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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">On the Record with Hamas</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Jeremy Scahill</div>
<div class="gmail-meta-data">
<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">July 9,
2024<br>
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src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb2073209-2878-4e8e-aa6d-08e5a1c4b656_4000x2653.jpeg"
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</a>Members of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing
of Hamas. Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty</div>
<p>The past nine months of Israel’s genocidal war in
Gaza have spurred an unprecedented global awakening to
the plight of the Palestinian people. At no point in
the 76 years since the formation of the state of
Israel and the unleashing of the Nakba has there been
such sustained and open anger at Israel and such
widespread solidarity with the Palestinians. The
massive demonstrations in cities across the globe, the
severing of diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv, the
recalling of ambassadors, rulings from world courts
against Israel, and mounting demands for the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state—none
of this would have taken place without the impetus of
Hamas’s armed insurrection on October 7 and Israel’s
subsequent war of annihilation in Gaza. </p>
<p>This reality poses uncomfortable but ineluctable
questions. From Hamas’s perspective, was Operation Al
Aqsa Flood a successful operation? Hamas undoubtedly
knew that Israeli retaliation would include the
killing of many Palestinian civilians, even if the
horrific scale of Israel’s assault was unforeseen. Was
October 7, then, a collective martyrdom operation
launched without the consent of 2.3 million
Palestinians? And, for the many people who proclaim
their support for the Palestinian cause but
reflexively condemn the violence of the October 7
attacks, how can they realistically separate the two? </p>
<p>Drop Site conducted a series of interviews with
senior Hamas officials alongside a comprehensive
review of its statements and those of its leaders. I
interviewed a variety of Hamas sources on background
for this story and two—Basem Naim and Ghazi
Hamad—agreed to speak on the record. I also spoke to a
range of knowledgeable Palestinians, Israelis, and
international sources in an effort to understand the
tactical and political aims of the October 7 attacks.
Some people will inevitably criticize the choice to
interview and publish Hamas officials’ answers to
these questions as propaganda. I believe it is
essential that the public understand the perspectives
of the individuals and groups who initiated the attack
that spurred Israel’s genocidal war—an argument that
is seldom permitted outside of simple soundbytes.</p>
<p><span>Hamas leaders cast their operations on October
7 as a righteous rebellion against an occupation
force that has waged a military, political, and
economic war of collective punishment against the
people of Gaza.</span><strong> </strong><span>“They
have left us no choice other than to take the
decision in our hands and to fight back,” said Dr.
Basem Naim, a senior member of Hamas’s political
bureau and a former government minister in Gaza.
“October 7, for me, is an act of defense, maybe the
last chance for Palestinians to defend themselves.”</span></p>
<p>Naim, a medical doctor, is a member of the inner
circle surrounding former Gaza Prime Minister Ismail
Haniyeh, the chief political leader of Hamas, who is
based in Doha, Qatar. In the aftermath of October 7,
Naim has served as one of the few Hamas officials
authorized to speak publicly on behalf of the
movement. In an interview, Naim offered an
unapologetic defense of the October 7 attacks against
Israel and said that Hamas was acting out of
existential necessity in the face of sustained
diplomatic and military assaults not only on
Palestinians in Gaza, but also the occupied West Bank
and Jerusalem.</p>
<p>“The people in Gaza, they had one of two choices:
Either to die because of siege and malnutrition and
hunger and lacking of medicine and lacking of
treatment abroad, or to die by a rocket. We have no
other choice,” he said. “If we have to choose, why
choose to be the good victims, the peaceful victims?
If we have to die, we have to die in dignity.
Standing, fighting, fighting back, and standing as
dignified martyrs.”</p>
<p><span>Polls suggest that Palestinian support for
Hamas remains strong. Prior to the October 7
attacks,</span><a
href="https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/12/palestinians-views-oct-7"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true"> opinion polling</a><span>
in Gaza and the West Bank indicated that support for
Hamas was on the decline, with one poll finding that
just 23 percent of respondents expressed significant
support for Hamas and more than half registering
negative views. “The October 7 war reversed that
trend leading to a great rise in Hamas’s
popularity,” Arab Barometer</span><a
href="https://www.arabbarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/Arab-Barometer-PSR-Palestine-Report-Part-I-EN-.pdf"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true"> reported</a><span>.</span></p>
<p>“If we have to choose, why choose to be the good
victims, the peaceful victims? If we have to die, we
have to die in dignity.”</p>
<p><span>A more</span><a
href="https://www.pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2092%20English%20press%20release%2012%20June2024%20%28003%29.pdf"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true"> recent poll</a><span>
conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and
Survey Research, whose findings were released in
mid-June, found that two-thirds of the Gaza
population continued to express support for the
October 7 attack on Israel, with more than 80
percent asserting that it put Palestine at the
center of global attention. More than half of Gaza
residents polled indicated that they hoped Hamas
would return to power after the war. “They lost
confidence in peace with Israel. People believe that
the only way is now to fight against Israel, to
struggle against Israel,” said Ghazi Hamad, the
former Hamas deputy foreign minister and a
longstanding member of its political bureau, in an
interview. “We put the Palestinian cause on the
table. I think that we have a new page of history.”</span></p>
<p>“Israel has now spent nine months [fighting in
Gaza]—nine months. This is [a] small area. No
mountains, no valleys. It is a very small, besieged
area—against Hamas’s 20,000 [fighters],” Hamad
continued. “They bring all the military power,
supported by the United States. But I think now they
failed. They failed.”</p>
<p>Dr. Yara Hawari, the co-director of Al-Shabaka, an
independent Palestinian think tank, said that
assessing the role Hamas’s October 7 attacks played in
the growing global movement to support Palestinians
raises complex moral questions. “If the Israeli regime
hadn't embarked on a genocide in Gaza, would we be
facing this kind of level of solidarity? I think it's
a difficult thing to answer. It's also an
uncomfortable one because I don't think Palestinians
anywhere should pay in blood for the solidarity of
people around the world and certainly not in over
40,000 people killed,” she told me.</p>
<p>“We have surpassed the numbers of the Nakba by at
least three times in terms of those killed. And an
entire place has been destroyed. Gaza doesn't exist
anymore. It's been destroyed completely. So I think
that it's certainly been a very revealing moment,”
said Hawari, who is based in Ramallah. “Had October 7
not happened, would that have been revealed to people
around the world or not? It’s an uncomfortable thing
to think about for sure.”</p>
<p>Hamas has emphasized that its aim on October 7 was to
shatter the status quo and compel the U.S. and other
nations to address the plight of the Palestinians. On
this front, informed analysts say, they succeeded. “On
October 6, Palestine had disappeared from the regional
agenda, from the international agenda. Israel was
dealing unilaterally with the Palestinians without
generating any attention or any criticism,” said Mouin
Rabbani, a former UN official who worked as a special
advisor on Israel-Palestine for the International
Crisis Group. “The attacks of Hamas on October 7 and
their aftermath played a crucial role, but I think
just as much credit, if you will, goes to Israel, if
not more so,” he added. “If Israel had responded in
the way that it did in [previous assaults on Gaza] in
2008, 2014, 2021, it would have been a story for a
number of weeks, there would have been a lot of hand
wringing, and that would have been the end of it.”</p>
<p>“It's not only the actions of the colonized, but also
the reaction of the colonizer that has created the
current political reality, the current political
moment,” Rabbani said.</p>
<p>U.S. and Israeli officials often respond to questions
about the staggering death toll in Gaza or the mass
killing of women and children over the past 9 months
by casting blame solely on Hamas. They have treated
the events of October 7 as if they granted Israel an
open-ended license to kill on an industrial scale.
