This month, the Hamas organization celebrates 35 years since it was founded, and like then, in the late 1980s, when the organization's first actions were to kidnap and murder IDF soldiers Avi Ssports and Ilan Saadoon, even today all that Hamas can be proud of is terror and more terror.
Hamas therefore chose to celebrate the birthday with a demonstration in the streets of Gaza.
Not, God forbid, a display of achievements in the fields of society and the economy that the residents of Gaza can enjoy, but a display of his military capabilities, missiles and even drones that floated in the air. For dessert, he also presented a Tabor rifle, which Hamas claims belonged to Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, whose body they kidnapped in the operation A solid cliff and since then he has held it as a bargaining chip against Israel.
But the truth is that it was a poor celebration that expressed not the power of Hamas, and certainly not its victory, but rather its failure - the failure of the path of extremism, violence and terror in which it leads the residents of Gaza and seeks to lead all Palestinians.
Hamas has inscribed on its banner the "liberation of all of Palestine", but today the Palestinians are as far away from even a much narrower goal - of establishing a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel - as they have never been before.
Since the coup against the Palestinian Authority in Gaza at the beginning of 2007, Hamas has firmly ruled the Strip.
His rule is with the blessing of Israel, and at the very least with her tacit consent.
Egypt, as well as many other Arab countries, is interested in the overthrow of Hamas' rule, which poses a threat to their stability at home, since Hamas is a sister movement to the Islamic movements in these countries.
But for Israel it is a lesser evil, certainly in view of the possibility of chaos that will dominate the Strip and force Israel to return and control it.
It is possible, by the way, that Israel is wrong in its calculations, and it is possible that a renewed takeover of the Strip will not be as complex and expensive as it fears, but at this time Israel is "in favor of Hamas".
But the problem of Hamas, the "resistance" movement that currently serves as a "policeman" guarding Israel's southern border, lies in the disillusionment of the Palestinian public with its charm.
The Gazan population is tired and exhausted, most of them are unemployed and live below the poverty line, and are therefore looking for relaxation.
If it weren't for the Qatari money or payments transferred by the Palestinian Authority, all through the good services of Israel, the economic collapse would have been complete.
And as evidence, during Operation Dawn, at the beginning of August this year, Hamas chose, lest it be forced by the pressure of the Gazan public, to stand aside and let Israel strike at its "little brother", the Islamic Jihad organization, and eliminate the commanders of its northern and southern divisions in the Gaza Strip, Taysir al- Jabari and Khaled Mansour.
The Palestinian Authority has been on the rocks for some time, and continues to exist thanks to the artificial resuscitation that Israel performs on it, but Hamas is unable to fill the void created in the Palestinian arena.
True, the Pavlovian impulse among the Palestinians is to cheer every time someone commits a terrorist act against Israel, considering "it's good that the Israelis are suffering too", but they also know that this is not an answer to the hardships and challenges they face today.
In the international arena, Hamas is also in trouble: the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, abandoned it in favor of warming its relations with Israel.
In the Arab world, no one trusts him or is interested in him, perhaps except for Qatar, which as we know cannot be trusted and whose power is limited anyway, except for cash that it can transfer to the organization through Israel.
Only Iran and the Shiite Hezbollah stand behind him, and these, as we know, are in terms of a red sheet for the Arab and Sunni world.
And for this it is said: with such friends, who needs enemies.
Throughout the Arab world, political Islam turned out to be a story of failure, and the Palestinian arena is no exception.
Extremism, violence and terrorism did not and will not bring any result in the future, except suffering for the population that Hamas controls and which it claims to represent.
This is therefore Hamas' "achievement balance sheet" in its 35 years of existence, which requires soul-searching and not victory celebrations.
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