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class="preview">Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi, a top leader of
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, discusses October 7, the war against
Israel, and whether Trump or Biden would be better for Palestine</div>
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href="https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=2510348&post_id=146643956&utm_source=post-email-title&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=lvppb&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozNjc1MTU4MywicG9zdF9pZCI6MTQ2NjQzOTU2LCJpYXQiOjE3MjExMzgyODksImV4cCI6MTcyMzczMDI4OSwiaXNzIjoicHViLTI1MTAzNDgiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.wYEQXJAoJF2_xJzzsSOgGlaATnlNORIe6h6zjMJHfO0"
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Islamic Jihad speaks to Drop Site News</a></h1>
<h3 class="subtitle"
style="-moz-appearance: optimizelegibility; -moz-osx-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-appearance: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; appearance: optimizelegibility; color: #777777; font-family: 'SF Pro Display', -apple-system-headline, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol'; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 4px 0 0; margin-top: 12px;">Dr.
Mohammed Al-Hindi, a top leader of Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, discusses October 7, the war
against Israel, and whether Trump or Biden would
be better for Palestine</h3>
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datetime="2024-07-16T13:56:54.433Z">Jul 16</time></div>
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<figure style="margin: 0 auto; width: 100%;"><a
class="image-link" target="_blank"
href="https://substack.com/redirect/298ea4e8-f435-44ca-9dba-bb03f9203606?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM"
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height="867"></a><figcaption
class="image-caption"
style="box-sizing: content-box; color: #777777; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: -.15px; line-height: 20px; margin-top: 8px; padding-left: 15%; padding-right: 15%; text-align: center; width: 70%;">Mohammed
Al-Hindi in 2005. Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP via
Getty.</figcaption></figure>
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<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Before
Hamas, there was Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The
resistance movement, founded in 1981, organized
itself around the principle that defeat of Israeli
occupation and subjugation could only be achieved
through armed struggle, and it sought to merge the
secular and Islamist strands of the Palestinian
political landscape. For 30 years, PIJ has engaged
in a campaign of paramilitary warfare against
Israel and has controlled the second largest armed
Palestinian resistance faction. While Hamas has
governed the Gaza Strip since 2006, PIJ has often
set the tone for increased militancy toward Israel
and has proven its willingness to engage in
battles on its own.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Though
PIJ says it did not know about the October 7
attacks ahead of time, its armed wing joined the
Hamas-led operation that morning, took hostages of
its own, and—together with Hamas’s Al-Qassam
Brigades—has waged a nine-month guerrilla war in
Gaza against Israeli occupation forces.</p>
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<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Senior
leaders of PIJ rarely grant interviews to Western
journalists, but Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi, the
group’s second highest-ranking official, agreed to
sit down for a wide-ranging, in-person interview
with Drop Site News. Al-Hindi discussed PIJ’s role
in the October 7 attacks, what he sees as the
political aims of the operations, his perspective
on President Joe Biden’s push to revive a
“two-state” solution, Donald Trump and the U.S.
elections, the Abraham Accords, and the future of
Palestinian liberation and politics. He also
discusses PIJ’s ties to Iran and explains why he
believes Israel would face a catastrophe in
Lebanon if it decided to go to war against
Hezbollah.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Since
the early 1980s, Al-Hindi has been a central
figure in Palestinian Islamic Jihad and currently
serves as its deputy secretary general and chief
political negotiator. He is a pediatrician by
training and early in his career worked at
Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. Al-Hindi was jailed for
a year during the First Intifada and has been
imprisoned several times by both the Israeli
government and the Palestinian Authority. In 2004,
Israeli helicopters fired several missiles at
Al-Hindi’s office in Gaza in what was widely
believed to be an assassination attempt. Al-Hindi
is the chief of PIJ’s political department and the
top deputy to its secretary general, Ziyad
Al-Nakhalah. He led PIJ’s negotiations with Israel
that achieved a ceasefire in May 2023 and
continues to advise Hamas negotiators in the
current war. In 2019, Al-Hindi was named a
Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S.
