In Hamas’s mouthpiece al-Resalah, Israel’s Arabs rarely make the news, let alone merit headlines.
The prediction made by Sami Abu Shahadeh, leader of the Arab Democratic Bloc, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fall was imminent (along with Itamar Ben-Gvir’s, of course) did.
After all, who should know better than a leader from the “inside,” composed of “1948 Arabs,” about “Zionist entity” politics, especially when his analysis dovetails with Hamas’s aspirations?
Hamas hates Netanyahu with a passion. Under his administration, three chiefs-of-staff, Muhammad Deif, Izz a-Din al-Hadad, and his replacement, Muhammad Odeh, have been killed in the past three years. It took well over a decade to do that before the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacres, with the assassination of Hamas’s chief-of-staff Ahmed Jabari in 2012.
The same is true of its top political leaders, Saleh Aruri, Ismail Haniyeh, and Yahya Sinwar, all of whom were killed in a span of two years, in 2024 and 2025. Over 20 years had passed since Israel succeeded in doing the same, with the demise of Abd al-Aziz Rantisi and Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the organization’s spiritual leader.
It’s not only a matter of the pace of the Israeli government’s punishment of the organization but also the indignation of failing to avenge these deaths. The killing of Jabari in 2012 elicited about five days of intensive air warfare. Hamas launched 1,550 missiles, with Israel responding with just as many air sorties.
By contrast, Hamas failed to respond either to the killing of Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 massacres in Israel, or to the killing of Hamas’s last two chiefs-of-staff, al-Hadad and Odeh, who were killed in the span of 11 days. One suspects that the lack of response was hardly due to a lack of motivation, but to a lack of capabilities.
These have been mercilessly denigrated by the persistent attacks on Hamas terrorists, especially since the ceasefire signed in October 2025, the most dramatic being the abduction on September 1 of Mu’in al-Arabid, a senior official in the internal security apparatus of the organization from the Katiba neighborhood in the western part of Gaza City. For Hamas, the word “ceasefire” is always in italics. From its point of view, there is no respite in the Israeli government’s war against it.
Once again, the lack of response to these weekly, often daily, attacks on the part of Hamas contrasts markedly with Hamas’s ability to either deter or attack Israel in the past.
In the past, Hamas had not only reacted with missile launches in response to any attack on its personnel, but also set political conditions in July 2014 to reduce its rocket fire, including the cessation of arrests of terrorists in the West Bank, doing away with import restrictions on Gaza, and compelling Israel to pressure the Palestinian Authority to transfer money to pay Hamas civil servants.
In 2021, Hamas launched the largest missile attack on Israel since 2014, on the grounds that Israel refused its conditions regarding the Temple Mount, in its political bid to force Israel to concede to the organization’s right to determine political matters in Israel’s capital.
The downfall
Today, Hamas neither reacts politically nor militarily to continuous lethal Israeli attacks against it. It makes do with daily and ineffectual litanies to the Americans and the Board of Peace to compel Israel to honor the ceasefire, while it blames Netanyahu for its sorry state of affairs.
Loathing Netanyahu is also characteristic of Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, another one of Netanyahu’s victims. The organization has many reasons to hate the Israeli leader: for the beheading of its veteran leader, Hassan Nasrallah, the beeper incident that left hundreds of Hezbollah fighters maimed in the span of a few hours, and most of all, the perpetual weakening of the organization to the point that it was helpless in defending the Assad regime in Syria against the Sunni jihadist onslaught, thus depriving Hezbollah of its major local ally and financial and military conduit to Iran, its patron.
Al-Mayadeen, Hezbollah’s largest media site, is subtle in stating its preference for Israel’s opposition leaders, especially Yashar’s Gadi Eizenkot. It presents poll findings favorable to the opposition; for example, election campaign coverage that relies on Israeli media critical of Netanyahu.
This includes Channel 12’s coverage, or commentary by media figures who are critical of the Israeli prime minister, such as Ronen Bregman, who writes for both Ynet and The New York Times – two outlets that are very critical of Netanyahu and his government. It will also highlight news items that embarrass Netanyahu.
An interesting twist was the coverage it gave to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. She is quoted in Arabic translation as saying, “I love Israel but hate the Netanyahu government and its policies,” adding, “I love America, but hate the Trump administration and its policies.”
At the end of the news item, a link appeared to an article entitled: “A poll: A new setback to the Likud and to Netanyahu, who is far from a majority that would enable him to set up the government.”
On election night, Israel’s enemies will join millions of Israelis as they follow the election results. But unlike the Israelis, who are divided about the desired outcome, Israel’s enemies will be unanimous in welcoming a victory of the opposition and the downfall of their nemesis – the Netanyahu government.
The writer is a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University.