Gaza militias backed and armed by Israel have made little headway against Hamas, a reminder that when rival armed factions compete for control, ordinary people are the ones left under the boot. The Times of Israel published the piece on June 21, 2026.
The State's Favorite Game
The only hard fact in the base article is blunt enough: Gaza militias backed and armed by Israel have made little headway against Hamas. That is the whole architecture in miniature — one armed hierarchy funding another set of armed men and hoping the result somehow looks like liberation, stability, or progress. It does not. It produces more armed competition over the same population.
The article identifies Hamas as the force these militias have failed to dislodge. It also identifies Israel as the backer and arms supplier to the militias. That leaves the people of Gaza trapped between competing armed structures, each claiming necessity, each depending on coercion, and each treating civilians as terrain rather than as human beings with any say in the matter.
Armed Proxies, Civilian Costs
The base article does not provide figures, battlefield details, or quotes, only the core political fact: the militias have made little headway. That matters because it strips away the usual theater. No triumphal narrative, no clean proxy-war success story, no neat statecraft. Just another reminder that armed patronage does not magically create legitimacy or control.
Israel’s role in backing and arming the militias places it squarely inside the conflict it claims to manage from a distance. Hamas, for its part, remains the armed authority the militias have not overcome. The result is not a path out of domination but a rearrangement of who gets to wield it. The population below gets none of the choice.
The article’s framing also exposes the familiar logic of state power: outsource force, deny responsibility, and hope the proxies do the dirty work. When that fails, the people on the ground still live with the consequences. The machinery keeps moving even when the plan does not.
No Exit Through Another Gun
There is no sign in the base article of grassroots organizing, mutual aid, or any horizontal alternative. There is only the familiar contest between armed actors, with Israel on one side of the supply line and Hamas on the other side of the barricade. The militias may talk big, but the article says they have made little headway. That is not a strategy; it is a stalemate with better branding.
What remains visible is the structure itself: armed groups backed by states, armed groups ruling by force, and civilians caught in the middle. The article offers no evidence that this arrangement is producing anything resembling safety or self-determination. It only shows that the apparatus is still in motion, and that its promises are as thin as ever.
In the end, the piece is less about a military breakthrough than about the persistence of the same old order: states arming clients, armed factions competing for control, and ordinary people paying for the privilege of being governed by force.