“None of the suffering would have happened if Hamas
hadn’t done what it did on October 7,” is a sentiment
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is fond of
repeating.</p>
<p>That is clearly untrue. But does multi-decade
brutality of the Israeli occupation absolve Hamas of
all responsibility for the consequences of its actions
on October 7?</p>
<p>“It's kind of like telling the folks in the Warsaw
uprising that you should have known that the German
military was going to respond the way they did and you
are going to be responsible for the deaths of other
residents in the Warsaw ghetto.”</p>
<p><span>“These deaths should be on the conscience of
the Israeli leaders who decided to kill all these
people,” said Rashid Khalidi, author of T</span><em>he
Hundred Years’ War on Palestine</em><span> and
widely viewed as the leading U.S. historian of
Palestine. “But they also to some extent should be
on the consciences of the people who organized [the
October 7] operation. They should have known, and
had to have known that Israel would inflict
devastating revenge not just on them but mainly on
the civilian population. Do you credit them for
this?” Khalidi added. “The end result may be the
permanent occupation, immiseration, and perhaps even
expulsion of the population of Gaza, in which case I
don't think anybody would want to credit whoever
organized this operation.”</span></p>
<p>The Palestinian-American novelist and author Susan
Abulhawa has twice traveled to Gaza since the siege
began last fall and has been unapologetic in her
defense of Palestinian armed resistance. She rejects
the notion that Hamas is responsible for Israel’s mass
killing of civilians in Gaza since October 7. “It's
kind of like telling the folks in the Warsaw uprising
that you should have known that the German military
was going to respond the way they did and you are
going to be responsible for the deaths of other
residents in the Warsaw ghetto,” Abulhawa said. “Maybe
that's true, but is it really a moral point to make? I
don't think there has ever been so much scrutiny on an
indigenous people, on how they're resisting their
colonizers.”</p>
<p><span>Abulhawa, whose novels include </span><em>Against
the Loveless World</em><span> and </span><em>Mornings
in Jenin</em><span>, told me, “As a Palestinian, I'm
grateful for it. I think what they have done is
something that no amount of negotiation was ever
able to achieve. Nothing else we did was able to
achieve what they did on October 7. And I should
say, actually, it's not so much what they did, but
it was Israel's reaction that led to a shift in the
narrative because they're finally naked before the
world.”</span></p>
<p>The past 76 years of Palestinian history have been a
nonstop succession of Israeli atrocities and war
crimes. Why did Hamas launch such a monumental action
at this specific moment?</p>
<p>The people who can best answer the question of what
Hamas was thinking on October 7 are the men in the
tunnels being hunted by Israeli forces in Gaza. Yahya
Sinwar, Hamas’s leader on the ground, and Mohammed
Deif, commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, are widely
understood to have decided how and when the course of
history would be altered.</p>
<p>In both Israeli and U.S. media, Sinwar is generally
portrayed as a cartoonish villain hiding in his tunnel
lair, dreaming up ways to murder and terrorize
innocent Israelis as part of a warped, ISIS-style
interpretation of Islam. He has been a U.S. State
Department-designated terrorist since 2015. “The
United States has to have a bogeyman, a Saddam Hussein
figure, a Hitler figure,” said Khalidi. “I think
Sinwar has been chosen.”</p>
<p>Despite the sinister portrayals, Sinwar’s writings
and media interviews indicate he is a complex thinker
with clearly defined political objectives who believes
in armed struggle as a means to an end. He gives the
impression of a well-educated political militant, not
a cult leader on a mass suicide crusade. “It's not
this black image of Sinwar as a man with two horns
living in the tunnels,” said Hamad, the Hamas official
who worked directly with Sinwar for three years. “But
in the time of war, he's very strong. This man is very
strong. If he wants to fight, he fights seriously.”</p>
<p><span>In 1988, just months after Hamas was founded,
Sinwar was arrested by Israeli forces and sentenced
to four life sentences on charges he had personally
murdered alleged Palestinian collaborators. During
his 22 years in an Israeli prison, he became fluent
in Hebrew and studied the history of the Israeli
state, its political culture, and its intelligence
and military apparatus. He translated by hand the
memoirs of several former heads of the Israeli
intelligence agency Shin Bet. “When I entered
[prison], it was 1988, the Cold War was still going
on. And here [in Palestine], the Intifada. To spread
the latest news, we printed fliers. I came out, and
I found the internet,” Sinwar</span><a
href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5364286,00.html" rel=""
moz-do-not-send="true"> told</a><span> an Italian
journalist in 2018. “But to be honest, I never came
out—I have only changed prisons. And despite it all,
the old one was much better than this one. I had
water, electricity. I had so many books. Gaza is
much tougher.”</span></p>
<div><a target="_blank"
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<div><span><img
src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F78581d5a-24d0-47e7-a0c9-38b29b0105fe_3072x1556.jpeg"
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</a>Yahya Sinwar, the Gaza leader of Hamas,
interviewed by Vice News in June 2021</div>
<p>In his past media interviews, Sinwar has spoken of
Hamas as a social movement with a military wing and
framed its political goals as part of the historic
struggle to reestablish a unified state of Palestine.
