Despite Israel’s vows to decimate Hamas, military analysts in the country and beyond believe the resistance movement is unlikely to be completely uprooted. Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari himself admitted that Israel “cannot eliminate an ideology”. Indeed, Hamas has been able to continue fighting and inflict losses on one of the world’s most sophisticated, modern, and professional armies for over a year now. The movement continues to conduct limited strikes on Israeli forces in spite of Israel destroying over sixty percent of the strip’s physical infrastructure.

While Israel claims it has killed 15-20,000 Hamas fighters, and caused upwards of 186,000 deaths according to a letter published in The Lancet in July, Hamas continues to inflict casualties on the Israeli military—including killing senior officers—forcing the army to return time and again to areas of Gaza that were presumably free of fighters.

How Hamas has managed to keep standing—shifting from open combat to guerilla tactics in the process—deserves closer scrutiny. This is especially the case as Israeli military operations have partially shifted to Lebanon in the meantime, with the consequence that Gaza risks sliding slowly off the international agenda.

Just as guerilla tactics can frustrate an occupying force—Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam come to mind as examples—so can wartime discourse build psychological dominance over the battle space, especially its political framing. This is because language plays a powerful role in shaping our understanding of conflict contexts, participants, and the scope for action. It frames what is happening, defines who we are, and provides options on what can be done. Control of the narrative, particularly during conflict and war, is critical as it helps build support among constituencies and can instill fear among adversaries.

Analysis of how Abu Obaida, spokesperson for Hamas’ armed wing—the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, or al-Qassam for short—has framed the fight of the brigades against Israel, mobilized support, sowed dissent, and portrayed victory after October 7 offers insights into the group’s goal of psychological dominance in the war theater.

Twenty-six of his speeches, which vary between two-minute voice clips and 20-minute video addresses aired between October 7, 2023 and May 29, 2024, were converted into a textual corpus to allow a quantitative analysis of key terms and structural features which informed a qualitative thematic analysis of the aforementioned issues. A deeper understanding of the sources and prospects of the resilience of Hamas’ military wing—including the organization’s internal cohesion and public support, both of which are influenced by the movement’s discourse—can inform policymakers about its motivation and strategy.

Language as a Weapon

Al-Qassam have been active since the 1990s, attacking civilian and military targets in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Named after the anti-Zionist Syrian militant Izz al-Din al-Qassam, killed in Jenin by the British in 1935, their stated goal is to violently resist the occupation of the Palestinian Territories, liberate Palestinian prisoners, and put an end to “Zionist” control of “historic Palestine”. Their militancy is part of a broader “Project of Resistance” spearheaded by the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas. This project is different from the Iran-linked “axis of resistance”.

The group spearheaded the October 7 attack on Israel, killing up to 1200 people—combatants as well as non-combatants—and taking over 200 hostages back to Gaza, and broadcast its operation live to audiences all over the world as part of a multimedia campaign that continues until today. It includes battlefield footage, intimidating videos of hostages, real-time updates from the ground, and long-form speeches.

As the central figure of al-Qassam’s media campaign, Abu Obaida has appeared before crowds and cameras since 2006, when the group kidnapped the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, to explain the operations and strategy of the Brigades. Always dressed in military fatigues and characterized by his iconic red keffiyeh, he is seen as a symbol of resistance across the region.

Addressing his audience “from the heart of the battle”, as he puts it, Abu Obaida’s speeches include briefings on the battlefield, the hostage situation, statements on negotiations, and details about the performance of resistance fighters in Gaza. Looking into discursive practices like direct address, anecdotes, and moral as well as religious appeals helps understand how al-Qassam—an entity that is part of Hamas, but not identical to it—views its fight against Israeli occupation. The analysis adheres closely to the frames, language, and symbols used by Abu Obaida in a bid to render and interpret these as clearly as possible.

Framing the Conflict

Abu Obaida consistently justifies armed resistance as a legitimate response to Israel’s enduring and violent occupation—a counterforce that will always emerge in a dialectic with the forces of occupation.

He describes the occupation’s violence as “the slow and silent killing of our people for many years, the Judaization and settlement [of the land] and desecration of al-Aqsa, the siege of Gaza, the oppression against our prisoners, and the displacement of our people by every means”.

