Today, Explained - How Palestinians view Hamas

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

The US along with Israel and many of its allies have long considered Hamas a terrorist group. Khaled Al-Hroub, a professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, explains how its reputation is a lot murkier among Palestinians, who elected the group to political power in 2006. This episode was produced by Haleema Shah and Siona Peterous, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Serena Solin, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If Hamas wanted to get the world's attention with their attacks on Israel, they've been wildly successful. They got a war. The Israeli military is amassing troops and equipment along the border for a ground invasion that everyone knows is coming, but few know when it will start. They triggered an international diplomatic crisis. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met the Egyptian president after visits to Israel, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They poured gasoline on the already eternal fire burning over this Israel and Palestine issue. Police in Paris fired water cannons and tear gas into a crowded pro-Palestinian

rally here. The protests have been banned by the interior minister who feared such gatherings would cause public disturbances. Practically everyone has an opinion. On Today Explained, we're going to do some facts. The history of Hamas coming up on the show. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications.

Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs? And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. You're listening to Today Explained. The United States and Israel and many of their allies officially designate Hamas as a terrorist organization.

And as you may have heard in the past few days, not everyone agrees. In light of this new war, we wanted to find out how Palestinians see Hamas. So we reached out to Khaled Al-Hroob. I am a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwestern University in Qatar, author of a couple of books on the Palestinian issue, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and Hamas. As we so often do, we started at the start. Hamas is, you can think of it as the product of a mother organization called the Muslim Brotherhood, which is, again, very famous. You can see them in Egypt, in Jordan, in Pakistan, in Malaysia, maybe everywhere.

So this is kind of the mother organization of Hamas. They have a Palestinian branch. It was called the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, and this was since mid-1940s. So they would focus on mosques, religious affairs, building social networks, charities, and the rest of it. The business of resistance was left to other ideologies, Marxists, nationalists, and others. So Hamas was a charity organization. Well, the mother organization of Hamas was a charity organization, ironically speaking, until 1987.

In 1987, something big happened. Wide spread protest against the Israeli occupation. The first intifada marked the first time Palestinians from all parts of society began such an intense resistance. The protests evolved from boys throwing rocks and people marching to fighters attacking Israeli soldiers and military targets. And that was kind of a very challenging moment for the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. Until that moment, we didn't have something called Hamas. So they faced this choice. Either they refrain from participating in the uprising,

and in this case they are going to lose their membership, they are going to lose their face and their status within the Palestinian community, or they change their strategy and they gear up from charity into something meaningful in the eyes of the Palestinians. That is resistance. So they reorganize themselves, resaped themselves under the name of Hamas. By resistance, do you mean violent? Do you mean terrorism? Do you mean politics? What do you mean? The very generic term resistance within the Palestinian, let's say, context and language, it means using all means against the occupation. These could be violent means, these could be non-violent means. For the Palestinians, they say, all these means are justified under the international law

and UN kind of resolutions. They would allow and justify using force and military force against any occupier, any in any part of the world. So this is kind of the source of legitimacy upon which the you know, the Palestinian resistance is anchored. Okay, so Hamas becomes a sort of formal resistance movement in 1987. What do they say their mission

is? In 1988, they published the so-called charter. In this charter, they tried to kind of outline the strategy, the main goals, aims, perception of enemies and friends, and the rest of it. This charter was still kind of full of religious connotations, language, loaded with Quranic verses. And they have been criticized at that because of that language. And even there are some kind of anti-Semitic tones in it and the statements. The Hamas charter is filled with anti-Semitic references to Jews being behind communism, being behind World War I, World War II. It endorses the famous anti-Semitic conspiracy,

the protocols of the elders of Zion, a global Jewish conspiracy. Later on, two, three years after that, Hamas became kind of more mature, let's say, in practice and more politics. So they started kind of to distance themselves from their own charter gradually. When we are talking about the Jews, we are not against their religion. So we are against the one who is occupying our lands. We are against the one who is occupying our cities, villages. Who is this organization attracting? Are they men? Are they young? Are they old? Are they students? Are they academics? Who are they? All of these, all of the

above. I think it attracts two groups of people. One, the people who are nationalist, of course, they want to liberate Palestine, they want to participate in the resistance. And the other group is the people who are religious. And the mixture of these two produces a new form of individuals. These are people who are religious, ready to sacrifice themselves for the sake of

