Israel-Palestine

UNDERSTANDING HAMAS: PART 2

INTRODUCTION

In 2024, Helena Cobban and Rami G Khouri of Just World Educational held a series of conversations with five experts on the subject of Hamas. Transcripts of these conversations were subsequently published, along with additional material, in the book Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters.

The experts featured in the book are:

Dr. Paola Caridi, a lecturer at the University of Palermo, and formerly a journalist who reported from Cairo, 2001-03, and Jerusalem, 2003-12. The second of Dr. Caridi's three books was Hamas: From Resistance to Government, which appeared in Italian in 2009, and in English in 2012.

Dr. Khaled Hroub, a senior research fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge and a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Northwestern University in Qatar. Hroub's numerous books include Hamas: Political Thought and Practice and Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide.

Dr. Jeroen Gunning, a professor of Middle Eastern Politics and Conflict Studies at King’s College London and a visiting professor at both Aarhus University and the London School of Economics. Gunning is one of the founders of the field of critical terrorism studies and has taught and advised policy-makers and numerous civil society organisations. 

Mouin Rabbani, co-Editor of Jadaliyya, Managing Editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, and a Contributing Editor of Middle East Report. Among other previous positions, Rabbani served as Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. 

Dr. Azzam Tamimi, a British-Palestinian-Jordanian academic and political thinker who headed the Institute of Islamic Political Thought until 2008. Tamimi has written several books, including Power-Sharing Islam, Islam and Secularism in the Middle East, and Hamas: A History from Within.

Endorsing the book, John J Mearsheimer, Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago writes:

'Israel and its supporters have done us all a disservice by demonising Hamas and making it almost impossible to have a reasoned discussion about the movement. One does not have to like Hamas, but it is imperative to understand what it is really all about. This book is a giant step in that direction.'

Below are some extracts from the book which I hope will lead us towards a more balanced understanding of who Hamas are, how they operate and what they want.

Timeline of key points in Hamas’s history

Late 1987: At the start of the First Palestinian Intifada (uprising) against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas was born from the Palestinian branch of the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood organization.

August 1988: Hamas issued its first charter. It stressed the organisation's religious character and opposition to the 'usurpation by the Jews' of the land of Palestine.

September 1993: The PLO, led by Fatah, signed the Oslo Accords under which the Palestinian Authority was created and negotiations began for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Hamas opposed the entire Oslo process.

February 1994: American Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein went on an armed rampage in Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque, killing 29 worshipers. In response, Hamas started sending suicide bombers against civilian targets in Israel. Israel cracked down on Hamas with the aid of Fatah.

September 2000: It was clear that Oslo's promise of an independent Palestinian state had failed and meanwhile 1994 Israel had seized a lot more land in the West Bank. Hamas and its allies launched the Second Intifada. It was more violent than the First Intifada and, as Israeli PM Ariel Sharon responded very harshly, Hamas and other participants undertook some suicide bombings of Israeli civilians.

2005: Sharon pulled Israeli soldiers and settlers out of the interior of the Gaza Strip but kept tight control of Gaza's land and sea borders, thus keeping for Israel the role of 'occupying power' under international law.

January 2006: Hamas won the PA parliamentary elections. Israel, Fatah and the US were horrified and planned to overthrow the PA's newly elected Prime Minister.

2007: Hamas security police prevented the coup attempt in Gaza. Hamas kept control of civilian life in Gaza while the PA (Fatah) kept control of the West Bank. 

2007: Israel imposed a very tight siege on Gaza, strictly limiting Gaza's access to food, water and electricity. They punctuate the siege with periodic, harsh assaults on the Gaza Strip that Israeli leaders often dubbed 'mowing the lawn'.

May 2017: Hamas leaders adopted a new, revised charter. Key changes from the 1988 version included: removing all anti-Semitic language; placing more focus on Palestinian political issues rather than religious issues; slightly opening the door towards accepting two-state solution; and stressing that Hamas has now become separate from the Muslim Brotherhood.

March 2018: Palestinian groups launched a campaign of nonviolent action called the Great March of Return. Every Friday after Muslim prayers, large crowds marched together to the 1949 Armistice Line with Israel, seeking to exercise the right of return to their families’ properties that the U.N. had long promised them. Israeli military units around the Armistice Line shot them, killing 223.

October 2023: Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Extracts From Hamas’s 2017 Document of General Principles and Policies

Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.

Hamas believes in managing its Palestinian relations on the basis of pluralism, democracy, national partnership, acceptance of the other and dialogue. The aim is to bolster the unity of ranks and joint action for the purpose of accomplishing national goals and fulfilling the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

Hamas stresses the necessity of building Palestinian national institutions on sound democratic principles, foremost among them are free and fair elections. Such process should be on the basis of national partnership and in accordance with a clear programme and a clear strategy that adhere to the rights, including the right of resistance, and which fulfill the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

In its relations with world nations and peoples, Hamas believes in the values of cooperation, justice, freedom and respect of the will of the people.

