The American CNN network said that a wave of new analyzes conducted by American intelligence agencies warned that the credibility of the Islamic Resistance Movement (agitation) and its influence has increased sharply in the Middle East and beyond during the past two months since the start of the Israeli aggression against Gaza strip On the seventh of last October.
The network quoted American officials as saying that Hamas has succeeded in positioning itself in some parts of the Arab and Islamic world as a defender of the Palestinian cause and an effective fighter against the Israeli occupation, after it launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
A senior US administration official also stated – according to the network – that Hamas was not a very popular organization before last October 7, but today it has become more popular.
She added that American officials are closely monitoring several key indicators that indicate that support for Hamas is increasing in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the region.
According to the network, a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that support for Hamas in West Bank The occupation rate rose from 12% last September to about 44% this December. In Jordan, where more than half the population is of Palestinian origin, demonstrators chanted in the streets in support of Hamas.
A former intelligence official specializing in the region, Jonathan Banikoff, said that Hamas is now, especially in the occupied West Bank, “increasingly seen as the only group actually doing something against the Israeli occupation.”
According to the network, various assessments were circulated within the US government, as officials of the President’s administration began joe biden They publicly warn that the civilian death toll from Israeli bombing threatens to increase Hamas’s popularity in the Palestinian territories, while analysts warn that “the bombing may only inspire more terrorism there and abroad,” according to CNN.
American officials believe that these stark assessments underscore the inherent difficulty – if not the impossibility – of Israel’s insistence that it will “eliminate” Hamas.
Some analysts within the US government fear that Israel’s continuation of its war against Hamas – including the punitive air campaign that led to the death of more than 20,000 people – will have the unintended effect of legitimizing Hamas politically and inspiring more “terrorism,” as the network puts it. CNN”.