State Department.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Drop
Site News has decided to publish the interview
with Al-Hindi in full because we believe it is in
the public interest to examine the perspectives of
a top figure in the current Palestinian armed
resistance and the second in command of an
organization at the center of Israel’s genocidal
war against the Palestinians of Gaza.</p>
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<h2 class="header-anchor-post"
style="-moz-appearance: optimizelegibility; -moz-osx-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-appearance: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; appearance: optimizelegibility; color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-family: 'SF Pro Display', -apple-system-headline, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol'; font-size: 1.625em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.16em; margin: 1em 0 0.625em 0; position: relative;">Palestinian
Islamic Jihad: The Backstory</h2>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Palestinian
Islamic Jihad began to carry out armed attacks
against Israel in 1984, three years prior to the
founding of Hamas. More than a decade before the
first Oslo Accord was signed in 1993, PIJ’s
founders took the position that the Palestine
Liberation Organization of Yasser Arafat had
started the Palestinians on a course to disaster
by opening the door to conceding substantial land
to Israel in a two-state settlement. The founders
were also inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution
in Iran and saw the overthrow of the U.S.-backed
shah as evidence that they could topple their
oppressors. </p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">“In
the 1980s, when a young guard of Palestinian
students wanted the Muslim Brotherhood to engage
in armed violence or in armed struggle against
Israeli occupation, they were dissatisfied with
the Muslim Brotherhood’s lack of interest in armed
struggle,” said Erik Skare, a postdoctoral
researcher at the University of Oslo who is widely
viewed as one of the leading English-language
scholars on PIJ. “If you were a Palestinian in the
1980s in the Gaza Strip who wanted to participate
in the armed struggle, there was no feasible
vehicle to do so. On the one hand, you had the
Islamist movement that did not partake in the
military armed struggle. And on the other hand,
you had the secular nationalists who were either
in jail, [or] who were incapacitated.” PIJ filled
this void.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><span>Skare
has written two books on the group, including </span><em>A
History of Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Faith,
Revolution and Awareness in the Middle East</em><span>.
He said PIJ’s founders rejected what they saw as
the dogmatism of the Muslim Brotherhood, from
which Hamas rose. “They did not just read Ibn
Taymiyya. They didn't just read Sayyid Qutb.
They didn't just read Hassan al-Banna. They read
Lenin, they read Jean-Paul Sartre, they read
Fyodor Dostoevsky. They read everything that
they could come across as they tried to figure
out the future and the way forward and out of
that Palestinian impasse,” Skare told me. “They
wanted to be true to their religion and go to
the cinema. They wanted to read, study Islamist
orthodoxy, while being open to new ideas.”</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">In
August 1987, members of PIJ ambushed and killed an
Israeli army officer in the Gaza Strip, in what
would become a precursor to a broader Palestinian
revolt. During the First Intifada, which began in
December, the PIJ expanded its armed operations in
Gaza and the West Bank, initially utilizing
stones, knives, and small arms. By the end of the
decade, the group’s senior leadership was exiled
and many of its members jailed. In 1992, Israel
deported hundreds of PIJ and Hamas members,
including influential leaders of both movements,
to Lebanon. In exile, the two groups forged closer
ties and discussed coordinating actions against
Israel. PIJ also deepened its relationship with
Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the
Syrian government. Its members received military
training and support from all three.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">PIJ
rose to international recognition and infamy in
the 1990s as both it and Hamas began to conduct
suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and
military targets. PIJ also began to formally
organize its paramilitary wing, Saraya Al-Quds,
the Jerusalem Brigades. On January 22, 1995, a PIJ
operative disguised as an Israeli soldier
approached a crowded bus stop in the central
Israeli town of Beit Lid where Israeli soldiers
were awaiting transport back to their bases. The
operative detonated an explosive belt in the
middle of the crowd. A few minutes later, a second
suicide bomber attacked. In all, 21 Israeli
soldiers and one civilian were killed. “We confirm
our ability to penetrate all the enemy’s false
security lines and reach the heart of the enemy,”
a top PIJ leader said in claiming responsibility
for the attack. President Bill Clinton responded
the next day by issuing an executive order
criminalizing any financial support for PIJ.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">In
1997, both PIJ and Hamas were officially
designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S.