Conversation With Dr Paolo Caridi

My first question is, how should we understand Hamas? It has many dimensions, which you can tell us about. But what is the most important way to understand what Hamas is and why it matters? 

This is a very, very hard question. Hamas is a political movement with a sometimes very rigid structure that has used different tools: political, armed struggle, and even terrorism. But, on the same level, we can’t avoid the political dimension of the movement that started some years before 1987, when there was a meeting in Gaza that paved the way for the movement. 

It started in 1982 because of the war in Lebanon and the expulsion of the PLO from Beirut. The apparent failure of the PLO was one of the things that paved the way for an Islamist political movement born from the Muslim Brotherhood. 

After that there were different chapters in the life of Hamas. There was an initial chapter that started with the First Intifada. There was a second one after the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre done by Baruch Goldstein, which was when the movement decided to use - and it was the political movement that decided to use - the armed struggle and terror tools like suicide attacks.

But the most important thing, from the beginning until now, has been the structure of Hamas: four constituencies with members in the West Bank, in Gaza, in prisons and abroad (in the refugee camps), and a very strong organisational structure.

What causes Hamas to change? Is it political pragmatism? Is it desperation? Is it opportunism? How are decisions made among these different constituencies?

I would say that the movement has a lot of pragmatism, and also a very rigid structure and decision-making process. If they say they will do something, they do it - because the constituencies have each had a say in making the decision.

What is Hamas's attitude to being part of the PLO today?

They started to think about being accepted inside the PLO since 2005, with the Cairo Declaration in March 2005. And they continue until now because they want to be legitimated by the PLO. They want to be part of the international dimension of the Palestinian issue. It was a goal for Khaled Meshaal for years and years. But until now, it’s still part of the discussion.

What about their charter? Is this a document that you still feel is central to anybody’s analysis of Hamas? 

The charter that was published in August 1988 is the pillar of the foundation of Hamas. Until now, they’ve never rejected it. However, they have published many texts along the years. And especially in 2017, they published the document on General Principles and Policies that was very different from the charter.

They tried to put aside the heavy weight of the foundational charter and enter another chapter of their life. It was the last act of Khaled Meshaal as the head of the Politburo. He wanted to have this kind of document, especially for the goal of being accepted into the PLO. In the document there is a recognition of the two states. There is not a rejection of what the foundational charter sought regarding the destruction of Israel and neither is it a rejection of Palestine as an Islamic waqf, but it compromised on the two-state solution.

Leaving aside whether logistically it’s possible ever to have a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, that’s for the future to determine; but if it were possible - is Hamas basically telling the Israelis and the world, we’re not going to do the same thing that Arafat did, we’re not going to recognise you, we’re not going to stop doing armed resistance before we get something of equal value in return? Is that an accurate way to describe Hamas’s position? 

In a way, yes. We do have to look at this from the perspective of what Hamas says. But we also have to look at what Hamas did in 2005 and 2006: it effectively accepted the two-state solution by participating in the parliamentary elections. And if I may say so, the mistake of the international community was not in accepting Hamas as part of the elections, but in not accepting Hamas as the winner. Because the problem was that Hamas won the elections and Fatah lost.

So, the failure of 2007, the split between West Bank and Gaza, between Fatah and Hamas, really radicalised the youngest activists in Hamas. They said, look what happened, we didn’t reach any result, so let us go for the resistance.

Conversation With Dr Khaled Hroub

I know from your writing and people I’ve met over the years that there are basically two main strands within Hamas’s thinking. One is the Islamist and the other is the Palestinian nationalist. How do you see that balance as having changed over time and where do you see it now?

Hamas is a multifaceted organisation or movement. This means they are a political party; they are a charitable organisation; they are a military faction: all of these combined together. And within it, you have the nationalist and you have the Islamist component but these are not mutually exclusive; they are overlapping, feeding into each other. Sometimes, one of these takes the lead, the other one maybe goes to the back seat, depending on the context and given circumstances.

I would say we have been witnessing a steady increase of the nationalist force within Hamas at the expense of the religious one over the past two, three decades.

How and where do you see Hamas's standing among Palestinians and Arabs?

I think maybe the key word for this is resistance. The Palestinians specifically, and then the Arab audiences and Arab peoples at large: I think the main reason why they support Hamas is because of resistance, not because of religion, not because of nationalism or anything else. You have other kinds of factors here and there. The organisation is clean-handed in their delivery, in social work, in running the business of government, but I think the core issue is resistance.

