An insight into Hamas
JVL Introduction
The pervasive media justification for the genocide being perpetrated in Gaza rests upon an uneasy combination of two distinct postulates of Israeli propaganda:
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Hamas is a terrorist organisation akin to ISIS and is motivated by a fanatic desire to exterminate Jews.
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Hamas is embedded in the civilian population of Gaza who act as their “human shields” and are therefore legitimate collateral victims of Israel’s “war of self-defence”.
While postulate (2) elicits a certain disquiet even in official circles in the UK, postulate (1) has remained largely unquestioned.
Indeed it now takes extraordinary courage to challenge this dogma, since any attempt to do so is immediately translated as a moral justification for the atrocities of October 7 or as “far left antisemitism”.
In the following thoughtful piece a Palestinian academic from Gaza now living in the UK gives a nuanced account of the manner in which both social organisation and Hamas ideology have evolved in Gaza, and of the complex interplay of different social institutions.
It is a sad reflection on the officially approved racist repression that the author feels obliged to remain anonymous.
GW
This article was originally published by the Balfour Project on Mon 20 Nov 2023. Read the original here.
How the Palestinians of Gaza live with Hamas
A personal view by a Palestinian from Gaza who grew up in the era of the resistance group’s rise to power.
The author writes: Journalism and its practitioners will always carry an inherent point of view no matter how objective we try to be. However, it is built on the honourable principles of freedom of speech and equality of human rights
As I write this article, I am aware that the opinion and call for help I voice is one obscured by a cloud of propaganda, so that even the very term Hamas will evoke a response that has become increasingly difficult to counter. We are surrounded by such virulent images of prejudice that in the most respected forums the very name of our country or of our political factions can deny us and our supporters everywhere any opportunity for the complex discussion of truth. It is against this background that I feel the terrible weight of this time of death and destruction in Gaza. I write to correct the distorted record of the Palestinian struggle and rights. This article is my opinion, but it is what I have seen and from an honourable people, a valuable culture and from fellow human beings: it is a call for help.
The people of Gaza constitute a well-educated population, who have been put under the strain of war and destruction far too many times. Hamas, which has been the de facto governing body in Gaza since 2007, although with limited governmental power in terms of ability to deliver services to Gaza, is but one significant fraction of the story of Gaza.
Hamas came to whatever power it has had in Gaza through popular elections, which it won in 2006, over the beleaguered Fatah movement. Fatah had dominated official Palestinian politics since the 1960s. Palestinians in Gaza relate to Hamas, or not, in different ways. On the one hand, it is in charge of policing Gaza, and maintaining security inside it. Yet Gaza has been under severe blockade from sea, air and land by the Israeli occupation forces since 2007. Whatever is allowed into Gaza in terms of life-essentials such as food, water, electricity and fuel is controlled by the Israeli occupation. Therefore, Hamas’s authority in Gaza, if one can call it authority at all, is limited.
People in Gaza, particularly those employed in the various pubic sectors, receive their salaries from the Palestinian Authority, the governing structure that emerged after Oslo in 1993, which is dominated by Fatah and has its is headquarters in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank; the United Nations, through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which looks after Palestinian refugees; from charities; or from Hamas itself. Many of the loyalties in Gaza have material underpinnings, in the sense that people maintain loyalty to whoever keeps their families and loved ones alive, given the severe restrictions on Gazans’ life.
Hamas is one of these organisations, an effective force in Gaza, provisioning the Gaza Strip with social security, such as during the Covid Crisis with its immediate deployment of mobile quarantine facilities. Most people bear witness to its efficiency in terms of maintaining security in Gaza. This is in contrast to the Palestinian Authority of Fatah, whose rule in Gaza from 1993 to 2007 was marred by corruption and ultimately a breakdown in law and order.
In addition, Hamas has demonstrated its capability to resist repeated Israeli assaults on Gaza. This has earned it respect as a movement of resistance in the face of official, Western-backed Israeli terrorism and the non-existent prospects for peace in Palestine under the increasingly maximalist Israeli extreme right wing.
However, this does not mean that all people support Hamas in Gaza. Far from it. But the reality is that in Palestine, people relate to political movements on the basis of their ability to stand up for their historic rights, and Hamas is seen in that light.
The Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank have been exposed to extreme violence, morphing now into genocide and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli Government and its settler movement in the West Bank. This background dims hope of any prospects for peace for the Palestinians, who have long been maligned for resisting peacefully or violently against the Israeli occupation. There are no prospects whatsoever on the horizon of the Palestinians gaining their rights as enshrined in international law.
Hamas cannot be understood in terms of people’s relationship to it in Gaza without this multifaceted reality: services to the people of Gaza, security in Gaza, and resistance to the Israeli occupation and its regular assaults on its people and the lack of any hope of a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian tragedy since 1948.
Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere do not equate Hamas with the extremist ISIS and its indiscriminate violence against people in Syria or Iraq or elsewhere, as Israel and its backers now repeatedly and irresponsibly suggest they do. Hamas has always linked its military operations and struggle in general to the Israeli occupation and targeted it as the primary source of Palestinian suffering. It has never engaged in operations outside Palestine against any other state. While there are occasions, where indiscriminate violence took place against Israeli civilians as happened on 7 Oct, Hamas still made distinctions between military and civilian targets; and there are several statements by Hamas spokespersons that support this differentiation.
Palestinians are thirsty for emancipation from the Israeli occupation, and people in Palestine see the Hamas operation on the borders with Gaza in that light: as a desperate attempt to free them from the biggest open air prison on earth and to improve their horrific conditions. Hamas for them and all Palestinians remain rational interlocutors with whom it is possible and necessary to conduct diplomacy and pave grounds for peace, despite 7 Oct. Alas, the Israeli genocide unleashed after that complicates Palestinian reality even further and makes their fervent dream for liberation and freedom from the Israeli occupation a distant reality.
When I visited Gaza in 2018 for the first time in 18 years, I saw a population that is on the whole capable of sensitive and nuanced thinking, despite repeated assaults on its life and sanity. I felt sympathy for most of the views that I heard, and understood the rationale for them: from those who expressed the view that only resistance could work with the Israeli occupation, to those who submitted to the reality of the Israeli occupation as brute force, and called for diplomacy and peace where possible with it, to those in between who advocated non-violence resistance and peaceful methods to attain their rights; although none of these has ever worked with the intransigent Israeli occupation.
Hamas itself as a movement espouses and represents all these views. Although it used force on 7 Oct primarily against the Israeli military installations responsible for the blockade of Gaza, it is cognisant of the Israeli power and its Western backers, and most probably, in my view, did not expect the extent of Israeli destruction and genocide unleashed on Gaza after that. It probably thought, from its reading of Israel’s history, that Israel would ultimately submit to exchanging Palestinian prisoners, while delivering military reprisals Hamas can afford to accommodate as a movement accustomed to deadly confrontations with Israel.
In general, the people of Gaza have also evolved alongside Hamas in terms of its distinction between Jews as respected People of the Book and Zionism as an ideology of occupation and violence against the Palestinian people. This was expressed very clearly in its second charter in 2017, which is often ignored by the Western media. The distinction reads as follows, in article 16:
“Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of its 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 colonial project and illegal entity.”
The people of Gaza are linked to Gaza and Hamas is of them. This is particularly the case as they desperately cling to vanishing semblances of life amidst extreme destruction and inhumanity applied against them from the Israeli occupation and its official Western backers. The latter are turning a blind eye to the complexities of Palestinians lives, views and realities, while embracing their unconscionable Israeli occupiers instead: double standards and inhumanity to an extreme degree.
The author is a Palestinian academic originally from a refugee family in Gaza, now living in the UK. He has asked to remain anonymous.
Very grateful for this article. All good but especially useful and informative are the last four paragraphs that give a more plausible explanation for the events of 7th Oct than the absurd “mindless barbarism” explanation that has been given by the mainstream media. As more information emerges, we will see that much of the violence and destruction in the two kibbutz and elsewhere was the result of Israeli bombing and indiscriminate gunfire. It is all tragic and horrifying but dehumanising the actions of Hamas, does not help us move towards a solution.
