Demystifying how the Hamas leadership works

Hanna Alshaikh, Mondoweiss, August 30, 2024 — 

Media sources have misunderstood how the leadership of Hamas operates, drawing simplistic binaries between the “moderate” Ismail Haniyeh and the “extremist” Yahya Sinwar. In reality, Hamas decision-making is far more institutionalized.

After Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas Political Bureau, was assassinated in Tehran, the Movement’s senior consultative body, the Shura Council, quickly and unanimously chose Yahya Sinwar as his successor. At the time of his killing, Haniyeh had been leading the Hamas effort in the ceasefire negotiations with mediators, and many analysts claimed that Sinwar’s rise signaled a total break with the policies of Haniyeh and other senior Political Bureau members.

Much of this analysis is misinformed. 

It betrays a shallow understanding of not just the leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), but the wider Movement as a whole. The assumption that Sinwar’s leadership is a rupture with the past follows a tendency in Western analysis to view Palestinian leaders through vague, simplistic binaries like “hawk vs. dove” or “moderate vs. hardliner.” These labels conceal more than they reveal.

Despite these flaws in the wider conversation, it is nonetheless worth exploring the extent to which Sinwar’s tenure will differ from Haniyeh’s as Head of the Political Bureau. Does this signal a rupture?

Defying isolation

To assess the question of a rupture, it is worth considering some parallels in the trajectories of Haniyeh and Sinwar. On the most obvious level, each eventually became the head of the Gaza leadership and then the head of the Hamas Political Bureau. Born in Gaza Strip refugee camps in the early 1960s, Haniyeh and Sinwar entered the world as refugees, which entailed an existence based on exclusion, dispossession, and marginalization. In defiance of these conditions, both leaders joined the Islamic movement in Gaza and found themselves further isolated and dislocated: Haniyeh was exiled to the Lebanese town of Marj al-Zouhour in 1992, and Sinwar was imprisoned in 1988 and given a quadruple life sentence the following year. These challenges did not stop either leader from developing not just their own political knowledge, but playing a role in developing Hamas itself. 

From the harsh conditions of his Marj al-Zouhour exile, Haniyeh gained experience in coordinating efforts with Palestinians outside of Hamas, fostering ties with Hezbollah, and engaging with Arab states and the international community — culminating in the passing of a successful UN Security Council resolution calling for their return, which they were able to achieve one year later. This experience in diplomacy and negotiation with Palestinian groups would follow Haniyeh later in his career. In 2006, Haniyeh became the first democratically elected Palestinian Prime Minister. While the thwarting of this Palestinian unity government led to brutal inter-factional fighting and the onset of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, he spent years working towards national reconciliation and unity, in addition to his efforts on the diplomatic level. 

From prison, Sinwar continued to develop the Movement’s counterintelligence capabilities, a process he started with the establishment of the “Security and Awareness Organization” known as “Majd” in 1985, with the objective of providing training in matters of security and counterintelligence and identifying suspected collaborators. When Sinwar was arrested in 1988, only one month into the First Intifada, he was accused of executing twelve collaborators. As a prisoner, Sinwar continued his efforts toward strengthening the Movement’s counterintelligence and investing in the capacity of Palestinian prisoners. He attained fluency in Hebrew and was an avid reader. This expertise left an impact on the Movement’s development over time and helped solidify Sinwar’s place as a Movement authority in prison.

Also read: Leader of the underground tells all.

An important and more commonly known chapter in Sinwar’s political experience was the key role he played in negotiations that led to the release of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in 2011, including Sinwar himself, in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Qassam Brigades fighters in 2006. A lesser-known aspect of Sinwar’s time in prison was the careful skill with which he engaged and rallied Palestinians across factional lines within prison strikes and protests. In the immediate aftermath of his release, he was able to employ these skills in building leverage with Israel and finding points of unity with Palestinians in other factions.

Negotiations after prison

Shortly after his return to Gaza, Sinwar was elected to the Political Bureau of Hamas in 2012. Only five years later, Sinwar was elected the Head of the Gaza-based leadership, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh in 2017. Sinwar’s first years back in Gaza are often discussed as a time in which Hamas closed ranks internally and engaged in public campaigns against collaboration with Israel, albeit in a form quite different from the earliest days of Majd. 

Less sensational and not quite the fodder for dramatic storytelling, Sinwar also engaged in several complex and trajectory-changing negotiations as head of the Gaza-based leadership. 