State Department. During the Second Intifada,
which began in September 2002 and lasted for
nearly five years, both organizations engaged in
military battles against Israeli forces and
conducted extensive suicide bombings inside
Israel.</p>
<div class="pullquote"
style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e6e6; border-top: 1px solid #e6e6e6; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px auto;">
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px 0; text-align: center;">"The
logic is pretty much the same as the PLO in the
1960s and 1970s—that what has been taken with
force has to be regained by force."</p>
</div>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">In
the years since the last intifada, PIJ has
cultivated its presence in both the West Bank and
Gaza, from which it has regularly engaged in
rocket attacks against Israeli military targets
and cities. Unlike Hamas, PIJ is not a political
party that fields candidates for elections run by
the Palestinian Authority, as it rejects the
entire framework of the Oslo Accords that gave
rise to the PA. Instead, PIJ has prioritized
confronting Israeli settler colonialism and
occupation through direct military action. “They
fight for the entirety of historical Palestine
from the river to the sea,” said Skare. “The logic
is pretty much the same as the PLO in the 1960s
and 1970s—that what has been taken with force has
to be regained by force.”</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><span>While
PIJ is often narrowly portrayed as a violent
Islamic terror organization, it views itself
both as an armed vanguard advocating a unified
liberation movement and a political and social
movement rooted in Islamist and Palestinian
history and culture. “We saw two categories of
Palestinian: the nationalists, who talked about
liberating Palestine but who forgot about Islam,
and the traditionalists, who talked about Islam
and an Islamic state but who forgot about
Palestine,” observed PIJ's founder Dr. Fathi
Shaqaqi in an </span><a
href="https://substack.com/redirect/44b4d1a3-5c3e-4965-af56-3c912793b097?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM"
rel=""
style="color: #00058c; text-decoration: none;"
moz-do-not-send="true">interview</a><span> in
1995, nine months before he was assassinated by
the Mossad in front of a Malta hotel. “We had to
solve this problematic issue, to make the
crossing-point between nationalist and
Islamist.”</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Many
of PIJ’s earliest recruits were drawn from the
ranks of the secular PLO, and PIJ’s leaders forged
a path to uniting that secular revolutionary
spirit with Islamist ideas. Its central objective
was to reclaim all territory seized during the
creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and to
avenge the violent displacement and killing of
Palestinians during the Nakba. “Islamic Jihad
turned the logic of the Muslim Brotherhood upside
down,” said Skare. “The Muslim Brotherhood focused
on Islamization for liberation. That is, you had
to Islamize Palestinian society first and prepare
the Palestinian masses by spreading Islamic values
so could you prepare them for the armed struggle
to liberate Palestine. But Islamic Jihad, on the
other hand, they said first we have to liberate
the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and only
then can we focus on Islamization.”</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Skare
said that despite its designation by the U.S. and
other Western nations as a terrorist organization,
PIJ does not conduct attacks outside of historic
Palestine. “It also distances itself from attacks
against the West and also against Israelis outside
of Israeli or Palestinian territory because it
would weaken the Palestinian struggle and the
legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle,” Skare
said. “They make it quite clear that their
struggle is not against Israelis because of their
Jewish faith, but because of the occupation.”</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Since
Hamas’s founding in 1987, its relations with PIJ
have seen periods of tight coordination as well as
conflict, strategic disagreement, and turf wars.
After Hamas won the democratic elections in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2006 and
consolidated its control of the Gaza Strip, the
two groups often synchronized their operations
against Israel. The year it took power in Gaza,
Hamas announced an end to the use of suicide
bombings against Israel, causing the number of
such attacks to plummet. Hamas said the tactic had
only been deployed during an “exceptional period.”</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">While
Hamas became a governing authority, responsible
for the basic administration of civil life on the
Gaza Strip, PIJ eluded these functions and
squarely focused on armed resistance. PIJ opened
its doors to Palestinians who prioritized armed
action against Israel, including those “that were
dissatisfied with the governance project of
Hamas,” said Skare, who has interviewed senior PIJ
figures. “It says something about the way [PIJ]
can push other armed movements.”</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">PIJ
and Hamas formed a united front in a series of
shorter duration wars in the years following
Hamas’s election, including in 2009, 2012, and
2014. In 2018, the two groups revived a joint
operations center with other smaller armed
factions in Gaza. In May 2021, PIJ and Hamas
launched a barrage of rockets at Israel in
response to Israeli attacks on Palestinian
worshippers at Al-Aqsa mosque and threats of
evictions in East Jerusalem, killing 12 Israeli
civilians. Israel launched an intense 11-day
bombing campaign against Gaza, during which more
than 250 Palestinians were killed and some 1,900
injured. The war ended when President Joe Biden
called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and told him the runway was finished. Both Hamas
and PIJ leaders made clear that while a truce was
reached, the broader war would endure. “We will
come to you, God willing, in a roaring flood,”
Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar declared in a
speech in December 2022. “We will come to you with
endless rockets, we will come to you in a
limitless flood of soldiers, we will come to you
with millions of our people, like the repeating
tide.” </p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">While
Hamas generally respected the Egyptian-brokered
ceasefire with Israel, PIJ and Israel continued to
fight. In August 2022, Israel began a campaign of
targeted assassinations against senior PIJ leaders
in Gaza, killing important commanders. Israel said
the attacks were “preemptive” strikes. Two of the
Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of Palestinians,
including children. In retaliation, PIJ launched
more than 1,000 rockets into Israeli territory as
Israel pummeled Gaza with further air raids.