“I am the Gaza leader of Hamas, of something much more
complex than a militia—a national liberation movement.
And my main duty is to act in the interest of my
people: to defend it and its right to freedom and
independence,” he said. “All of those who still view
us as an armed group, and nothing more, you don't have
any idea of what Hamas really looks like.... You focus
on resistance, on the means rather than the goal—which
is a state based on democracy, pluralism, cooperation.
A state that protects rights and freedom, where
differences are faced through words, not through guns.
Hamas is much more than its military operations.”</p>
<p>Sinwar, unlike leaders of Al Qaeda or ISIS, has
regularly invoked international law and UN
resolutions, exhibiting a nuanced understanding of the
history of negotiations with Israel mediated by the
U.S. and other nations. “Let's be clear: having an
armed resistance is our right, under international
law. But we don't only have rockets. We have been
using a variety of means of resistance,” he said in
the 2018 interview. “We make the headlines only with
blood. And not only here. No blood, no news. But the
problem is not our resistance, it is their occupation.
With no occupation, we wouldn't have rockets. We
wouldn't have stones, Molotov cocktails, nothing. We
would all have a normal life."</p>
<p>“All of those who still view us as an armed group,
and nothing more, you don't have any idea of what
Hamas really looks like.”</p>
<p><span>Throughout 2018 and 2019, Sinwar endorsed the
large-scale nonviolent protests along the walls and
fences of Gaza known as the Great March of Return.
“We believe that if we have a way to potentially
resolve the conflict without destruction, we’re O.K.
with that,” Sinwar said at a rare</span><a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/world/middleeast/gaza-protests-yehya-sinwar.html"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true"> news conference</a><span>
in 2018. “We would prefer to earn our rights by soft
and peaceful means. But we understand that if we are
not given those rights, we are entitled to earn them
by resistance.”</span></p>
<p><span>Israel responded to the protests with the
regular use of lethal force, killing 223 people and
wounding more than 8,000 others. Israeli snipers
later</span><a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-03-06/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/42-knees-in-one-day-israeli-snipers-open-up-about-shooting-gaza-protesters/0000017f-f2da-d497-a1ff-f2dab2520000"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true"> boasted</a><span>
about shooting dozens of protesters in the knee
during the weekly Friday demonstrations. For many
Palestinians these events reinforced the view that
Israel’s policies cannot be changed by words.</span></p>
<p>In May 2021, following a series of Israeli attacks on
Palestinian worshippers at Al Aqsa mosque—as well as
threats of forced evictions of Palestinians from
Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem—Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched a barrage of
rockets at Israeli cities, killing 12 civilians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with U.S.
support, ordered heavy attacks against Gaza. More than
250 Palestinians were killed and thousands injured.</p>
<p><span>After the end of Israel’s 11-day bombing
campaign against Gaza, Sinwar spoke to</span><a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12khZa6d_0I"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true"> VICE News</a><span>
and sought to frame the Palestinian struggle in a
U.S. context, using recent cases of lethal police
violence against African Americans. “The same type
of racism that killed George Floyd is being used by
[Israel] against the Palestinians in Jerusalem, the
Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and in the West Bank.
And by the burning of our children. And against the
Gaza Strip through siege, murder, and starvation.”</span></p>
<p>The Israeli attacks ended when President Joe Biden
intervened and told Netanyahu to wrap it up. “Hey,
man, we are out of runway here,” Biden told Netanyahu
on a May 19 phone call. “It’s over.” Two days later,
Israel agreed to a ceasefire.</p>
<p>“The battle between us and the occupation who
desecrated our land, displaced our people and are
still murdering and displacing
Palestinians—confiscating lands and attacking sacred
places—is an open ended battle,” Sinwar said. When
asked about the killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas
rockets, Sinwar became animated. “You can’t compare
that to those who resist and defend themselves with
weapons that look primitive in comparison. If we had
the capabilities to launch precision missiles that
targeted military targets, we wouldn’t have used the
rockets that we did,” he shot back. “Does the world
expect us to be well-behaved victims while we’re
getting killed? For us to be slaughtered without
making a noise? That’s impossible.”</p>
<p>Two and a half years later, Sinwar authorized the
start of Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the single deadliest
attack inside Israel in history.</p>
<p>Hamas officials told me that for strategic reasons
they timed the attacks to coincide with Shemini
Atzeret, the final day of the Sukkot thanksgiving
holiday, but more broadly to exploit mounting
divisions within Israeli society and the deepening
unpopularity of Netanyahu within Israel. On a tactical
level, they engaged in extensive monitoring of the
Israeli military facilities along what is referred to
as the “Gaza envelope” and identified vulnerabilities
in surveillance systems and perimeter defenses.</p>
<p>Throughout the two years leading up to the October 7
attacks, Hamas officials told me, they sent Israel
repeated warnings to halt the activity of illegal
settlements and annexations in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem. Hamas also protested Israel’s mounting
attacks and provocations on the grounds of Al Aqsa
mosque, the holiest Islamic site in Palestine, and
demanded that the U.S. and other nations restrain
Israel. “We talked to the mediators, especially the
United Nations and the Egyptians and the Qataris:
‘Tell Israel to stop this. We will not be able to
tolerate more and more,’” said Hamad, a Hebrew speaker
with a long history of negotiating with Israeli
officials. “They did not listen to us. They thought
that Hamas is weak, Hamas is now just looking for some
humanitarian aid, some facilities in the Gaza Strip.
