Will Hamas Elections Pull the Movement Out of Its Crisis?

Hamas’s current elections are not merely a process of leadership replacement; they constitute a test of the movement’s ability to survive and reconstruct itself in the aftermath of the losses incurred since October 7.

The internal competition within Hamas revolves around two principal approaches: one centered on resistance, alignment with Iran, and close ties to the military wing; and another more pragmatic current advocating broader Arab and diplomatic engagement while reducing dependence on a single regional axis.

The movement’s central crisis lies in the relationship between the political and military spheres, particularly in the unresolved question of who ultimately possesses strategic decision-making authority within Hamas.

October 7 exposed profound deficiencies in Hamas’s decision-making mechanisms and reignited debate over the costs of military action and the limits of its effectiveness in shaping the movement’s future.

Hamas’s experience governing the Gaza Strip generated a structural contradiction between its identity as a resistance movement and the practical demands of governance and administration, producing a deeper crisis concerning the definition of the movement’s role.

Internal divisions have deepened as a result of competing regional alignments between the Iranian axis and the camp favoring broader Arab engagement, in addition to the widening divergence between the movement’s internal and external leadership structures.

Ultimately, Hamas’s future has become increasingly dependent on its ability to redefine both its identity and political role while establishing a sustainable balance between resistance and political engagement without sliding into fragmentation or losing its sources of legitimacy.

Attention is increasingly focused on Hamas’s selection of a new head of its Political Bureau, as this represents a critical moment for understanding the movement’s future orientation and anticipating its possible trajectories. The significance of these elections does not lie merely in their role as a periodic mechanism for reshaping the movement’s leadership elite following Israel’s assassination of its most prominent traditional military and political leaders since October 7. Rather, they constitute a genuine test of Hamas’s ability to overcome the structural and existential threats confronting it, preserve its internal cohesion, reconstruct its leadership framework, and regulate its decision-making mechanisms.

These elections reflect a deeper dilemma that extends beyond the mere production of a new leadership elite. At stake is the movement’s capacity to continue functioning as a political actor amid mounting debates over its role, objectives, and sources of legitimacy on the one hand, and its ability to manage internal decision-making dynamics-particularly between its political and military wings-on the other. In this sense, the elections cannot be reduced to a competition over leadership positions. Instead, they represent an indicator of a complex crisis tied to the movement’s ability to reconcile its diverse currents and its dual political-military character within an increasingly restrictive regional and domestic environment. This, in turn, requires a reassessment of its strategic priorities and a redefinition of its functional roles.

These elections have been accompanied by extensive debates across traditional media platforms and digital spaces, while also resonating strongly within the movement’s leadership circles regarding the type of leadership most suitable for the coming phase. At its core, this debate reflects a state of alignment and latent tension between Hamas’s various factions, extending beyond personal disagreements or elite rivalries to reveal deeper divergences in intellectual references, operational approaches, and patterns of regional alliances.

It is evident that the competition for the movement’s leadership has largely centered around two key figures: Khalil al-Hayya, who is closely aligned with Iran and maintains strong ties with the military wing and field leadership. He possesses significant influence and networks within the Gaza Strip and has headed Hamas in Gaza since 2024. The second figure is Khaled Meshaal, widely viewed as one of Hamas’s more pragmatic leaders and the figure most open to the Arab sphere. Meshaal advocates expanding the movement’s room for maneuver within regional diplomacy and repositioning Hamas as a political actor capable of engaging with Arab and international capitals without publicly abandoning the option of armed resistance. In 2017, he led efforts to moderate Hamas’s political framework before leaving the position he had held since 1996.

This competition reflects the nature of the tension between two distinct strategic approaches within the movement. The first is rooted in the centrality of armed resistance as a non-negotiable pillar for preserving Hamas’s sources of strength and confronting the occupation. Advocates of this approach argue that any substantial retreat from this option, or any sharp repositioning within the regional alliance structure, would weaken the movement and strip it of both its raison d’être and its sources of legitimacy.