Fatah remained at the forefront of the Palestinian national activism and leadership until the signing of Oslo. At that moment, Fatah started to decline because they put resistance on the side. Hamas started to rise because of this, because they adhered to and hold the flag of resistance.

So, I think what marginalises or centralises any political movement within the Palestinian colonised scene is resistance. What now makes people in the West Bank and in Palestine and in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere support Hamas, in my humble analysis, it’s this: the primary thing is resistance. You have secondary reasons, definitely, yes. But all of them, they would come not as significant as resistance.

How do you anticipate Hamas might try, once the attack by Israel ends, to regain people’s trust and continue to be in a government leadership role, maybe with others? Do we have any sign of that?

Hamas has signaled and not only signaled - in fact, they said this publicly and in clear language, that they are not interested in ruling the Gaza Strip exclusively. What they want, as they have said, is a Palestinian coalition that would take over the Gaza Strip and be united with the West Bank as well.

Can you talk more about relations between, on the one hand, Hamas and its allies, and on the other, Fatah and its allies? Does the current push by Hamas to become included in the overarching national body, the PLO, stand a chance of success? 

At the Palestinian level, Hamas’s position and relations with all Palestinian parties, I would say, have grown stronger during this genocidal war. So, if you think of the inter-Palestinian spectrum from right, left, and center, Hamas’s relations really seem to be very strong. The only exception, however, is with Fatah. 

And with Fatah, we need to talk about two Fatahs: Fatah, the official one, that is led nowadays by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is seen by many Palestinians as only a functionary of the Israeli occupation. Basically, they are there to protect Israeli settlements and to do whatever is dictated to them by the Israeli colonial masters. And then you have the other Fatah - the original, nationalist Fatah that is in huge disagreement with the official Fatah. Hamas’s relations with this other Fatah, as far as I know, are good.

At the regional level, if we think of who Hamas’s allies in the region are, we think of Hezbollah and the Houthis. I think at the very beginning, maybe in the first two or three weeks of the war, one could sense some inharmony, because as we know now, Hamas conducted the attacks of October 7th without any prior consultation. But that inharmony has now ended and the relations with these parties have grown stronger as time passed on.

That raises another really interesting point. You cannot imagine ISIS getting into a coalition with any Shiite organization at all!  All the minorities in Syria and Iraq that were not Sunni Muslim were the targets of ISIS, whereas Hamas has always had respectful relations with Shiite movements. And sometimes, as now, it’s had a close alliance with them. 

Actually, the sectarian or ideological identification of the parties that the movement would choose to ally itself with doesn’t feature in its calculation. Hamas does not care, if I am allying myself with you, whether you are secular, Marxist, or communist. The main thing is your political position, whether you are  with or against resistance, with Oslo or against Oslo.

Do you see any outside intervention being successful in reuniting the PLO?

I think the bottleneck is in Ramallah, with Mahmoud Abbas himself, even personally, and his clique. He doesn’t believe - not just in unifying the Palestinian national movement; but he is not even willing to do anything to unify Fatah itself, Fatah, his own movement! He is not willing to reform the PLO even if you put Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to the side.

Clarify for us Hamas’s attitude to attacking civilian targets or not attacking civilian targets and its attempts to try to reach an understanding with Israel on this for the benefit of all civilians.

Well, let’s go back to the mid-1990s. Maybe most of the audience would remember the wave of suicide attacks that was led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine and even followed by Fatah and other organisations. All that started as a response to the killing of civilian Palestinians by Israeli settlers. Israel did nothing to the perpetrators except build shrines for them. 

Now, after that crime, Hamas retaliated by two or three attacks and then in 1994, they issued a statement saying we are more than ready to neutralise the civilians from both sides and are more than happy for Israel to target us as a military organisation and then we do the same. We just direct our operations to a military target and then in that case, all civilians are basically spared on both sides. Israel responded with heavy attacks against all civilians in Gaza and since then, every now and then, maybe every two or three years, Hamas would do the same, would issue a communique saying we are offering this to neutralise civilians, without any response from the side of the Israeli government. 

This has led to this cycle of killing civilians on the Palestinian side, tenfold of what was happening on the Israeli side. And yet the whole talk, the media, the buzz, everything is about the Palestinians killing Israeli civilians because they don’t have the same media, they don’t have the same influence for many reasons. 

Another thing: from Day One, the military wing of Hamas said our strategy is not to do any military operation except in the historic land of Palestine. So, this has been the battlefield. From then until now they have done nothing outside of this. 

And actually that is another distinction between Hamas and ISIS. ISIS and Al-Qaeda are best known for their global purview and their global set of operations.

So in this context, how do you see the October 7th attack?

In my analysis and based on what I have gathered from statements and interviews with Hamas leaders, I think what was planned was a small-scale operation aiming to kidnap a group of soldiers, not civilians, and then take them back to Gaza Strip in a very swift operation and then do a prisoner’s swap. 