But at the same time, we were preparing.”</p>
<p>“We talked to the mediators, especially the United
Nations and the Egyptians and the Qataris: ‘Tell
Israel to stop this. We will not be able to tolerate
more and more.’”</p>
<p>“We were preparing because we are under occupation,”
said Hamad. “We think that the West Bank and Gaza is
one unit. This is our people under oppression, under
killing and massacres. We have to save them. And
Israel feels that they are above the law. They can do
anything. No one can stop them.”</p>
<p>“We have said it before October 7 that the earthquake
is coming. And the repercussions of this earthquake
will be beyond the borders of Palestine,” Naim said.</p>
<p>As Hamas delivered messages through international
mediators, it simultaneously held regular secret
meetings in Gaza where its leaders brainstormed
potential ways to confront Israel. “We had meetings in
the political bureau of Hamas in Gaza, and we
discussed the situation all the time. What was put on
the table was an evaluation of Israel in the West Bank
and Al Aqsa mosque,” said Hamad. “Hamas decided to do
something in order to make a kind of deterrence to
Israel.” They also wanted to send a message to the
Palestinian masses: “We are not weak [like] the
Palestinian Authority.”</p>
<p>Hamad said the discussions focused on actions that
would force the world to pay attention to the plight
of Palestinians, but also to send a message to Israel.
“We are going to show them that we can do something in
order to harm you and to hurt you,” he said. “What is
the other alternative? Either we, as Palestinians, are
waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for many
years for some countries, the international community,
to do something in order to save the Palestinians, or
we can go in the violent way to make a kind of shock,
in order to get the attention of the world.”</p>
<p>Naim said Hamas had concluded that Israeli policy
could only be altered through violent resistance. “I
have to say we are also reading history very well. We
[learned] from the history in Vietnam, in Somalia, in
South Africa, in Algiers,” he said. “At the end, they
are not peaceful NGOs who will come and say, ‘Sorry we
have bothered you for some years and now we are
leaving and please forgive us.’ They are so brutal and
bloody that they will not leave except with the same
tools they are using.”</p>
<p>Hamad and other Hamas political officials said that
while they participated in the strategy meetings in
Gaza leading up to the attacks, most of them were not
privy to the operational details or timing of the
operations. “There is a special group headed by
Sinwar, who took the decision for October 7. A very
narrow circle,” he said. “We did not know anything
about this. We were surprised with October 7.”</p>
<div><a target="_blank"
href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd264765b-929c-44fd-95fe-4b2e576d7e73_7105x4737.jpeg"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true">
<div><span><img
src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd264765b-929c-44fd-95fe-4b2e576d7e73_7105x4737.jpeg"
alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"
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height="263"></span></div>
</a>Gaza City during an Israeli airstrike on October
9, 2023. Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty</div>
<p>Before October 7, the prospects for a Palestinian
state were becoming slimmer and slimmer. The
conditions in Gaza were dire and there were no signs
of improvement because of the intense Israeli blockade
and lack of interest from the world. Residents of the
Strip, according to polls, were increasingly
apportioning blame for their misery on Hamas—one of
the central aims of Israel’s collective punishment
strategy. The U.S. was spearheading a series of
diplomatic initiatives to normalize relations between
Israel and Arab states. The Abraham Accords, launched
under President Donald Trump, effectively excised the
issue of Palestinian self-determination as a condition
for normalization, a major victory for Israel. Israeli
provocations and attacks against worshippers at Al
Aqsa were becoming a regular occurrence. Israel was
aggressively moving forward with its annexation of
Palestinian land and armed settlers were conducting
deadly paramilitary actions, often with the support or
facilitation of the government, against Palestinian
farms and homes in the occupied territories. </p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank was widely
despised for its corruption and collaboration with
Israel, including through the brutal actions of its
U.S.-backed security forces. The PA, often referred to
as a subcontractor of the Israeli occupation,
routinely arrests dissidents, union organizers, and
journalists, in addition to people Israel has
identified as security risks. </p>
<p>Hamas wanted to shatter the status quo on Gaza,
position itself as the defender of the Palestinian
people, and open possibilities for a new alignment of
political power to replace what they saw as PA leader
Mahmoud Abbas’s Vichy rule. At its highest level,
Operation Al Aqsa Flood was to be the opening salvo in
what Hamas hoped would be a decisive and historic
moment in the war for the liberation of Palestine.</p>
<p>On a tactical level, the October 7 operations
exceeded Hamas’s projections. “It was very surprising
for us how speedy one of the strongest brigades in the
Israel Army—the Gaza brigade is one of the strongest,
most sophisticated groups of their army—to collapse
within hours without any serious resistance, and that
even the state as a whole, for hours and maybe days,
continued to be paralyzed, were not able to respond in
the proper professional way,” said Naim, the Hamas
political bureau member. </p>
<p>“They were able to create this image of undefeated,
undefeatable army, undefeatable soldiers, the long
hand of Israel, which can hit everywhere or strike
everywhere and come back, relax, to drink at some cafe
in Tel Aviv, like what they have done in Iraq, in
Syria, Lebanon, everywhere. I think it has shown that
[Israel’s self-promoted reputation] was not reflecting
the reality.” The attacks, he said, showed
Palestinians and their allies that “Israel is
defeatable and liberation of Palestine is a good
possibility.”</p>
<p>“There was absolutely no control of the battle space.
There was no control of this area.”</p>
<p>Nine months after the attacks, Israel remains in a
state of shock and disbelief over the total failure of
its vaunted military and intelligence agencies to
protect the most vulnerable areas of Israel.</p>
<p>“Hamas won the war on October 7. The fact that they
were able to conquer parts of Israel and kill so many
Israelis,” said Gershon Baskin, an experienced Israeli
negotiator in regular touch with elements of Hamas.
