After a year-long pursuit involving several agencies and employing the latest technologies, the best Israeli special forces, and American assistance, Yahya Sinwar was killed by regular soldiers who encountered him without realizing who they had killed. Reports indicate that the soldiers were not on an assassination mission, nor did they have intelligence suggesting they were in the vicinity of the elusive Hamas leader, the architect of the October 7 attacks, the man Israel wanted dead more than anything else. The soldiers only recognized him after a closer look at his face and finding identification documents with him.
Along the way, Israeli forces decimated large parts of Gaza, displacing two million people from their homes. The fierce pursuit that followed was marked by a combination of advanced technology and brute force, with hunters displaying their willingness to go to great lengths, including causing extremely high civilian casualties, in order to kill the Hamas leader and dismantle the tight circle around him.
The hunters consisted of a task force made up of intelligence officers, special operations units from the Israel Defense Forces, military engineers, and surveillance experts under the umbrella of the Israeli security agency, known as “Shabak” or “Shin Bet.” Personally and institutionally, this team sought to atone for their security failures that allowed the October 7 attack to occur. Nonetheless, despite their motivation, they faced over a year of frustration. Michael Milstein, a former head of the Palestinian affairs department in Israeli military intelligence (Aman), remarked, “If you had told me when the war started that he would survive for [a year], I would have found that astonishing.” Some in the Israeli defense establishment believed that Sinwar was using hostages as human shields, and the risk of killing hostages certainly did not prevent the IDF from dropping 2,000-pound bombs on targets suspected of being Hamas leaders. Ultimately, Israelis reported finding no signs of hostages in Sinwar’s vicinity when he was killed, and he was only accompanied by two other men. There was no shortage of experience among Sinwar’s pursuers. Targeted killings have been a fundamental tactic of the Israeli army since Israel’s establishment. Since World War II, Israel has assassinated more individuals than any other country in the world.
Milstein, whose mission in military intelligence “Aman” was to study Sinwar and other Hamas leaders, stated: “After nearly 50 years of assassinations, we realize that this is a fundamental part of the game. Sometimes, it is necessary to assassinate a highly prominent leader. But when you start to think that this will change the game and an ideological organization will collapse because you killed one of its leaders, that is a grave mistake, and it won’t end the war.” Former Mossad Deputy Chief Ram Ben-Barak predicted that after Sinwar’s fall, “someone else will come.” “It’s an ideological war, not a war against Sinwar.”
Israel’s strategy of killing and eliminating Hamas leaders has proven ineffective over decades. More than a year after the Israeli attack on October 7, the war in Gaza shows no signs of winding down. The past months have been marked by widespread death and destruction. However, Israel’s primary objective of completely eliminating Hamas has yet to be achieved. Even as Gaza turns to rubble, Hamas remains a powerful force that effectively controls large parts of the territory. The continued resilience of Hamas can be attributed to bureaucratic and ideological factors that have historically proven resistant to Israeli efforts.
Targeting leaders, also known as targeted assassinations, is a tried-and-tested tactic employed by Israel, particularly highlighted during times of severe tension. In a study on Israeli trends in targeted killings, researcher Stephen David found that during the Second Intifada (2000-2005), Israel engaged in more of these operations than ever before in its history to deter and prevent more attacks against Israelis. The findings from these operations highlighted that the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli deaths during the First Intifada (1987-1993) was about 25 to one, but during the Second Intifada, armed Palestinian groups engaging in suicide bombings reduced this ratio to three to one. Israel responded to the increasing number of deadly attacks by tightening restrictions on Palestinian movement and conducting military raids on areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, quickly targeting and killing armed Palestinian groups. According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Israeli forces conducted at least 208 targeted killings between September 2000 and 2006. Since 2000, as part of its “decapitation” strategy, Israel has targeted regular members and leaders of Hamas. The majority of these attacks consisted of close-range killings using Apache helicopters, drones, and undercover agents; in July 2002, Israel assassinated Hamas military leader Salah Shehada with 16 bombs. Two years later, in March and April 2004, Israel killed Hamas founder and leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in missile strikes. Hamas declared that Israel had opened “the gates of hell” with their deaths and vowed to kill “hundreds of Zionists.” As the Intifada progressed, the number of Hamas attacks steadily increased, with 19 attacks in 2001, 34 in 2002, 46 in 2003, 202 in 2004, and 179 in 2005. Support for suicide bombings continued to rise as the Intifada advanced. Three years after the outbreak of the Intifada, a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that 74.5% of Palestinians supported suicide operations.
