Exclusive: Hamas Official Counts Key Wins in War with Israel One Year Later

In an interview with Newsweek, a senior Hamas official has shared his evaluation of the state of the Palestinian Islamist movement’s war with Israel one year on, counting a series of strategic, tactical and political victories amplified by an intensification of attacks conducted by an Iran-aligned coalition across the region.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas led an unprecedented attack known as “the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood” from the Gaza Strip against Israel in which Israeli officials estimate around 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and about 250 more abducted. The following day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced “Operation Swords of Iron” as a declaration of all-out war against Hamas.

The ensuing conflict has emerged as the longest and deadliest of its kind. As of one year later, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has counted the deaths of more than 42,600 people in the Hamas-led territory, the majority of them women and children, while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reports 350 of its soldiers have been killed and around 100 hostages remain captive in Gaza.

While the IDF has taken control of large parts of Gaza and claimed to have killed up to 17,000 enemy combatants, including much of the group’s top leadership, Hamas and other Palestinian factions continue to announce new operations against Israeli forces and Israeli cities. Meanwhile, Iran-aligned Axis of Resistance militias active in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen have stepped up attacks against Israel, with Tehran itself launching a second, largest-ever barrage of missiles last week.

In the midst of the ongoing violence and chaos, Hamas Political Bureau member and spokesperson Bassem Naim argued that insecurity would continue to plague the Middle East and beyond until the group’s goals tied to a long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict were met.

“The message of the operation from the beginning was clear,” Naim told Newsweek, “that no one in the region or outside the region will enjoy security, stability or prosperity as long as the Palestinian people have not obtained their rights to freedom, dignity, independence, the right to self-determination and the return of refugees.”

The roots of the conflict could be traced back to decades of competing territorial claims between Israelis and Palestinians since the United Kingdom first abandoned its colonial Mandate of Palestine in 1948. The newly formed State of Israel would immediately go on to clash with Arab nations in the first of four wars that erupted throughout the remainder of the century, while facing persistent Palestinian insurgency.

A series of 1990s peace agreements known as the Oslo Accords granted limited self-rule to Palestinians but ultimately failed to achieve a two-state solution and resolve the underlying conflict.

Hamas, formed in the 1980s as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, opposed peace deals with Israel. Hamas’ popularity gradually began to eclipse that of the traditionally dominant left-wing Fatah and inter-Palestinian clashes following a 2006 election victory saw Hamas take over Gaza in 2007, just two years after Israel ended a lengthy military occupation of the territory, where a new series of wars and clashes throughout the following years only further fueled tensions.

Since the outbreak of the current conflict, Netanyahu has declared four wartime goals. They include neutralizing Hamas as a military and political organization, rendering Gaza incapable of posing a threat to Israel in the future, recovering all hostages still held in Gaza and returning civilians to communities affected by the conflict in the north and the south.

IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani recounted to Newsweek Israel’s progress thus far on these goals, saying, “We are on our way, there’s still a way to go.”

He said that Hamas, despite its losses, managed to conduct another major rocket attack from Gaza on the anniversary of the conflict targeting Tel Aviv. He also pointed out that 101 hostages remain in Gaza and that, while some Israelis have returned to the southern communities surrounding Gaza, the north remains largely evacuated due to intensified fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah.

“There’s more work to be done. So, we see progress, but these terror armies around us have been preparing for a war with us for decades, 20 years, you can say even more,” Shoshani said. “So, it’s something that takes time to deal with and fight, even if there is progress.”

Naim, for his part, referred Netanyahu’s three goals as “destroying the resistance, especially Hamas, displacing the Palestinian population from the Gaza Strip, and recovering the prisoners inside the Strip.” He felt that “any observer and follower of this battle after a year will find that Israel has failed to achieve any of these three goals.”

As for eliminating Hamas, he argued that Israel “may have been able to kill thousands and destroy homes, schools, mosques, churches, and destroy the water, communications, electricity, and other infrastructure and networks, but it was not able to defeat the resistance.”

Naim further argued that the lingering presence of Palestinians in battle-ravaged Gaza, which had a prewar population of around 2.2 million people, stood as a testament to defying Israeli aims. On the hostages, he argued that the IDF may have been able to rescue several since the last major swap conducted last November, but dozens more were killed due to Israeli airstrikes and ground raids.

Reached for comment, the IDF referred Newsweek to the Israeli military’s official report outlining the events of what it refers to as the “October 7 massacre” or “Black Saturday,” including a detailed retelling of “numerous violations of international law and the rules of war.”

“In response to the unprecedented attack by Hamas, the IDF has been operating for the past year against terror threats posed on Israeli civilians,” the IDF report said. “The IDF will continue operating until the security of Israeli civilians is ensured.”

The IDF has also accused Hamas of using human shields and committing other violations throughout the conflict, while the group has argued that Israel intentionally targets civilians and civilian infrastructure. The two parties deny the other’s claims while leaders on both sides face investigation for suspected war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Naim said that the ICC investigation into Israel, along with a separate probe being carried out by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), highlighted another major setback for Israel, “as the narrative that Israel has woven over 70 years of occupation and conflict has been destroyed or received devastating blows, as millions of people around the world today know exactly why this is happening on the ground.”

“And they are no longer fooled by the story that Israel is the most civilized state in the region, the state that represents the West, that respects human rights values, the democratic state, etc.,” he added.

Also, “more importantly,” Naim said, such investigations have “made it impossible for them to integrate into the region and continue the normalization project based on the Abraham Accords,” the series of U.S.-backed agreements launched in 2020 that saw Israel establish diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Today, he argued, “if this project has not stopped, at least this project has been delayed for many years.”