“They took out Israel's electronic surveillance system
with drones that you can buy on Amazon and hand
grenades. They took down Israel's internal
communication systems in the kibbutzim all around the
Gaza Strip. They were so much more sophisticated than
Israel.”</p>
<p>Hamas “never imagined that there would be no Israeli
army when they crossed the border into Israel,” said
Baskin. “One of the Hamas leaders told me, ‘If we knew
there was going to be no army there, we would have
sent 10,000 people and conquered Tel Aviv.’ And
they're not mistaken. They had no army there, and when
they encountered the [Nova] music festival that they
didn't know about, they went on a killing spree.” </p>
<p>Khalidi also believes that Hamas was not prepared for
its own operational success on October 7. “I don't
think they expected the Gaza division to fall apart. I
don't think they expected to overrun a dozen or more
border settlements. I don't think they expected
thousands and thousands of Gazans to come out of this
prison that Israel has created and kidnap individual
Israelis. I don't think they expected the kind of
killing that took place in these border settlements. I
don't think all of this was planned, frankly,” he told
me. “There was absolutely no control of the battle
space. There was no control of this area. The Israeli
army took four days to reoccupy every single military
position, every single border village. So there were
two days, three days, in some cases more, during which
there was complete chaos. I'm sure horrific things
happened.”</p>
<p>Hamas has consistently denied allegations that its
fighters intentionally killed civilians on October 7.
In a manifesto published on January 21, titled “Our
Narrative,” Hamas sought to explain Operation Al Aqsa
Flood, though the document consisted mostly of general
grievances. Among the tangible aims of the attacks in
Israel, Hamas said, its fighters had “targeted the
Israeli military sites, and sought to arrest the
enemy’s soldiers to [put] pressure on the Israeli
authorities to release the thousands of Palestinians
held in Israeli jails through a prisoners exchange
deal.”</p>
<p><span>“Maybe some faults happened during Operation Al
Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid
collapse of the Israeli security and military
system, and the chaos caused along the border areas
with Gaza,” it continued. Sinwar</span><a
href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-chiefs-brutal-calculation-civilian-bloodshed-will-help-hamas-626720e7?mod=hp_lead_pos7"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true"> reportedly
acknowledged</a><span> to his comrades after October
7 that “things went out of control” and “People got
caught up in this, and that should not have
happened.”</span></p>
<p>Rabbani said that it is undeniable that Hamas killed
civilians during the October 7 attacks and expressed
serious doubts about the group’s official position
that Al Aqsa Flood was focused solely on targeting the
Israeli military. “Hamas has a history of this—its
suicide bombings against civilian buses and
restaurants and so on during the Second Intifada,” he
said. Rabbani recalls reading accounts of the October
7 attacks and watching videos from that day of Israeli
civilians being killed or captured. “My initial view
was that these were probably people who had been
suffering in Gaza their whole lives, didn't expect to
go back alive, and wanted to go out with a bang. I'm
sure that's the explanation for some of these cases,”
he said. </p>
<p>“But I also wonder to what extent it was
premeditated. I'd be very interested to learn to what
extent Hamas intended to inflict a terribly traumatic
blow on Israeli society, and not only the Israeli
military,” he added. “There is evidence to support it.
There is also evidence to contradict it. But I think
it's a question worth examining in more detail.”</p>
<p>The discourse surrounding the killing of Israeli
civilians on October 7 has been a central element in
shaping public opinion on the war. “So much of the
rage in Israel is a function of this very high toll of
civilian death,” said Khalidi. “War leads to civilian
deaths, but this was far beyond what could or should
have been acceptable under any circumstances, and that
is also on the planners of this operation. I think
that's a hard thing to say, but I think it's something
that should be said.”</p>
<p>“My initial view was that these were probably people
who had been suffering in Gaza their whole lives,
didn't expect to go back alive, and wanted to go out
with a bang,” said Rabbani. “But I also wonder to what
extent it was premeditated.”</p>
<p>Israel’s social security agency has determined the
official death toll from October 7 to be 1,139 people.
Among those killed, 695 were categorized as Israeli
civilians, along with 71 foreign civilians and 373
members of Israeli security forces. As horrifying as
the civilian death toll was on October 7, the message
was and remains firm from U.S. and Israeli officials:
Israeli lives are worth exponentially more than those
of Palestinians.</p>
<p>Hamas has said that its forces targeted military
bases and illegal settlements, characterizing the
killing of civilians in the kibbutzim as collateral
damage in battles against armed settlers “registered
as civilians while the fact is they were armed men
fighting alongside the Israeli army.” Hamas officials
suggested that many of the confirmed dead Israeli
civilians were killed in crossfire, “friendly fire”
incidents, or intentionally killed by the Israeli Army
to prevent them from being taken alive back to Gaza.
“If there was any case of targeting civilians," Hamas
alleged in its manifesto, "it happened accidentally
and in the course of the confrontation with the
occupation forces.”</p>
<p>Abulhawa charged that the Israeli and U.S.
governments launched a coordinated propaganda campaign
in the immediate aftermath of October 7 aimed at
dehumanizing Palestinians and successfully crafted a
false narrative of Hamas fighters as bestial monsters
who killed for the sake of killing. She cited the
volume of horror stories of sadistic crimes allegedly
committed by Hamas fighters, including the beheading
of babies, that have been promoted by Israeli and US
officials, including Biden, only to later be disproven
under scrutiny from journalists and independent
researchers. “They said that they beheaded babies,
that they eviscerated a pregnant woman, that they
burned a baby in an oven, like really horrific
violence that seemed just evil and gratuitous to kill
Jews. That was the narrative,” she said. “It had not
even a seed of truth.”</p>
<p>Hamas’s Naim credited the October 7 attacks and the
nine months of armed insurgency against the invading
Israeli forces for elevating the plight of Palestinian
liberation to the center of global attention. “This
popular support everywhere, especially in America and
Europe, do you believe this would happen by a workshop
in Washington, D.C., discussing between Palestinians
and Americans how to run Rafah crossings?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, this is the way. There is no other
way.”</p>
<p>Hamad told me that no one involved with the planning
of the October 7 attacks that he spoke with predicted
the full scope of Israel’s response and that many
Hamas leaders expected a more intense and prolonged
version of previous Israeli attacks on Gaza. “This is
a point that is very sensitive,” he said. “No one
expected this reaction from the Israel side, because
what happened now in Gaza, it is a full destruction of
Gaza, killing about 40,000 people, destroying all the
institutions, hospitals and everything. I know the
situation is horrible in Gaza. It's very, very hard.