Ten years into Israel’s blockade on Gaza, the daily struggles of 2 million Palestinians were about to get worse in 2017, when a series of decisions from Mahmoud Abbas intensified the economic impact of Gaza’s isolation. In March 2017, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) cut the salaries of PA employees in Gaza by up to 30%, and in June, the salaries of Palestinian prisoners “deported” to Gaza in 2011 were completely eliminated. Then, in a controversial move seen as a measure of collective punishment, Abbas effectively cut off Gaza’s fuel supply by canceling a tax exemption, causing an energy crisis that cut down the available electricity supply for Palestinians in Gaza from about eight to four hours per day. Subsequently, Gaza’s only power plant was forced to shut down. 

In a move that took many observers by surprise, Sinwar struck a deal with former Palestinian Authority Preventive Security Force head Muhammad Dahlan to address the crises brought about by the policy shifts from Ramallah. Dahlan, like Sinwar, was born in the Khan Younis Refugee Camp, became a key leader in Fatah until a falling out with the party’s leadership in 2011, and subsequently relocated to the UAE. The idea of a Hamas deal with the man who carried out the Bush administration’s wishes to disrupt the Palestinian unity government headed by recently-elected Prime Minister Haniyeh was unfathomable at the start of the Gaza-West Bank split ten years prior. Domestic and regional matters, however, required Movement leadership to adapt, and Sinwar was ready to talk.

The Hamas-Dahlan deal was met with limited success, but it pointed to two essential aspects of Sinwar’s tenure as head of the Gaza leadership: bridging differences with other segments of Palestinian politics and society and balancing foreign relations in a new regional landscape. More specifically, through his close ties to the UAE and Egyptian governments, Dahlan secured the entry of some fuel through the Rafah Crossing. This was significant, as Egypt-Hamas ties were at their most tense at the start of Sinwar’s first term as head of the Gaza leadership.

Over time, Sinwar was able to continue to ease tensions with Egypt in the coming months and years. Using leverage built up by independent Palestinian grassroots mobilizations that came to be known as the Great March of Return (2018-19) and a botched Mossad attempt to infiltrate and plant surveillance equipment in Gaza in November 2018, Hamas leadership won a number of concessions that eased the impact of Israel’s blockade on Gaza, including eased restrictions on travel through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt, more trucks carrying goods and aid entering Gaza daily, and cash to pay the salaries of public servants.

It is widely recognized that Sinwar played a major role in improving Hamas’s relations with other members of the “Axis of Resistance” after Hamas leadership left Damascus in 2012 amid the Syrian uprising and civil war. Not as widely recognized was Sinwar’s role in improving and renegotiating the terms of Hamas’s relations with other regional players outside of its close alliances. Focus on his ties to the “Axis” limits the discussion of Sinwar’s leadership within the confines of a certain ideological stream, but his willingness to negotiate signals a more sophisticated approach to balancing regional powers than these arbitrary labels allow. 

Sinwar and his predecessors

Two operative concepts in the Hamas political lexicon — accumulation and consultation — are crucial to understanding how the Movement and its leaders function. Any understanding of the Movement in general, or Sinwar’s rule of Gaza in particular, must consider these indispensable components of Hamas’s evolving institutional dynamism and power.

Accumulation is commonly used to describe military advancements over time. It is also useful to consider accumulation in terms of the political skills and experience that Hamas leaders bring to the table to navigate difficult matters of governance under blockade; meeting humanitarian needs under siege; moments of regional isolation; moments of regional alliance-building and calibration; and national reconciliation with other Palestinian factions. Laying the groundwork for political successes and military accumulation lends itself to continuity more often than rupture. 

Consultation describes best practices and structures within Hamas. The Movement has consultative bodies at various levels that function as accountability and advisory structures for political leadership. Members are elected and are inclusive of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, the diaspora, and the prisons. The high-level consultative body, the General Shura Council, appoints members to an independent body that coordinates and oversees Political Bureau elections to ensure transparency. While limited information about these structures makes its way to the public, an emergency scenario like Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination revealed that the General Shura Council will appoint a successor in exceptional circumstances (Sinwar was chosen unanimously).

Also read: The philosophy of Hamas in the writings of Yahya Sinwar.