So, it was reported this morning that the Metropolitan police have warned people on demonstrations not to display support for Hamas. They should read the resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations, of which Britain is a member, on the right of the resistance to occupation. I suppose it is too much expect that they would read this excellent article.
A very useful and clear antidote to the constantly repeated European and US prevailing message.
So all that makes 7 October OK, does it? Not one word about the taking of hostages. Not a word about the brutality of the assault.
Instead we are offered this: “Hamas for them and all Palestinians remain rational interlocutors with whom it is possible and necessary to conduct diplomacy and pave grounds for peace, despite 7 Oct.”
“Despite 7 October”? It will take decade to repair the damage now being created. Israelis will be even least trustful after the blood-letting of 7 October and all the Israelis are doing with their genocidal siege of Gaza is establishing the base for the emergence of utterly reactionary forces even worse than Hamas.
Why can’t the left, in the UK and internationally, get it into its head that outfits like Hamas and the Iran-cuddly Hezbollah are not on our side any more than the off-the-wall right-wingers running the show in Israel.
We are supposed to be socialists but here we are publishing an article that attempts to paper over or rationalise the enormity of the crimes of 7 October, crimes that were bound to produce an even grosser criminal response.
I always thought socialists opposed war because the only people who get hammered are the innocent, smashed to the floor, while their rulers – medieval obscurantists in the case of Hamas and racist authoritarians in the case of the Netanyahu government – fight it out in a war from which no worker or peasant can benefit.
Until the popular masses in the Middle East can break decisively from and overthrow the gangsters that lead them hope of progress is forlorn.
In the meantime, with no mass socialist movement in sight there, that means supporting neither side in this war and demanding “Stop the War”, a call that undermines both sides and offers a road out of the Israel-inflicted torment of Gaza.
The assault on 7 October demonstrated one thing at least: the gross incompetence of Hamas which, at a time when civil conflict was about to erupt in Israel with massive anti-government demonstrations, chose a course of action that then only re-united most ordinary Israelis behind the Israeli government.
Really clever, that was.
Thank you to the Author.
Reading this made me start thinking of what my thoughts would have been if I had been a Palestinian living in Gaza.
I’m sure I would be permanently angry and that anger would grow after every bombing raid by Israel.
What would I be thinking, would I have a single idea come to mind, I would obviously know that Israel had such a massive advantage in Military capability that I’m positive that I would feel helpless even desperate and after one of Israel’s bombing sprees, which would have killed many innocent Palestinians, possibly even friends or relatives, what would I think then, how would I sleep etc.
I’m only surmising and I feel desperate for a solution to come to mind but nothing does. Tomorrow morning I can talk to my wife about what we might be doing for Christmas etc, what will Palestinians be talking about tomorrow morning, I feel desperate for them.
We must keep campaigning and protesting against this Genocide, call out the BBC and its Biased reporting, share information across Social Media, get as much of the truth out into the open, in the hope that the tide starts turning against Israel, there are more politicians speaking out against Israel, that’s the only positive that I can see.
I think I know the author! A very thorough and thought provoking document. Every leader of the western world should read it. They know these truths already, and still support the Israeli right wing.
Thank you very much, whoever you are, for this attempt to give a reasoned analysis of a complicated group of people all assembling under the one label that stretches from those wanting to make women wear headscarves to those running playgroups and nurseries in the most disadvantageous conditions, to those willing to give their lives for the cause of ending the occupation and achieving the right of return..
The inclusion of the reference to the 2017 amended charter is particularly helpful since security “experts” we hear on the BBC always quote Hamas as being committed to the elimination of Israel – as if this meant Israelis.
As Sir Jeremy Greenstock said in 2010 during an interview on the “Today” programme and at the time of “Cast Lead”, “The truth is not being told.”
Nothing changes in that way!
Interesting context.
Was Oct 7 a rogue act or intended as a military assault which went hideously out of control? Or something else? Certainly many of the brutalities fly in the face of the revised charter. Hamas is clearly a broad er mosque but I’m wondering what discipline exists within it or doesn’t it work like that? What discussions or strategies exist within it now?
Not victim blaming here but certainly Oct 7 has given Netanyahu the pretext for stepping up genocidal policies.
Inevitability ever greater militancy and violent resistance will emerge, maybe more reactionary.