Israel also swept PIJ strongholds in the West
Bank, arresting PIJ operatives.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">The
intermittent battles between Israel and PIJ lasted
until May 13, 2023, when an Egyptian-brokered
ceasefire was declared. While Hamas was not a
party to the fighting, it praised PIJ for
“defending the Palestinian people against the most
recent Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip.”</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Prior
to October 7, Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds
force was estimated, in Western government and
media sources, to have between one and eight
thousand fighters in Gaza. Sources within PIJ,
however, say the number of fighters and logistical
support personnel exceeded 10,000 (reliable,
verifiable statistics do not exist). While it is a
smaller force than Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, which
prior to October 7 was estimated in the range of
20,000–30,000 soldiers, PIJ also enjoys a stronger
paramilitary presence in the West Bank,
particularly in Nablus, Tulkarm, and Jenin. PIJ
recently said that it has continued to enlist new
recruits to fight Israel in both Gaza and the West
Bank.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">In
reporting on the October 7 attacks against Israel,
PIJ is often unmentioned or described in passing
as another militant group that participated in
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. By the group’s own
account, it was not involved with the planning of
the October 7 attacks but joined in immediately
that morning when the operations began. Skare said
that while PIJ may not have organized the attacks,
its militant posture of armed struggle as the only
solution against Israel may have played a role in
Hamas's decision to contemplate the large-scale,
decisive action. “Hamas had to balance on a
knife’s edge between being a provider of services,
a provider of governance in the Gaza Strip, and
maintaining its [role] as a resistance movement.
Islamic Jihad could continue stressing the need
for armed resistance, continue stressing the need
for a complete liberation without being encumbered
by the inconvenient responsibilities of
governance. And that always was troublesome for
Hamas,” he said. “I think the fact that Hamas
carried out October 7 was partly caused by the
fact that Hamas found itself in an impossible
situation.”</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Along
with Hamas, PIJ’s standing among Palestinians in
the occupied territories has risen significantly
since October. Its members have fought alongside
Qassam forces in the guerrilla war against
Israel’s occupation forces in Gaza, and it
regularly posts videos of its forces ambushing
Israeli tanks and soldiers.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">PIJ
continues to hold an unknown number of Israelis
taken on October 7—PIJ initially said it had 30
captives—and participated in the exchanges last
November during which 105 Israelis were freed in
exchange for hundreds of Palestinians held by
Israel. Along with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic
Jihad is a member of the Axis of Resistance, a
coalition that includes Iran, Syria, Ansar Allah
in Yemen, and several regional militant groups
that coordinate strategy in confronting Israel.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Below
is a full transcript of our in-depth interview.</strong></p>
<div class="captioned-image-container-static"
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<td style="text-align: center;"><br>
</td>
<td class="content"
style="text-align: center;" width="1200"
align="left"><a class="image-link"
target="_blank"
href="https://substack.com/redirect/b4a76dbd-c2b0-44b8-8c2e-835a719e76e2?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM"
rel=""
style="align-items: center; border: none; display: block; flex-direction: column; height: auto; margin: 0; padding: 0; position: relative; text-decoration: none; width: auto;"
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data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/868c3f4e-a553-4156-a038-8c1d7dd12994_2048x1556.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":false,"imageSize":"large","height":1106,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":1200,"bytes":225169,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/jpeg","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null}"
alt="" class="wide-image"
src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2400,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F868c3f4e-a553-4156-a038-8c1d7dd12994_2048x1556.jpeg"
style="-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; border: none !important; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 0; max-width: 100% !important; vertical-align: middle; width: auto !important;"
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<td style="text-align: center;"><br>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<figcaption class="image-caption"
style="box-sizing: content-box; color: #777777; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: -.15px; line-height: 20px; margin-top: 8px; padding-left: 15%; padding-right: 15%; text-align: center; width: 70%;">Mohammed
Al-Hindi speaks with Jeremy Scahill. Photo:
Jeremy Scahill.</figcaption></figure>
</div>
<h3 class="header-anchor-post"
style="-moz-appearance: optimizelegibility; -moz-osx-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-appearance: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; appearance: optimizelegibility; color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-family: 'SF Pro Display', -apple-system-headline, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol'; font-size: 1.375em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.16em; margin: 1em 0 0.625em 0; position: relative;">My
Interview With Mohammed Al-Hindi</h3>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi,
thank you for agreeing to do this interview.
