ decision confirmed the complex and evolving role the movement has taken since taking control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. It also exposed the frictions between Palestinian Islamist militants over how best to fight Israel, and highlighted both the influence of Iran – which supports both Hamas and Islamic Jihad – and the limits of that support.
Hamas is still a military force that opposes Israel’s existence, and is considered a terrorist group by Israel and the United States. But unlike Islamic Jihad, it is also a ruling government and a social movement. While authoritarian, Hamas is sensitive to public opinion in the enclave and must also deal, albeit indirectly, with Israel over the most restrictive aspects of a 15-year Israeli-Egyptian blockade enforced after the group came to power and life has decimated conditions in Gaza.
By holding fire this weekend, Hamas showed sensitivity to Palestinian fatigue at the prospect of another confrontation with Israel, at least the sixth during Hamas’s tenure. It also suggested that Hamas was wary of losing several small but important economic measures that Israel has offered to Gaza since the last major showdown in May 2021, including 14,000 Israeli work permits that boosted the strip’s economy.
In a briefing to reporters on Monday, a senior Israeli official, who spoke anonymously to discuss the issue more freely, said Israel’s policy of offering more work permits over the past year had played an important role in keeping Hamas away from this round of to fight. The official said this would encourage Israel to step up its approach in the future.
While no one expects the fundamental dynamics in Gaza to change, let alone the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some analysts, diplomats and officials hope the perceived success of this trade-off will encourage Israel to ease more restrictions in the future, allowing the risk of violence.
“Hamas doesn’t want war right now,” said Hugh Lovatt, an expert on Palestinian politics at the European Council on Foreign Relations research group. “A more pragmatic relationship has developed between Hamas and Israel. To some extent it can be mutual.”
Publicly, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have expressed their solidarity during and after the weekend conflict, pledging to join forces again in the future, just as they did during previous rounds of fighting in 2008, 2014 and 2021.
In essence, both groups share a similar goal and ideology. Rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood, the global Islamist movement, they seek an end to Israel and its replacement with an Islamic Palestinian state.
Muhammad al-Hindi, an Islamic Jihad official, told a Turkish broadcaster on Sunday that there was no rift between the two groups. “Our relationship with Hamas has grown stronger and closer,” said Mr al-Hindi. “We have fought together and we will fight together.”
In a statement posted on its website on Saturday, Hamas said it remained “united” with Islamic Jihad, adding that “fighters of all factions are coping with this aggression as one”.
But the differing behavior of the two groups during the conflict reflects their different current priorities and historical backstories.
Founded more than four decades ago, Islamic Jihad is older, smaller, and mostly engaged in violent opposition to Israel. In fact, it has little interest in participating in Palestinian political structures.
Hamas, founded in 1987, is relatively more pragmatic – a social and political movement as well as a militant one.
It opposed efforts by the Palestine Liberation Organization, the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinians, to reach a peace agreement with Israel in the 1990s, and mounted a deadly terrorism campaign to derail that process.
But Hamas nevertheless takes part in Palestinian elections, winning the last parliamentary election, in 2006. It operated within unity governments in the Palestinian Authority, even after it wrested Gaza from the authority’s control. And in recent years, it has expressed its willingness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel while not recognizing its legitimacy.
“Ideologically they are not much different – they both believe that Israel has no right to exist in Palestine,” said Azzam Tamimi, an expert on political Islam and an academic associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. “But Hamas sees itself as a leader of society, not just a resistance movement.”
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad receive financial and logistical support from Iran. But their differing approaches in recent days show how Islamic Jihad — whose leader, Ziad al-Nakhala, visited Tehran during the conflict — is more susceptible to Iranian influence than Hamas.
During the Syrian civil war, Islamic Jihad has never broken with Iran’s closest ally, Syria, despite the Syrian government’s war against rebels who, like Islamic Jihad and Hamas, were Sunni Islamists. Hamas, however, severed ties with Damascus ten years ago, out of solidarity with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and only recently reinstated them.
“Islamic Jihad decided from the beginning that the Iranian revolution was a model, a kind of beacon,” said Mr. Tamimi. Hamas, he added, “has always insisted that relations with Iran should be based on cooperation not bound by any obligations.”
Islamic Jihad’s struggle with Israel could bolster its popularity among some Palestinians, but previous polls suggest it could have the opposite effect in Gaza itself — especially after some of the group’s missiles appeared to explode. misfire and fell on civilian areas in the strip, seemed to show video. After a similar round of fighting in 2019, in which Hamas also stayed out of the fray, nearly half of Gazans thought Hamas was right to do so, and only a third disagreed.
Some Israelis hope that Hamas, which is trying to maintain favor in Gaza, will continue to stay out of future conflicts if given more economic incentives to do so.
“I want to speak directly to the residents of the Gaza Strip and tell them there is another way,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a speech Monday night. “We know how to protect ourselves from anyone who threatens us, but we also know how to provide employment, an income and a life of dignity for those who want to live in peace by our side.”
Yonatan Touval, an analyst with Mitvim, an Israeli research group, said the situation even presented “an opportunity to promote far-reaching settlements between the two sides — primarily those related to the reconstruction of Gaza.”
But few expect that small economic gestures will fundamentally change Hamas’s broader view, especially as long as the blockade remains in place. Israel’s grant of 14,000 work permits has increased the incomes of thousands of families, but does not change the lives of the majority. In the overcrowded enclave of 2 million people, nearly half of working-age adults are unemployed and only one in 10 Gazans has access to clean water.
“In the absence of a more sustainable long-term political vision for Gaza,” said analyst Mr Lovatt, “the ceasefire agreement with Israel will eventually reach the limits of what it can offer Gaza and Hamas.”
Isabel Kershner and Hiba Yazbek reporting contributed.