By Rima Najjar
Hamas’s Conditional Acceptance Disrupts the U.S.-Israeli Containment Strategy
Author’s Note
This essay argues that Hamas’s conditional acceptance of the Trump administration’s Gaza peace proposal represents a strategic reconfiguration of its political identity, not a retreat, but a recalibration. By leveraging the language of international law and regional consensus, Hamas disrupts the U.S.-Israeli policy of containment and exposes the underlying asymmetry of a diplomatic process that demands Palestinian capitulation while enabling Israeli impunity. The analysis traces Hamas’s evolution from a purely militant organization to a savvy diplomatic actor, demonstrating how its response exploits the contradictions within the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Finally, the essay explores the regional ramifications of this move, particularly for Lebanon’s Hezbollah, where the perceived success or failure of Hamas’s diplomatic gambit could determine the future of the “axis of resistance.” This act of conditional refusal transforms Hamas from a subject of coercion into an agent of strategic disruption, challenging the very spectacle of U.S.-led diplomacy in the region and reasserting resistance as a force of regional recalibration.
— –
I. Introduction
In a region where every gesture is freighted with existential stakes, Hamas’s partial acceptance of Trump’s 20-point proposal marks a moment of calculated diplomacy that disrupts the spectacle of U.S.-Israeli diplomacy — a performance designed to orchestrate a managed surrender rather than achieve a just peace. Far from capitulation, the move signals a strategic pivot — one that reframes Hamas not merely as a militant actor but as a negotiator capable of leveraging international law, regional consensus, and symbolic restraint.
II. From Armed Resistance to Political Legitimacy
Founded in 1987 during the First Intifada, Hamas emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood’s social infrastructure in Gaza, positioning itself as an Islamist alternative to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Its early charter rejected any compromise with Israel and embraced armed struggle as the sole path to liberation. This uncompromising stance earned Hamas both grassroots support and international isolation.
Yet even in its early years, Hamas demonstrated a capacity for strategic recalibration. During the 1990s, while opposing the Oslo Accords, it began participating in municipal elections and cultivating a parallel governance structure through charitable networks. This duality — resistance and service — laid the groundwork for its political ascent.
That trajectory deepened in 2017, when Hamas issued a revised political document that removed language previously deemed antisemitic — not in the Western European sense rooted in racialized exclusion and genocidal ideology, but in a cultural-religious framework shaped by centuries of theological contestation and colonial experience. This revision reframed Hamas’s opposition as directed not against Judaism as a faith, but against Zionism as a settler-colonial project that instrumentalizes religious narratives to justify territorial dispossession. Yet this ideological recalibration is often flattened in Western discourse, which continues to cast Hamas as a monolithic militant entity — not to mention its designation as a terrorist organization by a small subset of Western-aligned states—including the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom and all 27 member states of the European Union—as well as by the European Union, which, while not a state, has adopted similar classifications through Council-level sanctions.
This label, deployed as a tool of diplomatic exclusion, forecloses engagement with Hamas’s evolving political posture and reinforces a securitized lens that privileges Israeli strategic narratives over Palestinian testimonial sovereignty (the ethical right to narrate one’s experience without external reframing). It functions less as a legal classification than as a rhetorical weapon, one that delegitimizes any form of resistance while elevating Israeli state violence as self-defense. In this framework, Hamas’s charter revision, its engagement with international law, and its overtures toward regional consensus are rendered invisible, dismissed as tactical ploys rather than substantive shifts.
Even strategic analyses that acknowledge Hamas’s deterrence logic — such as those by Israeli scholar Daniel Sobelman — operate within frameworks that abstract Palestinian resistance into metrics of military leverage. Sobelman’s work on asymmetric deterrence offers valuable insight into Hamas’s evolving posture, but his positionality as a former Israeli intelligence officer embedded in Zionist institutions must be critically contextualized. His voice is amplified in Western academic and policy circles, while Palestinian scholars like Omar Barghouti, whose work on BDS foregrounds nonviolent resistance and international law, are systematically vilified and excluded. To counter this asymmetry in ways of knowing, it is essential to pair strategic readings with testimonial accounts from Palestinian and Arab intellectual traditions. Scholars such as Lama Abu-Odeh and Fawwaz Traboulsi emphasize the ethical and historical dimensions of resistance, framing Hamas not merely as a security threat but as a political actor embedded in a decolonial tradition. Juxtaposing these perspectives restores narrative sovereignty and affirms the necessity of reading Hamas’s diplomacy through both strategic and ethical lenses.
