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By Tom O'Connor
Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy
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With U.S. President Donald Trump's party staggering from a major midterm election setback and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrangling to retain power following a heated vote, the Palestinian militant movement that sparked the Middle East crisis looming large over both men's careers could be poised to gain momentum.
Hamas, though battered and besieged, has survived three years of full-scale war in which Netanyahu placed eliminating the group once and for all at the foremost of his goals.
Now, having held on long enough to witness the first electoral challenge to the Israeli premier and the second turning of political tides in Washington since the start of the conflict, the Islamist movement finds itself with a new array of options.
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"Hamas may calculate that divisions in Washington and political uncertainty in Israel provide additional room to maneuver over disarmament, reconstruction and its future role in Palestinian governance," Magnus Ranstorp, a leading counterterrorism expert serving as strategic adviser at the Swedish Defense University's Center for Societal Security, told Newsweek.
Ranstorp speaks from decades of firsthand experience studying the group. He's met face-to-face with much of Hamas' historic, now-slain leadership, from founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, killed by Israel in 2004, to Ismail Haniyeh, who led during the bloody October 2023 attack before his brazen assassination in the heart of Iran's capital the following year.
In the face of the latest developments, Ranstorp predicts, "this could encourage Hamas to pursue a strategy of political accommodation without surrendering its remaining military infrastructure, while deepening contacts with other Palestinian factions and preserving its influence within Gaza's institutions."
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Hamas' Quiet Comeback
Hamas' formal organizational structure has never fully recovered from the shock of Haniyeh's surprise 2024 killing. Unlike the Qatar-based Haniyeh, his successor, Yahya Sinwar, was already embedded deep in the trenches of Gaza upon being named the new leader.
He held the top position for just over two months before being hunted down by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) drone on the front lines.
Sinwar's demise prompted the formation of a temporary leadership committee that ultimately chose deputy chief Khalil al-Hayya as the group's new chief in July. Like Haniyeh, he is based in Qatar, and he, too, has faced attempts on his life abroad, having eluded an Israeli strike in Doha that resulted in an international incident and a rare apology from Netanyahu as Trump watched on, in September 2025.
But focusing solely on the highest echelons of the group's command and control misses the roots of its staying power. As Ranstorp explained, "Hamas remains deeply embedded in Palestinian society, with its concept of muqawama (resistance) operating simultaneously on three interconnected fronts: military, political and social."
On the military front, members survive under partial Israeli military occupation through an intricate system of "decentralized networks and underground structures," Ranstorp said. Yet their presence continues to be asserted thanks to "extensive religious, charitable and social welfare networks" that persist in promising a better future.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Israel have gone through lengths to define a postwar governance free of Hamas influence.
But as Palestinians prepare to go to the polls on November 28 for the first time in the two decades since the 2006 election that resulted in a Hamas victory and clashes with rival the rival Fatah movement that resulted in the group's seizure of Gaza, Hamas' pragmatism is a major challenge.
That includes the group's contacts with slated unifying figures such as Mohammed Dahlan, widely seen as second in command to Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also presides over both Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) coalition. A longtime critic of Hamas, Dahlan has recently called for the group to be included in a future governance structure, a prospect that has won supporters far beyond the Palestinian territories as well.
"[Hamas'] influence also extends into the Palestinian diaspora, where competing organizations and networks are challenging Fatah and the PLO over electoral arrangements and representation in the Palestinian National Council," Ranstorp said.
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The Impact in America
In some ways, Hamas has welcomed the opportunity to cede the responsibilities associated with its overt control over Gaza. Long before the peace deal announced by Trump in September 2025, Hamas had signaled, including in comments shared with Newsweek, that it would be willing to hand the reigns to a "technocratic" committee of Palestinians dedicated to governing the war-ravaged territory on the Mediterranean.
The group's decision to officially dissolve its governing body in July was similarly seen as part of an underlying strategy, born out of both pragmatism and an absence of alternatives at a time when even some Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia had begun changing their tone in a bid to ease frictions.
"They understand that they are completely radioactive," Mohammed Shehada, a Gazan researcher and human rights advocate who is visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Newsweek.
Not even two of the most prominent progressive Muslim Americans with pro-Palestinian leanings to recently achieve public office in the U.S., Michigan Senator-elect Abdul el-Sayed and New York City Zohran Mamdani "would try to have a reconciliatory tone towards Hamas," Shehada said, describing the group as "burned politically in the West."
And even Hamas, for all its rhetoric, may not realistically aim for a better arrangement than the one unveiled by Trump.