It’s unusual for a Western reporter to be able
to interview one of the leaders of Palestinian
Islamic Jihad. Explain the political ideology
and objectives of the organization.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> In the name of God, the
merciful, the compassionate. First of all,
Islamic Jihad is generally perceived as a
fighting group. That impression, however, is not
accurate. In the early stages of its
establishment, our movement tried to develop its
own vision and understanding before engaging in
active fighting against Israel. A vision of the
political reality, understanding the Islamic
world, and the region’s history. So, it started
as an intellectual discussion before it took up
arms. Ultimately, however, its analysis was that
the project of establishing Israel was a Western
one. The West had its issues with the Jews. In
short, it could be said that antisemitism is a
European problem that did not exist in the East.
It was solved, however, at the expense of the
Palestinian people and the region. The Zionist
project is not about the Jews in the first
place. Rather, it is a Western colonization
project that aims to control the region and
preclude its independence and development.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">This
is the Zionist project at heart. We do not have
any problem with the Jews per se. Rather, our
problem is with Zionism as a racist movement which
was based on usurping our resources and homeland
and displacing us in 1948. This was the founding
political vision upon which Islamic Jihad movement
was established. Our vision relied on Islam which
constitutes the culture, history and faith of the
Palestinian people.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Based
on that vision and that understanding of the
political reality and Islamic history, the
movement was established. This debate started at
an early stage when we were students in Egyptian
universities in the mid-1970s. This vision was
translated, though, when we returned to the Gaza
Strip under the occupation. Since there was
occupation, it was imperative to have resistance.
So, the Islamic Jihad started to engage in
resistance in the early 1980s after we returned
from Egyptian universities.</p>
<div class="pullquote"
style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e6e6; border-top: 1px solid #e6e6e6; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px auto;">
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px 0; text-align: center;">“The
Zionist project is not about the Jews in the
first place. Rather, it is a Western
colonization project that aims to control the
region and preclude its independence and
development.”</p>
</div>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">So,
the resistance emerged based on the presence of
the occupation. As a religious, Muslim people, we
base our resistance on our understanding, history
and faith. That’s why some identified Islamic
Jihad as standing somewhat in the middle between
Islamic extremism and the national movement, which
was based at the time on Fatah and the Palestinian
left. In brief, we are a national Palestinian
resistance movement which is rooted in our
people’s faith, culture and belief, namely Islam.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> When you say that
Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a national
resistance movement you're talking about armed
struggle.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> No, I’m talking about
the idea of Islamic Jihad.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> How do you define then
what a resistance group is in the context of
what you’ve said?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> As long as there is
occupation, there must be resistance. We started
our resistance in the presence of occupation
through the Nakba in 1948 and then in 1967 with
the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
We were conceived in the Gaza Strip and the
movement then expanded to the West Bank under
the occupation. The occupation was engaging in
practices which all the world could see. But
they were silent, unfortunately, because
ultimately the Zionist project is a Western one.
That’s why in 1987, in the First Intifada, under
then-Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, they used an
extremely oppressive policy which was the ‘bone
breaking’ policy against children involved in
the uprising. Quite literally, a soldier would
hold a child’s hand against a rock and then
break it with another rock. It was implemented
literally. So this violence used by Israel under
which we grew up, made it necessary to resist.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> But Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, for instance, does not run for elections.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>That’s not true. We do
take part in student elections in Palestinian
Universities. We take part in elections of
syndicates, all Palestinian syndicates: doctors,
teachers, lawyers, engineers. All syndicates.
