Just when Hamas had taken the last “hostage card” – on October 13, 2025, all 20 Israeli hostages were handed over.The two-year “Gaza Marathon” suddenly reached the end of the chapter, but everyone was asking the same question: Who is the real winner?
Hamas: Losing the battlefield and winning the public opinion field?
On the surface, Hamas has lost nothing: 20 hostages + 28 bodies in exchange for only 1,900 prisoners, not including their named "Palestine Mandela" Balguti.
But is Hamas wrong? wrong! they have long turned the war into a worldwide live-streaming “trist drama.”When white flags floated over the ruins of Gaza, when Israeli airstrikes bombed United Nations schools, the worldwide public opinion almost fell to sympathy with Palestine.Now even Western European nations have started publicly supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state, Hamas’ wave of “strategic withdrawal” has directly pushed the Palestinian issue back to the C-spot of world politics.
Israel: Winning tactics and losing strategy?
The Israeli Defence Army has blown the Gaza Strip into the “moon surface.” But if 1,900 prisoners are released back to the south of Gaza, it will directly change the territory that Fatah wants to control into “Middle East Syria.” More importantly, the international image has fallen – when Netanyahu screams “Destroy terrorists completely” in front of the camera, CNN is broadcasting live the tragedy of Gaza children holding their limbs. Now even the U.S. Congress has begun to question the help, and Israel’s “military victory” has plunged itself into the dungeon of diplomatic isolation.
3. The United States: The largest invisible player?
Trump’s “peace mediation” is too much to play! The surfaced ceasefire actually turned Gaza into the “testfield” of the United States. Under the agreement, the future Gaza will be made up of security forces of Arab countries, the United States responsible for providing “technical support”. This is like letting Saudi Arabia be a security guard, the United States as the director of the monitoring chamber, both weakened Iran’s influence in the Middle East, and gave Israel a “democratic transformation” lock. Moreover, Trump buried a “Gazariviera” plan in the agreement, to make Gaza a Mediterranean tourist destination – apparently a servant to turn the Palestinians into a resort village.
4. Can Hamas make a comeback?
Hamas is now like a superhero who has been turned back into its original shape: no hostages, no hostages, and even control of Gaza has been lost. But don’t forget that the year when Sinwar was shut down by Israel for 23 years and released out as the “King of Gaza.” Now Hamas is underground, but its organizational structure remains, and the pocket of his father, Iran and Qatar, has not been completely shut down. What’s more, the “culture of resistance” has spread among Palestinian young people – when they see Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian children on social media, you guess whom they will support?
5. What will Gaza look like in the future?
According to the U.S. scenario, Gaza should be an “Arab Singapore”: high-rise buildings, tourists as weaving, and Palestinians as a living house.But the reality is that Gaza now has 2 million people crushed into the ruins of 365 square kilometers, and the unemployment rate is as high as 80%.Where does the rebuilding start, and where does the money come from?The worst thing is that the fight between Fatah and Hamas has just begun.When Fatah takes over Gaza with the gunpowder given by the United States, Hamas will not become the “Gaza Taliban”?
The two-year war, with no real winners. Hamas replaced the organization with 20 hostages, Israel with 1900 prisoners for a strategic buffer, and the United States with a paper agreement regained control of the Middle East chess station. But the real losers are always the ordinary people who lost their homes in the war. When weapons are still hidden in Gaza, and blood is still flowing under the crying walls of Jerusalem, the so-called "permanent peace" is only the quiet before the storm. Per as netizens say: "The only thing in the Middle East is changing forever."