With its evolving political identity established, Hamas’s engagement with Trump’s proposal emerges as a strategic continuation — not a deviation.
III. Hamas’s Diplomatic Engagement with Trump’s Proposal
Despite its pariah status in the West, the movement has steadily expanded its diplomatic footprint, engaging with regional powers like Qatar, Turkey, and Iran, and more recently with Russia and China. These relationships have served multiple purposes: securing humanitarian aid, legitimizing its governance in Gaza, and positioning itself as a stakeholder in regional stability.
Hamas’s diplomatic turn accelerated in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks. According to Hamas Political Bureau, it conducted over 130 diplomatic meetings in 2024 — nearly five times its previous annual average. These included engagements with 23 countries and numerous non-state actors, insisting on the fact that it is both a militant movement and a negotiator.
The movement’s rhetoric continues to foreground international laws and resolutions — not as a newfound concession, but as a longstanding framework through which it contests occupation, siege, and displacement. By invoking these norms in its response to Trump’s proposal, Hamas reasserts its position within globally recognized legal discourse, even as it refuses to abandon its resistance credentials.
In contrast, Israel’s continued defiance of international law, its repeated violations of UN resolutions, its refusal to comply with ICJ rulings, and its systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure, positions it outside the legal order entirely. What more dramatic indictment is needed than its public shredding of the UN Charter, broadcast live to an international audience that watches, condemns, and ultimately enables?
This extralegal posture reverberates through the current negotiations, where Israel enters not as a state bound by law, but as a sovereign exception to it — i.e.,where legal norms are suspended to consolidate state power. The very premise of dialogue is distorted: demands for ceasefire, humanitarian access, or accountability are reframed as concessions rather than obligations. Palestinian negotiators, civil society actors, and international legal advocates find themselves pleading for adherence to norms that Israel has already voided. The result is not negotiation but coercion — an asymmetrical theater in which law is invoked only to be suspended, and where the architecture of impunity is mistaken for diplomacy.
This legal and diplomatic positioning by Hamas exposes the fundamental pitfalls and contradictions within the U.S.-Israeli approach, which relies on brinkmanship and bad faith.
IV. The Pitfalls: Trump’s Brinkmanship and Netanyahu’s Contradictions
1. Trump’s Brinkmanship
President Trump’s framing of the Gaza proposal — delivered with the threat that “all HELL, like no one has ever seen before” would follow Hamas’s rejection — is emblematic of his coercive, zero-sum approach to diplomacy. The tweet did not respond to an actual rejection; rather, it preemptively cast refusal as illegitimate, foreclosing dissent before it could be voiced. This ultimatum, couched in apocalyptic language, reveals a strategy less concerned with negotiation than with domination. But coercion cannot substitute for consensus, especially when the proposal itself is riddled with ambiguities and lacks enforceable guarantees.
Hamas’s partial acceptance, articulated in its official statement titled Important Statement on Hamas’ Response to U.S. President Trump’s Proposal, exposes the fragility of Trump’s timeline. The movement’s insistence on clarification, its rejection of the economic framework, and its call for national consensus before any technocratic transition all signal a refusal to be boxed into a binary of compliance or annihilation. By invoking international law and regional consultation, Hamas reframes the proposal not as a peace offer but as a pressure tactic — one that demands resistance through diplomatic engagement rather than military escalation.
Trump’s claim that “every country has signed on” is contradicted by the cautious responses of key regional actors. Egypt and Qatar have emphasized the need for Palestinian unity and a sustainable ceasefire, while Jordan and Turkey have expressed concern over the plan’s unilateralism. Hamas’s engagement with these mediators — rather than direct submission to Trump’s terms — reveals the hollowness of the claim and the performative nature of the ultimatum.
