Israel has vowed to "destroy Hamas." If that happens, who will lead the Palestinians in Gaza?

Ramallah, West Bank — Israel has vowed to "destroy Hamas," the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. Israel's neighbors have warned that an invasion and ground war would bring many more civilian casualties and displace even more of Gaza's roughly 2.3 million people from their homes, but there's another concern: If or when Hamas is removed from power in Gaza, who or what will replace it?

What is Hamas?

Hamas is a militant group created in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood political movement. It has been designated a terror organization by the United States since 1997, and many other countries, including Israel and most of Europe, see it the same way. 

The U.S. government accuses Iran of providing Hamas with the bulk of its funding, weapons and training. 

"During periods of substantial Iran-Hamas collaboration, Iran's support to Hamas has been estimated to be as high as $300 million USD per year, but at a baseline amount, is widely assessed to be in the tens of millions per year," the U.S. Treasury said in a 2019 assessment.

The militant group and its armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, have carried out attacks against Israel for years, including suicide bombings. 

In its 1988 charter, Hamas said it sought to destroy the state of Israel and create an Islamic society in historic Palestine. In 2017, it published a new document that accepted the idea of an interim Palestinian state. 

Hamas is one of the two major Palestinian political parties, alongside Fatah.

Who governs Gaza and the West Bank?

The Gaza Strip and the much larger, Israeli-occupied West Bank are the two primary Palestinian territories, but they are run separately.

In 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, signed the Oslo Accords, an historic agreement that established limited self rule under a new entity called the Palestinian Authority (PA), for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

In 2006 elections held in both territories, Hamas won a majority of seats in the PA legislature, but its political rivals of the Fatah faction refused to accept the results and ousted the more extremist Hamas politicians. 

Fighting erupted in Gaza, Hamas' historic stronghold, and it created a break between the two Palestinian territories. By 2007, Hamas had taken over the Palestinian Authority institutions in Gaza and was running the coastal enclave, as it has done ever since. 

Fatah has continued to manage the West Bank through the Palestinian Authority, but the territory is occupied by Israeli security forces, and Fatah and its leader, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, have become deeply unpopular among many Palestinians. There's deep-rooted distrust in Gaza and the West Bank of Fatah and of the PA, which, when it was created, agreed to help find members of the "Palestinian Resistance" and hand them over to Israel.

There hasn't been a legislative election for Palestinians in either territory since 2006, and Abbas refused to hold a vote that should have taken place in 2021. Hamas officials accused him of a "coup" for blocking an election he knew Fatah was likely to lose.

If Israel destroys Hamas, who will run Gaza?

Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said Israel's operation in Gaza would have three phases.

First, he said Israel would carry out "a military campaign that currently includes strikes, and will later include maneuvering, with the objective of neutralizing terrorists and destroying Hamas infrastructure." The second phase, he said, would focus on "eliminating pockets of resistance" in Gaza.

"The third phase," Gallant said, "will require the removal of Israel's responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel."

But it's not clear what that means for the people of Gaza.

President Biden told 60 Minutes that an Israeli occupation of Gaza would be a "big mistake."

Fatah won't come "on an Israeli tank to rule Gaza"

Some suggest the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority, which has Western backing and supports the long elusive two-state solution, could take over, but a senior Fatah official told CBS News that would not happen without an election.

"We will not be going on an Israeli tank to rule Gaza," Sabri Sidam, the deputy secretary general of the Fatah Central Committee, told CBS News. "We would go to Gaza with the hope that the people of Gaza would want to see the Palestinian Authority through elections, and would want to build their lives and restart from scratch."

When he spoke with CBS News at his office in the West Bank's largest city, Ramallah, on Monday, Sidam said it was too soon to think that far ahead, given the humanitarian disaster still unfolding in Gaza.

"We are refusing to discuss the future. We are discussing now the cessation of hostilities. That's number one priority," he said.

Sidam said fighting and violence were an inevitable consequence of the failure to create a two-state solution, with an independent state for both Israelis and Palestinians.

"We often said to the American administration and other friends that things are spinning out of control. You can't turn your back to the Palestinians and expect them to be quiet," he said. "So this situation, if ever there was a responsibility for this, [it is] the failure over decades to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict." 

"It is now up to the international community to stop this madness," Sidam told CBS News, referring to Israel's strikes on Gaza. "Scores of people being killed, women and children. Why kill them? Why kill them? How would this ever be a formula for acceptance or a formula for coexistence? What peace would it bring for Israel? Nothing."

"The last chance for Fatah"?

Hani Al-Masri, director general of Masarat, the Palestinian Centre for Policy Research and Strategic Studies, said Fatah was facing a moment that would define its future.

"If they don't change the previous approach, I think Fatah will disappear," Masri told CBS News. "Maybe this is the last chance for Fatah."

The bombardment of Gaza has triggered protests in the West Bank with hundreds of Palestinians voicing their anger at the Israeli government and the United States, but also at their Fatah leaders who run the Palestinian Authority.

Al-Masri described Fatah's position on the war as "neutral," and said, "you can't have a neutral position while your people [are] under massacres."

Al-Masri said the PA's longtime leader Mahmoud Abbas doesn't want an election, "because he thinks that the results will not help him. This is the main problem, because now the Palestinians want to vote for the resistance movement more than before."

"Even if Hamas is destroyed, there will be another party to continue the struggle," he said, "because the main issue is Palestinian people, not the party. Palestinian people want freedom. If you give them freedom, you can communicate with them and you can achieve peace. Without that, how you can convince the Palestinians about anything while they face killing and increased settlement?"

Al-Masri told CBS News he believes the best path forward for the Palestinian people is for the West Bank and Gaza to be reunited.

"The majority, vast majority of Palestinians think that our priority is to be united. This is the main issue: United on the basis of democracy, partnership. On the basis of a national program," Al-Masri said. "I think this, what happened, will push the Palestinians towards that."

In:
• Fatah
• War
• Iran
• Mahmoud Abbas
• Hamas
• Israel
• Gaza Strip
• Middle East
• West Bank

Haley Ott

Haley Ott is an international reporter for CBS News based in London.

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