Weakened but not wiped out: What now for Hamas and Hezbollah?

Then again, it would come as no surprise either were such meetings deemed off the immediate agenda, such has been the relentless, vengeful efficiency with which Israel’s security and military apparatus has penetrated and eliminated both groups’ hierarchies,

Last Thursday it was the turn of Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, chief architect of the group’s attack on Israel on October 7 last year, to join the long list of Hamas chiefs to be eliminated by Israeli forces.

His death came in a chance shoot-out, rather than the usual planned intelligence-driven missile or drone strike and special forces operations that have been the hallmarks of Israel’s retribution to date.

There’s nothing new in all this, of course. For years, Israel has ticked off the Hamas and Hezbollah men from the “active” list as and when it has considered necessary.

But these past months the Israel Defence Force’s (IDF) “mowing of the grass”, as the metaphor sometimes used to describe its strategy of degrading the ranks of militant groups is often called, has taken on a new urgency.

For both Hamas in Gaza and its bigger and more powerful ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, the tally of those killed reads like a veritable who’s who of clerics, commanders and fighters who for years have been the vanguard facing off against their Israeli foes.

There was Hamas senior military commanders Marwan Issa and Mohammed Deif killed by air strikes in Gaza. Then there was Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas’s guiding council, killed in Tehran in his accommodation in a military-run guesthouse after attending the inauguration ceremony for Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian.

And finally, last Thursday, Yahya Sinwar, who replaced Haniyeh as Hamas’s new leader.

Hezbollah’s losses have been equally profound, among them founding member Fuad Shukr and the Iranian-backed group’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for more than three decades before Israeli bunker buster bombs blew him and others apart in Beirut’s southern suburb district of Dahiya last month.

Supporters of the Shiite movement Hezbollah

Pressing questions

These key figures are only part of a much wider list of Hamas and Hezbollah chiefs whose killing has raised pressing questions as to who will likely succeed them, alongside the wider issue of what it means for both organisations and the current conflict in the Middle East.

To take Hamas first, it’s clear that Sinwar’s death has come at arguably the group’s weakest moment since Israel’s assassination of its founder back in 2004.

It effectively leaves Hamas without someone who was steeped in both its politics and militant operations, creating a vacuum that could see its remaining grip on Gaza slip away. On that very question the nature of Sinwar’s death is significant.

For what Palestinians in Gaza saw in the Israeli drone footage of his death was a man above ground, dressed in fatigues and with one arm severed. His last defiant gesture, caught on camera, was to throw the only weapon he had – a stick – at the aerial device earmarking him for death.

It’s all a far cry from the Israeli authorities’ depiction of Sinwar as holed up in Hamas’s labyrinth of tunnels, hiding from Israeli bombs and using hostages as human shields.

“His fate – beautifully pictured in his last image – is not a deterrent but a source of inspiration for resistance fighters across the region,” wrote Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi on X, adding a still image of Sinwar from the drone video.

Iran, of course, is a supporter and backer of Hamas, but whether the same view of Sinwar is shared by ordinary Gazans, some of whom blame Hamas for bringing Israel’s onslaught down upon them, is another matter.

That said, some reports surfacing from the enclave indicate that the manner of Sinwar’s death has bolstered the popularity of the organisation he headed. But still the question remains as to what happens now to Hamas and who Sinwar’s likely successor will be.

According to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, a senior Hamas official told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that Sinwar’s death would have a great influence on the Gaza-ruling terror group, which now faces “a new stage”, and that talks over his replacement were already under way.

Whoever is chosen, numerous analysts maintain that with Sinwar gone, Hamas decision-making will now be made by remaining leaders abroad. As veteran Reuters Middle East correspondent Nidal Al-Mughrabi also highlighted, Hamas, in its leadership deliberations, must consider not only the preferences of its main backer – Iran – but also the interests of the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, where all the main candidates to take over as politburo chief currently reside.

Supporters of Yemen's Huthis chant slogans as they gather with a picture of Hamas' slain leader Yahya Sinwar during a rally held in the Huthi-controlled capital Sanaa on October 18, 2024

New leader

MANY regional experts say the likelihood is that Sinwar will be replaced with a new political leader based outside Gaza while his younger brother – Mohammed Sinwar –is expected to assume a bigger role directing the war against Israel on the ground in the enclave.

A veteran commander of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Sinwar has seldom appeared in public, and long been on Israel’s most-wanted list having survived several attempts on his life,

For the moment, one seemingly obvious contender for overall leader is senior Hamas politburo official Khalil al-Hayya, who resides in Qatar. As Sinwar’s deputy, he currently has temporary leadership responsibility and struck a defiant note on Friday following the Hamas leader’s death, saying Israeli hostages would not be returned until Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza and the war ended.

Besides Hayya, who is Hamas’s chief negotiator, the other figures touted as leadership contenders include former Hamas political bureau leader Khaled Mashal, who is also in Qatar.

Mashal has been deeply involved in mediated talks between Israel and Hamas during the ongoing war and has been a prominent Hamas leader for decades.