Palestine, because it's a nationalist-slash-religious idea. So one arm of this organization that we haven't really touched upon yet is, of course, the one that the world is now probably most recognizing, which is terrorism. When does Hamas first get to be known as an organization that practices terrorism? Of course, to start with, this is highly contentious terminology, Sean. So people, the Palestinians would frown upon you when you use this term. I know this is kind of the terminology used in the U.S., in Europe, and elsewhere. But for the Palestinians, Hamas and other Palestinian groups are freedom fighters. Not necessarily everybody agrees on every single act that Hamas does,

but by and large, it is considered as a nationalist, liberationist kind of group. But anyway, for the outside, for Israel to start with, Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization as all other Palestinian factions. And Hamas continued to be seen as so until this very moment. There is a big difference, however, that took place, and this takes us in our discussion to another kind of maybe milestone, that took place in 1993. The children of Abraham, the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, have embarked together on a bold journey. Together, today, with all our hearts and all our souls, we bid them shalom, salam, peace. Shalom Peace The official spokesperson

of the Palestinians, the Palestine Liberation Organization, signed Oslo Accords with Israel We who have fought against you, the Palestinians we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice

enough of blood and tears. The PLO is the umbrella of all Palestinian factions, excluding Hamas. So the PLO agreed on Oslo Accords, saying our aspirations as a Palestinian people could be achieved through peace talks. We recognize Israel. Yes, we make a huge compromise. That is 78% of the historic land of Palestine from a Palestinian perspective. And we accept only 22% of the land to have a Palestinian state on it. That was the promise and the premise of Oslo. You're talking about the two-state solution? Yes.

The two men making these promises on behalf of their peoples were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Arafat was hailed as a hero in Gaza after 27 years in exile, at least by a part of the Palestinians. Hamas says, no, the entire land is for us, from the Mediterranean Sea to Jordan River. How does Hamas proceed at this point? You've got the Oslo Accords,

you've got this two-state solution. They're not happy with the agreement. How do they go forward? Hamas, for a while, for a few years, in fact, after signing the Oslo Agreement, became somehow confused, slightly disorientated, and the popularity that Oslo Accords and Yasser Arafat gained because of the high hopes within the Palestinians at that time.

So you have Hamas somehow marginalized. Now, this kind of lasted maybe until 1995, 1996. Before that, we have a very infamous incident. Now, this kind of lasted maybe until 1995, 1996. Before that, we have a very infamous incident. On the 25th of February, 1994, an American-Israeli far-right settler, Baruch Goldstein, entered the mosque during prayers and started shooting. He killed 29 worshippers and wounded nearly 200.

And then Hamas vowed to retaliate. And they did retaliate using a new strategy, new tactics. That is the suicide bombings. The Islamic group Hamas took responsibility for the attack and said the intention was to kill Israeli Air Force personnel aboard the bus. So Hamas is conducting terrorist attacks, but they're not in power. They're political outsiders. Yeah, this is how it was seen in the eyes of Israel and the U.S. However, by 1999, the Palestinians should have a Palestinian state, according to Oslo Accords. And of course, it didn't happen. And Hamas becomes

stronger and stronger, saying, we told you that peace talks are leading to nowhere. And since then, the Palestinian Authority and the IDF also became undermined. And here comes kind of a very interesting story. 2003, George W. Bush led the so-called war on terror against countries and organizations designated as terrorists. And that list included Hamas. Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

Hamas was, of course, you know, extremely angry. We are not, we are a liberation movement. Leading to the year 2006, to circumvent that campaign, they decided to participate in the Palestinian elections. The Islamic Hamas party winning a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. And the Palestinians said, OK, you have been criticizing the Palestinian Authority for many years. Now, here you go. Do much better than them if you can. You are on the show.

Hamas plus political power when we're back on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Thank you. Oriframe's make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Oriframe as a gift, you can personalize it. You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an Oriframe for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday. And she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the Aura Frame.

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Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Today explained, when we were last with you, Hamas had just kind of unexpectedly won an election. Israel, of course, was not happy. This organization that had been terrorizing them was now in charge of Gaza. So Israel blockades Gaza.

Tonight, special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from the Gaza Strip, a region the United Nations predicts will be uninhabitable by next year. The United Nations says just 10 percent of Gaza's two million people have access to safe drinking water. Along the beach each day, young men drag in a meager catch. Food is scarce, they said. Palestinians and aid workers say that the lack of food, medicine, fuel, and basic supplies has made the situation in the Gaza Strip, quote, catastrophic. We asked Professor Khaled Al-Hurub how Hamas responded. A number of things. Militarily speaking, they relied on smuggling weapons. In terms of the basics for living for the Gazans in the region, life was designed to be,

as it was put by one Israeli leader, I think, we are going to starve them, but not letting them die. So we keep them kind of struggling. We keep them all the time trying to keep their survival. And in this case, they consume their energy in this process. That was the situation of Gaza Strip since 2007. When Hamas gains political power, do the suicide bombings stop? Do these sort of terrorist-style tactics against Israel stop? Yes. In 2005, Hamas,

that is one year before the elections, Hamas decided to stop all these kind of tactics, especially the suicide attacks. And they decided to do their utmost effort to join the PLO. And a third main decision was to take part in the elections. When they became in power, all these kind of measures became behind their back. It's kind of rehabilitating themselves to the new phase, if you like,

to the political phase of Hamas, that we are kind of ready to be part of the parliament, to be part of the political process, and so on and so forth. How long does that last? Two years only, 2005, 2006 into 2007, when the split took place between Fatah and Hamas in 2007. And then Israel started kind of applying more pressure on Hamas and the Gaza Strip. And a year after that, 2008, the first war on Gaza under the rule of Hamas was launched. Israel continues to bomb the territory for a third consecutive day, hitting targets across the area overnight and into Monday. And how does that war resolve?