By contrast, the second approach adopts a more “pragmatic” logic. Its proponents contend that, in the aftermath of October 7, Hamas faces an existential threat that necessitates adaptation to the new realities in order to preserve the movement’s survival and continuity. Supporters of this perspective seek to broaden Hamas’s network of Arab and international relations and reduce its dependence on any single regional axis, thereby facilitating the movement’s reintegration into the regional political environment.

Yet both approaches operate within a narrow horizon constrained by regional and international pressures aimed at restructuring the political, administrative, and security landscape in Gaza while dismantling Hamas’s military influence there. This significantly limits the capacity of any new leadership to create a meaningful breakthrough in the movement’s prospects.

Within this context, Hamas finds itself confronting a deeper crisis tied to its future, identity, political function, and the fate of its military wing-issues that require a fundamental reassessment and strategic decisions extending far beyond a mere reshuffling of leadership figures. The pragmatic approach collides with fears that the movement could lose its defining identity, while the insistence on maintaining the military option faces mounting challenges amid the complexities of the local, regional, and international environment. This dynamic intensifies the debate between the necessity of preserving the movement’s sources of strength and the demands of political adaptation, even as neither option enjoys broad room for maneuver or the ability to substantially reshape the broader landscape.

The disagreement between the two approaches extends beyond questions of instruments and tactics, reflecting instead a deeper divergence within Hamas’s leadership elite over the movement’s identity and future function. One current insists on preserving Hamas’s foundational identity, viewing any departure from it as an erosion of its ideological essence and a breach of public trust. The other advocates a reformulation of the movement’s political positioning and a reinterpretation of some of its established principles in line with the demands of the current phase, thereby granting Hamas greater tactical flexibility in dealing with shifting regional and international balances.

Hamas is therefore reproducing the same long-standing debate over the visions and strategies capable of rescuing the movement. Its core dilemma does not primarily revolve around whether to retain or abandon arms; rather, it centers on how to manage the relationship between the political and military spheres within the movement itself. This includes questions concerning the management of the resistance option, the limits of dependence on regional alliances, and the mechanisms for reconciling the imperatives of military action with the requirements of political and diplomatic engagement. In this sense, the essence of the two approaches reflects diverging conceptions among Hamas’s leadership elites regarding the movement’s priorities and future role. Between these competing tendencies, a delicate equation emerges: excessive pragmatism may be interpreted as abandonment of the movement’s liberation project, while ideological rigidity risks deepening isolation and amplifying strategic costs.

The elections are not necessarily expected to result in the dominance of one approach over the other. More likely, each current will retain sufficient influence to pressure or obstruct the other, preventing either side from monopolizing the final decision-making authority. As a result, collective decision-making may remain vulnerable to delay and hesitation. Yet the course of the elections itself reveals, according to a report published by Asharq Al-Awsat on May 21, 2026, the emergence of a new current that finds neither approach fully representative of its vision. Evidence of this can be seen in the movement’s inability to elect a Political Bureau chief in the first round, forcing the process into a second round due to the unusually high number of blank ballots-an occurrence unprecedented in previous electoral cycles within Hamas. This development carries important implications, signaling a degree of dissatisfaction with both candidates and amounting to a form of silent protest against the movement’s broader orientations on specific issues, in addition to reflecting a possible desire to create space for younger leaders capable of renewing both discourse and practice.

The Crisis of the Relationship Between the Political and Military Spheres

The events of October 7 reopened fundamental questions concerning the limits of integration between Hamas’s political and military wings, as well as the authority governing strategic decision-making. A critical current that emerged within Hamas came to describe this exceptional military action in the movement’s history as an uncalculated gamble and an undisciplined escalation that weakened the logic of resistance while burdening the movement with costs that could limit its effectiveness for years to come. According to this view, the consequences of that experience require a long-term reconstruction process to repair the damage it caused.

