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The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas brokered by Donald Trump has come into effect. The text of the agreement is limited to the cessation of military operations, withdrawal of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to an agreed line, entry of humanitarian aid and relief, and the exchange of hostages held by Israel and the Palestinian forces.1 Nothing more is as yet agreed to. This has not prevented triumphal commentary from the Right and hostile criticism from some commentators who believe themselves to be leftist. Some other commentators observe sympathetically that the Palestinians are caught in a trap, and that now their hope lies in building ties with alternative major powers.
Analyses by these three sets of commentators have some points in common. The essence of their comments (despite variations among them) is as follows:
1. Hamas has accepted guarantees of the war’s cessation from the very powers who earlier have violated such assurances, or from some others who have collaborated in facilitating such violations by Israel and the US.
2. When Hamas hands over the hostages, it is giving up its last lever. Having obtained the hostages, there is nothing to bind Israel; it will simply resume the slaughter.
3. Hamas has surrendered, accepted defeat, and submitted to a type of colonial rule.
Whether deliberately or out of confusion, these commentators have missed the actual significance of what has taken place.
Point 1 is true; but the supposition that Hamas has either been duped or is surrendering, is not true.
Point 2 is partly true: one cannot rule out Israel resuming the genocide. Indeed it is certain that Israel will keep violating the ceasefire, trying to achieve what it could not in two years of war. But the assumption that, in such a situation, Hamas will be the loser as a result of this agreement is not correct.
Point 3 is simply untrue.
We need to see the present juncture in the light of the history of the Palestinian liberation struggle, the politics of Hamas and its partner resistance organisations, the actual course of fighting, and the developments of the past two years in Gaza and the world. Below we argue that Hamas views itself as a national liberation movement; that it has succeeded in preventing the Israeli army from achieving its aims; that in fact the Israeli army and its US patrons need respite; and that this remarkable outcome has opened up scope for an eventual victory of the Palestinian resistance, which is linked to a broader political struggle.
I. Considerations behind the ceasefire decision
There are risks in any ceasefire; there are also risks in not agreeing to a ceasefire, and a resistance organisation is answerable to the people who form its base. Hamas and other Palestinian resistance forces had to weigh both types of risks, and see whether their essential interests were compromised by the ceasefire agreement. We will come later to how they view their essential interests.
It is unlikely Hamas and its fellow resistance organisations have any illusions about either Israel and the US, or Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. The resistance organisations had to collectively make a judgment about how these countries will conduct themselves at the present juncture. Only the Palestinian people, through their legitimate representatives, have the right to make this judgment. They are best placed to do so, and they alone have the authority to do so, as they pay the price in lives.
It has been clear for some time that the hostages no longer constituted leverage for Hamas, if indeed they ever did, as the Israeli rulers have shown no interest in saving the hostages – perhaps to the contrary. In fact, many Israeli hostages have been killed in Israeli bombing. The actual leverage possessed by the resistance organisations lies in two political facts: First, Israel’s failure to defeat Hamas over the past two years. Secondly, the unprecedented worldwide condemnation of the holocaust in Gaza and exposure of Zionism. Hamas and its partners are keenly aware of this reality, as evidenced by their recent statements.
From the text of the agreement it is evident that the plans for colonial rule, with Trump as emperor and Blair as viceroy, have not yet been agreed to by the resistance organisations. Nor has Hamas agreed to disarm, though it could discard some of its arms as a ceremonial face-saving gesture towards the Israelis – without seriously affecting its actual military strength.
II. Political positions of the resistance organisations
To understand Hamas’s actions at the present juncture we need to study its own statements. Hamas has made its own positions clear in a number of documents. In January 2024, it published a document, “Our Narrative”, which lays out its justification for the October 7, 2023 strike (the ‘Al Aqsa Flood’ operation).