Around 13 syndicates. And we have taken the
initiative in forming some other syndicates too.
This impression or perception, though, was
because we did not take part in the 2006
Palestinian legislative council elections.
Refraining from participation constitutes a form
of participation itself, a form of political
position. We have taken a position towards the
Oslo Accord, which at the national level has
conceded some basic principles in addition to
its being undemocratic as the Palestinian people
have not been consulted, nor were other members
of the PLO and its factions. This agreement was
reached behind the back of the Palestinian
people. So the position of the Islamic Jihad was
to boycott any arrangements or elections of an
authority emanating from this agreement. This is
a political position of its own right. We take
part in all other elections.</span></p>
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<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> What is the relationship
between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> First, in terms of the
founding principles, Islam constitutes the
faith, culture and history of our Palestinian
people. It is a faith for Muslims and a culture
for Christians. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad use
the faith of our people and their culture in the
case of Christians as a point of departure. We
further agree with Hamas on some aspects of our
political vision in terms of the position
vis-à-vis the Oslo Accord and rejecting it and
in relation to the resistance imperative and
maintenance of Palestinian basic principles. On
the other hand, there are disagreements in
relation to our vision or some political issues
such as elections. We had a position, Hamas had
a different position, and so on. So in some
political issues, Islamic Jihad holds a
different position from Hamas. Our differences
were more pronounced in the past. With time,
however, the scope of disagreement between the
two movements started to diminish.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> I want to ask you about
the two-year period leading up to Operation
Al-Aqsa Flood. You had the 2021 Israeli bombing
campaign against Gaza. And then over the course
of the two years that followed, the Israelis
continued to target and assassinate leaders of
Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Maybe we could begin
by describing this period and how your movement
experienced Israel’s attacks from the end of
2021’s intense war until October 7, 2023. Also,
Palestinian Islamic Jihad was launching rocket
attacks against Israel and Hamas was largely
staying out of it or at least saying that they
were not directly participating. They were not
condemning Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but they
were saying that they weren’t participating in
it.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> First of all, Israel is
under the illusion that eliminating military or
political leaders of Palestinian resistance
movements would affect these movements. In the
two years you pointed out, Islamic Jihad was
exposed to a wave of assassinations, actually
three waves. So Islamic Jihad engaged in
defending the Palestinian people and responding
to those crimes committed against leaders in the
military structure Al-Quds Brigades. Hamas,
during those three confrontations, did not
intervene. But as you said it did not condemn
the Palestinian resistance and launching
rockets. As a matter of fact, it stood by the
Islamic Jihad in its political position stating
this was a normal response to the Zionist
crimes. Some, especially in Israel and some
regional media outlets tried to disgrace Hamas
for having abandoned the Islamic Jihad, saying
it could have helped fend off the Zionist
aggression on Gaza since it was in charge of its
administration. But let me clarify that Islamic
Jihad was capable of responding and persisting
in confronting Israel for a long time without
intervention. If it were not capable, we might
have blamed Hamas for not taking part, but
Islamic Jihad proved to be capable and Israel
was forced to engage in negotiations with the
Islamic Jihad movement in Cairo. I was leading
these negotiations with the Egyptians. We
reached an agreement. Those observing may not
use this episode to drive a wedge between Hamas
and Islamic Jihad. On the contrary, Islamic
Jihad understood Hamas’s position and decided we
can manage this battle on our own in the three
confrontations and we managed quite well.</span></p>
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<td class="content"
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target="_blank"
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<figcaption class="image-caption"
style="box-sizing: content-box; color: #777777; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: -.15px; line-height: 20px; margin-top: 8px; padding-left: 15%; padding-right: 15%; text-align: center; width: 70%;">Mohammed
al-Hindi (right) with Hamas spiritual leader
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (center) and Hamas’s
Ismail Haniyeh (left) at a memorial in 2003
for assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Abu
Shanab. Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty.</figcaption></figure>
</div>
<h3 class="header-anchor-post"
style="-moz-appearance: optimizelegibility; -moz-osx-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-appearance: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; appearance: optimizelegibility; color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-family: 'SF Pro Display', -apple-system-headline, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol'; font-size: 1.375em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.16em; margin: 1em 0 0.625em 0; position: relative;">The
October 7 Attacks</h3>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> How did Operation
