Can Hamas Still Control Gaza?

The first rule of power politics is that nobody relinquishes authority willingly. The second rule is that yesterday’s allies are tomorrow’s enemies, and vice versa. Both rules are now playing out in Gaza, where Hamas is reportedly fighting to reassert control even as President Donald Trump’s peace deal supposedly ushers in a new era for the Middle East. Gaza’s administrative and policing structures have been shattered by the war. And Hamas fighters, their ranks depleted but their determination intact, are clashing with rival armed groups in what appears to be a contest for supremacy in the post-ceasefire vacuum. To hear some analysts tell it, this represents a battle between the terror group and citizens who’ve had enough of its rule. The reality, as always in Gaza, is considerably murkier. The groups challenging Hamas are primarily clan-based militias with long histories of criminal enterprise and violence. These aren’t freedom fighters animated by democratic ideals or human rights principles. They’re not the Founding Fathers in keffiyehs. They are, to put it bluntly, thugs who have spent decades reading the political winds and aligning themselves with whoever holds power. When Hamas ruled Gaza with an iron fist, these clans made their accommodations with the terrorists. In exchange, they were allowed free rein over the enclave’s economy, formal and informal. During the war, the clans provided a modicum of economic support to desperate members. Now they sense an opportunity to grab power for themselves. This pattern—the losing side of a conflict desperately trying to preserve dominance—is as old as warfare itself. From the Japanese holdouts on Pacific islands after World War II to Saddam loyalists in post-invasion Iraq, defeated forces rarely accept their defeat gracefully. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, has even more reason to fight on. The organization isn’t merely a government or a militia; it’s an ideology, a social movement, and a patronage network rolled into one. To lose power in Gaza is, for Hamas, to lose its very reason for being. The parties ranged against Hamas have had time to prepare for the fight, and enjoy the backing of the victors of the war. For more than a year now, Israel has pushed the idea of shoring up the clans and bypassing both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in the aftermath of the war. Hamas reportedly executed a leader of the powerful Doghmush clan in March 2024, on grounds of cooperating with Israeli authorities, looting aid convoys and reselling the spoils on black market. Another militia, known as the Shabab gang, is reportedly supported by the U.S. funded Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Some Western observers have seized on reports that certain clans and groups, like the Doghmush and the Shabab, are openly cooperating with Israeli forces, interpreting this as a rejection of Hamas’s extremism. This badly misreads Gaza’s political culture. The Palestinian territories—and Lebanon, for that matter—have a long history of armed groups working with and for Israel when convenient, only to turn their guns on their former patrons once they’ve consolidated authority. These tactical alliances should not be mistaken for strategic realignment. Consider the history of Hamas itself: the organization grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood with Israel’s tacit encouragement in the 1980s, when Israeli authorities saw it as a counterweight to Yasser Arafat’s secular PLO. Look how that turned out. The clans now positioning themselves as Hamas’s opposition are no more trustworthy, and certainly no less violent. They’re simply more opportunistic.   But the real wild card in Gaza’s power struggle isn’t to be found among the clans. Western analysts consistently overlook the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the terrorist organization that has historically operated as Hamas’s junior partner in the enclave. In pre-war estimates, the PIJ’s fighting force was counted in the thousands, whereas Hamas was thought to have tens of thousands. If the post-war tallies are closer, the PIJ leadership may feel strong enough to claim top-dog status.  The PIJ has something the clans lack: political legitimacy, or at least the militant equivalent of it. The organization has deeper roots in the Palestinian Territories, an ideological foundation similar to that of Hamas, coherent leadership, and—crucially—the sustained backing of Iran. Unlike the clans, which are motivated purely by power and profit, the PIJ claims revolutionary credentials and has an organizational structure that has survived decades Israeli operations. It also has a strong presence in the West Bank, which means it can draw on resources beyond Gaza. If Hamas cannot retain its grip on Gaza, the PIJ is the most likely successor. From Israel’s perspective, that would merely trade one Iranian-backed terrorist organization for another.  The deeper problem is that Gaza has become a Hobbesian free-for-all, where life is likely to be nasty, brutish, and short for the unfortunate residents caught in the crossfire. Trump’s peace deal, whatever its other merits or flaws, failed to address the fundamental question of who governs Gaza and how order will be maintained. There is no stabilization force, no peacekeeping presence, no mechanism to prevent armed groups from settling their differences with bullets rather than ballots.  To some extent, this chaos is the natural aftermath of war. Conflicts create power vacuums; armed groups rush to fill them. But what’s happening in Gaza reflects a more specific failure: the absence of any serious plan for Gaza’s governance and security. Trump brokered a ceasefire, which is no small achievement. But ceasefires without security architectures are merely intervals between rounds of violence.  The vultures are circling over Gaza, and they’re likely to keep circling for a long time. Hamas won’t surrender its authority easily, the clans will keep pushing for advantage, and PIJ will wait for its moment. Meanwhile, ordinary Gazans will pay the price. The tragedy isn’t just that this is happening—it’s that anyone who knows the region’s history could have predicted it would.