After recounting the century-long history of the Palestinian struggle against Zionist occupation and colonial rule, the document asserts: “The Hamas Movement according to international laws and norms is a national liberation movement that has clear goals and mission. It gets its legitimacy to resist the occupation from the Palestinian right to self-defense, liberation and self-determination. We stress that resisting the occupation with all means including the armed resistance is a legitimized right by all norms, divine religions, the international laws….” (emphasis added) It calls “upon the free peoples across the world, especially those nations who were colonized and realize the suffering of the Palestinian people, to take serious and effective positions against the double standard policies adopted by powers/countries that back the Israeli occupation.”
Regarding the present negotiations, Hamas’s stand is made clear in an August 2025 statement, “Why Hamas Will Never Surrender: The Logic of Resistance in the Face of Genocide”:
The central question is simple: Why does Hamas, along with other Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza, continue to fight against overwhelming odds? Why not surrender to spare further loss of life?
On the surface, all military, political, and media indicators suggest the resistance is cornered. Israel possesses vast destructive capabilities and the backing of global superpowers. Arab regimes, many of them normalized with Israel, remain largely silent. The cost in Palestinian lives is staggering. And yet, the resistance endures. Why?
Because to surrender would not only be a strategic defeat—it would be a moral, national, and existential suicide.
The leadership of Hamas has made its position clear since the onset of this war: it seeks a dignified and just peace, one that preserves Palestinian rights and honors the sacrifices made. But surrender, as demanded by Israel and its allies, would not bring peace. It would erase the Palestinian cause itself. No resistance movement in history has ever laid down its arms to an enemy bent on extermination—and survived.
To surrender would not save Gaza. It would invite massacre, displacement, and obliteration. It would reward genocide….
The Palestinian resistance does not seek endless war. It seeks justice. It seeks freedom. It seeks a future where Palestinian children are not born under blockade and bombings. But it knows, and history confirms, that surrender has never delivered that future.
Until the day comes when the occupation ends, the siege is lifted, and Palestinians achieve their long-denied right to self-determination, the resistance will continue—because surrender is not an option when survival is at stake.
Thus it appears that Hamas has no intention of disarming and dissolving itself. But it relies not only on its weapons, but on the support of people both in Palestine and worldwide:
[The Palestinians] are not alone. Across the world, millions stand with Gaza—not governments, but people. Not the powerful, but the principled. The resistance today carries not only the hopes of Palestinians, but the hopes of all oppressed peoples who see in Gaza a mirror of their own struggles.
On October 9, in a statement announcing “an agreement that stipulates ending the war on Gaza, the withdrawal of the occupation from it, the entry of aid, and the exchange of prisoners”, Hamas asserted:
We affirm that the sacrifices of our people will not be in vain, and that we will remain faithful to the covenant, and will not abandon our people’s national rights until freedom, independence, and self-determination are achieved….
The aggression cessation agreement is a national achievement par excellence, embodying the unity of our people and their adherence to the option of resistance as a way to confront the zionist occupation….
What the occupation failed to achieve through genocide and starvation over two full years, it did not succeed in achieving through negotiation. (emphasis in original)
In sum: Hamas is a national liberation movement which views itself as heir to the legacy of earlier such struggles in Palestine and around the world. It will not give up its right to struggle, including through armed resistance, till it achieves the goal of national liberation.
Hamas’s allies too have released statements clarifying their position regarding the ceasefire. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) states:
The ceasefire agreement is a first step toward ending the genocide, and the steadfastness of our people and their valiant resistance broke the zionist war machine and imposed the agreement….
We reject foreign guardianship and affirm that the administration of Gaza must be purely Palestinian, with Arab and international participation in reconstruction and recovery.
The world today stands by us and supports our right to freedom and self-determination. Global action and the pursuit of the occupation and its leaders must continue even after reaching a ceasefire agreement, so that Palestine remains alive in the conscience of the world until the occupation is removed. (emphasis in original)
The resistance organisations thus claim that they have defeated, or at least thwarted, the Israeli army, and that they are negotiating on the basis of this strength. Does this claim have any basis in fact?
Let us see how the two sides have actually performed on the battlefield. The following is based on reporting by pro-Israel sources such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Foreign Affairs. To the extent possible, we have tried to quote their own words. We apologise for the length of this section; the purpose will become evident.