2. Israel’s Negotiation Deceptions and Strategic Dissonance
Israel’s endorsement of Trump’s proposal is undermined by its actions on the ground. While Netanyahu publicly supports the plan, the Israeli military continues its operations in Gaza, including targeted assassinations and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. These actions contradict the spirit of the proposal, which ostensibly calls for a phased withdrawal and the release of hostages.
Moreover, Israel has refused to commit to the full terms outlined in the plan, particularly those involving the transfer of Gaza’s administration to a Palestinian technocratic body. Netanyahu’s government has issued statements suggesting that any such transition must be vetted by Israeli security agencies — a move that effectively nullifies Palestinian sovereignty and reasserts Israeli control under the guise of coordination.
This strategic dissonance reveals a deeper fissure between the U.S. and Israel. While Trump seeks a legacy-defining peace accord, Netanyahu appears more invested in preserving Israel’s military leverage and domestic political capital. His maneuvering reflects a familiar pattern: endorsing peace frameworks for international optics while sabotaging their implementation through on-the-ground escalation and bureaucratic obstruction.
Hamas, recognizing this duplicity, has chosen to engage with regional and international mediators rather than rely solely on U.S.-Israeli channels. Its response to Trump’s proposal — conditional, consultative, and grounded in international law — exploits the contradictions within the alliance and repositions Hamas as a diplomatic actor navigating asymmetrical terrain with strategic precision.
V. What Hamas’s Agreement Means for Lebanon
The ultimate success of Hamas’s diplomatic gambit will be measured not only in Gaza but in its ripple effects across the region, with Lebanon serving as the most immediate and volatile barometer, where Hezbollah’s posture is tethered to Hamas’s resistance credentials and regional standing.
Crucially, Hamas did not agree to disarm. Instead, it deferred the question, insisting that any decision regarding weapons must emerge from a “comprehensive national stance” and align with “relevant international laws and resolutions.” Senior official Mousa Abu Marzouk clarified that Hamas would only hand over its weapons to a future Palestinian state — not to Israel, not to the U.S., and not to any externally imposed authority.
This rhetorical precision is strategic: Hamas is acutely aware that even the optics of disarmament, however deferred or symbolic, risk undermining Hezbollah’s claim to be the region’s last uncompromised axis of resistance. In resistance politics, symbolism is strategy. The mere suggestion that Hamas might relinquish arms threatens to isolate Hezbollah as an outlier — no longer part of a unified front, but a relic of a fading paradigm. In this context, Lebanon becomes a mirror: not of Gaza’s liberation, but of its containment. The transition in Gaza, framed as peace, may in fact signal the managed pacification of resistance — an outcome Lebanon is pressured to emulate or resist.
Yet the stakes are not unilateral. If the agreement is perceived as surrender — an externally imposed framework that dissolves Hamas’s authority without securing Palestinian sovereignty — it could trigger backlash across Lebanon’s political spectrum. Hezbollah, which has long positioned itself as a strategic partner to Hamas in a united front against Israeli expansionism, would seize the moment to reaffirm that negotiation is capitulation, that resistance remains the only viable path. This alliance is not symbolic — it is infrastructural, forged through joint operations, shared intelligence, and a common understanding that Israel’s military doctrine treats Gaza and Lebanon as interchangeable theaters of containment. A perceived weakening of Hamas’s resistance posture would embolden Hezbollah’s military stance, justify cross-border escalation, and silence reformist factions calling for de-escalation and political restructuring. The outcome hinges on whether Hamas can maintain its resistance credentials while navigating the diplomatic terrain — a balancing act that Lebanon is not merely watching, but absorbing into its own strategic calculus.
VI. Conclusion
In conclusion, Hamas’s conditional refusal has disrupted the diplomatic script in ways armed resistance alone could not. By accepting the frame of negotiation while rejecting its coercive content — its asymmetrical terms, deferred sovereignty, and juridical traps — Hamas has exposed the hollow core of a peace process never designed to deliver sovereignty. The spectacle has been broken. No longer shielded by diplomatic theater, the world must now witness not a managed surrender, but a real, messy, and strategically fraught political struggle — one whose outcome will redefine the balance of power and the meaning of resistance in the Middle East for years to come.
Note: First published in Medium
____________________
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.
5 October 2025
Source: countercurrents.org