The militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas have pursued a protracted struggle against Israel for decades, fueled by uncompromising ideologies and a willingness to endure immense sacrifice. In recent years, this resolve was put to the test as both groups engaged in a multi-front war with Israel that began in October 2023. Hamas, the Islamist movement ruling Gaza, launched an unprecedented surprise attack that sparked a 15-month war, while Lebanon’s Hezbollah opened a second front in solidarity[1][2]. Despite facing overwhelming Israeli firepower, including the assassination of Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah and the devastation of whole communities, neither group capitulated in defeat[3][4]. Instead, they framed mere survival as victory and vowed to continue the “resistance” for generations to come. This article examines the historical roots, ideological motivations, and strategic choices that drive Hezbollah and Hamas in what they often describe as an existential, hundred-year struggle against the state of Israel. It also explores the human costs of this long war – on the fighters and the civilian populations they claim to represent – and the implications for the Middle East’s future.
Historical Roots of a Relentless Conflict
Both Hezbollah and Hamas emerged in the late 20th century from contexts of conflict and occupation, setting the stage for their enduring hostility toward Israel. Hezbollah was founded in 1982 amid Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, as a Shia Islamist militia backed by revolutionary Iran[5][6]. From the start, Hezbollah’s raison d’être went beyond resisting Israeli forces in Lebanon – it embraced Iran’s ideology of “exporting” Islamic revolution and destroying Israel. In a 1985 manifesto, Hezbollah bluntly declared: “Our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no ceasefire, and no peace agreements.”[7] This uncompromising stance against Israel’s very existence has remained central to Hezbollah’s doctrine. Over the ensuing decades, Hezbollah fought a grinding guerrilla war that pressured Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon in 2000, which the group touted as a historic victory. It then clashed with Israel again in 2006, in a month-long war that caused heavy destruction in Lebanon but from which Hezbollah emerged politically emboldened by simply surviving the onslaught[4][8].
Hamas was created in 1987 during the First Palestinian Intifada (uprising) as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood with the goal of “spearheading a Sunni extremist movement committed to destroying Israel.”[9][10] Its 1988 charter framed the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a religiously mandated jihad: “Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”[11] Hamas rejected the secular nationalism of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and opposed the Oslo peace process of the 1990s, instead carrying out suicide bombings to derail compromise[12]. Even after winning elections and governing Gaza from 2007 onward, Hamas maintained its hardline goal of “liberating all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea” and explicitly refused to recognize the legitimacy of Israel[13]. As one Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, stated in 2012: “There will be no concession on any inch of the land. We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation… We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone.”[14] This absolutist ideology positioned Hamas, like Hezbollah, for an open-ended conflict with an enemy it deemed illegitimate and transient.
Ideology and Objectives: No Compromise, No Surrender
At the core of both Hezbollah and Hamas is an ideology that treats Israel as an alien entity destined to be removed – no matter how long it takes. Their leaders have repeatedly voiced an expectation that history is on their side and that Israel will eventually collapse or disappear. Hezbollah’s longtime secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah often articulated this vision. In a 2000 interview, Nasrallah insisted: “I am against any reconciliation with Israel. I do not even recognize the presence of a state that is called ‘Israel.’ …If Lebanon concludes a peace agreement with Israel…our deputies will reject it; Hezbollah refuses any conciliation with Israel in principle.” He affirmed that the destruction of Israel and the “liberation of Palestine” is “the principal objective of Hezbollah.”[15][16] On other occasions, Nasrallah explicitly predicted Israel’s demise, proclaiming “there is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel.”[17] Such statements mirror the rhetoric from Iran’s leadership (Hezbollah’s patrons), who have described Israel as a temporary “cancerous tumor” that will not survive. Indeed, Hezbollah’s 1985 open letter, published in a Lebanese newspaper, made clear that the group saw itself as part of an Islamist vanguard following Ayatollah Khomeini and that any entity impeding that vision – foremost Israel – was illegitimate and doomed[7][8].