III. The two armies face to face
In recent months, a number of articles in the western press have claimed that Hamas has undergone a transformation in the period since January 2025, from a conventional army to a guerrilla force.2 This is a peculiar notion. In fact it was evident from the very outset of the war that Hamas was fighting a guerrilla war (see our November 2023 post). They are following long-established doctrines of guerrilla warfare, such as preserving one’s own forces and destroying the adversary forces (rather than trying to hold on to territory), decentralized command in specific campaigns and battles combined with centralized strategic command, and confronting the adversary only when one is in an advantageous tactical position.3 It is strange to read many of these being reported today by military analysts as if they were freshly minted.
The Israelis complain that Hamas is not giving the IDF adequate chance to kill them. This is indeed a traditional complaint of occupying armies when confronted by guerrilla resistance. “Hamas’s Guerrilla Tactics in North Gaza Make It Difficult to Defeat”, grumbles a New York Times (NYT) headline.4 After all, “In open combat, Hamas’s fighters are no match for Israel’s army”.5 But “Instead of confronting the Israeli invasion that followed in frontal battles, most Hamas fighters have retreated from their bases and outposts, seeking to blunt Israel’s technological and numerical advantage by launching surprise attacks on small groups of soldiers.”6 “Hamas is a terrorist organization — for them, just surviving is victory,” says Dana Stroul, the Pentagon’s former top Middle East policy official.7
Indeed, from the very start of the war, the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, have been willing to cede territory temporarily while preserving their forces: “When Israeli tanks and infantry battalions surged into Gaza that Friday, they were met with little to no resistance for the first couple of miles, according to four soldiers who were among the first to cross the border…. Qassam Brigades’ strategy was to ambush Israeli soldiers once they had advanced deep into the territory, instead of counterattacking immediately…”8 Retired Maj. Gen Israel Ziv, former head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate, explained to CNN that “They don’t defend territory — they seek targets.”9
While Hamas chooses to cede space, the IDF is unable to retain space: it keeps having to re-take territory it has already taken several times before. “Time and again, Israeli soldiers have forced Hamas from a neighborhood, only to retreat within weeks…. That has allowed the group to return and re-exert control, often prompting the Israeli military to return months or even weeks later…. ‘We occupy territories, and then we get out,’ said Michael Milstein, an Israeli analyst of Palestinian affairs. ‘This kind of doctrine means that you find yourself in endless war.’”10
Ambushes
It appears that the Al-Qassam Brigades engage the IDF at a time of their own choosing, and only after “knowing the enemy”. As Ziv points out, “Their war is built around our weaknesses…. Hamas has had time to study how the IDF operates, and they are turning that to their advantage.”11
For example, in late 2023, “Israeli infantry soldiers had been staying inside their armored personnel carriers too long as they waited for the lead vehicle—typically a bulldozer or tank—to clear the path forward. Hamas exploited this hesitation and attacked that specific type of vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade from a close and elevated position, killing eleven soldiers in one attack. Hamas had not only found a way around Israel’s advanced active protection systems, but also recognized the vulnerability in the IDF’s dismount timing.”12
The IDF is repeatedly lured into ambushes: “Hamas’s ambush squads typically stay hidden until an Israeli convoy has moved through an area for several minutes, or Israeli forces have grouped in a particular place for hours, creating the impression that Hamas has left the area, six Israeli soldiers and the Hamas officer said. After a period of calm, a squad emerges from a tunnel, often as a group of four. Two fighters are tasked with fixing explosives to the sides of a vehicle or firing anti-tank missiles at it, according to the Hamas officer. A third carries a camera to film propaganda footage. A fourth typically stays at the tunnel entrance, preparing a booby-trap that can be activated as soon as the others return, to kill any Israelis who try to follow them underground.”13 The videos are promptly posted to the internet.