Now, the operation was highly successful and this, I think, surprised the in-field leaders. So, they expanded the operation. The ease with which they were able to penetrate all these military bases and settlements tempted them to make their military signature. They took the opportunity to defeat the regional superpower and push them back 30, 40 kilometres. In their calculation, that was unmissable.

A leader of Hamas, Khalil al-Hayya, made a statement the other day that Hamas would be prepared to live next to Israel in a two-state configuration. He didn’t say they’d recognize Israel, but he said that they would exist peacefully with Israel, and that if that happened, there would be no need for the military wing of Hamas anymore. How do you interpret that kind of statement?

They say, we accept a Palestinian state because this is a Palestinian consensus. This is one way to bring in all Palestinians to one political platform. If the original idea of Hamas from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan faces disagreement, and if the PLO, Fatah, have their commitments here and there: okay, we agree on the principle of a Palestinian state within these borders without recognising Israel.

In the 2017 document that Hamas issued in a way to replace the old charter, they said clearly that we agree on the principle of a Palestinian state, 1967 borders, because this is what most of the Palestinians agree on.

And Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, at one point, said military action and armed struggle is not an end in itself. We, Hamas, are not born to fight forever. We have aims, ends, liberation, self-determination, and emancipation. If these things are achieved, then of course, there is no need for armed struggle.

Conversation with Dr Jeroen Gunning

There are many points we’ll discuss, but the key thing to understand about Hamas, in your view, based on your studies, is what exactly? 

I think, just starting with this question of why it matters that we understand Hamas, I would say that it matters because deliberate mis- and dis-information has been used to justify Israel's genocidal war on Gaza and its stated goal of eradicating Hamas at all costs. So if you just buy that uncritically, you end up supporting the whole narrative that supports this extraordinary assault on Gaza.

I would say also that understanding Hamas matters because if you understand its relationship with Palestinian society and other political factions, the history of ethnic cleansing, of dispossession, occupation, blockade, wars, etc., you know that eradicating Hamas would require a full genocide because the majority of Palestinians would support Hamas actions in spite of Israel’s genocidal response.

You are a co-founder with others of the field of critical terrorism studies. What does that mean and how does it relate to Hamas?

Critical terrorism studies was launched as an academic field in the mid-2000s  in response to 9-11 and the turn to a terrorism narrative, when we felt that the term terrorism is analytically unhelpful. It doesn’t explain very much. And politically, it has disastrous consequences. Firstly, the terrorism narrative strips violence of its historical and political context. It is portrayed as coming out of nowhere. And it delegitimises anyone who seeks to contextualise this violence as misguided at best or a terrorist lover at worst. Secondly, the terrorism narrative means that there’s no political solution. There’s just a military or a surveillance policing solution. Among those practicing peace negotiations, it’s well established that the term ‘terrorism’ hinders the possibility of negotiations. And finally, I think terrorism reduces a very complex movement like Hamas to one dimension. It’s all about violence. It’s also portrayed as illegitimate and barbaric.

Under UN resolutions and international law, Palestinians have every right to resist occupation violently. It says in UN resolutions: to resist occupation and fight for independence by any available means. Of course, this right is limited by obligations on fighters not to harm civilians, and any intentional targeting of civilians constitutes a war crime. But the terrorism label reduces all violence to illegitimate and barbaric violence, even violence against Israeli soldiers. And this then serves not just the purpose of dehumanising the other side, but also to obscure any barbarism of Israel’s own armed forces in response.

Tell us about the history of Hamas in negotiations?

Hamas has a long record of negotiating and coming to compromises and ceasefires. It did so, for example, in 1995, only a few years after it had been established. It negotiated with Fatah in the lead up to the 1996 Palestinian elections, which were the first under the Oslo Accords process. And they agreed to cease (violent) operations temporarily, for example, in the latter half of 1995. It similarly negotiated a short-lived ceasefire in 2003. And then again, in 2005, in the lead up to the second national election in 2006. And again, this was in negotiations with Fatah. And every war on Gaza since 2006, and there have been many, has ended with a negotiated ceasefire, negotiated indirectly between Hamas and Israel and followed by a period of calm. There have been hostage negotiations before, where hostages were exchanged. And since 2006, Hamas has also repeatedly sought to negotiate a national unity government with Fatah, making increasingly significant concessions, most notably in 2017, although most of these negotiations failed for a variety of reasons, involving not just Hamas, but also Fatah’s intransigence and Israeli or Egyptian interference.

Over the years Hamas has learned, rightly or wrongly, that you need violence or the threat of it to get Israel to the negotiating table. But whether or not Hamas negotiates or is willing to compromise is very much influenced by the political opportunity and the threat structure that prevails at the time.