And we need at least ten years to reconstruct Gaza.”</p>
<p>“This war is totally different,” Hamad said. “Totally
different.”</p>
<p>International mediators have restarted negotiations
between Hamas and Israel and there are indications
that some type of incremental agreement may be on the
horizon, though the permanent ceasefire that Hamas has
demanded seems unlikely. “The main issue is Hamas
won't do a deal without the end of the war and Israel
won't do a deal that ends the war,” Baskin told me. </p>
<p>Israel has insisted that Hamas disarm and that the
group be barred from participating in the post-war
governance of Gaza. Hamas has maintained it will
remain a political force with the right to armed
defense against Israeli occupation. “America should
understand, and this is very important, Hamas will be
part of the Palestinian scene,” said Hamad. “Hamas
will not be expelled. Hamas created October 7 and
created this history.”</p>
<p>According to a member of Hamas’s negotiating team,
the Palestinian representatives have observed U.S.
mediators growing increasingly frustrated with the
Israeli side. “Everything that [Israel] needs, they
call the babysitter. The United States is fed up now
from the Israeli behavior,” said the Hamas official,
who asked to remain anonymous. “They are scared that
this war will be wider in different regions, so they
want to control Netanyahu and his madness. They are
trying to [put] more pressure on Israel to accept this
ceasefire. They are trying, but I think until now they
did not use all the cards in order to push Israel. I
think it's like their spoiled boy.” The Hamas
negotiator told me he has the impression that “the
United States is trying to deal gently and softly with
Israel, trying to apply pressure, but not squeeze them
in the corner. Because of this, now there is a big
conflict and dispute between Israel and the United
States.”</p>
<p>Of all the objectives of the October 7 attacks, the
one that Hamas was most confident would yield concrete
results was freeing Palestinians from Israeli jails.
According to Israeli figures, more than 240 people,
including Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as
foreigners, were taken back to Gaza during the
Hamas-led attacks.</p>
<p>“[Hamas] made a quick deal with the Israelis,” said
Baskin. “It was three prisoners for every hostage. I
think that was an amazingly low price.”</p>
<p>Sinwar has consistently prioritized the liberation of
Palestinian prisoners. It was how he gained his own
freedom in 2011, in an exchange that saw Sinwar and
more than 1,000 other Palestinians freed from Israeli
jails in return for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad
Shalit. “It isn't a political issue, for me it is a
moral issue,” he said in 2018. “I will try more than
my best to free those who are still inside.”</p>
<p>Naim said Israel has historically shown a willingness
to pay a high price for the return of its soldiers,
including freeing Palestinians it characterizes as
terrorists. “Some of them are now [in prison] for more
than 45, 44 years,” he said. “They have also exercised
a lot of pressure on the leadership to do something.” </p>
<p>But, three weeks into the war, when Sinwar officially
proposed a sweeping deal to release “all Palestinian
prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for all
prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance,” Israel
rejected it. </p>
<p>Baskin has served as a shadow peace negotiator with a
variety of Palestinian factions. He played a central
role in negotiating the Shalit deal and has continued
to work behind the scenes on hostage issues since
October 7. Hamas, he said, knew the only chance to
free the “impossibles”—high-value Palestinian
prisoners including those who had been convicted of
killing Israelis—would be to take large numbers of
military personnel hostage. “For the soldiers, they
wanted to free all the Palestinian prisoners in
Israel, those serving life sentences,” Baskin said.
“At that time, there were 559 Palestinians serving
life sentences. That was their main target, getting
all of them.”</p>
<p>Eventually, under both domestic and international
pressure, Netanyahu agreed to a limited exchange deal.
During a brief truce last November, Hamas released 105
civilian hostages to Israel in return for 240
Palestinians—mostly women and children—held captive by
Israel. “[Hamas] made a quick deal with the Israelis,”
said Baskin. “It was three prisoners for every
hostage. I think that was an amazingly low price.”</p>
<p>Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas official who worked with
Sinwar, was emphatic that Hamas did not intend to take
Israeli civilians hostage. “What we planned was just
for military purposes, just to destroy this part of
the Israeli army who controls the situation in Gaza
and to take some hostages from the
military—soldiers—in order to make a kind of
exchange,” he said. “I don't deny that there were some
mistakes done by some people, but I am talking about
the decision of Hamas, the policy of Hamas.”</p>
<p>Baskin told me it was immediately clear that Hamas
did not prepare for holding so many civilians and was
caught off guard when other Palestinian groups and
individuals who flooded into Israel that day took
large numbers of hostages, including senior citizens
and children. “They ended up simply taking people back
into Gaza without thinking about the logistics, about
what price they wanted for them,” Baskin said. “From
day four of the war, I was talking to Hamas already
about a deal for the women, the children, the elderly,
and the wounded, which I thought was the low hanging
fruit, because Hamas would not have been set up to
deal with them. They wanted to get rid of them.”</p>
<p>Israel has used the civilian hostages as the primary
justification for their continued siege. Hamad
confirmed that negotiations began almost immediately
after the October 7 attacks. He told me that “from the
first week, we talked to some people, some mediators,
that we want to return the civilians, but Israel
refused.”</p>
<p>Hamad added that Hamas informed international
mediators last November that it was working to track
down more civilian hostages taken by other groups or
individuals so it could return them to Israel. “We
asked them, ‘Please give us time now to look for
people,’” Hamad said. “But Israel did not listen to us
and they continued to kill people.”</p>
<p><span>A major point of contention in the current
negotiations, Hamas negotiators told me, is</span><strong>
</strong><span>Israel’s continued refusal to free
Palestinians it characterizes as terrorists with
“Jewish blood on their hands.” Hamas has insisted
that if Israel wants its soldiers returned, it must
free Palestinian resistance fighters, including
those convicted of murdering Israelis. In the
negotiations, Israel has insisted it maintain veto
power over Hamas’s list of Palestinian prisoners it
wants freed in any deal. </span></p>
<p>Hamas negotiators told me that the fact that their
forces have managed to sustain a nine-month armed
insurgency against Israel in Gaza despite being
outgunned and subjected to large-scale attacks with
powerful weapons provided by the U.S. has sent a
message to the negotiators that Hamas has its own red
lines. “Nine months have passed and our resistance has
not been exhausted, nor has it relented, nor has it
subsided,” said the spokesperson for the Qassam
Brigades, known by his nom de guerre Abu Obeida, in a
July 7 audio message. “We are still fighting in Gaza
without support or external supply of weapons and
equipment, and our people are still persevering
without food, water, or medicine, and under a
criminal, unjust genocide war.”</p>
<p>Last weekend, Netanyahu released a list of what he
called “non-negotiables” in any agreement with Hamas.