Hamas’s doctrine has been similarly uncompromising. The original Hamas Covenant of 1988 rejected any peaceful solution, declaring that “initiatives and international conferences are all a waste of time” and that jihad was the only path forward[18]. Although in 2017 Hamas issued a new political document accepting the idea of a Palestinian state on 1967 borders “without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity”, this was widely seen as a tactical adjustment rather than a renunciation of the ultimate goal[19][20]. Hamas leaders continue to invoke maximalist goals. After the deadly surprise offensive on October 7, 2023 (dubbed “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”), exiled Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh hailed the attack as a divine victory and vowed to “expel [the enemy] from our lands, our holy city of al-Quds, our Al-Aqsa mosque…we shall crown it…with a crushing defeat” of Israel[21][22]. In Hamas’s view, any temporary truce or political arrangement can be justified only as a means to an end – never as a permanent peace. The organization’s very name means “Islamic Resistance Movement,” reflecting its self-image as perpetually in resistance until all of Palestine is “liberated.”
Critically, both groups frame their conflicts in existential and religious terms, which helps justify an indefinite war. Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist party, uses the narrative of “resistance” as a quasi-sacred duty for Lebanon’s Shia community. It glorifies martyrdom and endurance in what it calls the “resistance society.” During the 2006 war, Nasrallah famously claimed victory simply by not being militarily defeated: “When our will is not broken, then this is victory… When we are not defeated militarily, then this is victory.”[23]. This sentiment – that to survive and continue fighting is itself victory – resonates strongly in the rhetoric of both Hezbollah and Hamas. It means that setbacks on the battlefield or immense casualties do not equate to defeat in their eyes, so long as the organization’s will to fight remains intact.
Hamas’s Islamist ideology similarly sacralizes perseverance. The notion of “samud” (steadfastness) in Palestinian resistance culture predates Hamas, but Hamas has embraced it to rally Gazans around enduring siege and assault. Religious language is frequently employed: Hamas propaganda paints the conflict as a holy struggle in which the fighters are assured victory by God if they remain patient and faithful. Their slogan that “death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of wishes” encapsulates how sacrifice is lionized[11]. This ideology enables Hamas leaders to reject compromise even under extreme pressure, believing that ultimate triumph – however distant – is ordained. As one regional expert noted of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s Gaza leader, “hardships and suffering were…interpreted by him and his followers as part of a larger Islamic belief of sacrifice”[24]. In other words, pain is temporary and even desirable if it serves the divine cause of destroying an illegitimate invader.
The Long War: Patience as a Strategic Weapon
“Defeat is never final, and patience is a weapon” – this mantra effectively sums up how Hezbollah and Hamas approach their conflict with Israel. Both groups have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to absorb losses, bide their time, and fight another day, turning protractedness into a strategic advantage. In practical terms, this has meant asymmetric warfare and wars of attrition punctuated by long lulls and brief flare-ups. Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas can match Israel’s conventional military might, so instead they seek to outlast Israel psychologically and politically. They wager that if they cannot win outright, they can ensure Israel cannot decisively win either, thereby keeping their cause alive until conditions tilt in their favor – even if that takes decades.
Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel illustrates this long-war strategy. After Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah spent the next six years quietly building a formidable arsenal of rockets and fortifying positions, anticipating a future showdown. When war erupted in 2006, Hezbollah withstood a month of Israeli bombardment and kept firing rockets until the last day[25][26]. Though Lebanon suffered terribly, Hezbollah emerged politically stronger by claiming a “Divine Victory” – not because it defeated Israel militarily, but because it survived and denied Israel a clear victory. Israeli analysts later noted that Hezbollah’s fighters had trained for six years and were ready for a confrontation, with the expectation that if they could hold out, Israel’s will to continue would waver[27][28]. Indeed, Israel ultimately accepted a ceasefire without eliminating Hezbollah, allowing Nasrallah to boast that Israel failed to achieve its aims. From Hezbollah’s perspective, this validated patience: short-term battlefield losses were acceptable in exchange for long-term gains in reputation and deterrence.
Hamas has followed a similar playbook in Gaza. Since taking control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas and Israel have fought multiple rounds (2008–09, 2012, 2014, 2021, and the 2023–25 war), none of which ended in Hamas’s elimination. In each confrontation, Hamas’s immediate aim has been to withstand Israel’s superior firepower long enough to force a ceasefire on terms it can tolerate, thereby surviving to fight again. For example, during the 2014 Gaza war (50 days of fighting), Hamas absorbed devastating strikes but continued launching rockets until a ceasefire was reached that did not remove it from power. That allowed Hamas to claim a symbolic victory for resisting the Israeli assault. Fast forward to the war that began in 2023: Hamas shocked Israel with the scale of its initial attack, provoking a massive Israeli retaliation in Gaza. Yet Hamas’s strategy was not to hold territory in a conventional sense; it was to draw Israel into a drawn-out urban fight, use tunnels and guerrilla tactics, and stretch the war out. The longer the war continued, the more Hamas could project to its supporters that Israel was being bogged down and that international pressure would eventually intervene. In fact, Israel’s leaders grew frustrated that Hamas “held out in the face of a fifteen-month…campaign until Israel agreed to a ceasefire deal”, whereas Hezbollah had folded much sooner[29]. This contrast during the two-front war underscored Hamas’s deliberate doggedness.