If you fast forward, the rise of hardliners within Hamas over the last five years is in part because of the failure of these negotiations and the refusal of successive Israeli governments and Western governments to respond to Hamas’s political overtures and engage it. I think particularly the lack of response to its 2017 document of revised principles, and then to the originally nonviolent Great March of Return which they co-opted. If political overtures do not lead to change, then that means that hardliners in the movement gain power.

It’s also important that members of their external leadership have indicated that the Qassam Brigades could be disarmed if there were a permanent ceasefire, and the end of the blockade, and an actual Palestinian state.

And interesting again here, in terms of the colonial theme, is that anti-colonial movements usually lay down their arms and convert into political parties after they have won independence. So there’s a clear sense in which what Hamas is doing at the moment is similar to this kind of anti-colonial history.

Let me jump in here and ask you a little about the 7th October attack. None of us really knows why Hamas did this - but what you might be able to shed light on is: what does the October 7th attack tell you about the way Hamas operates?

From what has been said in public statements about the attacks being intended to change the whole political equation and also based on analysis of what has been reported about the extent of the attacks...it seems to that the goal must have been larger, that it was more than just a kidnapping operation. It was also about making the point that Israel was not invincible, that it was not sovereign on its own soil, that Gaza could take the fight to Israel.

If you look at how Hamas leaders have talked about wanting to change the equation, to show that Israel was not invincible, that Palestinians would not be forgotten and to put a Palestinian state back on the international agenda, it seems there was a more maximalist agenda. 

Hamas leaders seem to have expected that the fighting would spread to multiple fronts, that it would spread to the north with a much more full-on response from Hezbollah in Lebanon than has happened so far; these actions have been far more limited than Hamas appears to have expected. It’s also possible that Hamas expected the international community to put more pressure on Israel sooner.

And then finally, one should try to understand Hamas’s actions from an anti-colonial perspective; in their mind, the end-goal of national liberation and a Palestinian state is worth the sacrifices made today.

That brings up a related question about Hamas's relationship to the Palestinian people, whether in Gaza or all over Palestine. It’s a question that is rooted in a very frequent Western tradition of saying these are brutal dictators, they look at what they did [Hamas] in Gaza when they ruled, they killed their opponents, they wouldn’t let people speak freely, etc, etc. So their presentation as a brutal dictatorial organisation is certainly anchored in some realities. Does that present a problem for them going forward? 

Whether Hamas acts in a more democratic or in a more authoritarian way depends very much on the political context. And when there was an active electoral process, elected Hamas representatives were generally more responsive to popular demands than a lot of Fatah representatives. In the lead-up to the 2003 and 2005 ceasefires, Hamas leaders were seen consulting with the wider population about whether they would support the ceasefire, and they clearly cared about that. And the fact that a significant majority supported the ceasefire in opinion polls seemed to play a role in their decision.

It’s also important to remember that when faced with national elections, Hamas adapted its program through consultation with its own grassroots and the wider population. And one reason it began to accept a de facto two-state solution around 2006 was because it recognized that this was the national consensus.

And then you’ve got the aftermath of 2006. There was the whole lead-up to elections, and then the elections were not recognized: Fatah doesn’t recognize them, the international community doesn’t recognize them. Coupled to that, Fatah, encouraged by the U.S. and other Western forces, then prepares to stage a coup against Hamas. That completely changed the incentive [for Hamas] to participate in elections, because their participation meant nothing. But also, it made them much more paranoid and much more autocratic. And since 2007, when it violently ousted Fatah from Gaza in this kind of internecine struggle, as a kind of pre-emptive coup against the expected coup, it has not brooked opposition in Gaza.

I would also add that in the 1990s before they came to power, Hamas had developed a very extensive Islamic democratic framework for politics. A lot of the big decisions were taken through consultation within the movement and so it wasn't imposed through an authoritarian kind of top-down decision.

This reservoir of political thought is still there, but it has been overshadowed by the blockade and the wars of the past seven years, and the rise of this more hardline leadership. And so whether Hamas will return to that reservoir depends on what political system evolves in Palestine.

I would also say two more things. One is that Fatah itself is deeply authoritarian, but acceptable to the international community. And it was Fatah which cancelled the scheduled 2021 elections because it feared losing to Hamas. And yet, the international community insists that Fatah, in some kind of reformed way, should govern! So clearly, authoritarianism itself is not a problem for the international community. It is whether or not you agree with the Israeli and American agenda.

And that’s what leads me to my final point. There’s a very neocolonial nature to this discourse about Hamas being dictatorial. You say they’re not liberal Democrats. I would counter liberal Democrats have been complicit in a lot of violence outside, right? Look at Iraq, look at Afghanistan. And neocolonial, externally-manufactured regime change in neither Iraq nor Afghanistan has worked because it was imposed from the outside by powers that wanted pliant technocrats rather than national politicians with a grassroots following.

