Early on Wednesday, Mahmoud ventured out from the ruins of Nuseirat, a town in central Gaza, to a makeshift market that had sprang up during the war.
It was 6am and Hamas was already in charge, with masked men carrying guns keeping watch and traders instructed to keep the street clear for traffic.
By 8am, a bulldozer appeared and cleared some debris for a small convoy of SUVs, and by 8.30am men in the familiar Hamas security uniforms of cheap polyester jackets with fake fur lining were manning a checkpoint.
“On the ground, from A to Z, there is no doubt: Hamas is in charge,” said Mahmoud, who had driven north after the market and encountered four Hamas checkpoints, asked to show ID at every one. He declined to use his second name to speak freely about the group.
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[ Q&A: What remains of Hamas after two years of war?Opens in new window ]
After two years of war with Israel, and barely four days into a US-brokered ceasefire, Hamas is seeking to broadcast a message across Gaza: Israel is retreating, and the enclave is back in the Palestinian militant group’s hands.
The fog of war has barely lifted, making it difficult to ascertain how much of Hamas’s rapid redeployment is intended to mask a fear that it has lost control of an enclave it has ruled with an iron fist since 2007.
But everywhere Gazans look they see the signs. On social media, they see videos of Hamas publicly executing members of rival clans, who thrived during the war either by profiteering, collaborating with Israel or simply expanding their turf while the militants hid in their tunnels.
On the streets, they see Hamas security officials fan out to maintain order, if not the law. The ministry of education promises to restart schools; the ministry of health to identify unclaimed bodies, piled up in morgues and unmarked graves.
On television screens, they see a parade of sparkling clean pickup trucks, men with assault rifles and uniforms unexpectedly clean after months of war – a narrow, if potent, show of force designed to project an image of victory as Hamas bursts out from its subterranean refuge.
“New cars, new gear, new equipment, new uniforms, printing presses with massive slogans,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, director of the Horizon Center for Political Studies in Ramallah. “What has Israel been bombing for two years?”
There is little doubt that Israel has destroyed much of Hamas’ military wing and leadership, alongside nearly all of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, in the war triggered by the militant group’s October 7th 2023 attack.
But how much of Hamas, which is also a political and social movement and ran various branches of Gaza’s government, has survived – and what shape it will take – remains a crucial question.
What is clear is that Israel’s bombing campaign drove Hamas underground, ceding turf to rival militias that Israel armed and trained, repeating a strategy it has tried and failed in a previous war in Lebanon.
Above ground, it’s already clear that many of the more than 67,000 Palestinians the Israeli military killed were not Hamas fighters – close to half were women and children, said local health officials.
Israeli officials, including prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, have variously said that 10,000 or 20,000 of those killed were Hamas fighters – but provided little evidence.
Israel’s security chiefs believe that the militant group’s ability to attack Israel has been nearly eliminated. Its rocket arsenal has been decimated, its highly trained fighters and commanders killed and an estimated 40 per cent of its tunnel system destroyed, said Israeli intelligence estimates.
But Palestinians have not been as surprised as Israelis, or the rest of the world, that at least parts of Hamas appear intact after two years of battle.
“The perception that Hamas would emerge from under the rubble may be surprising to those who think Israel was running a targeted campaign on Hamas, instead of destroying a lot of civilian infrastructure,” said Dalalsha.
As Hamas sought to survive Israel’s onslaught, lawlessness gripped Gaza, robbing the Islamist group of some of its legitimacy and even prompting small protests against its rule.
Now that Israel is withdrawing to lines of control under US president Donald Trump’s deal – under which Hamas is expected to disarm – the militant group and its forces have swept through the remaining half of the enclave, residents said.
“Of course they are not at full capacity, but they have to project an image – Hamas is out in full force, and until any international stabilisation force is deployed, they are in charge,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Gaza’s Al Azhar University, who now lives in Cairo.
“The police were out within hours, they were organising traffic, they are deploying everywhere ... It’s like business as usual.”
One of the most potent displays of Hamas control is the public executions of several hooded men in busy marketplaces, the chilling videos instantly reverberating through Palestinian – and Israeli – social media.
Hamas said they were members of clans that had collaborated with Israel, calling their executions a warning to others to give up their arms and surrender.
It has declared war on at least four separate clans, two of them believed to have been armed by Israel and behind Israeli lines.
In other videos, men were shot in the legs as crowds watched, a reminder of the brutality of the 2007 internecine battles in which Hamas snatched control of Gaza from its Palestinian rival, Fatah, including by throwing Fatah officials off buildings or kneecapping them.
“To Gazans, the message was crystal clear: ‘Don’t f**k with us, don’t even dare to protest,’” said Abusada. “Two million Palestinians now know: don’t rise up against Hamas.”
Trump, asked about the vigilante justice meted out on Gaza’s streets, said it didn’t bother him much. “They were very, very bad gangs.”
They “want to stop the problems and they’ve been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time”, he told reporters.
Dalalsha, the Ramallah-based analyst, said the show of force was also intended to send a message to the diplomats now seeking to convert this ceasefire into a permanent truce.
The second stage of the 20-point plan calls for Hamas to disarm and to cede any governance role in Gaza, in addition to the demilitarisation of the strip and the entry of an international stabilisation force. Trump warned this week that “if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them”.
By asserting control, displaying its weapons openly and eliminating its rivals, Hamas is trying to place itself in a stronger position in those negotiations, he said.
“The primary issue is not with governance – it has to do with security control,” he said. Constrained by how much aid Israel will allow into the devastated enclave, Hamas “can’t deliver services like they used to”.
“But they are definitely trying to keep security control: the police, the ministry of interior,” he said. “They are holding on to that as a matter of negotiation in the future.”
Mahmoud said he couldn’t help noticing how healthy the Hamas personnel he encountered were.
“When you see them physically, you see their bodies – you get a clear indication that they were not suffering like us in this war,” he said. “They were secure – food, drink, emotionally.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