Before the outbreak of the war, Israel had been in discussions for securing a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia. But Riyadh has argued that such a move would be dependent on Israel accepting a two-state solution while at the same time opening the door for closer ties with Tehran following their resumption of relations in March 2023.

Naim viewed the disruption of the Abraham Accords as an especially vital development as he argued that, “as for the Hamas movement, when it launched this operation, it saw that the Palestinian issue was at stake and that the Palestinian issue was being planned in cooperation with international parties, especially the United States of America, to be completely erased.”

He claimed this was being carried out through Israeli plans for expanding control over the West Bank toward eventual annexation as well as further entrenching Israel’s authority in the disputed holy city of Jerusalem, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Access to worship at the sacred compound has long proved a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and growing settler activity elsewhere in the West Bank has reduced the mobility of Palestinians, also leading to new outbreaks of violence.

Now, not only have “many of these plans been disrupted,” Naim said, but Israel has yet to recover from the initial “devastating blow” dealt one year ago, including “at the level of the army that failed to repel this attack or at the level of the intelligence that failed to predict this attack at the level of providing security for citizens.”

No longer, Naim argued, would Israel enjoy the image of “the great power on the regional level, the invincible army, the intelligence with the long arm that can strike everywhere, and the state that can provide its citizens with security.”

Fervent debates continue within Israel regarding which individuals and entities ultimately bear responsibility for failing to prevent the events of October 7, 2023. The prevailing focus, however, continues to be on achieving victory on all wartime objectives, which as of last month include the goal of reestablishing security on the northern front against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Days after killing longtime Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut amid an intensified air campaign, the IDF launched a ground offensive into Lebanon last week for the first time since 2006. Israel has also vowed to double down against all others striking Israel, conducting new strikes against Yemen’s Ansar Allah, also called the Houthi movement, last week and threatening to retaliate against Iran directly over its latest missile attack.

While Naim emphasized that Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack was “a purely Palestinian operation, whether in terms of planning, objectives, timing or form,” he appealed for “everyone to come forward to help us.” He credited the Axis of Resistance for doing so from the earliest days of the war, saying it has “played a major role in relieving pressure on the Gaza Strip, be it from the north Hezbollah or from the south Yemen or Iraq or others.”

As such, Naim saw new advantages for Hamas in the latest developments.

“Certainly, this major escalation today in the north against Lebanon or against Yemen will relieve pressure on Gaza, but also more importantly, it will exhaust the Israeli occupation in battles on multiple fronts,” Naim said. “And thus, the state that was originally divided horizontally and vertically before the battle, divided on the political, military, social, and judicial levels, this division was strengthened after this battle, and thus this state cannot remain in a state of continuous war with many fronts.”

“Hence, this ongoing military action means that if Israel does not break or surrender and does not respond to the Palestinian demands,” he added, “it may collapse from within due to the continued pressure and existential pressure that the state is experiencing from within.”

The IDF, meanwhile, has expressed confidence in its ability to fight on up to seven fronts simultaneously.

But there is another external factor that has proved significant in the course of the conflict, and that is the U.S. role in supplying extensive military assistance to Israel and even conducting strikes against Axis of Resistance groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen throughout the war.

President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled a three-phase ceasefire plan in May that later won the rare backing of the U.N. Security Council.

In the first stage, the proposal calls for a temporary ceasefire, withdrawal of Israeli troops from populated areas of the Gaza Strip and a limited swap among the roughly 100 hostages held in Gaza and nearly 10,000 prisoners held in Israeli prisons. Next, negotiations would be held toward a permanent cessation of hostilities, release of all remaining Hamas-held hostages and the total withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from Gaza.

Finally, a plan would be carried out to rebuild Gaza and the bodies of hostages who died in Hamas custody would be returned.

Both Israel and Hamas also expressed their willingness to accept the proposal but soon after offered diverging interpretations of what the deal actually entailed and blamed one another for obstructing progress.

While U.S. frustration with Israel’s position appeared to mount, the expansion of the conflict to the Lebanese front and the growing risk of a direct clash between Iran and Israel appears to have largely sidelined ceasefire talks for the time being. A looming presidential election less than a month day has also weighed on the White House’s calculus.

Newsweek has reached out to the U.S. State Department for comment.

Naim has long accused Washington of distorting the reality of the conflict to suit political goals ahead of the election. Now, he argued that the U.S. risked harming its own interests in a critical region if it continued down its present course.

“The United States of America, unfortunately, because of its loss of leadership balance these days due to the elections and also due to the permanent bias over the past decades blindly in favor of the Israeli occupation, is, in the long run, working against the strategic interest of the United States of America,” Naim said.

This is because, he said, “this region, which represents a strategic interest of the United States, will not be stable, no state will be stable, and its people will not be stable until the Palestinian issue is resolved, and the Palestinians obtain their rights to freedom, independence, and the return of refugees.”

Even if Israel “can fight for years,” he said, the U.S. would stand to lose because of global perceptions over its unwavering positions in backing Israel militarily and financially, while also exercising its permanent veto to block resolutions critical of Israel in the U.N. Security Council and opposing efforts by international courts such as the ICC and ICJ to investigate Israel.

“Thus, everyday hatred for the United States of America increases in the region,” Naim said, “and the young generations in the region and outside of it have become clearly aware that the United States of America is lying when it claims that it is moving in the world to spread democracy, equality and freedom, and that this battle has proved the falsehood of all these claims.”

“Therefore, if the Americans are concerned with their strategic interests,” he added, “they must put an end to these crimes committed by Israel, not remain a spectator to Israel while it acts as if it is a state above international law and international humanitarian law and give the Palestinians their rights.”