So I think it’s very important to put it back on the Palestinians who have to decide who should lead them. But any chance for a more democratic turn requires the establishment of an independent state and an end to occupation.

Similarly, Hamas has long indicated it doesn’t want to govern on its own. At best, it wants a national unity government or maybe leave it to others altogether. And certainly Hamas wants to become part of the PLO, but not on terms of surrender, as Fatah has typically insisted.

That brings me to the question of women. You said you had some interesting experiences with the women grassroots networks of Hamas in the 1990s?

One thing that struck me was that all the Islamist women I talked to, said that Hamas had enabled them to go to universities that it enabled them to get jobs. Many of (those women) also received grants from Hamas and support to become professionals. So they saw Hamas as emancipatory and going against Gaza’s socially conservative culture, though within the Islamic framework. It’s interesting also that both Islamist and leftist women activists confirmed that Hamas was opposed to early marriage, and to honour killings. They said both of these were un-Islamic practices; they were kind of Arab cultural practices that had emerged and were not Islamic and therefore should not be sustained.

However, while on the one hand, Hamas is deeply patriarchal, leaders regularly reiterated to me that the role of women was primarily to raise the new generation. And only after that has been taken care of, then women can work or occupy public offices. But they had no problem with women being elected to parliament or heading ministries. And indeed, when they were elected, a number of Hamas MPs, and later also ministers in Gaza were women.

And also what’s interesting is that Islamist female student leaders themselves subscribed to the view, for example, that a woman could not be head of state, and accepted that men had the right to marry four women, even though they hated the idea. We had a long discussion on this. So you can see this is not binary, right? It’s not an easy binary. And it also doesn’t fit neatly into a Western perspective, which has these things in very kind of binary sort of blocks.

How does Hamas relate to Muslim religious leaders and what influence does that Muslim leadership have on Hamas?

Hamas respects them. They will go to international conferences. But I think they’re very much their own party. When I talked with Hamas leaders about Iran, they were very scathing about it because they said in our Islamic state, we wouldn’t have this kind of council of religious leaders who would dictate everything. They wanted to have religious leaders in the parliament, but who were elected.

It was very interesting - they made a distinction between religious authority and elected authority. And they said Islamic law, the source of the revealed laws in the Quran, are not legal until they’ve been legislated upon by the elected assembly. Before that, there were religious laws, but they’re not politically legal. And so in that sense, they’re a very political organisation. As far as I understand the research around this, religious authority is still sublimated to political authority. So it’s always the political reasoning winning out over the religious on the whole. There may be exceptions in extreme cases, but that seems to be generally true.

Conversation With Mouin Rabbani

In the diplomatic arena, what is Hamas's attitude to the two-state solution?

Hamas leaders have actually been open to this under various formulations since the 1980s. They put forward various formulations that made quite clear that at the end of the day they would accept, let’s call it an indefinite cessation of hostilities in exchange for an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. What happened in 2017 is that for the first time this became the official position of the movement, so Hamas is now formally committed to a two-state settlement.

However, I think that Israel’s genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip is calling that commitment into question. It will be very interesting to see if Hamas views the current developments as accelerating movement towards a two-state settlement and whether it will redouble its official commitment to that outcome or whether to the contrary it will conclude that there can be no peace with this Israeli state and that the state and its key institutions need to be dismantled and replaced by an entirely different form of coexistence.

One of the fascinating dimensions of Hamas is that they will refuse to give Israel or the United States what they demand in return for being brought into the diplomatic process. It’s intriguing when you meet Hamas officials or you read their stuff, they’re constantly saying, when you ask them a question, they say let them (the other side) meet the requirements of UN resolutions and then we will do the same. So they’ve taken a very clear, hard line that they’re not going to make a unilateral gesture. They’ve gone very far in saying we will coexist peacefully with the state of Israel, but the terms they put are really hard. And they’re actually in line with international law and UN resolutions: that the refugees have a right to return, East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. How do you interpret those terms that they talk about? Are they negotiable or are they going to stick to them?

The other position that Hamas was espousing, at least during the first two decades of the century, was that all of Palestine needs to be liberated. And then they would say: 'But we would accept any agreement that is ratified either by legitimate Palestinian institutions or on the basis of a popular Palestinian referendum.' 'Legitimate Palestinian institutions' means a PLO that includes Hamas, and a referendum means one that is held among the various communities. 

So that’s one way of Hamas clearly signalling that it would be willing to live with a two-state settlement, not only one that strictly conforms to international law, as you outlined it, but even one that would be negotiated by the Palestinian leadership that may involve certain minor compromises on that.