By contrast, defenders of the resistance option advance a different perspective. They reject reducing Hamas to a purely political experience that narrowed the space of its identity and distanced it from its original foundations. Instead, they argue that October 7 restored the movement’s orientation toward its core identity as an Islamic resistance movement.

At this point, a question long deferred within the movement’s internal structure comes to the forefront: Is the political leadership the holder of strategic vision, with resistance serving merely as one instrument among others, subject to calculations of interest and assessments of cost and benefit? Or does the military wing possess decisive authority, rendering politics a complementary function that expands or retreats according to the requirements of military doctrine? Between these two approaches, Hamas has long struggled to reconcile the two spheres without institutionally and clearly resolving which should hold primacy in decision-making. October 7 exposed the depth of the divide between them, not only at the theoretical level but also in terms of its consequences for managing outcomes and repercussions.

The operation, with the qualitative transformation it introduced into the trajectory of the conflict, revealed internal imbalances in decision-making mechanisms and in the distribution of influence between the political and military spheres. The issue is no longer confined to the cost of the decision or its operational effectiveness on the ground. Rather, the debate now centers on the nature of the structure that produced it: Who determines the timing? Who defines the objectives? And who bears responsibility for managing the consequences when they exceed the capacity for containment?

In this sense, the debate intensifies over how to achieve a balance between disciplining resistance activity and subjecting it to calculations of cost and practical utility, while simultaneously reproducing the historical identity and ideological reference framework that granted Hamas its legitimacy and distinctiveness. This discussion reveals an ongoing collision between the logic of “pragmatism,” which views resistance through the lens of rationality and strategic effectiveness, and the identity-centered approach, which clings to the movement’s essence as a resistance movement that sees resistance activity itself as a means of preserving organizational identity and renewing its legitimacy.

Some argue that this contradiction did not fully surface until Hamas became increasingly involved in political participation and assumed governing responsibilities in the Gaza Strip. At that stage, the problematic relationship between the political and military spheres began to manifest itself clearly within the structure and mechanisms of strategic decision-making. In transitioning from a resistance movement to a political actor administering authority, Hamas encountered challenges it had not faced while operating solely as a political and military opposition force. It found itself compelled to act as a political actor required to adapt to the obligations of governance, the complexities of the regional environment, and the pressures of the international system. Consequently, a persistent tension emerged between the identity-centered approach and the logic of interest, and between ideological centrality and the requirements of political and organizational survival. This tension has been reflected in the nature of decision-making within the movement and in the limits of consensus among its various wings regarding the priorities of political and military action.

One interpretive approach to understanding the causes behind October 7 examines the issue from a deeper angle: the collision between Hamas’s functional reality as a governing authority in Gaza and its identity as a national liberation movement committed to armed resistance. As a governing authority, Hamas is required to fulfill administrative, service-oriented, and security responsibilities tied to managing a society and ensuring the conditions necessary for daily life. At the same time, it continues to perceive itself as a national liberation movement deriving its legitimacy from the continuity of resistance activity. This contradiction between function (governance) and identity (resistance) generated structural complexities in the movement’s decision-making process and brought postponed questions back to the forefront regarding the priority of political vision, the limits of military action, and the extent of institutional integration between the two levels: should priority be granted to the requirements of governance and societal sustainability, or to the imperatives of resistance as an expression of the movement’s foundational identity? That moment revealed a clear imbalance in the distribution of power between political decision-makers and military decision-makers and exposed deficiencies in the institutional coherence between the two wings.

This clash cannot simply be described without being deconstructed within a broader conceptual framework connected to the problem of identity crises among movements that simultaneously practice governance and resistance. Such a crisis cannot be reduced merely to conflicting interests or divergent assessments. Rather, it stems fundamentally from ambiguity surrounding the reference framework that determines the hierarchy of priorities when contradictions emerge. The transition from opposition to authority imposes growing obligations on the movement and places it under multiple layers of accountability, making strategic decision-making increasingly shaped by social, economic, and security considerations that extend beyond the logic of military action alone. Conversely, the continued self-definition as a liberation movement imposes a different rhythm based on initiative, confrontation, and the symbolic reproduction of resistance activity. Between these two functions emerges a structural tension that intensifies in contexts of open and protracted conflict, producing a dilemma that threatens the movement’s capacity to sustain either role effectively.