One reason Hamas lasted longer was its freedom from political constraints. Unlike Hezbollah – which as a part of the Lebanese government had to heed domestic outrage at the devastation – Hamas rules Gaza unchallenged and has few qualms about the toll on the population (as grim as that sounds). Israeli offensives have repeatedly pummeled Gaza’s infrastructure and civilians, yet Hamas’s leadership often portrays these hardships as fuel for the resistance rather than reasons to surrender. A chilling illustration of this mindset came from Yahya Sinwar. An Israeli intelligence officer recounted asking Sinwar about the price Gazans were paying for Hamas’s actions: “I asked Sinwar, is it worth 10,000 innocent Gazans dying?” Sinwar’s reply was unequivocal: “Even 100,000 is worth it.”[30]. This stark statement – that no number of casualties is too high a price for Hamas’s goals – reveals how patience and attrition are weaponized. Hamas calculates that enduring terrible suffering is worthwhile if it exhausts Israel’s will or galvanizes international condemnation of Israel. In effect, Hamas uses its own people’s torment as leverage, betting that global opinion will eventually force Israel to stand down, as has happened when past wars ended amid outcry over humanitarian costs.
Hezbollah too sees patience as a strategic virtue, though its calculus was altered by the recent 2024 war. In that conflict, Israel’s intensive air campaign killed “much of [Hezbollah’s] senior political and military leadership” within weeks[31][3]. Facing unprecedented losses and public fury in Lebanon, Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire after 13 months, far sooner than it had perhaps intended[32][33]. Notably, Hezbollah restrained itself from using its most advanced weapons (like precision missiles) in that war[34] – possibly holding them in reserve for a future day. Even in defeat, Hezbollah clung to the narrative of eventual victory: the new leader Naim Qassem declared the ceasefire a “great victory” because Hezbollah “continues to exist” and Israel did not reoccupy southern Lebanon[35]. And on billboards across south Lebanon, Hezbollah tried to reassure its base with slogans like “In the martyrdom of our leaders, we are victorious.”[36]. The underlying message was that so long as Hezbollah’s resistance lives on – even in diminished form – the war against Israel is not over. This exemplifies patience as strategy: losses today are accepted in the belief that tomorrow the fight resumes.
Sacrifice and Suffering: The Human Cost of Endurance
Mass graves and martyrs: A photograph of a fallen Hezbollah fighter marks a fresh gravesite in Tyre, south Lebanon, December 2024. After a year of war, entire towns were left in ruins and an entire generation of Hezbollah’s leadership had been wiped out[4][37]. Both Hezbollah and Hamas glorify such sacrifices as noble and necessary “for the resistance,” even as grieving communities question the price.
The commitment of Hezbollah and Hamas to a long, unyielding war has come at an appalling human cost for the communities they purport to defend. In practice, their “no defeat is final” ethos has meant asking – or forcing – their people to endure repeated cycles of bloodshed, displacement, and economic devastation. Over time, this has strained the social contract between the militants and their support base, even if open dissent is rare.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s strongholds have paid dearly for the group’s confrontations with Israel. The 2023–24 war was especially catastrophic. Israeli airstrikes and a ground incursion in the south laid waste to dozens of villages and towns across southern Lebanon[32][38]. An estimated 3,900 Lebanese were killed and many more injured in just over a year of fighting[2]. Entire Shiite neighborhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs were reduced to rubble, including Haret Hreik where Nasrallah was killed by bunker-buster bombs[39][40]. Hezbollah lost thousands of fighters – several times more than in 2006 – and virtually its entire upper echelon of commanders[4][3]. For the residents of south Lebanon, the aftermath was bleak: flattened infrastructure, mass funerals of fighters and civilians, and a collapsed local economy. At a mass burial for 95 people in the village of Aitaroun, mourners openly wondered “Why did we have to fight it?”, lamenting that “the price of this war was huge.”[41] Young people spoke of lost futures, and older villagers like one 67-year-old farmer expressed despair that “the future of our kids, it’s all gone”, as even basic services like water and electricity had been destroyed[42][43]. Hezbollah had promised to compensate families for war damages, but as the bills ran into the billions of dollars, the group simply asked its supporters for patience instead, admitting it lacked the funds to rebuild what was lost[44][45]. This bitter outcome – devastation with little relief – has led some in Hezbollah’s base to quietly question whether the sacrifices were worth it. While many Shiites still revere the ideal of “resistance,” cracks in public opinion have appeared. By early 2025, Lebanese media and civil society were openly debating Hezbollah’s accountability, something nearly unthinkable before. Even some loyalists, while not rejecting Hezbollah’s cause, have voiced grief and doubt about its strategy[46][47]. In short, the human toll in Lebanon has tested Hezbollah’s narrative that endless resistance is glorious. The banners declaring victory through martyrdom ring hollow for those mourning loved ones and living amid ruins[48][37].
In Gaza, the suffering has been, if anything, even more acute. The Hamas-Israel war that began in October 2023 unleashed destruction on a scale “without parallel in recent times,” according to the United Nations[49][50]. Israeli forces subjected Gaza to continuous bombardment, a stringent blockade, and even periods of outright starvation as a weapon of war. By mid-2025, reports from Gaza grew dire: hunger-related deaths mounted into the hundreds as food, water, and medicine ran out under Israel’s siege[51][52]. Emaciated children filled hospital wards, and doctors warned of “alarming numbers” of fatalities due to malnutrition[53][54]. The UN Secretary-General decried the situation as a “horror show,” with 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in an ever-shrinking, bomb-shattered enclave[55][56]. Militarily, Gaza was pummeled relentlessly; by some counts, tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed in the fighting (exact figures remain contested, but the scale was enormous). Yet Hamas refused to surrender or disarm. Even during a negotiated ceasefire in January 2025 – which provided a brief lull – Hamas treated it as a tactical pause rather than an end to the war[57]. Indeed, fighting resumed by March 2025, as Israeli hardliners argued Hamas had to be decisively crushed[58][59]. The consequence was the continuation of Gaza’s agony. Israeli strikes and ground operations pushed over 88% of Gaza into militarized zones or evacuation zones, effectively turning the strip into a free-fire zone with civilians in peril everywhere[60][56].
Hamas’s response to this calamity was to dig in deeper. The group’s leadership, often sheltered in bunkers or abroad, remained defiant. Publicly, they extolled Gazans’ endurance and framed their people’s suffering as a heroic sacrifice for Palestine’s liberation. Internally, Hamas tolerated no dissent – reports indicated that those who protested conditions or questioned Hamas were silenced, as maintaining a united front against Israel was paramount. As outside observers have noted, Hamas’s “high tolerance for suffering, both for himself and for the Palestinian people, in the name of a cause” was a defining trait of leaders like Sinwar[61][62]. This mindset meant that even as Gaza’s humanitarian crisis spiraled, Hamas leaders were willing to prolong the war, believing that each day of resistance – and each image of Palestinian anguish – ultimately weakened Israel’s international standing while bolstering their own narrative of righteousness. It is a brutally cynical calculus: our people can suffer more than the enemy can bear. In effect, Hamas was saying to Israel and the world that they would sooner let Gaza be reduced to rubble and starvation than give up their armed struggle. And indeed, by mid-2025, international pressure on Israel was growing over the mounting civilian toll[63][55], which Hamas likely views as validating its grim strategy.
The “Axis of Resistance” and Regional Ambitions
Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas operates in isolation. Both are part of what their leaders call the “Axis of Resistance” – a regional alliance of Iran and its proxy militias dedicated to opposing Israel and U.S. influence in the Middle East. This alliance provides crucial resources and a strategic depth that enable the long war against Israel to continue. Iran, in particular, has been the lifeline: Hezbollah receives hundreds of millions of dollars in Iranian funding and weaponry annually[64][65], and Iran has also armed and trained Hamas for decades (despite Sunni-Shia differences)[66]. With Tehran’s backing, these groups feel emboldened to pursue maximalist goals without capitulating to pressure. Iranian leaders reinforce the ideological narrative by, for example, predicting Israel’s future collapse (Iran’s supreme leader once proclaimed Israel would cease to exist in 25 years). This external validation assures Hezbollah and Hamas that time is indeed on their side.
The regional dynamic also gives strategic rationale to patience. Hezbollah and Hamas believe that geopolitical trends – such as waning U.S. engagement or rising Arab anger – will eventually shift the balance. They often point to historical analogies: the Crusader kingdoms were ultimately expelled from the Middle East after a century, European colonialism was defeated in time, apartheid South Africa fell – and so, they argue, will the “Zionist project” be undone if resistance persists long enough. Every conflict with Israel is thus cast as just one battle in a multi-generational war. As Hezbollah’s spokesman Hassan Ezzedin said in 2002, even minor fronts are “a pretext for something larger,” vowing that “our goal is to liberate the 1948 borders of Palestine… The Jews who survive can go back to where they came from.”[16]. Such statements underscore that Hezbollah sees its struggle as inseparable from the Palestinian cause and as part of a broader historical arc. Hamas, for its part, frequently invokes pan-Islamic themes and tries to rally the Muslim world by depicting Gaza and Jerusalem as battlefields for all Muslims. This broader vision serves to inspire patience: the fight is not just for a strip of land, but for a grand cause that transcends generations.
However, recent events have also exposed the limits and risks of this strategy in the regional context. The simultaneous war Israel faced in Gaza and Lebanon in 2023–24 did not spark the wider regional conflagration some expected; other Axis members (like Iran or pro-Iran militias in Syria/Iraq) mostly stayed on the sidelines. Israel was thus able to concentrate force on Hezbollah and Hamas sequentially. The result: Hezbollah was rapidly degraded – “three layers of leadership eliminated, its military command decimated”[67][68] – while Hamas, though surviving longer, saw Gaza subjected to unprecedented devastation. Far from heralding an immediate triumph for the Axis of Resistance, the war left it weakened: Hezbollah’s prestige in Lebanon was dented, and Hamas’s realm lay in ruins. To make matters worse for Hezbollah, the war’s endgame saw Lebanon’s own government and army reasserting authority in the south (a key term of the November 2024 ceasefire) and even disarming some Hezbollah positions[33][69]. In parallel, Syria’s Assad regime – a vital conduit for Iranian arms – fell from power in late 2024, further straining Hezbollah’s strategic depth[70][71]. These setbacks illustrate that patience alone does not guarantee success; adversaries can adapt, and regional fortunes can shift unexpectedly.
Yet despite these blows, neither Hezbollah nor Hamas has signaled any fundamental change in ideology. Hezbollah’s leadership transition after Nasrallah’s death brought in Naim Qassem, a hardliner steeped in the same ideology of resistance[72]. Hamas’s surviving leadership, whether in Gaza or abroad, continues to insist that armed struggle is the only path – as evidenced by the collapse of the January ceasefire and resumption of hostilities. For the Axis of Resistance, martyrs have been exalted and losses framed as temporary. Iran’s state media lauded Nasrallah as a hero whose blood would only invigorate the fight, and Hamas praised Gaza’s endurance as a beacon of Islamic steadfastness. In this narrative, setbacks are merely trials on the road to ultimate victory. It is a narrative that can sustain morale among true believers but at the cost of ever more sacrifice.
Outlook: An Intractable War of Attrition
As of mid-2025, the Israel–Hezbollah–Hamas conflict stands at a fateful juncture. Israel has demonstrated that it can inflict unprecedented damage on its enemies, yet not eliminate them outright without paying a prohibitive price itself. Hamas and Hezbollah, for their part, have demonstrated that they can survive and even claim a kind of victory by refusal to surrender – but only by subjecting their people to unspeakable hardships in the process. This mutually painful stalemate suggests that the long war is far from over. If “defeat is never final” for Hezbollah and Hamas, the corollary is that Israel, too, remains locked in a cycle of conflict, never feeling entirely secure.
International efforts to break this cycle have so far failed, largely because of the absolutist positions involved. Diplomacy might secure temporary ceasefires or prisoner exchanges (as happened with the January 2025 deal and subsequent pauses), but a true peace would require Hamas to renounce violence and accept Israel’s existence, or Israel to decisively uproot Hamas – neither of which appears imminent. Hezbollah’s integration into the Lebanese state had once been seen as a moderating influence, but the 2024 war showed that when push comes to shove, Hezbollah will prioritize its “resistance” role even at Lebanon’s expense. That said, the backlash in Lebanon hints at a possible future where Hezbollah’s domestic support could erode if the fruits of resistance continue to be funerals and rubble[41][73]. In Gaza, public sentiment is harder to gauge under Hamas’s tight grip, but the sheer scale of suffering is bound to leave a profound mark on the social fabric and attitudes toward continued war – whether that manifests as continued defiance or as desperation for normalcy.
In the grand ideological narrative, Hezbollah and Hamas still preach patience – that “if not us, then our sons or grandsons will see the final victory.” They draw on a deep well of historical grievances and religious fervor that indeed can sustain struggle over generations. Patience, in their view, is not just a virtue but a weapon to be wielded against Israel’s perceived shorter attention span and greater sensitivity to casualties. However, patience is also running thin for ordinary people living through this conflict. A war that stretches into decades tests the limits of human endurance and moral justification. When a 23-year-old Lebanese student asks why her friend had to die for a war she never wanted[41], or when a Gazan parent cannot feed a starving child, the slogans of resistance face their toughest challenge.
In the end, the notion of a “hundred-year struggle” is not hyperbole but a real possibility if current dynamics persist. Absent a dramatic change – be it a political settlement, a collapse of one side’s will, or a shift in regional power – Hezbollah and Hamas seem prepared to fight on, no matter how long it takes. For them, no ceasefire is ever the end of the war. They will regroup, rebuild their arsenals (with Iran’s help), and teach the next generation to pick up the fight. Israel, on the other hand, will likely continue to respond with overwhelming force whenever it feels its security is imperiled, as it has shown in recent campaigns. This feedback loop of violence and retaliation underscores why so many analysts call the conflict intractable.
Yet history is full of surprises. Just as few predicted the scale of the 2023 Hamas attack, few predicted the rapid elimination of Nasrallah or the toppling of Assad soon after – events that have shaken the strategic landscape[74][70]. Change can come suddenly in the Middle East. One possible game-changer could be shifting popular attitudes: if Lebanese society no longer tolerates Hezbollah dragging it into war, or if Palestinians in Gaza eventually reject Hamas’s approach, that could force these groups to recalibrate. Conversely, an unforeseen victory or collapse – however remote it seems now – could dramatically shorten the “hundred-year” timeline.
For now, the tragic reality is that Hezbollah and Hamas are fighting a long war that neither side can decisively win or lose. As one observer noted, even in apparent defeat they claim a sort of victory in martyrdom and survival[36][75]. And as long as they can do so, the cycle of periodic conflict is likely to continue. In this sense, defeat for them truly is never final – it is simply a stage, a setback to be overcome with time and perseverance. Patience, wielded as a weapon, has kept their cause alive through countless crises. Whether it can ever deliver the ultimate victory they seek is uncertain, but it ensures that the conflict will endure, casting a long shadow over generations to come.
Footnotes: All source references are cited in-line, with informational links to reports, articles, and expert analyses that provide further detail on the points discussed. These include think-tank reports on Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s doctrines[7][14], news coverage of the 2023–25 conflicts and their toll[3][51], and first-hand accounts of statements by group leaders illustrating their mindsets[30]. Such sources underline the article’s factual basis and context for the assertions made.
[1] [34] Israel has lost its patience – Atlantic Council
[2] [3] [32] [33] [38] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [69] [70] [71] [73] ‘The price was huge’: Hezbollah reeling as Lebanese ponder sacrifices of its war | Hezbollah | The Guardian
[4] [31] [35] [36] [37] [39] [40] [46] [47] [48] [72] [75] Doubting the Party, Revering Its Ideology: Hezbollah’s Battered Constituencies Reckon with a Year of Loss
[5] [6] [64] [65] Doctrine of Hezbollah | Wilson Center
[7] [8] [15] [16] [17] [23] [25] [26] [27] [28] washingtoninstitute.org
[9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [66] Doctrine of Hamas | Wilson Center
[24] [30] [61] [62] [67] [68] Yahya Sinwar: The Hamas leader committed to eradicating Israel is dead | Reuters
[29] Hezbollah’s Defeat and Hamas’s Dogged Resistance: Israel’s Two-Front War and the Perils of Prewar Assumptions – Modern War Institute
[49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [60] Gaza logs 15 new deaths from hunger, taking toll since Israel’s war to 101 | Gaza News | Al Jazeera
[57] Israel-Hamas War (Gaza conflict) | Explanation, Summary, Ceasefire …
[58] 2025 Gaza war ceasefire – Wikipedia
[59] Why did Netanyahu end the Gaza ceasefire? – AP News
[63] Israeli military says airdrops of humanitarian aid will begin Saturday …
[74] What will Nasrallah’s death mean for the Middle East? | Brookings
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