Conversation With Dr Azam Tamini

Can I ask you first as far as you know or understand, what do you think were the intentions of the Qassam Brigades fighters who breached the Israeli defenses and led the military operation in Southern Israel on October 7th?

My understanding is that this wasn’t expected to be such a big operation. It was intended to capture a few Israeli soldiers from the battalion that is usually stationed around Gaza to provide security and protection for the settlements there, in order to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners.

Some of the atrocities perpetrated on that day were actually the result of two things. First, the Israelis trying to come in and rescue some of their hostages. They started shooting people, especially those who were coming out of the dance festival that coincided with the attack. Most of the people shot were actually shot by helicopter gunships. Some of the houses in which hostages were held inside the kibbutz were actually bombarded with tank fire by the Israelis themselves.

And what about the civilians who were either killed or taken hostage to Gaza? Do we know whether they were targeted specifically or did it just happen that there were so many people there that Hamas or others took some of these civilians hostage to trade for the 8000 Palestinians who were in Israeli jails?

My understanding of the Al-Qassam brigades is that they are highly disciplined and probably some of the things attributed to them, if they ever took place, were not actually perpetrated by them but by others. Some of the civilians, especially the women, the children and the elderly who were taken into Gaza, my understanding is that they were not actually taken by Al-Qassam fighters, they were taken by ordinary citizens who crossed the line after the fence came down.

Hamas, to be fair to them, from day one, asked for an international commission to investigate what happened because the Israelis were claiming all sorts of things and Hamas was pushed into a self-defending position. And they said, okay, send an international commission and let them investigate what happened. And we’d be willing to be taken to account if we did anything wrong. But it was the Israelis who refused, and who insisted on seizing on that event in order to crush Gaza.

How do you assess the effects of the operation at both the humanitarian and the political levels?

The 7th October was a game-changer. It is having a huge impact on the world's perception of the conflict. The conflict had always been portrayed as if it were a religious conflict, or a dispute over territory or the result of Arab or Islamic antisemitism or something of that sort. But now, the young men and women, in particular, university students, are actually going back to libraries and going online, and they’re Googling and looking for information, and they are discovering, many of them for the first time, that this was actually something completely different from what had been portrayed all along; that this is another colonial project by the West in order to achieve something that the imperialist West sought, and that in this the Palestinians have been victims all along since the beginning.

Not only that, I think the initial solidarity with the people of Gaza because of the genocide that is being exacted upon them is slowly and gradually turning into a revolution against the current world order, a world order whose leaders in Washington, in London, in Paris, in Berlin, and elsewhere in the West have proven to these youngsters—many of them are Jewish, by the way—that this is a world order based on hypocrisy, on double standards, and all the talk about democracy and human rights is very exclusive and very selective, and  it’s making these students question the very legitimacy of such a world order which is today fighting them for merely wanting to express their opinion regarding what happens in Gaza.

Why should anyone trust that a ceasefire concluded with Hamas would be respected by Hamas?

Hamas is an Islamic movement. It is informed by Islam. And in Islam, if you sign a contract, it is your religious duty to fulfill the terms of that contract. You cannot be the first to violate it or breach it. And I explain this in my book, even citing past examples of truces, informal truces, unofficial ones, reached with Hamas throughout the ‘90s. And until 2007, early 2008, it was always Israel that breached the understanding, not Hamas, not a single time.

How can the US veto in the UN Security Council be overcome?

So long as these permanent member states have the right to veto any resolution, we cannot get anywhere; we cannot get justice through the United Nations.

In 1956, at the time of the Suez Crisis, Britain and France had a veto at the Security Council and the United States was able to nullify that veto through economic pressure. Do you see that as being a prospect in the current international order?

We can dream of a moment in the future when the United States is led by a fair and just administration. But in the current circumstances I can't see that happening.

For us the issue is not about having or not having a state. It is about being free from occupation, from the foreign invasion that we have been suffering. Unless the root of the problem is addressed, there will always be a new generation of resistance fighters. The people of Gaza know who the enemy is. The enemy is not Hamas. The enemy is Israeli occupation and those who support it. Even if they destroy Hamas, there will be something else like it very soon in the future.

In the past, when you have a unified Palestinian national movement, the Israelis refused to deal with it. So how do you see today the feasibility of once again trying to recreate a single, credible, legitimate Palestinian leadership?

I’m sure there will always be efforts to bring the Palestinians together and unify them. But the real problem is to be united on what?

If you have a section of the Palestinians who decide it’s impossible, we cannot liberate our country, we cannot regain our homeland, so we might as well just accept whatever they’re willing to give to us. This is what Oslo was about. That’s a real divide. It’s impossible. You cannot agree on something like this.

We need to have unity of vision. It’s not about how many seats you have in parliament, or how many seats you have on the PLO, or a council. No, it’s about what is our vision of Palestine. This is the main disagreement.

