How power imbalance, misread signs and strategic blunders clouded Hamas’ judgment over Gaza ceasefire

In late February 2025, senior Hamas leader and ex-chairman of its politburo, Mousa Abu Marzouk, said he would not have supported Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel had he known how destructive Israel’s response would have been.

That remarkably frank admission takes on renewed relevance now, just weeks later, after the resumption of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign. Airstrikes since March 18 have already claimed hundreds of Palestinian lives and officially ended a tenuous ceasefire deal.

As an expert on Palestinian politics, I believe the return to active war in the Gaza Strip speaks – on the Palestinian side of the equation – to the ongoing gross power imbalance of Hamas’ military position vis-a-vis Israel, and the group’s lack of strategic foresight in failing to anticipate the apparent willingness of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to return to fighting.

Asymmetrical ‘peacefare’

It is no secret that Netanyahu and his coalition partners showed little interest in fully implementing the ceasefire deal that was in part brokered by Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and signed on Jan. 19.

The deal was split into two main phases followed by a post-conflict reconstruction phase.

In the first round, Hamas freed Israeli hostages in return for the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and the resumption of aid into Gaza. After that, a second round of negotiations was intended to see the release of all remaining Israel hostages in Hamas custody in exchange for the total withdrawal of Israel’s forces from Gaza – and an end to the war.

But from the beginning, there were widespread concerns that Netanyahu would not be able to deliver on the second phase of the ceasefire deal – and speculation that he had no personal or political intentions of doing so.

The Trump administration essentially took the same position. Statements by the U.S. president expressing a desire to take over Gaza – with the accompanying implication that Palestinians living there would have to leave – underscored the lack of commitment to the second phase of the ceasefire.

Hamas was aware of these realities. But the militant governing authority seemingly felt it had little other option than to pursue the terms of the ceasefire while holding onto the only source of leverage it still had – the remaining Israeli hostages, believed to consist of about 59 people with perhaps less than half of them still alive. Indeed, that leverage was tied to seeing through the second stage of a ceasefire.

Of course, part of Hamas’ interest in the ceasefire was that it offered the group the chance to remain in power while delivering to Hamas the opportunity of boasting that it had secured the release of thousands of jailed Palestinians.

A lack of strategic foresight

But despite Hamas’ obvious disadvantages during the ceasefire, it’s important to focus on how the group significantly failed to appreciate several external factors.

For one, Hamas leaders appeared to believe, for a number of reasons, that they had more time to negotiate than they did. That belief relied in part on the understanding that Israeli public opinion polls indicated that a majority of the public favors an end to the war in exchange for freeing all Israeli hostages in one package.

Moreover, Adam Boehler, Trump’s hostage envoy, had recently opened up a direct communication channel between the U.S. and Hamas – something that hadn’t happened for decades – over the release of dual U.S.-Israel citizen Edan Alexander.

And in the days running up the resumption of fighting, Hamas and Israel officials had been meeting with U.S., Qatari and Egyptian counterparts, where they were discussing a proposal to extend the first phase through the end of Ramadan while negotiations continued over the final stage.

Yet others were seemingly aware that the ceasefire was on borrowed time. U.S. envoy Witkoff, in blaming Hamas for allegedly balking at the extension proposal – something Hamas denies – explicitly noted on March 14: “Hamas is making a very bad bet that time is on its side. It is not.”

Hamas also appeared to have miscalculated the political situation in Israel. It seemingly read too much into the fractures within the Israeli security establishment, including Netanyahu’s intent to fire the chief of Israel’s internal security agency, Ronen Bar – seeing in these developments signs that Gaza was immune from any immediate resumption to the fighting amid internal Israeli splits.

But far from signaling a short-term weakness, Netanyahu’s security shake-ups have merely removed dissenting voices.

Finally, Hamas let its own limited success go to its head. It emerged from the initial ceasefire able to present the group as triumphant as a fighting force that had still not been vanquished and could force Israel to the negotiating table. That was on full display through its media machine during the six weeks of handovers of Israeli hostages, in which Hamas’ repeated propaganda displays during hostage handovers angered Israeli public opinion, as well as Israeli political and security officials.

Growing rift

Where things go from here is hard to predict. For now, Netanyahu appears all too happy to return to a full-scale war that keeps his far-right coalition members happy, makes new elections less likely and keeps him safe from the looming criminal charges he would have to face once out of office.

Yet for all of the suffering for ordinary Palestinians that war guarantees, Hamas appears more adrift than ever. There remains a clear rift between its political leadership – based in Qatar and Turkey – who are more interested in diplomacy, and the head of the military wing in Gaza, Mohammed Sinwar, whose brother Yahya – mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks – was killed by Israel last fall.

But aside from a desire for revenge against Israel and remaining the primary power broker in Gaza, Hamas has consistently struggled to articulate an achievable long-term strategy for alleviating the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. The resumption of the war is unlikely to change that.