Hamas fared not kind of impressively great in the eyes of the Palestinians, but they started the business of rockets, launching rockets. Later on in the years, they started manufacturing them and building more expertise and skills in making these rockets more kind of effective. On the Palestinian civilian side, however, the cost was very, very high. And then the blockade started to tighten, not only on Hamas, but also on the entire area. As a death toll crosses a grim mark, more than 1,000 Palestinians killed in less than three weeks of Israeli attack. Two, three years after that, 2012, there was another war and then 2014, another war. More than 1,000 Palestinians and more than 40 Israelis have been killed since the conflict began three weeks ago.

So we get into a cycle where Israel and Hamas are just going to war every few years. It obviously feels like we're in another round of that cycle right now. How does Hamas stay in power for so long? They were elected into office in 2006. It's now 2023. Are they that popular? There are no elections in the Palestinian scene until now. Neither presidential elections nor legislative elections.

So for some people would say Hamas' rule is illegitimate because it is not elected. The reason behind this is that Israel says they wouldn't allow elections in East Jerusalem. For these legislative elections, as in the past, the Israelis refused access to the city for Palestinian election officials, candidates, and campaigns, and allowed only a small number of Palestinian residents to participate with their votes cast as absentee ballots in Israeli post offices. East Jerusalem is considered as part of the occupied territories

in 1967. The Palestinians say this is part of the future Palestinian state. Israel says, no, this is part of unified Jerusalem. We are not going to allow any elections in this Jerusalem. And many Palestinians live there, of course, the majority. So because of this, there are no elections. It's kind of very difficult to say how popular they are in the Gaza Strip. Unemployment, for example, in the Gaza Strip is the highest in the world, more than 60%. Health services are extremely bad. People die, you know, waiting for permission to go outside Gaza Strip for medical care and service.

So it's a bleak situation. Hamas says this is because of the blockade. The people say, yes, it is because of the blockade, but you are the reason of the blockade as well. Hamas replies saying, well, I am doing this for Palestine and for resistance. So you have all these kinds of debates going around. After every single war, Hamas' support goes up, ironically speaking. And then during peacetime, people would point their finger to the bad services and Hamas support was down. You've got this cycle of wars going on, and then you haven't had an election since 2006 when Hamas initially took power. Do we have any idea how the people in Gaza feel about the events of last weekend?

Definitely in the first day or the second day until now, in fact, they were kind of jubilant. They were extremely happy. Hamas was seen as the only Palestinian, not only Palestinian, the only even Arab force that could inflict such harm and humiliation on the Israeli army, this army that defeated Arab countries, Arab armies, once, twice, three times, and they have this kind of image of being the most powerful and mighty force in the region. So Hamas is not kind of an official army, and they managed to go after the Israeli army and deep into Israeli-controlled territory, 30, 40 kilometers. For the Palestinians, now they turn a blind eye on the bad practices and others, but that was it.

People obviously aren't jubilant anymore. Like, how do they feel about Hamas now that Gaza's being destroyed? Well, that's the bigger question. Nobody expected the scale of retaliation that Israel is doing now. What we are seeing now is total kind of flattening of the entire city. An ambulance with a young girl and wounded woman inside rocked by explosions as they attempt to flee. They're among the tens of thousands of people on the move after Israel's military called on nearly half of Gaza's population, some 1.1 million people, to get south in a matter of hours. For some people, they use the terminology of genocide.

Even others, like NRC, the Norwegian Refugee Council, has warned against the risk of a humanitarian ethnic cleansing. The death toll is hitting 3,000 people now. So this is unexpected in this kind of short span of time. So definitely for me, we will have big questioning time that Hamas would face. What do you think its next chapter is? Well, this is the $1 million question, in fact.

I really don't know. It depends on the end game of this invasion or this Israeli attack. If the threat of ground invasion materializes, I think we are going to enter a new chapter whereby maybe Hamas could be, let's say, destroyed and dismantled or the main branches of it. But this would open another chapter, meaning where would Hamas's military wing go? Would it be fragmented into smaller splinter

groups, more radical than the mother organization, in this case Hamas? What Israel is going to do about them, in fact. Now we are dealing with one organization, political one. They have calculations. They go back and forth. But with smaller groups, totally unaccountable to any central command, maybe you are kind of multiplying your difficulties. So again, it's really very difficult situation, very difficult questions facing everyone. Professor Khalid

Al-Hurub, Middle Eastern Studies at Northwestern University in Qatar. He's written a bunch of books about Palestine, including one called Hamas, A Beginner's Guide. Our show today was produced by Halima Shah and Siona Petros. We were edited by Matthew Collette, fact-checked by Serena Solon, and mixed by Patrick Boyd. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained.