Why Is Hamas Arresting Fighters Firing Rockets At Israel?

Pragmatism, not moderation

Meir Litvak, an expert on Hamas at Tel Aviv University, wrote a journal article giving examples of how Hamas’s ideology of jihad and martyrdom is balanced by its desire for tactical victories.

“Like most other Sunni movements, Hamas has relegated the messianic elements of Islam to a secondary level, for it has been much more interested in establishing an Islamic state in the here and now,” he writes in “‘Martyrdom is Life’: Jihad and Martyrdom in the Ideology of Hamas,” published in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism in 2010.

“The one exception is the eschatological meaning given by Hamas to the jihad against the Jews, which it claims is a prerequisite for fulfilling God’s promise to establish His rule over the earth,” Litvak explains.

For example, he continues, then-Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal said in 2008 that its agreement to a brief ceasefire (tahdi’a) in the hostilities with Israel was not meant to signal a change from “a phase of resistance and battles to a phase of calm.” Rather, according to Hamas’s “concept of the management of this conflict, the tahdi’a is a tactical means. It is a step within the resistance and is not detached from it,” said Mashaal.

Therefore, while the long-term goal of Hamas is to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state, it realizes that this is not currently possible, and it must make small incremental victories at the expense of a continuous self-defeating jihad that Israel’s overwhelming power would crush.

Muslim Brotherhood movements tend to avoid uninterrupted jihad and prefer a patient strategy of building grassroots support through their social services and educational institutions. While the end goal of creating a worldwide caliphate is not different from that of other jihadist groups like Islamic State, it prefers to play the long game instead of insisting on constant attacks without restraint regardless of their enemy’s strength.

The recent arrests of those responsible for firing rockets at Israel do not signal moderation but rather that this is not the appropriate time for such attacks in the view of the Hamas leadership.