On Oct. 19, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister of the Gaza Strip, delivered a speech to mark the second anniversary of the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Gaza has faced hard times since then, but as far as Hamas is concerned, the release of those prisoners remains a seminal moment, which deserves to be marked every year. And so, despite the steep price that Palestinians paid during the Israeli military onslaught that followed Shalit’s abduction, the release of 1,027 prisoners in the Shalit deal was a significant achievement for the movement.

On Oct. 30, Israel released 26 Palestinian security prisoners. Their release was in fulfillment of agreements reached in advance of the new round of negotiations with the Palestinians, which began this July. Five of those prisoners returned home to Gaza. While Hamas is resolutely opposed to the ongoing talks with Israel, the movement has also advocated stridently on behalf of Palestinian prisoners and made their release a priority. It would therefore be expected that it would welcome the prisoners returning to Gaza, at the very least. This is especially true considering that each of those prisoners had been sentenced to decades in prison for terrorist attacks against Israelis. In other words, their deeds align well with the Hamas worldview.

But the returning prisoners were not welcomed with a festive ceremony. Instead, Hamas chose to ignore their return, and even worse, to hide it. Hamas TV, which broadcasts from Gaza, did not report on the prisoner release, Palestinian journalists were forbidden from going to the Erez crossing point to document the newly released prisoners’ return, and those same prisoners’ families were asked to “celebrate quietly and discreetly.” Once again, Hamas gave a very public sign of the enormous crisis it is facing as a movement. Beyond that, however, it also highlighted the intense enmity that exists between the two major Palestinian movements. What happened was further evidence that instead of taking steps to benefit its constituents, Hamas’s actions are intended to serve the movement’s narrow interests, and they have been so ever since the movement was elected to power.

Ever since it was founded, Hamas was a social welfare movement, whose primary concern was the individual. The movement was established on the “Islamic center” infrastructure created by Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. That “center,” in turn, was comprised of a variety of diverse institutions intended to assist people in the refugee camps and the needy throughout the Gaza Strip. Even after Hamas was formed, those institutions continued to operate. In fact, they gained momentum and became one of the most important branches of the Hamas movement. They are the main reason why Hamas is still thought to be deeply entrenched among the people of Gaza. It is considered the kind of movement whose officials rise from the field, and who, as such, act out of ideology, rather than out of personal or political motives.