Eli Lake, Columnist

Why Hamas Starts Wars It Always Loses

If the strategy was to further the Palestinian cause, it has failed.

May 13, 2021 at 6:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

The southern Gaza strip, May 12, 2021.
Photographer: YOUSSEF MASSOUD/AFP

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According to its exiled political leader, Hamas’s war strategy — if that’s the proper term for raining hundreds of randomly fired rockets on Israel — is working. In a televised address on Tuesday evening, Ismail Haniya called the barrage a “victory” and “an honor for our people.”

This rhetoric is not unusual. Hamas always claims to win the wars it loses. In 2012, after suffering a humiliating defeat to Israel, a popular perfume appeared in a shop in Gaza named for the Hamas missile that reached Tel Aviv. The shop owner said it commemorated a military “victory” that left much of Gaza in shambles.