What Is Hamas Thinking Now?

DOHA, Qatar ― Six months into a war Hamas started ― with more than 33,000 Palestinians dead, more succumbing to famine daily and Israel determined to continue its aggressive campaign against the organization with robust American military support ― the militant group says it is confident it will wield significant influence in the future, come what may in Gaza.

Hamas believes its shock Oct. 7 attack on Israel achieved its goal of reigniting global concern for decades-long Palestinian subjugation, and it views the Israelis and Americans as intent on deepening the fighting rather than taking genuine steps toward an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. Additionally, it does not see itself as responsible for civilian deaths during that assault, in which Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 Israelis, more than half of them civilians, and took up to 240 hostages in violation of international law.

That’s how Mousa Abu Marzouk and Basem Naim, two senior Hamas leaders, presented their group’s current thinking in two lengthy, separate recent interviews with HuffPost, providing extremely rare hours-long, in-person access to a Western media outlet after complex negotiations and amid an extraordinarily delicate time in the war.

The group acknowledged it still holds dozens of captives ― including about 40 people Hamas counts in a humanitarian category as noncombatants, among them some civilians, and likely five Americans (the number of U.S. citizens a State Department spokesperson said remain unaccounted for since Oct. 7). But the Hamas leaders expressed little faith in negotiations for a pause in combat involving the release of those hostages in exchange for Palestinians held by Israel, the stated goal of President Joe Biden, who in