Empirical studies examining the effectiveness of decapitation tactics offer insights into Hamas’s ability to endure. Some researchers and advocates of targeted killing tactics argue that attacking the leadership of armed resistance groups like Hamas, especially when hierarchical structures are in place, diminishes the operational capacity of the group by eliminating skilled members, forcing them to divert time and resources to protect the remaining leaders. This argument assumes that ongoing assassination policies targeting leaders of resistance organizations who recruit, organize, and execute attacks on Israeli targets will raise the cost of violence, compelling current and potential fighters to abandon the struggle or change tactics. However, targeted killings are rarely a panacea for resistance organizations and movements, and aside from the normative and legal issues surrounding their practice, most existing literature rejects the idea that the elimination of enemy leaders helps achieve a state’s military and political goals. As analyst Patrick Johnston wrote in his 2012 study on targeting leadership in counterinsurgency operations, “the consensus among researchers is that high-value targeting is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst.” Studies regarding the effectiveness of Israeli operations against Hamas have reached similar conclusions. Indeed, Audrey Kurth Cronin, one of the foremost researchers in this field, recently pointed out in an article for Foreign Affairs that decades of targeted killing “did not affect the movement’s capabilities or intentions in the long term.” In fact, the bureaucratization of the group has been a contributing factor. Bureaucratic resistance groups, like other bureaucratic organizations, tend to clearly define management responsibilities, roles, and functions, thereby increasing organizational stability and efficiency. In the aftermath of decapitation, groups can rely on these functional bases and well-developed, diverse resources to withstand the sudden removal of key members and leaders. As they age, bureaucracies also become larger, more complex, and more sustainable. Reflecting this trend, older organizations and movements are more resilient in the face of decapitation tactics than younger ones that have not yet developed similar organizational capabilities. This is termed “the responsibility of renewal and replacement,” and the earlier the decapitation of a leader occurs in the life cycle of a resistance group, the greater the impact on the group’s survival. As experts on jihadist movements Brian Price and Gina Jordan found, these effects diminish in the first decade and are unlikely to affect the extinction or demise of a group once it surpasses the twenty-year threshold.
Now, as Hamas approaches the completion of its fourth decade, it has become a well-established and diverse bureaucratic organization. It has distinct political, military, and social wings, along with clearly defined roles, functions, and hierarchies. The deep bureaucratic foundations, as well as the bureaucratic leadership, have formed over the years through continued political representation, enduring losses of senior personnel on political, operational, and social levels, and the overlap of power structures between Hamas’s internal leadership in Gaza and its external leadership has created opportunities for rallying international political and moral support for the movement while forming an organizational backer to bear roles and responsibilities. For example, after Rantisi in 2004, Khaled Mashal, the political leader, effectively took control of the movement from his exile in Damascus; from 2017 to 2024, Ismail Haniyeh was the head of the movement as he traveled around the Middle East, recently engaging in indirect ceasefire negotiations with Israel. After Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran by Israel, he was quickly succeeded by Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, who was martyred on October 17, 2024. This illustrates the symbolic challenge and internal support for Hamas leadership and its ability to fulfill its roles and responsibilities through the hierarchy.
Advanced groups that enjoy widespread social support have proven difficult to displace. In fact, one of the dilemmas facing Israel is that Hamas is deeply rooted in Palestinian society through its political, social, service, and daily life aspects. Indeed, Hamas’s popularity stems from the fact that it is still seen as “the voice of dignity and a symbol of the defense of Palestinian rights and a force that refuses to surrender.” Popular support is a crucial factor in the resistance’s ability to maintain its organizational strength and legitimacy even after the removal of its leaders. It enables the group to attract new members, raise funds, and rebuild vital resources, ensuring its continued ability to operate as a clandestine organization and plan for future actions. Targeted killings can increase popular support for the cause of the resistance group by winning “hearts and minds” of local and international communities. Civilian casualties due to “collateral damage” or misdirected attacks can reinforce these negative effects and elevate the ideological or political significance and popularity of the group. In Hamas’s case, Israeli efforts, including targeted killings, have bolstered the movement’s legitimacy. The assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004 and his successor al-Rantisi sparked outrage and calls for revenge, creating a paradox: even as the movement was weakened militarily, its popularity reached unprecedented levels between 2000 and 2005, with Palestinian support for Islamists—of which Hamas is the largest faction—increasing by 20%. Fueled by the presumed failure of the secular Fatah movement supported by the PLO to end the Israeli occupation, Hamas won 44.5% of the votes in the 2006 elections.
A year after October 7 and the onset of the Israeli Operation Iron Sword, Hamas continues to fight and resist. In the days following the commencement of the attack on Gaza, Israel dismantled 18 out of 24 Hamas battalions, killed or incapacitated 14,000 Hamas fighters, destroyed large parts of the underground tunnel system, and killed over 100 leaders, including Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, Marwan Issa, deputy head of Hamas’s military wing, and former Hamas political bureau head Ismail Haniyeh. While these air strikes resulted in a large number of civilian casualties, there is simultaneously no evidence to suggest that the movement’s capacity to threaten Israel in the long term has been significantly weakened. In recent months, Hamas has relied on guerrilla warfare tactics such as close ambushes against Israeli forces and rocket attacks on Israel. On the other hand, the resumption of Israeli purges, especially in northern Gaza, allowed Hamas fighters, along with other groups like the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to regroup amid the security vacuum and regain some control. Polls conducted since October 7 support Hamas’s claims, particularly in the West Bank. The movement’s commitment to resistance and the October 7 attacks enjoy overwhelming support from Palestinians; according to a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy Research, 63% of Palestinians, as of late May, blamed Israel for the suffering of Gaza residents, while nearly all Palestinians (97%) believe that Israel has committed war crimes and atrocities in the current conflict. This sentiment is reflected in a rising approval rating for Hamas’s performance in the current war (64% in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank). Importantly, a majority of Palestinians support Hamas’s future and its resistance in the Gaza Strip, with 56% of Gaza residents believing that armed struggle is necessary for building a Palestinian state. Indeed, as these numbers show, Hamas’s long-term position is much stronger than Israel wishes it to be. As security analyst Robert Peebles recently cautioned, the severe destruction wrought by the Israeli operation has filled Gaza with angry and vengeful youth ready to be recruited by Hamas. Targeted assassinations may serve as a political tool for Israel in punishing those responsible for the October 7 attacks and placating the public, but they will not lead to the end of Hamas or its ideological resonance.