Among these was preventing the smuggling of weapons
from Egypt, the return of a maximum number of living
Israeli captives held in Gaza, and barring Hamas
fighters from returning to northern Gaza. The most
contentious aspect of Netanyahu’s list is his
insistence that Israel reserve the right to resume its
full-scale war in Gaza, a notion that Hamas has
consistently rejected. </p>
<p>Hamad believes the mediators, including those from
the U.S., are aware that Netanyahu views the
continuation of the war as linked to his own political
survival. While a preliminary agreement may be reached
for another exchange of captives, Netanyahu has
reiterated his vow to destroy Hamas militarily. </p>
<p>“He wants to prove that he is [continuing the war] in
order to achieve his big goals or what's called the
‘total victory’ in Gaza. But I think he could not
convince even the Israeli community, the Israeli
parties and his partners in the coalition,” Hamad
said. “Every day that he is losing soldiers and tanks,
what’s the big achievement of Netanyahu? To kill
civilians. So I think that the negotiation is stuck on
this point, that there is no seriousness, strong will
from the Israeli side to have an agreement with
Hamas.”</p>
<p>“If you look to the text on both sides, it is easy to
bridge the gaps,” Hamad added. “Israel is working very
hard in order not to achieve an agreement, because I
think that this agreement will dismantle the coalition
in Israel. I think this will be the end of the
political career for Netanyahu.”</p>
<div><a target="_blank"
href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9f960789-4031-46c1-aaaa-95749f35b08b_5472x3648.jpeg"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true">
<div><span><img
src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9f960789-4031-46c1-aaaa-95749f35b08b_5472x3648.jpeg"
alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"
style="margin-right: 25px;"
moz-do-not-send="true" width="394"
height="263"></span></div>
</a>A tuktuk driver rushes to transport casualties
after Israeli bombardment at al-Bureij refugee camp in
the central Gaza Strip on July 8, 2024. Photo: Eyad
Baba/AFP via Getty.</div>
<p>The October 7 attacks are often portrayed by U.S.
leaders as having occurred in a historical vacuum—an
alternative reality where Hamas, unprovoked,
obliterated the peace. But for the people of Gaza,
there has been no true peace. For 76 years, only a
morsel of freedom has ever existed and for most of the
past two decades it was restricted to the imaginations
of a people confined to an open air prison surrounded
by the occupation’s military bases and dotted by gated
communities housing Israelis enjoying life in a
bucolic setting.</p>
<p>In the years preceding the October 7 attacks, under
presidents Trump and Biden, Hamas watched as Israel
became more emboldened as prospects for Palestinian
liberation receded to the footnotes of Washington-led
initiatives aimed at normalizing relations between
Israel and Arab nations like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and
the United Arab Emirates. Netanyahu’s position was:
“We must not give the Palestinians a veto over new
peace treaties with Arab states.”</p>
<p>Just two weeks before the October 7 attacks, the
Israeli leader delivered a speech at the UN general
assembly in New York, brandishing a map of what he
promised could be the “New Middle East.” It depicted a
state of Israel that stretched continuously from the
Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza and the
West Bank, as Palestinian lands, were erased.</p>
<p>During that speech, Netanyahu portrayed the full
normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia as the
linchpin of his vision for this “new” reality, one
which would open the door to a “visionary corridor
that will stretch across the Arabian Peninsula and
Israel. It will connect India to Europe with maritime
links, rail links, energy pipelines, fiber-optic
cables.”</p>
<p> “When Palestinians look at the region, they feel
genuinely abandoned by their own leaders.”</p>
<p>Hamas monitored these developments carefully and saw
the U.S. moves toward circumventing a Palestinian
resolution in its normalization campaign as an
existential threat. “If Saudi Arabia signed, it means
the whole region, when it comes to the Palestinian
question, will collapse. It is not a plan. It is not a
peace process. It is an integration of Israel in the
newly created Middle East. They have started to talk
about Middle East NATO,” Naim said. “It is a coup
against the heritage, the history, the values of this
region and against the future, all this together.”</p>
<p>According to Abulhawa, “The status quo was
unsustainable and untenable, especially when Arab
leaders began normalizing and the writing was on the
wall for our total disappearance and total
destruction.”</p>
<p>While Netanyahu’s vision for a new silk road through
a Middle East without Palestine was certainly a
concern, Rabbani doubts that Hamas believed it could
derail the Abraham Accords. The desired impact, he
said, was likely to send a message to the Arab public
about the complicity of their rulers in crushing
Palestinian aspirations as they carved out agreements
with Israel. “If you look at the history of
Arab-Israeli normalization agreements, Palestinian
blood has never undermined them,” Rabbani said. “When
Palestinians look at the region, they feel genuinely
abandoned by their own leaders, by those who they
consider to be their natural allies and natural
champions, by the international community as a whole.”</p>
<p>Arab nations have “to play this sort of balancing act
between not upsetting their domestic population and
being just the right amount of critical of the Israeli
regime,” said Hawari, the political analyst at
Al-Shabaka, adding that she has “no expectations from
these despotic regimes” to defend Palestinians. “I
think the Saudis will push for certain conditions not
because they particularly believe very strongly in
Palestinian sovereignty, but because also they know
that, domestically, Palestine is still a popular cause
in Saudi Arabia.”</p>
<p>Abulhawa said that while she understands the value of
the quest to fully understand the specific motivations
and objectives of Hamas’s operations on October 7, it
is essential to view it as a logical consequence of
history. “Palestinians have, for decades, tried every
possible avenue to shake off this oppression, this
unrelenting, violent colonizer. So this was going to
happen sooner or later. It was inevitable that
something was going to come to a head, particularly in
Gaza,” she said.</p>
<p>“If you go back to the 1940s after the Nakba, there
was a decade or so when Palestinians were just
pleading with international bodies, going from one
place to another, trying to negotiate for justice,
trying to go home, trying to figure out a way. And
there was no movement. We were completely irrelevant.