Weapons
Hamas always knew it would one day have to face an Israeli ground invasion. “Hamas had been preparing for this moment since at least 2021, when the group began scaling up production of explosives and anti-tank missiles, in preparation for a ground war, and stopped making so many long-range rockets…”14 But the supplies of such weapons must have been depleted by now. With the Israeli invasion of Gaza in full swing, and the defeat of the Assad government in Syria (which had been a conduit for some weapons), where do Hamas and other resistance groups get their weapons from?
The main source is Israeli bombing and shelling: Hamas gathers Israeli munitions that failed to explode on impact, and re-purposes them to make improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Hamas’s “ability to move among the ruins of Gaza, armed with improvised explosive devices culled from tens of thousands of Israeli munitions, has turned the rubble of the besieged enclave into a source of resilience”, says CNN. “This is a war of IEDs.”15
The scale of Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign has also provided raw materials for IEDs on a correspondingly large scale. The US estimates that there are 30,000 unexploded munitions in Gaza.16Ahmad Fouad Alkhatib, who leads the Atlantic Council project “Realign for Palestine”, laments that “unexploded [Israeli] munitions throughout the Gaza Strip, which are in the hundreds of tons, are a source of weaponry that Hamas has, can, and will use in its combat operations to make rockets and improvised explosive devices…. the presence of unexploded munitions, coupled with the wires, electrical switches, pipes, and other materials from destroyed/bombed-out buildings provides the Islamist group with critical items & provisions.”17
This recalls Mao Zedong’s observation of 1936: “In establishing our own war industry we must not allow ourselves to become dependent on it. Our basic policy is to rely on the war industries of the imperialist countries and of our domestic enemy. We have a claim on the output of the arsenals of London as well as of Hanyang, and, what is more, it is delivered to us by the enemy’s transport corps.”18
Infrastructure
As is well known, Hamas has a large underground tunnel network. In December 2023, the IDF estimated it at 250 miles; by January 2024 its estimates had risen to 350-450 miles. Either estimate is extraordinary given that Gaza is at its longest point only 25 miles. The IDF estimates that there are 5,700 separate shafts leading down to the tunnels. It is remarkable that Hamas has been able to build such a vast infrastructure without Israel obtaining any useful information on it.19
At the start of the war, John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the US military’s Modern War Institute, West Point, said that “the scale of the challenge in Gaza, where hundreds of miles of tunnels crisscross below ground in the enclave, is entirely unique…. It is a veritable city underneath the cities on Gaza’s surface.”20 19 Dug as deep as 230 feet below the surface, the tunnels allow fighters to move between a series of fighting positions safely and freely even after the IDF drop thousand-pound bombs on them. Communications are maintained through a secure landline telephone system, not through mobile telephony.
Spencer says that “Of all the forces I have studied, the IDF has done the most work to prepare for dealing with tunnels in war.” Israel is a high-tech economy, and the IDF was “the only army in the world to have a full brigade-sized unit dedicated to training, manning, equipping, researching, developing new technologies and tactics, learning, and adapting solely for underground warfare.”21 It has created specialised units for the purpose: an engineering corps for finding, clearing and destroying tunnels; a unit trained for underground warfare with virtual reality simulators; dogs trained for operating underground; special intelligence services units on the question of tunnels; specialised equipment for tunnels (sensors, radars, drilling equipment); radios, navigation technology, night vision goggles; remote or wire-controlled flying/crawling robots designed for tunnels; ground penetrating ‘bunker-buster’ bombs; and explosives and bulldozers to seal tunnels. He ends, however, by admitting that “the hard truth is that the depth and scale of Hamas tunnels in Gaza will surpass Israel’s specialized capabilities. It may come down to IDF infantry and engineers dealing with tunnels as they discover them.”22
