Hamas’s launch of the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood military attack on October 7, 2023, stunned Israelis and Palestinians alike. Despite the operation’s audacious scale and ambition, two years later, it must be deemed a catastrophic failure by any measure. As Gaza and its people were devastated in the genocidal war that followed, the Palestinian national struggle for liberation suffered a debilitating setback. Rescuing what remains of Gaza will consume collective efforts for years to come. Moreover, because it also targeted civilians, the attack was marred by numerous violations of international law, thereby kneecapping the international solidarity that constitutes Palestinians’ greatest asset.

Nonetheless, the attack represented the long-standing conviction among many Palestinian political organizations that there is no path to liberation and self-determination except through armed struggle. It is the bitter fruit of a bitter root. The Nakba — the Palestinian displacement since 1948 — has deeply imprinted the logics of Palestinian resistance. A majority of Palestinian people live outside Israel’s domain, and they are incapable of undermining Israel’s interests or exploiting its vulnerabilities through sustained mass movements. Until the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian leadership in exile was constituted by the Palestinian diaspora and not by the segments of the population under different tiers of Israel’s colonial rule. Because of that leadership’s highly constricted ability to build mass movements within the Israeli domain, Palestinians sought to resist through armed struggle.

That, however, was short-lived. The conditions that were favorable for a militaristic strategy quickly evaporated as Arab regimes fully embraced diplomacy with Israel in the 1970s. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) prioritized establishing a base at home to preserve what it could of the national liberation project, but after Oslo, aspirations for national liberation under the PLO’s leadership unraveled. It was then that Hamas picked up the mantle of armed struggle, much as the earlier leadership in exile had done, building up its capacity under Israeli domination and control. The result is that, instead of exploring the power of mass movements and the deep capacities of grassroots organizing against Israel’s military might, Hamas only deepened its militarism with each passing year until the attack on October 7.