The final version of the plan ultimately eschewed earlier threats of resettling Gaza's 2.1 million people, instead focusing on establishing the very kind of independent Palestinian ruling framework that Hamas and Arab countries had earlier proposed, with the key conditions of both Hamas' disarmament and Israel's withdrawal.
The main challenge for Hamas has not necessarily been the deal itself but questions of interpretation as both the attention of Trump and his formerly ruling party often strayed. The most recent distraction, though ultimately intertwined with Gaza, has been the ongoing war against Iran, launched in conjunction with Israel in late February.
Vice President JD Vance and Trump himself have acknowledged that the conflict with the Islamic Republic that is aligned with Hamas was at least partially to blame for the poor Republican showing in the midterm elections.
When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the source of the Middle East's most serious ongoing turmoil and much past strife as well, Shehada suggested the incoming opposition in Washington might at least hold Israel to its word at a time when public opinion toward the longtime U.S. ally was plummeting toward historic lows.
"The Republican majority in Congress were completely disengaged from this topic. It did not interest them," Shehada said. "They were very sympathetic to Israel to an extent that they just gave Israel a free hand. It was cosmetic that you would see from time to time the Board of Peace coming to life once every few months with a statement and that's about it."
"And no one in the U.S. Congress is bothering to follow up on anything that is happening there," he added. "But now when we have this Democratic majority, the most that can come out of it is enforcing the Trump deal, enforcing the Gaza roadmap."
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Tough Questions for Israel
Hamas is similarly curbing its enthusiasm toward any political upheaval in Israel.
Gadi Eisenkot, the challenger in a vote last month that left no majority, is one of Netanyahu's former ministers. He's also a 40-year veteran of the IDF who served as chief of staff and is associated with the so-called "Dahiyeh doctrine"—named after the southern Beirut suburbs where Hezbollah enjoys support—that involves the bombardment of civilian infrastructure to advance goals against foes.
"I expect Hamas's leadership will be encouraged by the recent election results in Israel and the United States," Dov Waxman, an Israeli-Palestinian conflict expert serving as chair of Israel studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Newsweek. "They would surely welcome the prospect of Netanyahu losing power, but I doubt that they would expect an Eisenkot-led government to pursue a significantly different approach to Gaza than Netanyahu's government."
"While Netanyahu's exit wouldn't greatly change Israel's policies, it would be a propaganda victory for Hamas," Waxman said. "It could, however, be a pyrrhic victory, because if there's a new government in Jerusalem that is more willing to work with the Board of Peace, then that will increase the pressure on Hamas to disarm."
Few anticipate the group would disappear altogether even under a successful implementation of the deal.
"Hamas has proven itself to be a very resilient organization," Waxman said. "It has not only been able to survive Israel's military assault since October 7, 2023, but has also replenished its ranks and begun to rearm. It continues to rule over the roughly one-third of Gaza that is not under direct Israeli military control."
In what Waxman described as an unlikely scenario in which Hamas disarmed and Israel withdrew from Gaza, he predicted that the group would likely persevere in politics, perhaps under a new name. Others have outlined a similar path, not unlike the remnants of the Irish Republican Army after the 1990s peace deal that ended the Northern Ireland "Troubles."
Yet the conclusion for Israel is that, with its most immediate foe at a point of unprecedented vulnerability, the kind of victory promised by Netanyahu after the deadliest day in the nation's history three years ago appears further away than ever.
"There is a significant difference between weakening an organization and eliminating it," Or Horvitz, a retired IDF lieutenant colonel who until earlier this year as senior adviser to Israel's military intelligence, told Newsweek. "Hamas’s current incarnation appears capable of surviving, in part through a dispersed command-and-control structure and careful efforts to limit its operational footprint."
"Organizations like Hamas are exceptionally difficult to destroy, especially when they embody a political idea that retains considerable appeal among Palestinians and when there is no credible alternative," Horvitz said.
The biggest challenge now, according to Horvitz, was not Hamas' immediate reaction to the political contests abroad, but in Israel's struggle to chart a path toward victory while now under growing international pressure.
Hamas' choice of al-Hayya as the new leader, "the most radical and pro-Iranian of the available candidates," offered little solace.
"Hamas has considerable patience, and even weakened and isolated, it retains the ability to endure as a movement," Horvitz said. "In its current form, it is more like Al-Qaeda or ISIS than a conventional political organization: it can change shape, keep a low profile, and remain in the game."
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Samantha Beech and Edward T. Cummins
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