Just like well-run institutions – governmental or nongovernmental – that submit periodic reports on their activities and performance, Hamas has just published an assessment of its October 7 attack and the aftermath up to the cease-fire that was sealed two years later.
Like such institutions, Hamas is presumably thinking about the stakeholders who will read its report. In the document released Wednesday – 36 pages in Arabic, 42 in English – it's clear that the people of the Gaza Strip aren't among the stakeholders. They can't be partners to the picture of achievements and resilience described in the text.
In conversations with friends and family, but not for publication or discussion with the Israeli media, even loyal Hamas supporters in the enclave have questions about the attack and the considerations behind it. They aren't getting answers.
Those who aren't supporters of Hamas in Gaza, people who demand that Hamas take stock of itself, won't find a hint of this in the text. They'll find "disdain for their blood and suffering … a blatant ignoring of reality, an attempt to convince people that the biggest tragedy in the modern history of Palestine and Gaza was a 'national necessity' and a historic achievement," as one Gazan who remained in the Strip wrote.
A woman who left the enclave at the beginning of the war and has read Hamas' document concludes from it that "these people will never admit their fatal mistakes and will never feel the suffering and tragedies of our people, since they are insensitive and have no conscience."
These two writers were never supporters of the rival organization, Fatah, and cannot be suspected of being pro-Israel. Both of them – like all Palestinians and not only them – will gladly sign the report's main framing of the history of the conflict: Zionism as a colonialist-settler movement, with Israel as a dispossessing and expelling entity by nature. Not for a moment do they forget that Israel chose, as a policy, to kill their relatives, friends and neighbors while destroying their homes and all of Gaza.
But they are also among the not-so-few people in Gaza demanding that Hamas take some responsibility and not just bask on its self-congratulatory laurels for the "glorious crossing" of the border, and for October 7's 20 "most prominent achievements" (meaning that there are more), as noted in the report. Among the achievements listed are the isolation of Israel, its internal disintegration and the sabotaging of the normalization process with Arab countries.
Anyone looking for critical voices such as the ones above can find them, but they aren't the dominant voices, and they certainly don't get the place they deserve in reports by key Arab media outlets such as Al Jazeera.
Unlike the Gazans mentioned above who called Hamas' statements "delusions," others are likely to be impressed by the alternate reality that emerges from the organization's report, which is titled "Our Narrative: Al Aqsa Flood: Two years of Steadfastness and the Will for Liberation."
With its document, Hamas is targeting Palestinians in the diaspora; the Ummah (the Muslim world), a term repeated several times in the report; Palestinians in the West Bank; and the large solidarity movement supporting Palestine and Gaza, which is mentioned as one of the achievements. These communities remind us that Hamas' rule in Gaza is perceived as a jumping-off point. The group still strives to be in a position where it can lead the entire Palestinian nation as a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which needs to be revamped after being totally emptied of content by the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas.
But Hamas doesn't intend to wait until all this is achieved. It's building its strength in places where this is possible. The ostensible success of the armed struggle is a tool for building this strength.
"The armed struggle," as a mirror image of the glorification of official armies in regular states, remains a seminal ethos and vital component in the construction of political power in organizations that covet such power. This was true for the Palestinians and other nations in other periods. Since the Ummah is an important addressee, the text gently links this ethos to Islam. Anyone not listening to the voices of criticism and rage in Gaza might be impressed by the report's praise for the use of arms, while ignoring the report's falsehoods and contradictions.
In continuing the long tradition of exaggerating the number of dead Israelis in military clashes with Hamas, the authors claim that 5,942 Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza. This number is attributed to IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir.
Overall, according to "medical reports" quoted in the text, Israel suffered 13,000 fatalities on all fronts (Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza). The report is also mendacious regarding Gaza's social cohesiveness. Under the shadow of incessant bombing, the uprooting from homes, impoverishment and death, Gaza's society experienced unsurprising phenomena of internal disintegration, the exploiting of weakness, and war profiteering in despairing dimensions.
The text also lies when it praises the refusal of Gazans to surrender to attempts by Israel to expel them. People simply couldn't leave. People who could leave left the enclave and many still fantasize about leaving. These facts are incompatible with the narrative.
One explanation by the report's authors for choosing armed struggle notes a fact: Israel sabotaged the implementation of the Oslo Accords by continuing to build settlements. Conveniently, the authors fail to mention that in the '90s, Hamas was just as determined to sabotage the accords and Yasser Arafat's path as it did in a series of suicide bombings.
The authors note October 7 as a chapter in the history of the armed struggle, but forget to examine the results of earlier chapters that failed to stop Israel's takeover of land, as Israel did the opposite. The suicide bombings in the '90s were used by Israel as an explanation or pretext for halting the transfer of territory in Area C of the West Bank to the Palestinians.
The attacks in the first decade of the century led to the building of the separation barrier and the final severing of Gaza from the West Bank. In the second decade, Hamas and Islamic Jihad didn't even try to repel the growing violence by settlers in the West Bank and the expanding settlements.
Is the objective of Hamas – which declares that it's impossible to isolate it and make it disappear – to liberate all of Palestine, or to obtain a Palestinian state alongside Israel? As in the messages it has been sending almost since its establishment in 1987, the current message is ambiguous and confusing.
In the report, the prevailing tone is for the liberation of all of Palestine. In a historical review starting in 1948 and even earlier, it says that "the Zionist project ... has not realized that its fate will be like that of every wave of invasion that has targeted our blessed, holy land throughout history: it will either be expelled from it or buried within it."
On the other hand, it notes as an achievement the increasing number of countries that have recognized the "State of Palestine" within the 1967 borders. The document states what needs to be done to stop "Judaization" in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem, but doesn't refer to what is happening inside Israel itself. In a sentence typical in its vagueness, the report describes a vision of freedom, liberation of the land, including the holy city of Jerusalem, and the "establishment of our state."
The report isn't needed for indirect or direct negotiations with Israel. The self-assurance it exudes – whether real or false – confirms what it says: Hamas isn't preparing to leave the stage.
