The Strategic Origins of Hamas’s October 7 Attack

Why did Hamas attack Israel on October 7? The core argument of this article is that at the most overarching level, Hamas had gradually come to view the structural strategic conditions in the Middle East as a realistic opportunity to militarily defeat Israel and to bring about its collapse. The article outlines the contours of the evolution of the strategic landscape in the Palestinian arena and the region in the years that preceded the war. Building on an original analysis of the prewar dynamics that shaped the Israel-Hamas conflict, and drawing of Hamas documents seized by Israel during the war, the article explains the shifting balance of power between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and between Israel and the Axis of Resistance prior to the war. Having become strategically tethered to the Axis, Hamas apparently intended to detonate, as it were, this strategic infrastructure and plunge Israel in an existential war.