People tend to think of organizations as having one leader or a committee with decision making power. I think Hamas is an umbrella name and it represents a distributed network with no overall command authority. The religion allows anyone who feels he’s Hollier than thou to make any decision he feels promotes the religion. This is why the self-appointed religious police killed the Woman in Iran who they felt wasn’t wearing her hajib correctly. I’m sure the actual government would really have preferred that it hadn’t happened as it caused riots. But there was really nothing they could do about it. Same sort of thing here. The Hamas “leader” is really only the leader of people who follow him. There might be fifty “leaders” who may or may not follow him and their subordination is only due to how much the leader is paying them or supplying them with material.
Good description of the nutbar world of Islamic terrorism!
Former FReeper Wretchard talked about the consequences of having a distributed command structure that nobody can really get a binding peace agreement from.
Spoiler: there really is no solution other than complete extermination.
https://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/09/three-conjectures-pew-poll-finds-40-of.html?m=1
I think they are more coordinated than that. Maybe a bit like the mafia though. There is a boss but he may be unaware of every Capo and associate’s daily routine. Just the big stuff, and make sure the profits get divvied up properly.