By JOSEPH KRAUSS
JERUSALEM — In the three and a half decades since it began as an underground militant group, Hamas has pursued a consistently violent strategy aimed at rolling back Israeli rule — and it has made steady progress despite bringing enormous suffering to both sides of the conflict.
But its stunning incursion into Israel over the weekend marks its deadliest gambit yet, and the already unprecedented response from Israel threatens to bring an end to its 16-year rule over the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas assault, in which over 1,200 people were killed in Israel and dozens dragged into Gaza as hostages, will likely bring a far greater magnitude of death and destruction to Gaza, where 2.3 million Palestinians have nowhere to flee and where 1,100 have already been killed.
Hamas officials say they are prepared for any scenario, including a drawn-out war, and that allies like Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah will join the battle if Israel goes too far.
“I don’t think anyone really knows what the endgame is at the moment,” said Tahani Mustafa, a Palestinian analyst at the Crisis Group, an international think tank. But given the amount of planning involved in the assault, “it’s difficult to imagine they haven’t tried to strategize every possible scenario.”
Shaul Shay, an Israeli researcher and retired colonel who served in military intelligence, said Hamas “miscalculated” Israel’s response and now faces a far worse conflict than it had anticipated.
“I hope and I believe that Israel will not stop until Hamas has been defeated in the Gaza Strip, and I don’t think that this was their expectation before the operation,” Shay said of Hamas.
FROM UPSTART INSURGENCE TO PROTO-STATE
From its establishment in the late 1980s, on the eve of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, Hamas has been committed to armed struggle and the destruction of Israel. At the height of the peace process in the 1990s, it launched…
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