Al-Aqsa Flood come into being? Who initiated the
idea for it? Did it come from Palestinian
Islamic Jihad or Hamas or was there a joint
committee that was assessing potential responses
to Israel or potential positives and negatives
of launching some sort of attack? I’m trying to
understand how this was organized.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> Hamas, or more
accurately, Al-Qassam, were getting prepared for
Al-Aqsa Flood and no one knew about it. A day
earlier, on October 6, we in Islamic Jihad had a
celebration of the anniversary of the Islamic
Jihad movement. Thousands took part in the
celebration and we were taken by surprise like
everybody else. However, very shortly after
learning about the Flood, we engaged in this
battle. It was our duty as a resistance movement
to confront the aggression immediately.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> Just to clarify: You’re
saying that Palestinian Islamic Jihad, even its
special forces, were not at all involved with
the planning of it until the morning of the
knocking down of the fences, the walls?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>Right.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> So once your forces
started entering the battle space, were you
surprised at how deep into Israeli areas of
control they were able to get, particularly on
the military bases?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>The whole world was
surprised! The Israeli military units just
evaporated.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> Once the operations were
under way, were the military commanders of
Palestinian Islamic Jihad able to give orders to
their men in the field? Given that they didn’t
participate in the planning, once your soldiers
were in battle did Islamic Jihad issue
guidelines for them or objectives? How were the
orders given then to the PIJ forces that
participated?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> At the beginning, the
[Al-Quds] military commanders of our movement
started to give orders to engage. So after a
short while, the Islamic Jihad’s Quds Brigades
took part in the battle and the confrontations
started. As a resistance movement, our duty was
to fight against occupation and against this
aggression. Whenever a battle erupts, Al-Quds
Brigades take up their role and engage.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> When you started
watching the initial media reports—some of the
first reports said two thousand people, mostly
civilians, were killed, though those numbers
were later reduced and it became clear a large
number of Israeli soldiers were also killed
along with civilians—what sort of response did
you expect from the Israeli state to these
operations?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> We know Israel was
built on lying and this was one more lie. We
recognized from the beginning that there was a
great deal of misleading information addressed
to the West. We expected, of course, that there
would be a strong response. However, over time,
these lies started to be exposed. The Israeli
response to October 7 was not governed by any
sort of laws. Neither military laws nor laws of
occupation nor any sort of laws. I believe with
time, more crimes that no one knows about until
now will be exposed. Especially in relation to
detainees who were arrested just outside Gaza
and many of whom were executed in the field.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>What do you understand
as the direct objectives of the October 7
operations?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>First, this is another
episode of this conflict. It has erupted like
that, but it is another episode of a long,
bitter, and bloody conflict since 1948. By 1948,
we refer to the Nakba where enormous crimes were
committed. Around 500 Palestinian villages were
destroyed. The Palestinian people have been
fighting since 1948. You might know, or not,
that there is no Palestinian family that does
not have at least one martyr. All the fake news
that Israel fabricates to mislead the Western
world is obvious, but the West accepts and wants
it because they want to keep Israel as a control
and hegemony project in the region. What
happened on October 7 was an extension of those
crimes. It is also proof that the Palestinian
people cannot be destroyed. In short, Israel and
the United States wanted to completely end the
Palestinian cause, not only in Gaza but
everywhere.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Things
started to become clearer after the Abraham
Accords, which overlooked the rights of the
Palestinian people and aimed to arrange the region
along security terms by building security and
economic alliances in the region away from the
rights of the Palestinian people. Obviously, the
Palestinian people are not dead and it was
expected they would defend themselves and their
rights. Unless they receive their rights in full,
there would be nothing but more blood in the
region. It is against that context that we
understand Al-Aqsa Flood: not in the context of
October 7, rather in the context of 1948.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>Do you have a sense as
to why this specific day was chosen for those
operations?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>This is an issue that
was at the discretion of Al-Qassam. But I could
say that Gaza has been under blockade for 17
years. There are crimes being committed in the
West Bank and Gaza. There is a regional
political setting in which a new enemy is being
invented for the region away from the Zionist
enemy. This is the context in which we
understand this. So a fighting group makes its
arrangements and takes its decision and makes
the judgment on the appropriate conditions.
Undoubtedly, the conditions were indeed
appropriate.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>I want to ask you about
the taking of civilian captives on October 7.
