Hamas has called for an escalation of violence in Judea and Samaria following a targeted Israeli strike on their leader Mohammed Deif on Saturday.

“We call for a general alertness of all the resistance battalions, to support Gaza, and out of loyalty to the blood of the martyrs. Go out to mass protests in order to clash with the criminal Zionist occupation and its flocks of terrorist settlers who spread corruption in the villages and cities of the West Bank,” Hamas wrote in a statement as quoted by Arutz Sheva.

Hamas’ statement also seeks to garner international support for their cause, calling on “members of the Arab and Islamic nation, free people in the world, and those with a living conscience, who support the justice of our cause, to continue their mass activities and to escalate their actions of identification with our Palestinian nation.”

Since October 7, Hamas has been persistently urging Arabs in Judea and Samaria to take to the streets and engage in violence against Israeli targets. However, the reality on the ground suggests that the terror group’s influence may be waning, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

Attendance at Hamas support marches in major Palestinian Authority (PA) cities such as Ramallah and Nablus have been pathetic. These sparsely attended rallies, usually contained by the PA’s security forces, suggest that the vast majority of Arabs have no interest in sacrificing their lives and livelihoods for Hamas’ extremist cause.

Similarly, Hamas’s attempts to incite a wave of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians have fallen short of their malevolent aspirations. Since Oct. 7, the rate of attacks against Israelis carried out in Judea and Samaria is roughly on par with the pre-war average of 16-19 attacks per month.

Most of these terror attacks have been characterized as spontaneous and improvised, such as car ramming and knife attacks. This has led some analysts to speculate these lone wolf-attacks are driven more by personal grievances than by an organized drive to support Hamas.