Israel famously tried to assassinate him in Jordan in the 1990s, but the Mossad poisoning operation was botched when the agents were arrested, forcing Jerusalem to hand over to Jordanian authorities an antidote in exchange for their release.

Other less well-known figures also mentioned as potential successors to Sinwar include Mohammad Darwish a little-known figure who chairs the Shura Council and Mousa Abu Marzouk.

Speaking to Reuters news agency, Ashraf Abouelhoul, an expert on Palestinian affairs, said he expected Sinwar’s responsibilities to be split between two roles – one overseeing military affairs and another running the political office, responsible for international contacts and shaping policies.

“Iran is Hamas’s strongest ally, which supports the group with money and weapons, and their blessing is key to who becomes Sinwar’s successor,” said Abouelhoul, managing editor of the state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram in Egypt.

But for now, though, on a purely operational level, many analysts say it’s unclear whether any chosen successor will be able to hold control on the ground, issue orders and manage the organisation, which to a great extent has been shattered into independently operating pieces.

In the case of Hamas’s ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, it’s a slightly different story, albeit that the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group is still reeling from the stunning loss of its own longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Palestinian members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement

Devastating blows

AMID a string of seemingly devastating blows by Israel, including the mass wounding and in some cases killing of is operatives using exploding pagers, Hezbollah now faces what may prove to be its most consequential battle to date with Israel as it contends with these new challenges, both external and internal.

The true extent of damage dealt to the group remains difficult to discern, given that Hezbollah has always been very adept in its information and propaganda war against Israel.

“When you look at the bigger picture and you see in relative terms how Hezbollah has survived all this and been able to conduct such fierce resistance to an ongoing attempted invasion by the most powerful army in the Middle East, one can only conclude that Hezbollah is actually stronger than what we assumed it was,” Amal Saad, a specialist on Hezbollah at Cardiff University told Newsweek magazine recently.

But the absence of Nasrallah, who enabled Hezbollah to weather various storms and maintain its internal cohesion will definitely be felt, especially at precisely the moment when Hezbollah’s back is to the wall fighting on the ground against Israeli forces.

If the group has a real Achilles heel, says Amal Saad, then it lies in two places – the domestic front and its internal stability.

“That has always been the case. And that’s because Lebanon isn’t like Gaza, it’s a sovereign state, but also it’s one that’s very polarised,” explained Saad, highlighting the resentment towards the group shared by some in Lebanon’s corridors of power and among sections of the country’s population.

Much of Hezbollah’s future survival, too, will depend on the attitudes of its major backer Iran, for whom it serves as the vanguard in the Tehran-aligned Axis of Resistance against Israel that includes Hamas, Iraq-based Shia militias, and the Houthis in Yemen.

But up against such challenges as both Hamas and Hezbollah currently are, history has repeatedly reminded us that the assassination of leaders in such organisations rarely, if ever, causes their imminent collapse or any real change in their ideology or strategy. Too often there is the assumption that such movements are pegged to individuals but again history proves otherwise with people always ready to step into the role.

In the case of Hamas, undoubtedly weakened as it is, there is currently no Palestinian body or organisation that can take control of Gaza without them. Even the Palestinian Authority (PA) is wary of raising the idea of controlling Gaza without mentioning Hamas in some joint role.

Looking at the wider picture beyond who will replace Sinwar and what happens to Hamas, two other questions also immediately come to mind.

These are whether the conditions may now be right for a ceasefire in Gaza and, in turn, the prospect for the release of hostages held there that could lead to a broader de-escalation across the region.

On both counts, for now the signs are not encouraging, not least given that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ultranationalist allies in government feel there is still unfinished business when it comes to eliminating the threat of both Hamas and Hezbollah.

From Israel’s point of view, killing Sinwar and Nasrallah is certainly a political victory, a raw reminder of Netanyahu’s promise to destroy its enemies. But both organisations still fight on.

Netanyahu hailed Sinwar’s killing as a “victory of good over evil” and “the beginning of the day after Hamas” rule in Gaza.

But the reality is somewhat different in that Sinwar’s death does not solve the broader problem of post-war governance in the enclave.

Who governs Gaza?

AFTER more than year of war, Israel is no closer to conceptualising, let alone implementing, any such plan as to how Gaza will be governed. As for Lebanon, Israel’s long-term plans there also remain unclear.

Is it creating a buffer zone to defend northern Israel from Hezbollah

attack or aiming for something much bigger?

Given the current political mood in Israel, it’s almost certain that Sinwar’s death will not provide an off-ramp for the war in Gaza, welcome as that would be to the millions of suffering Palestinians there.

Almost equally certain is that it won’t prompt Israel to reverse course and decline to strike Iran in retaliation for its ballistic missile attack on October 1, even if new negotiations were to get under way for a deal in Gaza.

Which means that the fighting will continue, and for the moment at least, both Hamas and Hezbollah, diminished as they are in the near term, will remain part of that battle even if their leaders are picked off one by one.