Can you clarify for us your understanding of Hamas's position on coexisting in two adjacent states?

Well, since Hamas took part in the elections in 2006, it developed a new position, which was really unthinkable before. And that is what one may describe as a de facto recognition, not a de jure recognition of the status quo. Status quo means that, yes, Israel exists, it exists on our homeland; we don’t accept that, but we are willing to live with it if a Palestinian state is allowed to be next to it.

I think it is highly unlikely that we will ever reach a situation in which there are two states, one called Palestine and one called Israel. And that is not because of the Palestinians. It’s because of the Zionists. They don’t believe Palestinians have the right to exist anywhere, although at least a segment of the Palestinians have agreed to recognize Israel’s right to exist. There has been no real reciprocation.

As you know, the accusation is always made that Hamas just wants to kill Jews. Can you comment on this and contrast it with your understanding of what the real enemy of Hamas is?

There was a time when Hamas came up with a charter, in 1988, that gave that impression. I think it’s the worst thing that ever happened to Hamas. This is not a war between the Muslims and the Jews. This is not a religious war. Jews lived in this part of the world, across the Middle East, for centuries, with the Christians, with the Muslims. The problem started with Zionism, and I think Hamas leaders understand this now. Now, the narrative that is accepted officially by Hamas is that this is a fight with Zionism and not with the Jews.

Can you comment on the comparisons between Zionism in Israel and Apartheid in South Africa, on how Apartheid was overcome in South Africa and on what you hope for Palestine?

Zionism is a racist ideology because they believe that if you happen to be Jewish, then you have a God-given right to come to this land and live in it, or on it, at the expense of its natives. And this is exactly what Apartheid was in South Africa. Apartheid discriminated against people because of the colour of their skin. Zionism discriminates against others because of religious affiliation. And look at the sort of laws that exist in Israel: a law for the Jews; a law for the non-Jews.

And we can arrive actually at a permanent solution in Palestine similar to the one reached in South Africa. When they went to Nelson Mandela in his Robben Island cell and said to him, come on Nelson, we need to put an end to this mayhem and to this violence, etc. He said, very easy, no more Apartheid and we can live in peace.

And we in Palestine say the same thing: no more Zionism and we can live in peace. We’re not going to send any Jew away anywhere, they can remain. We don’t have a problem with them as Jews, but we have a problem with them as people who believe that they have God-given rights to discriminate against us. That’s the problem.

Does Hamas support Sharia law as it relates to women’s rights? You know, the demonization of Hamas in the West often focuses on Hamas being an Islamist group, and that if they were in control, women would have no rights of any kind, etc. So can you address that, please?

You don’t see in their literature or in their discussions or in their rhetoric, any talk about these issues, because these are to be left to society itself. Palestinian society, like any Arab society is a majority Muslim society, and the Muslims have every right to decide what sort of law they want to be governed by. It’s as simple as that. They believe in democracy, they accept democracy, they believe that there are no real contradictions between Islamic values and universal human rights.

There is nothing in Hamas experience or in Hamas literature that shows it wants to impose anything on anybody. Because of the demonisation of Hamas in the West, people will say the reason that the women in Gaza wear the abaya and the hijab is because they’re forced to by Hamas. This is what many believe, and so this is used to turn Westerners against Hamas. But it’s not true that they are imposing any costume on anybody. It’s not true at all, and there’s a Christian community also in Gaza. They’re suffering as much as the Muslims are suffering.

What can you say about the way that especially the resistance is viewed? I mean, we lionized the resistance of the partisans and the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. We lionized for a long time the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. And now people in the West at least understand the role that armed resistance played in that national liberation struggle. Do you think that there’s ever a way that the West will see Palestinian armed resistance as a major tool of the liberation struggle that is going to be won?

Oh, definitely. I mean, what do people think of the Viet Cong today? What do they think of the armed wing of the ANC in South Africa? What did they think of the Algerian resistance movement? Or the French resistance against the Nazis? At the time, those in power, if they are corrupt, resist recognizing things for what they are. They just want to tarnish them, draw a different image of them.

I have a dream that just as Nelson Mandela was received in this country as a hero, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin will one day be received in London as a hero. Because it’s the same principle, it’s resistance, it's fighting for justice. We are not the aggressors. We did not go to Europe and invade Europe. Europe came to us and invaded us.

If the Zionists come to us and say, just like the white minority in South Africa said to the black majority: We are sorry for what we did to you. It was wrong. We invaded you, we occupied your land, we dispossessed you. But now we want to start a new page, a new chapter. We want to live together. Would you agree? I’d say, of course, we agree. Let’s sit down and talk. But they need to recognize the principle. So long as the Zionists don’t recognize that the Palestinians have been their victims, you cannot negotiate anything. What is there to negotiate?