A friend shared a story about a man who set fire to his family’s farm to drive away the crows, then celebrated amid the ruins. When the crows returned in flocks, he declared victory: “There is nothing left for them to eat.
”Three years after October 7, 2023, the story raises a troubling question: how do we judge whether an action has achieved its purpose?Belief in a just cause tells us little about how best to pursue it. Indeed, deep conviction can impair judgement. People certain of their righteousness may cease to question what they do in its name. October 7 raises a further question: who had the authority to make the decision, who would bear its consequences, and who now gets to declare victory?
In January 2024, Hamas published 'Our Narrative: Operation Al Aqsa Flood', describing the attack as a response to Israeli occupation, the blockade of Gaza and attempts to sideline the Palestinian cause. It said the immediate objective was to attack Israeli military positions and capture soldiers for exchange with Palestinian prisoners. The broader aim was liberation.
Published three months after the attack, the document explains how Hamas justified its decision but reveals little about the calculations behind it. Hamas denied deliberately targeting civilians. A United Nations investigation found otherwise, concluding that Hamas and other Palestinian groups had intentionally killed civilians and taken hostages. Such acts remain crimes, whatever cause is invoked to justify them.The circumstances preceding the attack need little rehearsing. The occupation continued, settlements expanded, negotiations yielded little, and Gaza remained under blockade. The prospect of Palestinian statehood was receding. Inaction carried risks of its own. Yet the failure of previous approaches offered no assurance that a new one would succeed.
On October 7, Hamas achieved a remarkable military surprise. It breached Israeli defences and caught the security establishment unprepared. What was supposed to follow?
Hamas knew the disparity in military power and Gaza’s vulnerability to a prolonged offensive. Previous wars had demonstrated the dangers. The scale of Israel’s eventual response could not have been known, but a devastating war was plainly foreseeable. What arrangements had been made to protect civilians? What political outcome was envisaged?
How would the initial military success be translated into lasting gains for Palestinians?
Hamas’s published accounts offer little explanation. This does not establish that its leaders made no such calculations. It does leave serious questions about their judgement unanswered.
Max Weber distinguished between an ethic of conviction and an ethic of responsibility. The distinction matters because political decisions often determine the fate of people who had no part in making them. A fighter may willingly risk his own life. Exposing an entire population to war demands an authority that can be questioned and held accountable. Courage alone cannot supply it.
Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and took sole control of Gaza the following year. By October 2023, seventeen years had passed since those elections. A generation had grown up without the opportunity to choose its rulers. Occupation and Palestinian political divisions help explain the paralysis of representative politics, but they hardly settle the question of accountability. The legitimacy of resistance to occupation is one matter; an organisation's authority to decide the fate of those it governs is another.In Gaza, Hamas was both an armed movement and a government. The demands of these roles can conflict. An armed organisation may regard its survival, its weapons and its ability to continue fighting as measures of success. A government has obligations to the people who depend on its institutions, hospitals, schools and public services. When the same leadership controls both, the organisation's interests can become indistinguishable from society's. A small circle makes the decisions; the population lives with the consequences.
Israel’s subsequent war killed tens of thousands, displaced much of Gaza’s population and destroyed large parts of the territory. Israel bears responsibility for the conduct of its forces and the violations documented by international investigators. Those crimes cannot be attributed to Hamas simply because its attack preceded them. Hamas can nevertheless be asked what response it anticipated and what measures it took against foreseeable dangers. These are distinct responsibilities.
Three years later, Hamas has achieved some of its objectives. Prisoner exchanges secured the release of Palestinians from Israeli detention. Palestine returned to international prominence, and recognition of Palestinian statehood widened, partly in response to the devastation inflicted on Gaza. Yet the occupation continues. Reconstruction remains stalled, and Israeli forces still control roughly two-thirds of the territory, a year after the ceasefire. The gains deserve acknowledgment. So do their costs. Any assessment of the original decision must also consider the alternatives available at the time.In December 2025, Hamas issued another document, Al Aqsa Flood: Two Years of Steadfastness and the Will for Liberation, placing Palestinian steadfastness among the operation’s foremost achievements.
This claim is peculiar. Palestinians have endured extraordinary suffering while remaining attached to their land. Some stayed by choice; others had nowhere to go. Their endurance may have frustrated efforts to displace them. But it belongs to them. Their ability to withstand catastrophe cannot, in itself, establish the wisdom of the decision that preceded it.What gives an organisation the authority to claim a population’s suffering as evidence of its own success? And what, by this measure, would constitute failure?
The problem grows more serious when those who made the decision also control the account of its results. Military gains vindicate the strategy. Losses enter the record as sacrifices. The population’s survival becomes another achievement. Every outcome can be accommodated within the narrative of victory, leaving little room to reconsider the original judgement.Political responsibility survives the fighting. It requires leaders to explain their decisions, examine their assumptions, and accept scrutiny from those who suffered the consequences. Without that, experience teaches very little.For some supporters of Palestine, criticism of Hamas amounts to abandoning the Palestinian cause. Yet Palestinian self-determination must surely include the right to question those who govern in its name. What would liberation mean if Palestinians could not hold their own leaders accountable?
I return to the story of the farm. The man counted the damage done to the crows but gave little thought to what remained for his family. Having decided to light the fire, he also claimed the right to pronounce it a victory.
What kind of victory leaves the people, in whose name it was won, struggling to survive it?
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