Experience has demonstrated that attempts to combine governance and resistance activity ultimately lead to the subordination of one sphere to the other, resulting either in its domestication or gradual erosion. Likewise, the widening gap between political and military decision-making deprives liberation movements of the ability to preserve internal coherence among their components and may contribute to their fragmentation and eventual decline if they fail to reproduce themselves and redefine their identity. This dilemma is not merely theoretical; it is confirmed by the historical experience of Fatah, whose integration into the structure of authority resulted in the movement dissolving into governing institutions and losing its original identity as a national liberation movement. By contrast, the experience of Hamas led to the subordination of governance to the authority of military action, ultimately resulting in the loss of governance itself and the loss of control over the Gaza Strip. Consequently, Hamas’s current predicament is not merely a temporary crisis; it reflects a deeper threat exposing its identity to erosion and retreat, leaving the movement confronted with an increasingly difficult equation in preserving that identity.

The experiences of several liberation movements demonstrate that resolving the relationship between the political and military spheres through clear institutional frameworks-frameworks that ensure the subordination of military instruments to a unified political vision while preserving their professionalism-constituted a prerequisite for transitioning toward a logic of strategic conflict management. The experience of the African National Congress in South Africa provides a clear example of subordinating military instruments to centralized political decision-making, which later enabled the movement to secure significant political gains. By contrast, the absence of such institutional clarity led to fragmentation, as illustrated by the experience of the Irish Republican Army, which split into multiple factions as a result of its failure to establish a unified reference framework capable of reconciling the logic of politics with the logic of armed struggle and determining priorities, legitimacy, and their sources.

Multiplicity of Equations and Normative framework

The political-military duality within Hamas had not initially reached the level of divergence witnessed in later years, particularly after the movement transformed into a de facto governing authority in the Gaza Strip. As Hamas transitioned from opposition to governance, ideological considerations alone became insufficient to regulate the rhythm of decision-making amid the complexities of political administration and the pressures of the regional environment. With the intensification of regional polarization, differing patterns of external alignment emerged within the movement, reflecting contrasting priorities between the political and military wings.

The behavior of Hamas’s various currents can no longer be understood independently from their external extensions and affiliations; rather, these orientations increasingly reflect the nature and contradictions of such external relationships. Regional alliances thus became an additional factor deepening the gap between political and military decision-making within the movement. While one current within Hamas adopted an approach centered on reassessing the movement’s political positions, diversifying alliances, and expanding diplomatic engagement through strengthening relations with regional actors such as Turkey and Qatar, as well as opening channels of communication with Arab states including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, another current gravitated toward consolidating its ties with a different and opposing regional axis led by Iran and including actors such as Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria, driven by considerations linked to the primacy of resistance activity and the requirements of military support.

The duality between the internal leadership (inside Gaza) and the external leadership (diaspora leadership) within Hamas also played a major role in widening this divide. Whereas the external leadership derived its strength from financial, political, and diplomatic influence, the internal leadership drew its legitimacy from popular and field-based authority connected to daily resistance and the management of life under siege and occupation. This divergence in sources of power rendered decision-making subject to continuous tension between two leaderships operating under fundamentally different circumstances. Consequently, the decision-making process remained suspended between two distinct-and at times contradictory-logics in assessing situational and strategic imperatives: the logic of resistance identity, which tends toward military escalation, and the logic of political pragmatism, which seeks openness and diplomatic breakthroughs.