In December 2024, Spencer provided a detailed update of Israel’s anti-tunnel efforts. For all its expertise, Israel has not been able to destroy the tunnel system. Sending troops down has been risky: the tunnels are pervasively booby-trapped, and in November 2023 the IDF lost 5 soldiers to one such booby-trap. The IDF has sent in its special Oketz unit of trained dogs; in the process it has lost 42 dogs and 3 soldiers.23 Bombs are unable to penetrate 200 feet below the ground. Flooding has failed: huge quantities of water pumped in a single small tunnel took two weeks to show partial results, with the water simply draining out through the porous concrete or drainage holes. Placing explosives through the length of the tunnel does work,but “The harsh reality is that there is likely not enough supply of explosives or enough time to destroy all the tunnels in Gaza. To find all the tunnels and then destroy them would potentially take years.”24
The IDF has learnt that there is not a single unified tunnel system. “Each Hamas company, battalion, and brigade had its own networks of tunnels that factored into how they would fight and move around. Some of these networks connected to each other while others were separate.”25 A Hamas contingent may use a tunnel for as long as possible, then simply line the tunnel with booby traps and fall back on different tunnels. In Spencer’s assessment, “The tunnels gave Hamas the ability to control the initiative of most battles in Gaza.”26
By April 2025, IDF sources estimated that they had only destroyed 25 per cent of the tunnel network. American officials concluded much earlier that Israel’s efforts had failed to do much damage to the tunnel network or hamper Hamas’s operations. The network “has proved much larger than Israel anticipated,” and remains effective.27
Frustrated at its failure, the IDF has tried to wipe out virtually everything above ground. It has used tunnels as an alibi for bombing apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, refugee camps, mosques, sewage treatment stations, and so on, saying that a tunnel runs below. Since Gaza is one of the world’s most densely populated regions, it is inevitable that tunnels will run under all sorts of civilian buildings. Despite the killings of perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians, these bombings were useless for destroying tunnels deep underground, even assuming they passed through these locations. In fact, as Leila Seurat, a western expert on Hamas, points out, Israel’s purpose in bombing was not to destroy the tunnels. Rather, the purpose of bombing was to turn the population against Hamas and force it to surrender.28 Has that succeeded?
Fighting strength
Without doubt Hamas has been dealt huge blows, including the killing of its overall leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, its military chief, Mohammad Deif, its deputy military chief, Marwan Issa, and a middle layer of experienced field commanders. (The IDF claims that eight brigade commanders, 30 battalion commanders, and 165 company or platoon commanders of Hamas have been killed.29) Israel also assassinated Hamas’s political head, Ishmael Haniyeh, in Tehran. The killing of the top leadership of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and the mutilation of much of its second-rung leadership, indirectly increases the military pressure on Gaza, for Hezbollah supported the Palestine cause by engaging Israel militarily in the north. The overthrow of the Assad government in Syria must have cut off such meagre military supplies as came from outside.
All these are grave setbacks. However, according to Seurat, “The loss of a significant number of top leaders… has had little visible effect on [Hamas’s] capacity to fight.”30
Of the Palestinian fighters at the outset of the war, estimated by the IDF at 30,000-40,000, the IDF claim to have killed up to 23,000.31 This is a vastly inflated claim. In May 2025, Israeli intelligence officials assessed privately that just 8,900 Palestinian fighters had been killed; and one cannot set much store by even this figure, given the colossal failures of Israeli intelligence. But the resistance forces would, no doubt, have suffered sizeable losses.
