Hamas has plans for the West Bank. Now that there is a ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas wants to use the war it launched against Israel to bring itself more power and influence in the West Bank. It seeks to gain popularity through the prisoner releases secured in exchange for Israeli hostages – between thirty and fifty Palestinian prisoners will be released for each of the thirty-three hostages in the first phase of the ceasefire. This will last slightly more than forty days.
On January 19, Hamas emerged immediately after the ceasefire to showcase its continued presence in Gaza. Hamas members crowded onto white vehicles, including Toyota Hilux trucks of the type they had used on the October 7 attack, to parade around Khan Younis and other areas of Gaza. Their message was clear. They believe they have won. Even though Hamas suffered thousands of casualties in the war, perhaps tens of thousands, it has many armed men and they are ready to return to run Gaza.
The turn to the West Bank is an old Hamas game plan. For instance, after every round of conflict in Gaza in the past 20 years, Hamas would try to mobilize activists in the West Bank, including on college campuses. I remember seeing how Hamas put up posters at Al-Quds University, in Abu Dis overlooking Jerusalem from the West Bank, and campaigned for student government. Hamas always campaigned on its “resistance” to Israel, with posters of men holding rifles. In other areas of the West Bank, such as in refugee camps, Hamas has used past conflicts with Israel to put up graffiti and propaganda claiming victory.
Over the past months, terrorist groups in the West Bank city of Jenin, primarily Palestinian Islamic Jihad, have already been clashing with the Palestinian Authority (PA) Security Forces. The PA wants to crack down on Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other armed groups because it knows they are exploiting the war in Gaza to gain influence. The terrorists have also benefited from a flow of weapons, primarily M-16 style rifles, to the West Bank. It gets worse than rifles though. They are also working on improvised explosive devices and other threats. They are growing in the power and complexity of operations.
In the wake of the release of the three hostages on January 19, demonstrations broke out throughout the West Bank: in Beitunia near Ramallah, Nablus, the town of Ya’bad near Jenin, and outside the Israeli-run Ofer prison. The incidents near Ofer were apparently instigated by Palestinians awaiting the prisoners they expect to be released as part of the ceasefire deal. Palestinian Al-Quds media in the West Bank also showed celebrations in other villages near Nablus and also a town near Ramallah where a procession of vehicles drove through the streets. In a town near Tubas, Hamas flags were raised in an area that has seen a massive rise in terrorist activity in the last year.
The Israel Defense Forces have had to use drones and other means to crack down on the increased threats in the West Bank. The picture is clear in the West Bank. Hamas and other groups are making a play for the northern West Bank, and they will likely then try to target Ramallah.
Hamas doesn’t need to take over the West Bank in one large operation. It can do so slowly via the kinds of demonstrations of January 19 that gradually corrode the PA’s authority. Alternatively, Hamas could seek to precipitate the kind of collapse that happened in Syria in December when the Asad regime suddenly fell. The Asad regime was toppled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group that had been running Idlib province in northwestern Syria. The group, which previously had ties to al-Qa’ida, is a model for Hamas. Hamas has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood and its origins are in the 1980s when many MB-affiliates sought to rise to influence in the region.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas was born in 1935 and is 89 years old. The fact that the PA has not replaced him with someone younger makes the PA appear to be going the way of the Soviet Politburo of the late 1970s and early 1980s, with aging men out of touch with changes in society. Abbas has Western-backed security forces but they are not very well armed. They had difficulty cracking down on the chaos in Jenin. Many of the terrorists in the West Bank appear to be armed not only with M-16 type rifles but also with modern sights and other accessories. In the end the PA’s force could collapse if they are not bolstered. They could also turn on their own leaders, sensing that collapse is coming. Or they could melt away as Asad’s forces did.
The PA retains support from countries in the region including Jordan, Egypt, the Abraham Accord countries of Bahrain and the UAE, as well as Saudi Arabia. However, prior to October 7, none of these countries learned of Hamas’ plans and warned Israel. Hamas has backing from Qatar and Turkey, a major non-NATO ally and a NATO ally. Hamas feels it is on the upswing in the region.
Hamas, rather than collapse the PA, may prefer to try to co-opt it or push a Trojan horse into it in the form of a “technocratic unity government” in Ramallah led by Hamas sympathizers.
There are many avenues open to Hamas. If Hamas begins to rise up in the West Bank, Israel has no way of keeping that in check, other than killing individual gunmen and known terrorists. Some of the terrorists released in the Gaza ceasefire deal will return to the West Bank, potentially creating a powder keg waiting to go off.