The practice and structure of consultation are not limited to the political wing of Hamas. The Movement’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, also has procedures for consultation — in fact, Sinwar played the role of coordinator between the military and political wings after joining the Political Bureau. Zaher Jabareen, who established the Qassam Brigades in the northern West Bank, explained that the narratives of the centralization of the Majd Apparatus are inaccurate, as decisions about suspects are not in the hands of one individual alone — they are the subject of multi-step procedures, as well as additional investigation from a separate “professional apparatus.” Jabareen noted that there are serious accountability measures if security personnel mishandle a case.

Following this same dynamic, when a leader like Sinwar or Haniyeh makes a major decision, not only do they arrive at it through consultation with experienced figures, but they are responsible to constituencies within the Movement or society at large that pressure them to take action. As heads of the Gaza leadership and Political Bureau, Sinwar and Haniyeh worked together and often appeared in public meetings with various constituencies to rally around national reconciliation. For them, national reconciliation was not only the high-priority concern of making amends with Fatah and uniting the Palestinian body politic, but it also meant bridging other forms of political divides, as well as social and socioeconomic issues in Gaza. All of this was to prepare for the upcoming battle ahead, to accumulate necessary military strength, popular support, and political unity. It appears that consultation flows both from the top down and from the bottom up.

Statements from Sinwar and two of his predecessors show how the accumulation of strength and achievements fostered continuity between each new era. Khaled Meshaal outlined priorities for his final term in a May 2013 interview: resistance; centering Jerusalem as the heart of the Palestinian cause; freeing prisoners; fighting for the right of return and promoting the role of the diaspora in the struggle; national reconciliation among Palestinian factions that unites and rallies the Palestinian body politic around resistance; engaging the Arab and Islamic nation; engaging the international community on the popular and official levels; and strengthening internal Hamas institutions, expanding its power, and opening up the Movement towards other Palestinian formations, and to other Arabs and Muslims at large.

Meshaal’s point about prisoners stands out. He described them as the “pride of our people.” When pressed for details on the plan to secure their freedom and if it entailed capturing more Israeli soldiers, Meshaal declined to elaborate. Two months later, the overthrow of the Morsi government in Egypt would entirely change the formula for Hamas operations, which likely caused a recalibration for Political Bureau leadership. Despite the challenges this presented for Hamas, just one year later in Israel’s 51-day war on Gaza in 2014, Qassam fighters crossed into Israel, aiming for its military bases on at least five occasions, and captured the bodies of two soldiers in the course of the war. Today, this accumulation and continuity can be found in statements from Hamas leaders who explain that the goal of the October 7 operation was to capture Israeli soldiers for the purpose of a prisoner exchange. 

At the start of Meshaal’s final term, he and Haniyeh publicly dismissed rumors of tensions between one another. The rumors persisted throughout the years, with insufficient attention paid to the consistent messaging of each leader that indicate shared priorities.

The shared vision, messaging, and priorities carried over with Haniyeh as Head of the Political Bureau. Following Israel’s 2021 war on Gaza, dubbed “The Battle of the Sword of Jerusalem” by Palestinians — which coincided with a Palestinian uprising known as the “Unity Intifada” that spread from Jerusalem to the West Bank, to Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon and Jordan — Ismail Haniyeh gave a victory address that points to the central role of continuity and accumulation within the Movement. 

Haniyeh described the battle as a “strategic victory” and declared that what comes next “will not be like what came before it,” adding that it is a “divine victory, a strategic victory, a complex victory” on the levels of the Palestinian national stage, the Arab and Islamic nation, the level of the global masses, and on the level of the international community. The speech emphasized the accumulation of strength and commitment to priorities and efforts from previous eras of the Movement that built up to this victory. It also foreshadowed the major changes ahead.

In the leadup to October 7, Sinwar gave a speech, declaring: 

“Within a limited period of months, which I estimate will not exceed one year, we will force the occupation to face two options: either we force it to implement international law, respect international resolutions, withdraw from the West Bank and Jerusalem, dismantle the settlements, release the prisoners, and ensure the return of refugees, achieving the establishment of a Palestinian state on the lands occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem; or we place this occupation in a state of contradiction and collision with the entire international order, isolate it in an extreme and powerful manner, and end its integration in the region and the entire world, addressing the state of collapse that has occurred on all fronts of resistance over the past years.”

With this in mind, it is worth asking if Sinwar is really as unpredictable as pundits claim. His statements also call into question the framing of Sinwar’s rise as a total break with the Movement’s past.

