Ever since it was founded, the Hamas movement has been dealing with the need to find a safe transition from its uncompromising ideology and beliefs and the changing reality it faces. This effort has intensified over the past few years, since Hamas became a political movement that rules over the people of the Gaza Strip. Its leaders in Gaza, the West Bank, and other countries are used to treading carefully between the raindrops, seeking out justification for the compromises they must make to survive. Included among these compromises are the cease-fire with Israel and the war that Hamas waged precisely against the groups that sought to continue the campaign of violence against it.

The turbulence that has been sweeping across the Middle East over the past few years shook Hamas to its core. Many experts who study the movement are trying to determine if and how it will extricate itself from the current crisis. How will it restore its lost honor and regain the support of the Palestinian public?

Over the weekend of Oct. 19, Adnan Abu Amer, Al-Monitor’s correspondent in Gaza, listened to what the Palestinian Hamas Prime Minister had to say in a speech that was supposed to be historic, but ended up being banal at best. Abu Amer then went on to describe the crises facing the movement in the Gaza Strip. Calls by the Palestinian Tamarod movement for a revolution in Gaza like the one that occurred in Tahrir Square, and the dissolution of the historic alliance between Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Resistance Committees threaten the future of the Hamas movement and its ability to stay in power and govern.

And what is Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s solution to all that? Terror and violence. “We call for the renewal of the people’s Intifada in the West Bank, … and the renewal of high-quality attacks that will sow terror among the enemy’s leaders,” he read from the page in front of him without so much as batting an eyelash. But today Hamas, the “Islamic Resistance Movement,” which prided itself until recently for leading the jihad against Israel, looks more like a caged lion than anything else.