Any attempt to run Gaza like the West Bank will fail – and Hamas will benefit | Tahani Mustafa

The next administration is more likely to appear by default than by design, something that doesn’t bode well for Palestinians

Two months into the military campaign against Hamas, and there is still little clarity about Israel’s endgame or the future for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank living under occupation. The status quo was irrevocably broken on 7 October . But Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for 16 years, is likely to survive in some form despite Israel’s stated aim to wipe it off the map. Its survival as a political entity will have far-reaching implications for all in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

It is unclear to what extent Israel’s intensive bombardment of the Gaza Strip and its ground operations in the north have undermined Hamas’s operational ability. Though the militants have suffered some losses, Hamas still has considerable capacities ensconced in its bunkers and tunnels underneath Gaza from which to attack Israeli ground forces or launch rockets. As Israel resumes operations in the south, the extent of the damage it has been able to inflict on the tunnel system in the north remains unclear. But even if Israel succeeds in eliminating Hamas’s military wing and tunnel infrastructure, Hamas as a resistance movement will probably endure in Gaza and elsewhere for as long as Israel’s occupation continues.

Tahani Mustafa is the senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group

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How do young Britons see the massacre in Gaza? These Luton students will tell you | Aditya Chakrabortty

For many people under 25, opposing Israel’s brutal onslaught has become their generation’s rallying cause

Two minutes before the hour, and only a handful of friends had turned up. The student organisers looked at each other in dismay. Would their protest, pulled together in secrecy and haste, prove a flop? Then came a loud babble from inside the college. Boys and girls were flooding down the stairs towards the entrance. Many were jumping the turnstile. As they ran outside, teenage excitement – among the purest there is – filled the late-autumn sky. On an otherwise quiet Friday hundreds of students had defied their principal, charged out of lessons and massed outside their own college to make a little local history.

What brought so many out that morning on 17 November at Luton Sixth Form College, in Bedfordshire, was a jpeg passed from phone to phone. “School strike for Palestine” was the title, and it ended: “Over 10,000 Palestinians have been brutally massacred. It is time we stand on the right side of history and fight like hell for those who are still alive.” The entire rally ran off one low-res image, that simple sentiment and a borrowed mic, which didn’t always work. In the three weeks since that walkout, the student revolt has grown in size and scope so that it is now one of the most interesting and telling stories about how a war 2,500 miles away is reshaping politics and society here.

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