At the same time, US intelligence estimated that Hamas may have added 15,000 additional fighters since the war began. Says Seurat: “Hamas’s ability to renew its manpower has long been a defining feature of the group, which has for years managed to maintain a very strong foothold in Palestinian society even after severe setbacks. The current war is no exception.”32 Hamas has continued to recruit new fighters up to the present: “there are indications, including on social media, that growing numbers of young Palestinians with no prior training have been joining the al-Qassam Brigades and carrying out guerrilla actions.”33
Since the spring of 2025, Hamas has stepped up offensive attacks on Israeli forces across Gaza. Among the successful operations reported were those on April 20, June 24, July 7, July 15, and July 22, culminating in a large-scale assault on an Israeli encampment on August 20. All these resulted in multiple deaths of Israeli soldiers. By mid-August, Hamas’s offensive operations were multiplying in eastern Gaza City.34
Moreover, Israel has not been able to cripple Hamas as an organization. In January-February 2025, Hamas’s negotiators in Qatar could negotiate a deal, identify which hostages they still hold, and then deliver them in an orderly manner. This suggests that Hamas’s command and control remains intact.35
The significance of this needs to be appreciated. One of the world’s most sophisticated armies, equipped with the most advanced weapons from the US, Germany and UK, moving in planes and armoured vehicles, has been battling irregular militias armed with home-made explosive devices and light arms, for two years, and has been frustrated. In August 2024 US military officials told Israel that it had achieved all it could militarily achieve in Gaza, and would never be able to completely eliminate Hamas. They pointed out that Israel was unable to secure the areas it had seized, particularly after its forces pulled back; and it had been unable to destroy the tunnel infrastructure. Israel’s military, they said, had “reached the end of the line.”36
Israel nevertheless continued its onslaught for another year, without success. Indeed, successful Palestinian resistance operations increased. From about June 2025 the IDF became preoccupied with preventing any of its soldiers being taken hostage. The August 20, 2025 the Al-Qassam Brigades’ attack on an Israeli military encampment at Khan Younis – in which some 18 fighters attacked the base with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at close range – would have required significant preparation, coordination and intelligence, indicative of a well-functioning military apparatus.37
While Hamas is able to enlist thousands of new recruits, the IDF is unable to mobilise its existing forces. On August 20 of this year, the IDF called up 60,000 reservists for a planned invasion of Gaza City. According to the Wall Street Journal, “this is part of an effort by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to put military pressure on Hamas so that they will agree to Israel’s terms of surrender.”38 Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, had opposed the decision, saying that reserve soldiers were exhausted after nearly two years of war in Gaza.39The Israeli cabinet overrode his objections. The goal, according to the cabinet’s statement, was “to achieve a decisive victory over Hamas.”40
The plan backfired disastrously. On August 28, the New York Times reported: “Over the past few months, an increasing number of Israeli reserve soldiers have not been showing up for military service.”41 The Wall Street Journal headline on September 1 read: “The Israeli Army Is Struggling to Get Reservists to Show Up.”42
Thus Israel is now desperately trying to achieve through the ceasefire what it could not achieve through the war.
To sum up this long account: The actual battlefield record of the two opposing forces amply bears out the assertion that the Palestinian resistance has succeeded in its aim, which is to survive and continue resistance, preventing secure occupation. It is the IDF that is in difficulties. Hence the Palestinian resistance can legitimately claim to be negotiating from a position of strength.
Hamas support base
How is Hamas able to recruit? It appears to still enjoy popular support. The Palestinian national liberation movement has a long history, and a rich political legacy. Hamas projects itself as representing, not its own narrow interests, but the interests of the Palestinian nation. In the fighting, it coordinates with 11 other resistance forces, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and even a militia formerly affiliated with Fatah. Many decisions about the war and negotiation are made in the joint operations room of these organisations’ armed wings.43 Notably, among the most prominent demands of Hamas in the negotiations has been for the release of the Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is widely seen as representing resistance to Israeli colonialism, in stark contrast to the Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, who is identified with Israel and seen as a stooge of US imperialism. In line with its stance, Hamas does not insist on remaining in power in Gaza, but demands only that Palestine be liberated.
In purely military terms, one might question Hamas’s failure to preserve the lives of its leaders such as Yahya Sinwar and Mohammad Deif. But their deaths appear to have further cemented the political credentials of Hamas among the people, and made it harder for Israel to turn the population against the Hamas leaders. People see Hamas leaders as sharing their own fate, indeed as having made greater sacrifices. The autopsy of Sinwar’s body revealed that he had not eaten for three days before his death, a fact that would have struck a chord with Gazans in their time of greatest trial.
The secret to the ability of the Palestinian resistance forces to revive their strength over and over is their base among the Palestinian people. Further, the actual course of the onslaught has confirmed to the Palestinian masses that the aim of Israel was not merely to eliminate Hamas, but to eliminate or drive out the Palestinian people; Hamas and other resistance forces are under attack because they stand against that objective.
