The Changing Face of Palestinian Resistance: Hamas and the Defence of Palestine

The scale and audacity of Hamas's attacks against Israel on 7 October 2023, surprised many and has generated intense debate about their causes and consequences. This article employs arguments from the critical terrorism and resistance literatures to argue that a series of critical junctures between 2017 – 2023 narrowed the range of viable alternate paths for Hamas to resist the increasing political, military, and societal asymmetry between Palestinians and Israelis. This asymmetry caused Palestinians to fear that the growing permanence and normalisation of Israel's occupation made the prospects of a state chimerical. The article demonstrates how these junctures changed the meaning and intent of Hamas's resistance, using the attacks to transform the status quo in the Occupied Territories and place resolving the Palestinian Question at the forefront of international consciousness. By unravelling the complex interplay between the causal conditions, configurations, and mechanisms surrounding these junctures, this article provides an alternate explanation of these terrorist attacks that stands in tension with more orthodox explanations and their causal reliance on Weberian and Hobbesian norms about non-state actor violence.

2023年10月7日哈马斯对以色列发动袭击的规模与鲁莽程度令多方震惊，同时引发了关于其成因与后果的激烈辩论。本文援引批判恐怖主义与抵抗研究文献（critical terrorism and resistance literatures）中的相关论点，指出2017年至2023年间的一系列关键节点（critical junctures）压缩了哈马斯用以抵抗巴以双方日益加剧的政治、军事与社会不对称性的可行替代路径空间。这种不对称性令巴勒斯坦人愈发担忧：以色列占领的存续性与正常化程度不断提升，使得巴勒斯坦建国的前景形同泡影。本文阐释了这些关键节点如何重塑哈马斯抵抗行动的内涵与意图：通过此次袭击改变被占领土（Occupied Territories）的现状，并将巴勒斯坦问题（Palestinian Question）置于国际社会关注的核心位置。通过梳理围绕这些关键节点的因果条件、构型与作用机制之间的复杂互动关系，本文为此次恐怖袭击提供了一种不同于正统解释的另类阐释——正统解释依赖韦伯主义与霍布斯主义的非国家行为体暴力规范来构建因果逻辑，二者与本文的阐释存在显著张力。