Abu Obaida claims that the intensity and senselessness of Israel’s indiscriminate killing and destruction of infrastructure “show the criminal, Nazi occupation for what it really is, stripped of all the cosmetics with which it tricked the world for decades”. He also asserts that these features put the resistance on par with other national struggles for rights and freedom in terms of its morality and legitimacy. Abu Obaida contextualizes the violence of the al-Qassam Brigades by depicting them as waging an existential struggle on behalf of a people striving for the liberation of their land against an occupier bent on their displacement.

He describes the state and nature of the violence as the “Zionist Occupation”, supported by the “oppression and tyranny” of “Zionists in the White House”, directly linking Israeli practices to U.S. foreign policy. By naming “Zionism” as the target of the resistance, he shifts focus away from the state of Israel and the Jewish people, and toward a political ideology, its policies, and its supporters. He also broadens the scope of the conflict by referring to the history and ideology of the nineteenth-century Zionist movement that, steeped in Europe’s colonial attitudes of the time, encouraged and increased Jewish settlement of Palestine. By connecting historical and contemporary violence against Palestinians with a foreign political project, Abu Obaida develops an anti-colonial narrative in which settlers from Eastern and Western Europe emigrated to Palestine. He justifies resistance violence as part of a “decades-long” battle against the political ideology that accompanied that emigration. He constructs Zionism as an ideological adversary that cannot be reasoned with since its very goal is Palestinian destruction. In this context, Abu Obaida frames armed resistance as the only remaining option, which “speaks to the enemy in the language it understands”.

In support of this position, Abu Obaida depicts the international community as “governed by the law of the jungle”, which allows Israeli occupation forces to commit crimes of genocide, starvation, and forced displacement in plain sight—aided and abetted by the U.S. administration—without consequences. He posits that international law is defunct and international governance serves the powerful. Employing historically charged terms like “Nazi” or “fascist” in combination with international legal terminology like “genocide” and “crimes against humanity”, Abu Obaida contextualizes the victims of Israeli occupation using the experiences of the victims of other historic events of massive discriminatory violence, like the Holocaust. He claims that “Gaza has exposed all the lying and shameful organizations, institutions, and bodies that carry the sword of human rights against vulnerable peoples to protect and beautify the ugly image of the forces of injustice, occupation, and aggression.” These globalized, politicized labels are Abu Obaida’s way of harnessing anti-colonial and anti-imperial narratives that have shaped resistance and independence movements for decades. He does not hesitate to invoke Algeria and South Africa as examples of how freedom needs to be retaken with blood, bodies, and fighting.

Ultimately, Abu Obaida views the discriminatory ideology of the Zionist project, Western in origin and protected today by the United States, as the root of the conflict. He challenges mainstream Western perceptions of Israel as a democratic state under threat, and instead defines it as a country that is inspired by a discriminatory ideology and facilitated by a dysfunctional international system that serves the interests of powerful states. In his reading, the existential threat posed by Zionist ideology leaves the resistance with no other response than violence. July and September polls by the Palestinian Center for Polling and Survey Research indicate that around thirty to forty percent of Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza support Hamas, and about fifty percent of all Palestinians see armed struggle as the best way to end occupation. The other half is split between favoring negotiations and peaceful resistance.

Mobilizing Resistance, Sowing Dissent

Abu Obaida portrays October 7 as the storm that unleashed the al-Aqsa Flood (toufan), “a battle that is taking shape” to “change the face of the region” and “end the occupation once and for all”. To achieve this goal, he needs to mobilize support and challenge the enemy’s narrative and integrity. Abu Obaida’s key linguistic device is his use of the term “resistance” to describe the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas, and the broader anti-occupation movement. He constructs “the resistance” as a cross-factional, coordinated fighting force that is bound by its commitment to preserving Islam’s sanctities and achieving Palestinian liberation. While Hamas and the al-Qassam Brigades play a leading role in his vision of “the resistance”, it encompasses anyone around the world that opposes the occupation of Palestine. Naming the campaign after the al-Aqsa Mosque and focusing on mounting violations of the Waqf—Islamic charitable endowments of land or buildings—connects the occupation of the Palestinian Territories with pan-Islamic concerns about the sanctities in Jerusalem. Equating Israeli violations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (Al-Aqsa wa al-Misra) with showing deep disrespect for all Muslims, Abu Obaida calls on the entire Ummah (Muslim nation) to resist by all means available. He points to the actions of religious extremists in Israel as evidence of religious encroachment, with examples ranging from trespassing on the al-Aqsa compound to the acquisition by the Israeli religious organization Temple Institute of red heifers that are considered essential in the Old Testament to the ritual purification required to build the Third Temple.