From videos and other reportage from Gaza after the announcement of the ceasefire, it is clear that the Palestinian people are not merely looking at the ceasefire as a relief from the slaughter, but are treating it as a victory. Many of the present inhabitants are descended from those driven off their original lands in the first Nakba of 1948, and they have made Gaza their home. They remain in Palestine. By virtue of having survived the genocide and remained on their land, they consider that they have defeated Israel.
They know full well that Israel will keep violating the ceasefire, will attempt to introduce new ‘facts on the ground’ unilaterally, create hurdles for the entry of aid. All these things Israel did before October 7, 2023, too. But the situation has changed greatly since then.
IV. A turn in the situation
In one sense, world opinion regarding Israel has not mattered so far. Israel has continued to wage a genocidal war for two years with the backing of the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and other imperialist countries. The fact of genocide is confirmed daily by the most graphic videos, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Worldwide revulsion would appear not to have prevented Israel from proceeding on its course.
Equally significantly, not a single major power has waged an active diplomatic campaign against Israel’s genocide, applied sanctions against Israel, or even tried to reach humanitarian aid to the Gazan people. 44 Countries such as South Africa and Colombia, have taken diplomatic initiatives against Israel and charged it with genocide before the International Court of Justice, but Brazil, Russia, India and China have refused to act against Israel. For example, none of them signed up to even the very mild measures adopted by 12 nations at the Bogota Conference in July 2025.
Nevertheless, the abhorrence felt by people around the world (including peoples of the imperialist countries supporting Israel) has found expression in an upsurge of popular protest. Among the most striking examples are two successful general strikes in Italy in September-October 2025 solely on the question of Palestine, and the wave of protests in US college campuses in 2024. But these are part of a much wider phenomenon worldwide.
A section of the ruling classes in the US and Israel perceive a danger in this situation, a danger for not only Israeli but US interests as well (since ultimately Israel is sustained by the US precisely because it serves US imperialist interests). While the ultimate guarantor of power is armed force, it is not the only one: an enormous propaganda machinery too is required to continuously reproduce the support base for the ruling classes.
Let us take the New York Times, a newspaper which has long acted as a propagandist for Israel (and for US imperialist interests in general; among the Times’s most notorious episodes was its bogus discovery of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq, as a prelude to the US invasion). The genocide in Gaza has placed great strains on the Times newsroom. The Times has had to issue memos to its staff to avoid words such as “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territory” in relation to Gaza.45 The management killed an investigation by its own reporter into the actions of Israeli hooligans in Amsterdam.46 When the Times management pushed through a particularly poorly-manufactured smear on Hamas, several Times staff objected to the bypassing of journalistic norms, and the fact of dissent in the Times newsroom was leaked to another publication. the Times management then carried out “targeted interrogation” of journalists of Middle Eastern descent to find the source of the leak. The union of Times newsroom employees had to file a formal grievance against this harassment.47
Given the Times’s role in the US-Israel propaganda machinery, it is revealing to see the change in the tenor of its reporting. Viewing itself as a listening post, it is worried that “globally, most people have a negative view of Israel”. This is nothing new in itself: Israel has long faced international condemnation for its illegal occupation, and the United Nations has passed innumerable resolutions criticising Israel, with the US virtually alone in support of Israel. Israel has ignored this for decades.
However, the Times worries that surveys show that “negative opinions about Israel have surged.” Of 24 countries recently surveyed, in 20 countries, more than half of the people said they had an unfavorable view of Israel. In eight countries — Australia, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Turkey — more than 75 percent held that view.48 When a shipful of Israeli tourists tried to visit a Greek island in July, people gathered at the port preventing their disembarking. When Israeli football teams visit Europe, they face massive demonstrations against their presence. At Britain’s Glastonbury music festival in July, the punk rap duo Bob Vylan chanted “death to the IDF” amid roars of support. In Amsterdam, a city of less than a million, 250,000 turned up for a rally in support of Palestine in September.
