Hamas Leader Claims It Will ‘Determine the Outcome of the Next Campaign’

Hamas has often claimed, after its various conflicts with Israel, that it has emerged victorious, a belief that few outside Hamas appear to share. It even claims to have won the war last May, when in eleven days the IDF pummeled Hamas in Gaza. It destroyed large numbers of stockpiled rockets and missiles, razed command-and-control centers, collapsed most of a network of tunnels, and killed 200 Hamas fighters. Meanwhile, in that Operation Guardian of the Walls, exactly one Israeli soldier was killed.

Now Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, has said that his terror group, and not Israel, would “control the outcome of the next campaign.”

A report on his hallucinatory claim is here: “Haniyeh: Hamas will determine outcome of next war,” by Dana Ben-Shimon, Israel Hayom, April 21, 2022:

One day after rockets were fired at the southern Israeli city of Sderot from the Gaza Strip, Tuesday [April 19] Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Israel no longer controlled the equation of deterrence and that Hamas would be the one to determine the outcome of the next campaign.

Just as we defeated the flag march [in Jerusalem], so too will we defeat the policy of breaking into Al-Aqsa [Mosque], and we are still at the outset of the campaign. If the occupation thinks invading Al-Aqsa will change the Islamic character of the mosque, they are wrong,” Haniyeh said.

It was not Hamas that “defeated the flag march,” but the Israeli government, which did not ban the march outright, but changed its route, in order to avoid a confrontation between Jews and Muslims. Organizers of the event originally planned to enter the Old City through the Damascus Gate directly into the Muslim Quarter, and then to continue through there to the Western Wall.

Had they been successful, the marchers would have been met head-on by crowds of Muslim worshipers, packed into the Old City in the immediate hours before breaking the Ramadan fast.

With a minimal but growing presence, the Israel Police successfully contained the protest by blocking the road from Tzahal Square to Damascus Gate. The marchers were offered an alternative route, allowing them to enter by the Jaffa Gate that would lead them straight into the Jewish Quarter, but the march leaders rejected the offer. Hamas had nothing to do with the police decision to re-route the march, but that hasn’t stopped Ismail Haniyeh from insisting that his terror group had managed to “stop the march.”

Another senior Hamas official said the Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip Wednesday night [April 20] would not impact the will and determination of the Palestinian people. He emphasized the “resistance” would continue to defend Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa, and the Islamic holy sites.

He went on to say that there would be no return to the equations of deterrence imposed by the Israel Defense Forces’ Operation Guardian of the Walls in Gaza in May [2021].

It’s unclear what this Hamas official means, but at least he has admitted that the Operation Guardian of the Walls by the IDF did manage to deter Hamas for almost a year after that conflict ended. He may mean that Hamas will now attack Israel no matter what the consequences; Israel, he claims, no longer has the power to deter. Is this true? After two rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, with both falling harmlessly, the IDF launched two attacks on the central Gaza Strip, with its fighter jets destroying an underground complex used by Hamas to produce rocket engines. Those first rocket attacks were likely not launched by Hamas, but Israel has made clear that it will hold Hamas responsible for all attacks coming from Gaza, no matter what group was actually involved. Then three more rockets, this time identified by Israel as coming from Hamas, were launched at the Jewish state on April 22.

This time Israel tried another tack. It shut down the border between Gaza and Israel, preventing 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza from reaching their jobs in Israel. The border shutdown will have grave consequences for the Gazan economy, where the unemployment rate is more than 50%. Those 20,000 jobs paid much better than jobs in Gaza, and helped support whole networks of extended families. The Palestinians are already complaining about that shutdown, as if Israel has some kind of duty to employ them, even when rockets are launched from Gaza to kill Israelis. A month of this border shutdown, and one can predict that there will be no more rockets launched from Gaza. The deterrence that Ismail Haniyeh claims no longer limits Hamas will turn out to work just fine.

“The resistance forced Israel to change the framework of the radical settlers’ march and prevent sacrifices from being made inside Al-Aqsa,” he said.

The Israeli government, not the Palestinian “resistance,” decided – it was not “forced” by Hamas – that at this time of tension in Jerusalem, it made sense to reroute, not cancel, the march.

As for the attempt by a group of religious Jews to try to have a ritual sacrifice of a lamb carried out on Temple Mount, this year as for the past 54 years, the Israeli government prevented such a ritual from being carried out. Hamas did not prevent it, as Haniyeh claims; the Israelis themselves have done so for 55 years, ever since they took possession of the Temple Mount.. And they will continue to keep that ritual sacrifice from taking place.

The shutdown at the border will keep Hamas, despite its bluster, from re-starting hostilities with the IDF. Eventually, when the calm from Gaza has been definitively reestablished, Israel will decide to reopen the border. Hamas will have learned its lesson. Its cupboard is bare. The Gazans desperately need those 20,000 jobs in Israel. Hamas can run off at the mouth all it wants, but in the end, Israel will still call the shots.