Nobody even acknowledged us,” Abulhawa added. “It was
only until Palestinians resorted to armed resistance
that the world finally admitted that, ‘Oh wait, this
is an indigenous population that does exist.’ It was
only after we started hijacking planes and resorting
to guerrilla warfare in the spirit of leftist
guerrilla movements of that era that there was any
movement towards liberation.”</p>
<p><span>It was that armed resistance that created the
space for the peace negotiations between the
Palestine Liberation Organization’s Yasser Arafat
and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that many
Western leaders hailed as a breakthrough. The 1993
and 1995 signings of the Oslo accords, brokered by
the Clinton administration, were opposed not only by
Hamas and Islamic Jihad and other armed resistance
factions, but also by prominent intellectuals. “Let
us call the agreement by its real name: an
instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian
Versailles,”</span><a
href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n20/edward-said/the-morning-after"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true"> wrote</a><span>
Edward Said in a prescient </span><a
href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n20/edward-said/the-morning-after"
rel="" moz-do-not-send="true">1993 essay</a><span>
for the London Review of Books. "It would therefore
seem that the PLO has ended the intifada, which
embodied not terrorism or violence but the
Palestinian right to resist, even though Israel
remains in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.”</span></p>
<p>Those agreements led to the creation of the
Palestinian Authority and the concept of limited
Palestinian self-governance embedded within the fabric
of Israel’s apartheid regime that enforced the
pre-October 7 status quo.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of Oslo, both Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad engaged in periodic campaigns of armed
struggle against Israel, including through suicide
bombings and attacks on civilians. This culminated in
the launch of the Second Intifada in September 2000
that lasted more than four years. The Al Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades, a network of paramilitary forces aligned
with Arafat’s ruling Fatah movement, joined the armed
uprising. In the two decades following the intifada,
much of the armed resistance has consisted of
intermittent rocket attacks launched by Hamas and
Islamic Jihad from Gaza and occasional, small-scale
attacks against Israelis.</p>
<p>The post-intifada era of largely symbolic armed
confrontation of Israel has unfolded in the midst of a
political wasteland where the PA, Israel, and the
broader international community led by the U.S. have
presided over the decay of the dream of Palestinian
self-determination. “After Oslo, we are talking about
a disastrous political track,” said Naim. “After 30
years, the West Bank is annexed. Jerusalem is mostly
Judaized. Al Aqsa is nearly totally controlled. Gaza
is totally separated, isolated and besieged for 17
years, a suffocating siege.”</p>
<p>Israel has mastered the exploitation of the specter
of armed Palestinian resistance to justify its own
wars of conquest and annihilation. And it has done so
with the backing of the U.S. and a refusal by
successive administrations to apply international law
to Israel or to respect UN resolutions. </p>
<p>“The problem that the West has with Palestinian
resistance is not terrorism. It's not the targeting of
civilians. It's not armed resistance. It's resistance
full stop,” Rabbani said. “Whether it's massacring
civilians or successfully hitting military targets or
popular mobilization or boycott campaigns, there is
not a single form of Palestinian resistance that the
West is prepared to accept.”</p>
<p>The October 7 attacks and the subsequent guerrilla
war in Gaza against the Israeli military has
undoubtedly raised Hamas’s political standing among
many Palestinians. This support, though, may not
necessarily translate into political and electoral
victory down the line. “Whereas they clearly are in a
stronger position politically than the PA, which is
seen as a subcontractor for the occupation and as
clapped out, exhausted, corrupt and so on by most
Palestinians, that doesn't mean that there are not
criticisms which many people are not willing to voice
right now because they are standing up to the
Israelis,” Khalidi said. “Their resistance, the fact
that they're still fighting the Israelis on the one
hand makes a lot of Palestinians, especially the ones
farther away from Gaza, heartened. On the other hand,
what has happened to the people of Gaza leaves a lot
of Palestinians, especially the ones in Gaza, not so
happy.”</p>
<p>Rabbani agreed that how people in Gaza will
ultimately judge Hamas’s responsibility for the
apocalyptic devastation they’ve endured remains
unpredictable. “I think there will also be many
Palestinians who will look and say, ‘Okay, the Gaza
Strip has been reduced to rubble. You've left the
people of the Gaza Strip defenseless and subject to
genocide. And yes, Israel did it. Israel is
responsible. But that's on you as well.’” At the same
time, Rabbani says the attacks of October 7 represent
a historic chapter in the cause of Palestinian
liberation and compared it to other pivotal moments in
anti-colonial struggles in South Africa and Vietnam
that came with significant death tolls among
civilians. “There's no denying the catastrophic
consequences,” he said. “But my sense is that the
changes in the longer term—of course without in any
way trying to minimize the enormously unbearable
damage that has been inflicted on an entire
people—will, in the end, be seen as a critical turning
point akin to Sharpeville, Soweto, Dien Bien Phu.”</p>
<p>Abulhawa said that during her trips to Gaza she
talked with people about how they viewed Hamas and
encountered what she described as complex, nuanced,
and sometimes contradictory perspectives. “The trauma
is profound. And they'll tell you two conflicting
ideas in the same breath. On the one hand, they're
angry. And sometimes some people will blame Hamas, but
everybody knows who's bombing them. Everybody.”</p>
</div>
</div>
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