Using the vast differential in military might between occupier and occupied, Abu Obaida adds another layer to his mobilization discourse by juxtaposing a righteous indigenous resistance force of the people with an impersonal and foreign, almost mechanical adversary engaged in an unequal battle. He characterizes the contest between the Israeli military and resistance factions as a parallel of “David and Goliath”, with Israel’s “unbeatable army and the indestructible Merkava”, supported by air and naval forces “capable of occupying whole countries”. On the other side stands Hamas as a force that has nothing but “what we have between our hands, which we made from nothing and built from the impossible”. He depicts the Israeli military as relying on “dumb technology and tools” rather than well-motivated soldiers. Anecdotes of clashes depict the “steadfast” resistance as “aware, conscious” and “prepared for a long war of attrition” while Israeli soldiers are depicted as “not ready for this battle and not understanding its consequences”. By layering images and anecdotes that symbolize a conflict he claims is between technology and grit, money and righteousness, weakness and strength, Abu Obaida hopes to craft a subliminal image of courageous human warriors fighting a soulless mechanized enemy. In these depictions, resistance fighters reclaim agency that is lost in a context of forced displacement, imprisonment, and occupation.

Abu Obaida also seeks to deepen divisions within Israel. He addresses “the people of the enemy” separately from the “enemy leadership and its army” and seeks to frame the former as victims of an Israeli government that is led by “bloodthirsty right-wing extremists” enabled by the “criminal and corrupt” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is only after his personal gain. Abu Obaida consistently undermines the Israeli government’s official narrative in his speeches by claiming that it deceives its people about the number of soldiers killed and wounded in Gaza, its intentions to free the hostages alive, and its military performance. His updates on the condition of hostages remind the “people of the enemy” that they are endangered by Israeli bombing and that they live in the same conditions as the people of Gaza.

Polling by the Israel Democracy Institute shows an increase in the number of Israelis who favor the return of the hostages over the defeat of Hamas: from fifty-one percent in January 2024 to sixty-two percent in October 2024. To deepen the psychological impact, Abu Obaida mentions other unrecovered hostages, like Nachshon Waxman, Shaul Oron, Hadar Golden, Ron Arad, Hisham Sayyed, and Avera Mengistu. He portrays these hostages as “forgotten, because they are not of interest to Netanyahu and his wife”. In brief, Abu Obaida seeks to sow dissent in Israeli society by exploiting its divisions and capitalizing on the fear and uncertainty that grip the country.

Achieving Victory?

A final dimension of importance of Abu Obaida’s discourse is how he constructs the October 7 attack and the subsequent months of slaughter in Gaza as steps toward victory. Essentially, he emphasizes the necessity of the violence of October 7 as the only response that could halt the relentlessness of Israeli occupation and annexation. Abu Obaida portrays the current fighting both as evidence of the enemy leadership’s sense of defeat and as the price of outlasting them. By representing suffering and steadfastness as necessary sacrifices, he attempts to legitimize the consequences of the attack on Israel. By revealing the al-Qassam Brigades as effective and the Israeli military as beatable, he also seeks to instill a sense that tenacious resistance underwritten by sacrifice can and will overthrow the occupation.

From the beginning of Toufan al-Aqsa, Abu Obaida seeks to construct an image of transparency and openness by explaining and detailing the preparations, deception, and coordination that went into the October 7 attack. He frames the nonconfrontational posture of Hamas between 2021 and 2023 as part of preparation for the attack by creating a false sense of security among Israeli forces—a strategy which appears to have been highly effective in influencing the Israeli intelligence and political frames for thinking about Hamas as a threat factor. He asks Gazans to forgive this temporary departure from al-Qassam’s usually uncompromising position. In detailing the intelligence gathering, stockpiling of weapons, and coordination of personnel required for the attack, he underlines the technical and tactical professionalism of the Brigades as well. He even shares in some detail how they monitored Israeli army observation posts, patrols, border crossings, digital surveillance systems, and the status of the border fence in an effort to enhance their image of competence. Generally, Abu Obaida portrays the Israeli military as weak, divided, and unprepared for battle. By mocking the fear of its soldiers to raise their heads out of their armored vehicles, listing numbers of vehicles destroyed and detailing ambushes, he seeks to shatter the image of “the undefeatable army”.

By citing al-Qassam’s outgunned but unbowed resistance, Abu Obaida holds out the prospect of victory. By underlining and repeating names of every neighborhood across the strip where al-Qassam clashes with the Israeli military, he creates an image of a resistance force that engages the enemy everywhere “at zero distance” and from “behind enemy lines”.

At every turn, Abu Obaida attributes the success of the resistance fighters to the steadfastness of the people of Gaza, thus making them part of their struggle and their victories. Polling by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research suggests Hamas has managed to retain a substantial level of support among Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, around thirty to forty percent, despite all the destruction and death that October 7 arguably brought about. Humbling himself before Gaza’s refusal to give in to chaos and destruction, he builds on the Palestinian principle of sumud, steadfastness and commitment to the land. Abu Obaida paints the people of Gaza as the noblest, worthiest, and strongest people the region has ever seen, glorifying their sacrifice as the resilience that will lead to victory. Mobilizing key local images—Gaza as a graveyard for invaders and the Palestinian spirit as a “thorn in the throat” of the enemy—he reinforces identity characteristics of toughness and readiness. By ascribing the success of the resistance in battle to the steadfastness of the people, he connects their tolerance for suffering directly to the outcome of victory and encourages them to hold out in the face of the continuing violence.

Force versus Prospects for Peace

The intent of Abu Obaida’s discourse is clear. He seeks to firm up resistance in the face of terrible suffering of the Palestinian people and an enduring occupation that is based on structural violence—before and after October 7—by depicting Zionist designs on Palestinian lands as an existential threat that can only be countered by violence and sacrifice; obtaining rights and freedom requires blood, death, and destruction. In this sense, Abu Obaida hopes to echo the stories of Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi Minh. By positioning October 7 as the parting shot of a longer campaign, Abu Obaida makes it clear that this struggle will be neither brief nor successful in the short-term. But he also seeks to assure his audiences that the resistance will emerge victorious due to the commitment, tenaciousness, and steadfastness of the Palestinian people, as well as the support of the wider Ummah underscored by links with al-Aqsa. Purely on the basis of Abu Obaida’s discourse, it is possible to identify a few pointers for future conflict resolution efforts.

First of all, his message is rooted in decades of violent occupation that are amplified by the failures of Oslo and now underlined by the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. Despite the ensuing death and destruction, a September 2024 poll suggests that Palestinian support for the October 7 attacks remains significant even if it has decreased. In other words, Abu Obaida’s discourse has resonance among Palestinian and, likely, Arab audiences. Public statements of Israeli politicians only strengthen Abu Obaida’s frames and exhortations. For instance, when Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz recently called for “temporary evacuation orders” in the West Bank, he seemed to replicate the military’s display of utter disregard for humanitarian law in Gaza, which might amount to advocating for the war crime of forced displacement in the context of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice of June 19, 2024.

Second, Abu Obaida’s discourse makes clear what al-Qassam has on offer, namely a recipe of violence for violence that produces devastating suffering. It also happens to play to Israeli military strength. Yet, violence may be(come) the only route that many Palestinians see as viable given the failure of Oslo, the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, the unpopularity of its president, Mahmoud Abbas, the unconditional U.S. support for Israel, international neglect, accelerating annexation of the West Bank, and the destruction of Gaza. Paradoxically, Israel may even have unshackled Hamas by removing it from its governance and service delivery obligations of running the Gaza Strip.

Finally, the discourse indicates that ending, undoing, and repairing occupation is a feasible route to “defeating” Hamas militarily in the sense of disarming and mainstreaming it as a political party. There is ample precedent for groups formerly labeled as “terrorist” to become political parties when the moment was right, including the Zionist Irgun and Lehi groups and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, for example. The specific conditions for Hamas to lay down arms—creating a Palestinian state on the 1967 boundaries with East Jerusalem as capital—are, however, outlined explicitly only in speeches by the assassinated head of Hamas’ Political Office, Ismail Haniyeh. In any case, the possibility of Hamas disarming and operating solely as a political party in a two-state scenario runs counter to conventional wisdom among U.S. and Israeli political elites who maintain that it should be eliminated and the occupation continued.

All in all, Abu Obaida’s discourse points us to the fact that Hamas is a product of Israeli occupation. As long as this repressive condition persists, a movement like Hamas is likely to exist and can and will anchor its discourse in the grievances thus produced.