This duality created a widening gap in the determination of priorities, visions, strategic options, and assessments of interests and political realities. Its manifestations appeared in multiple moments, most notably in disagreements surrounding the issuance of Hamas’s General Principles and Policies Document, debates over reconciliation with Fatah, and eventually the discussions concerning the utility and consequences of the October 7 operation. Although the external leadership historically maintained greater weight in leadership and funding, Hamas’s governance of the Gaza Strip granted the internal leadership increasing influence, transforming it into a central actor in military and field decision-making. This divergence rendered the relationship between the two leadership spheres more competitive than complementary, reinforcing a broader condition of incoherence in the decision-making process.

Ultimately, these dynamics produced what may be described as a state of “dual strategic normative framework,” whereby each component within the movement increasingly aligned its choices with the calculations and interests of its external allies. This narrowed the space for internal consensus and intensified implicit competition over control of decision-making authority. In this way, the diversity of alliances-rather than serving as a source of strength and flexibility-became a source of structural disorientation that deepened the divide between political and military decision-making and reshaped the movement’s priorities in ways that reflected external balances as much as they expressed considerations of collective strategic interest.

The Crisis of Hamas’s Future Role

Understanding Hamas’s crisis requires moving beyond a mere description of tensions as a struggle for influence among the movement’s competing currents. Rather, these tensions must be unpacked within a broader framework tied to the crisis surrounding Hamas’s future role. The movement today faces a dual dilemma: the erosion of its capacity to function as a governing authority in the Gaza Strip following the loss of effective control, and, simultaneously, the increasing difficulty of sustaining itself as a national liberation movement engaged in armed struggle. Hamas’s governing authority in Gaza has significantly diminished-if not effectively collapsed-and it no longer appears strategically rational for the movement to seek administrative roles that would once again burden it with the heavy obligations associated with managing civilian life. At the same time, continued engagement in military action has become increasingly problematic within a territory devastated by large-scale destruction and marked by a noticeable decline in the willingness of the popular base to endure further sacrifices. Consequently, attempts to persist in either of these roles appear increasingly unsustainable, as Hamas seems to possess only limited room to continue effectively performing either function. The movement therefore finds itself confronted with an existential question concerning its future: neither the objective nor the internal conditions any longer permit it to operate according to its previous model, and its future may ultimately depend on its ability to explore alternative spaces of action in which the political and social costs-both for the movement itself and for society-are substantially lower.

Hamas’s elections appear largely procedural in nature, serving primarily to fill leadership vacancies within the movement rather than ensuring a profound critical reassessment of its previous trajectory or bridging the gap between the political and military spheres. More than a competition over positions, the elections reveal an implicit struggle over the movement’s future orientation. As military and regional pressures continue to intensify, Hamas faces a critical test regarding its ability to preserve internal cohesion as a political actor, or alternatively, to slide toward structural fragmentation that may fundamentally reshape its identity and future role. Given the divergence among Hamas’s elite factions over the movement’s future, the elections seem less a moment for articulating a comprehensive strategic vision than a test of internal power balances within a highly volatile environment where the political and humanitarian costs of any chosen path remain extraordinarily high.

Since October 7, Hamas has entered into a multidimensional crisis revolving around three central questions: survival within an increasingly hostile international environment; internal legitimacy in light of the consequences of military action; and identity in the tension between resistance and politics. The response to these challenges cannot be reduced to changing leadership figures or modifying political rhetoric. Rather, it requires a careful reading of structural transformations, the reconstruction of an internal elite balance, and an organizational transformation capable of ensuring adaptation without disintegration. In the absence of a sustainable equilibrium between principle and political interest, the movement will remain trapped in a persistent tension between its founding discourse and the demands of political reality.

The debate between the identity-centered approach and the logic of pragmatism has therefore evolved beyond a mere disagreement over priorities into a fundamental question concerning strategic normative framework and the limits of political initiative. The danger lies in the possibility that the elections may produce a political leadership incapable of controlling developments on the ground, leading to contradictory messages, fluctuating decisions, and the emergence of parallel centers of authority operating outside the formal organizational structure. Such an outcome would deepen Hamas’s crisis rather than open a pathway toward overcoming it.