Hamas as mediator

The personality of Yahya Sinwar has been sensationalized in Western (and even Arab) media. Generally speaking, these discussions about Hamas have often been based on rumors, innuendo, and unsubstantiated claims that tend to highlight disagreements between segments of its leadership, labeling leaders along lines like “moderates who favor diplomacy and negotiations” versus “militant hawks.” Through a review of aspects of Sinwar and Haniyeh’s careers, it should become clearer that while personalities and the specificities of each leader’s journey do impact their decision-making, it is only part of how these leaders, and the Movement at large, make decisions.

Over the years, Hamas has demonstrated its ability to leverage the diverse backgrounds of its leaders to strengthen its capacity across military, political, diplomatic, and popular fronts. Rooted in principles of consultation and accumulation, Hamas is at once a horizontal Movement and a Movement of institutions. Effective institutions like the Shura Council have helped the Movement see itself through moments of uncertainty, like the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh.

This is the latest example of Hamas demonstrating unparalleled levels of institutional dynamism and flexibility compared to the history of institution-building among Palestinian factions. 

Also read: The question of Hamas and the Left.

In this context, what might appear as significant differences between leaders can become a source of strength for the Movement, allowing it the ability to balance the sometimes-competing demands of various constituencies, especially as it navigates decision-making amid high levels of surveillance, the constant threat of assassination and imprisonment of its leaders, and ongoing assaults on its structures and institutions. 

None of this is to deny that there are sometimes disagreements between leaders within the Movement. This has been a factor at play since the organization’s founding in 1987. However, Hamas is also a Movement of institutions, procedures, and accountability mechanisms. The overarching rule has been consultation, accumulation, and the balancing of the needs of various constituencies. The evidence for this has been public and consistent in the messaging of the organization’s leadership, not just throughout this ongoing genocidal war, but for all of its 37-year history.

In the wake of the al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7, 2023, and the ensuing genocide in Gaza, more questions have been raised about Hamas in general, and the personality of Yahya Sinwar in particular. Many still refer to Sinwar as the unpredictable mastermind of the operation, insisting on a narrative in which Sinwar single-handedly had the power to conduct an unprecedented operation against Israel, with all the complex local, regional, and international implications that would result from such an event. This is not intended to do Hamas any favors — it is not a guise to place the blame on one “bad apple” to allow for the return of a “demilitarized” Hamas to govern. For some self-styled experts, the use of this explanation comes from a shallow understanding of the Movement. For others, it is to provide cover to Israel for its military failures in the event that it captures Sinwar and to substitute this for the “total victory.” If Sinwar is Hamas and Hamas is Sinwar, then eliminating one would end the other.

In reality, what we think we know about the planning and execution of the October 7 offensive — and Hamas’s subsequent operation in the face of Israel’s genocidal war — is probably a drop in the ocean. But the publicly available evidence we do have tells us that Yahya Sinwar is not all that unpredictable. He, like his predecessors, has been quite open and clear about the direction in which the organization was headed. The signs were everywhere for at least two years on the official and grassroots levels. Major powers were shocked because they underestimated and ignored the Movement, not because they were deceived. The narrative around Sinwar also provides cover to “experts” to explain away their superficial knowledge of the Movement at best or disingenuous analysis at worst.

What analysts should have known is that Hamas is a Movement of institutions, and like any other mass movement, it brings together different streams and political orientations who might disagree on tactics, but not strategy. The rule of the organization has been one of continuity despite geographical fragmentation and differing schools of thought on how to move forward. There have been moments of fierce debate and public disagreements, but they are not a secret, and they sometimes unfold in public outlets. This is consistent with the dynamics of an organization with robust and competitive internal elections.

Very little of the reports attributed to “anonymous sources close to Hamas” on internal disagreements within Hamas, or Sinwar’s restructuring of the Movement, are substantiated. Perhaps the operations of the Movement will change as a result of the ongoing war, and it is possible that its institutions will transform as a result. However, until substantiated evidence is made available, analysts would be wise to base their musings on the vast body of writings, speeches, and interviews that shed light on needlessly mystified aspects of Hamas and its leadership. There is no credible evidence to suggest that Sinwar has totally overhauled the structure of the Movement and centralized power around himself. There is, however, plenty of evidence that Sinwar is not just a product of the Movement but someone who spent decades building it and is unlikely to have disregarded the people he grew up with politically and the processes he helped establish.

Someday, after this genocidal war ends, it is possible that new details will emerge that will change understandings of Hamas and contradict hypotheses circulating now. When that occurs, it is wise to place the new evidence in its proper historical context and demand a higher standard from “experts” who have not done their homework.