Not since the exuberant early days of the first intifada has the Palestinian resistance harboured illusions about an imminent victory. Optimism is not its point of view. It operates in full consciousness of the enormity of the forces stacked against it and – under the current balance of power – the slim to non-existing chances of liberating the land. So what is the point of resisting? ‘To keep the embers of the conflict burning’, in the words of Hamas, until broader historical processes have turned the tables on the enemy, at some future point, however faraway it might be – or, to keep ‘the issue alive until such time as the requirements for victory materialize’. In an interview published in Journal of Palestine Studies, Ramadan Shallah, leader of Islamic Jihad, the second most important armed force of the resistance, spells out the same strategic doctrine: the purpose is to maintain ‘the military pressure on Israel’ until ‘new parameters’ emerge. No one knows how long that will take. (Anyone who feels unease at the Islamism of these two groups should ponder, among other things, their – particularly Hamas’s – extraordinary efficiency in stamping out every attempt by Daesh to rear its head in Gaza.)