Senior Hamas official tells NYT permanent war is the end goal

A top Hamas official recently told the New York Times that perpetual war is the terror organization’s goal, not governance within the internationally proposed two-state solution formula.

The senior official, Khalil al-Haya, said the terror organization Hamas seeks to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash” with Israel. 

Al-Haya said the terror group believed that only an event like the Oct. 7 massacre would "change the equation" of the status quo between Israel and the Gaza Strip. He also admitted that Hamas expected a strong Israeli response. 

“What could change the equation was a great act, and without a doubt, it was known that the reaction to this great act would be big,” al-Hayya stated.

He believes the Oct. 7 massacre was necessary to focus the world’s attention on the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. 

“We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm,” the senior Hamas official assessed during his NYT interview from the Qatari capital Doha, a major hub for Hamas leaders. 

“We had to tell people that the Palestinian cause would not die,” al-Haya concluded. 

Looking ahead, Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media advisor, expressed hope that perpetual war would emerge on all the Jewish state’s borders. 

“I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us,” El-Nounou told NYT. 

The Islamist terrorist organization Hamas has been in charge of the Gaza Strip since the violent ousting of its political rival, the Fatah party led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in 2007.

Hamas has systematically neglected civilian development in Gaza while its leadership has continued to amass great wealth at the expense of the vast majority of impoverished Gazan citizens.

Instead of investing in schools and hospitals, Hamas has used the considerable amount of resources it has been given from supporters to build large terrorist infrastructure, including its vast tunnel system. 

In late October, Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official and member of the terror group’s political bureau told the Russia Today TV news outlet that the purpose of the Hamas tunnels is to protect its operatives and not Gaza's civilians.  

“We have built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being targeted and killed,” Marzouk said. “These tunnels are meant to protect us from the airplanes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels,” he added. 

Marzouk also denied that Hamas is responsible for the civilian population in Gaza. 

“Everybody knows that 75% of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees, and it is the responsibility of the United Nations to protect them,” the senior Hamas official claimed.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of Gazans were born in Gaza, they are still classified as “refugees” according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).