The Times itself conducts an opinion poll every year to check on the state of support for Israel among US citizens. This year it was shocked to find that “Nearly two years into the war in Gaza, American support for Israel has undergone a seismic reversal…. with slightly more voters siding with Palestinians over Israelis for the first time since The Times began asking voters about their sympathies in 1998. A majority of American voters now oppose sending additional economic and military aid to Israel, a stunning reversal in public opinion since the Oct. 7 attacks…”49
Thus the Times editorial of September 30 is headlined: “This Terrible War Must End”. It says:
The war needs to end for the sake of Israel and its security. The horrors that it has inflicted in Gaza have contributed to a sharp decline of support for Israel in the United States and elsewhere. Any additional military gains against Hamas pale in comparison with the long-term strategic threats from global isolation.50
Other editorials (e.g., “Israel’s Gaza Media Ban Is Indefensible,”51 “Gaza’s Hunger Is a Moral Crisis”52, etc.) are similarly indicative of a belated and alarmed realisation by the Times editorial board that the genocide has backfired. One of the Times’ most aggressively Zionist columnists, Thomas Friedman, writes that “this Israeli government is committing suicide…. It is destroying Israel’s standing in the world…. Israel is now well on its way to making itself a pariah state.”53 He points out that “proliferation of social media, particularly TikTok, means that video of every single civilian casualty – every dismembered civilian – can now be broadcast the the smartphone of everyone on the planet.”54 Israel’s lobbyists say a ceasefire is needed in order to stop the flow of images revealing the truth: “Eventually, an end to the war should mean an end to the worldwide focus on Israel’s conduct of it”, says Ted Deutch, president of the American Jewish Committee.55
Keep in mind that the US is perhaps the world’s most indoctrinated country, and therefore its population has long been a solid base of support for Israel. Now, however, pro-Israel journalists, academics and lobbyists in the US are warning of a sea-change. In the words of right-wing commentator Megyn Kelly, “Everybody under 30 is against Israel”; a pro-Israel campaigner who recently toured US campuses said “They’re absorbing this toxic idea that there’s something basically illegitimate about a Jewish state.”56 A year after the October 7 operation, the pro-Palestine group that had organized student encampments at Columbia University issued a statement calling for “liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance.”57
For Israel, the implications are grave. Shibley Telhami, a pollster and professor at the University of Maryland, told the Times that “Israel’s dependence on US support had become so glaring over the course of the war – in political, military and economic terms – that Israel would be motivated to treat its possible defeat in the court of American public opinion as an ‘existential threat’.”58
The weakening of US imperialism
The threat is not only to Israel. As we have argued elsewhere, Israel serves as an essential instrument of US imperialist hegemony. Over the last 22 years, the US has waged a series of aggressions on various countries of the region in an effort to prolong the life of its global hegemony. Israel has served as a powerful military prop of US domination of the West Asian region, and a key part of US plans to re-shape it. Israel’s long history of aggression, including its recent aggressions on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, must be seen in this light. While many commentators labour under the belief that Israel controls the US, they do not adequately grasp how important Israel is to US imperialism. And hence its weakening is also the weakening of US imperialism.
The Palestinian national liberation struggle has long been the central political question of west Asia-north Africa. It reflects in a concentrated form the struggle between imperialism and oppressed nations, which can be seen in different forms in every country in west Asia-north Africa; and hence the broad masses of the region identify with this struggle as their own.
With the October 7 strike and the ensuing holocaust of Gaza, the Palestinian struggle appears to have gone further, and become the focus of the struggle against imperialism by people the world over, including in the imperialist countries themselves.
The Palestinians have resisted colonisation for 75 years, and have now fought back another 2 years of outright genocide. With their bodies, they have managed to stall one of the world’s most powerful military machines; rally support from around the world; and weaken imperialism itself in the process. Their struggle is far from over. It remains to be seen whether the people of the world rise to the present occasion.
