In the long march of liberation, timing is not a luxury; it is survival. Movements rise and collapse not solely on the justice of their cause but on their capacity for discipline, patience, and long-range vision. Revolutions do not perish for lack of zeal. They die when zeal outruns strategy, when emotion blinds leadership to the slow and brutal mathematics of power.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas broke through the Gaza perimeter and, for that moment, turned the geometry of the conflict on its head. Their coordinated, and shockingly effective breach sent tremors through Israel’s vaunted security establishment as intelligence failures unravelled, generals fumbled for explanations, and the aura of Israeli invincibility forever cracked. Hamas believed it had reshaped the narrative.
But shock is not victory. The months that followed were biblical in their devastation. Gaza became a mass grave. Tens of thousands were killed. Entire neighbourhoods were scrubbed from the map. The exhausted Palestinian cause was thrust into deeper peril. What was supposed to be a moment of ascendance mutated into a catastrophe. This is not an apologia for Israel’s merciless response, nor a dismissal of Palestinian grief. It is an autopsy of a movement that mistook tactical surprise for strategic maturity; a lament for a resistance that peaked before it prepared to endure the aftermath, and an attempt to discover what lies behind the fateful decision to attack Israel.
A region haunted by hubris
The Middle East is littered with the ruins of leaders undone not by weakness, but rather by the intoxication of early triumph. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait-a gambit he believed would secure his dominance-triggered the years of his undoing. Muammar Qaddafi imagined himself midwife to a pan-African renaissance; he died in a ditch, hunted by his own people. The late Egyptian diplomat Nabil Fahmy warned that “in this region, the gravest mistakes are often born not of weakness, but of overconfidence.”
Hamas fell prey to that pathology. Over the past years, through one explosive mixture of populism, coercion, and resistance, it clung to Gaza. But survival is not power. On 7 October, Hamas acted not like a movement ready for the burden of statehood but like one desperate to announce relevance in a world that has learned to tune out the misery of Gaza.
“Shock,” retired US General David Petraeus once observed of insurgencies, “is the beginning of victory only if it leads to strategic momentum.” Hamas delivered the shock. It never captured the momentum.
What if they had waited?
Imagine a different horizon, one forged over two decades of disciplined state-building: A Hamas that invested in schools, hospitals, and infrastructures resistant to siege; rooted out corruption; trained its fighters with the discipline of a national army rather than a limited militia; forged alliances on pragmatic interest rather than emotive spectacular gestures; built legitimacy not only in Gaza but on the occupied West Bank and throughout the diaspora.
Would Israel have changed its stance? Absolutely not. It never would. Its occupation has been built on structural impunity. But the world might have. Two years after that fateful day, it is now impossible to predict whether Palestine might have regained the global moral stature it once had, when global movements joined ranks behind leaders who represented not just defiance but a clear vision. The haunting question today is, has 7 October buried all prospects of diplomatic traction under an avalanche of rubble and rage?
READ: White House dismisses report on alleged US military base on Gaza border
The emotional trap of resistance
In the collective Arab political memory, resistance is sacrosanct-the language of dignity versus humiliation. Yet resistance stripped of strategy is not freedom; it is a ritual sacrifice. As former Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher noted, “Anger alone is not a strategy. It is an impulse. And impulses do not build states.”
Hamas acted from a repository of generational trauma, a powder keg of grief too long neglected by the world. But grief is not governance. And Gaza’s children deserve a future that is more than martyrdom.
Palestinian scholar Dr Yara Hawari has best caught this heartbreak: “Our liberation cannot be built upon the ruins of our own society. It must be rooted in life, not death.” It is a truth repeatedly betrayed by leaderships intoxicated by their own symbolism.
The geopolitical gambit
Why 7 October? In the months leading up to the attack, Israel and Saudi Arabia had been edging toward a historic normalisation agreement. This geopolitical earthquake threatened to consign Palestinians to political irrelevance. A Saudi-Israeli deal without Palestinian buy-in would make Gaza irrelevant and forever forgotten, given the unbridled US and Western support of Israel.
For Hamas, irrelevance is extinction and the end of the dream of statehood. The attack was a desperate gambit to derail a process that would permanently sideline them. And in one sense, it worked: Saudi Arabia hardened its stance, insisting normalization must be tied to a credible path toward Palestinian statehood.
But at what cost? Can a movement claim to be strategically successful when its own people drown in those ruins? Only history will be able to judge whether the answer to this agonizing question was right or wrong. This heartbreaking dilemma is best summed by the saying “you can’t see the forest for the trees.”
The lesson of restraint
It is not an act of fury, but a patient architecture of legitimacy, sacrifice, and political acumen. The ANC knew that. The Vietnamese resistance knew it, and the most embattled Algerian FLN knew that timing is the most crucial component of any liberation movement.
Carl von Clausewitz warned, “Courage without foresight is useless.” Did Hamas act as if foresight was optional? A heart-rending question to answer. And now, the cost is measured in dead children, shattered families, and a global hesitancy to mourn Gaza without judging its rulers.
A final reckoning
This is the tragedy of Hamas: not its violence, but its timing. The movement was in a race against time to pre-empt the Israel-Saudi deal. It mistook a single moment of tactical brilliance for the dawn of a strategic revolution. In doing so, has Hamas consigned its people to a long, dark future— a future defined not by liberation but by obliteration?
History is not yet over. It does, however, call for leadership inspired by clear vision, discipline rather than spectacle. In reclaiming its future, Palestine will need to do so through leadership that perceives freedom as a marathon rather than an eruption—and that the deadliest mistake of all may be peaking too early.
OPINION: The improbable statesman: Al-Sharaa’s White House gambit and the future of Syria’s sovereignty
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.