Hamas is not the Islamic State. Any comparison on the part of the Israeli leaders responds to specific war propaganda. In fact, they know each other very well, since the radicalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement once served Israel to undermine the Palestinian Authority (PA) that emerged from the 1993 Oslo agreements and stop future negotiations, until became the greatest enemy, based on bloody suicide attacks.
Although present in both the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas concentrated its power in the strip, led by an elderly quadriplegic and blind man, Sheikh Ahmed Yasin (murdered in 2004). In 2005, Ariel Sharon had the revolutionary idea of ??a “disengagement” from Gaza; that is, forcing the Israeli settlers to leave and closing the perimeter, maintaining control of the territory – as an occupying force according to international law – by land, sea and air, and leaving the administration in the hands of the Palestinian Authority, directed by Al Fatah. The most careful Gazan observers then considered that the Hamas leaders were wrong to celebrate it. Ismail Haniye, the political boss, was naive. And Mahmud Zahar, the head of the hardline and an old acquaintance of the Israeli services, was going to increase his influence.
In 2006, Palestinian elections gave victory to Hamas in Gaza; The people, fed up with corruption, voted for them because they saw them as more honest. The response, after a few months, by Al Fatah’s strongman, Mohamed Dahlan, was to attempt a kind of coup d’état. Hamas knew it and moved forward: the men of Al Fatah fled in disarray amidst shooting towards Israel; those who were less fortunate were thrown from the roofs of tall buildings in Gaza City. Dahlan ended up in the Emirates. It was a true upheaval that meant the breakdown of the unity of the Palestinian factions, which has not been recovered since then.
For a time, Hamas maintained its manners and showed it by protecting the house of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PA, in Gaza: the police in blue who guarded it could not touch anything in the refrigerator (there was a lot of frozen meat) and they brought them the meal. But immediately, the Hamas leaders seized homes, liquidated the unions… Islamic law, although Gaza was already quite conservative, fell like a stone on the young women. Hamas became the new party-state.
On the religious side, however, Hamas could be very pragmatic. In fact, some of its leaders took their children to Catholic school, and promised retaliation when it was attacked on one occasion by the Islamic Jihad, with no consequences other than the burning of a Bible and a crucifix.
Between 2006 and 2014, this special envoy was able to speak on some occasions with various Hamas leaders, from the local level to the political bureau. All of them were courteous, circumspect and cold (except when they wanted to talk about football) and were careful not to say “Israel” (a state they do not recognize) or “Jews”, and always referred to “the occupation”. They did not reveal anything, but they made it clear how they had reached the conclusion that, given the thousands of deaths that the Palestinian population had accumulated, and the fact that they were losing in any negotiation, there was no other way than armed struggle, that he had resigned from Fatah.
For the elderly and renowned psychiatrist Iyad el Sarraj (died in 2013), a refugee from 1948 who lived very close to the separation wall, after the collapse of the so-called “peace camp” in Israel – to which the suicide attacks contributed – , Hamas was to be feared. “They do not belong to this world, they cannot be brought down to reality,” he said. For them, Palestine is a foundation of Islam, they cannot touch it, they cannot do anything with it.” It was all or nothing.
What support does Hamas have among the population of Gaza? Shortly after taking power, silence prevailed. In 2018, the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies considered that some 50,000 families (out of a population of 2.2 million) formed the hard core of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. At the end of last July, for the first time there were demonstrations, in Gaza City and Khan Younis, against Hamas shouting “Shame!” because of the difficult living conditions. They were quickly repressed. But don’t be fooled: when Israel bombs, even those who hate Hamas know well who destroys their homes and lives.