Hamas officials have told me that their forces
did not have any orders to take women who were
not soldiers or children back to Gaza as
captives. Hamas has told me that essentially
when the fence and the wall encircling Gaza was
broken down and the second and third wave of
people came in—this included ordinary people or
people that were not officially involved in the
operation—that they started taking Israeli
civilians back to Gaza and then Hamas had to
essentially find these people and offered to
return them to Israel. What is your
understanding of the civilians taken to Gaza?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> Hamas already declared
that. In Islamic Jihad, we had a boy and an
elderly lady. We issued a statement at an early
stage saying we wanted to release them both,
without anything in exchange, should the
security conditions be available. This was
publicly stated and filmed at the time. So, yes,
this issue was there, especially that children,
women, and elderly people were taken in by
mistake. We declared our position, and you may
go back to the records. We said we have these
people in our custody, and they appeared in a
video, the young boy and elderly lady, and we
were ready to let them go just like that should
the security conditions allow for it. They were
then released within the first deal.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>How do you think
history is going to see the events of October 7
and the months that have unfolded since?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>A huge strategic
failure for Israel on October 7 at all levels:
the political, military, and intelligence. It
was also a failure for the protectors of Israel.
The nine months that followed were just more
failure because they committed crimes against
civilians, destroyed Gaza, employed the
starvation policy. All those add to the military
and moral failure. Israel’s image has been
damaged. The image of victimization which it
sold to the world for years is over. It has
become a wanted criminal. So, Israel has lost at
the level of its image and narrative and at the
moral level. Further, the army has not achieved
any of its objectives and has been exhausted. So
those successive months have only been more
failure at all levels: military, political,
moral, and in terms of Israel’s image.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> You’re the chief
political negotiator for Palestinian Islamic
Jihad. Are you directly participating in the
negotiations over a ceasefire or ending the
siege on Gaza?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> I would like to make
one thing clear. In these negotiations, we as
resistance factions have mandated Hamas to lead
the negotiations. We agreed that Hamas would
manage the negotiations for various reasons. We
are reassured that Hamas will not yield in these
negotiations because it is more in the
crosshairs than Islamic Jihad.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">So,
papers are put forward in those negotiations, be
it from Israel, the U.S., or others. Hamas
presents those papers to us, and we discuss them
and offer feedback. Based on this, Hamas responds.
So, the response is not that of Hamas but of the
resistance and its factions.</p>
<div class="pullquote"
style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e6e6; border-top: 1px solid #e6e6e6; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px auto;">
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px 0; text-align: center;">“We
realized that Netanyahu was trying to create a
fracture between Hamas and Islamic Jihad and we
did not give him that chance.”</p>
</div>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Hamas
is the chief negotiator mandated by the resistance
factions. It discusses the proposals made with the
resistance factions and provides a response that
is a reflection of the resistance factions’ view.
Hamas is mandated and authorized to negotiate on
behalf of the factions.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">The
other point is that Israel has tried to drive a
wedge among resistance factions in terms of the
negotiations. Netanyahu has personally asked the
UN representative to meet him in Jerusalem around
four months ago. Netanyahu and his negotiations
team asked him to go to Lebanon and meet the
Islamic Jihad to convey a message saying that
Netanyahu was ready to engage in direct
negotiations with Islamic Jihad and that he would
be lenient in reaching an agreement with them on
prisoners exchange.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">It
was around three months ago, the UN representative
came to meet one of our brothers in Lebanon, an
Islamic Jihad official, and he delivered
Netanyahu’s message. We realized that Netanyahu
was trying to create a fracture between Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, and we did not give him that
chance. We announced this at the time, but we did
not try to make a big fuss about it. We talked
about it in a Lebanese newspaper, Al-Akhbar. Some
Israeli papers talked about this issue the day
after. Some regional powers also tried to invite
Islamic Jihad to meetings and discussions, but we
kept that door shut, too. I mean to have a
delegation and make visits, but we realized that
they were trying to initiate individual
negotiations, so we just turned these proposals
down.</p>
<div class="captioned-image-container-static"
style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px auto;">
<figure style="margin: 0 auto; width: 100%;">
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<tbody>
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<td style="text-align: center;"><br>
</td>
<td class="content"
style="text-align: center;" width="1200"
align="left"><a class="image-link"
target="_blank"
href="https://substack.com/redirect/75c35872-0ccd-4494-92dd-775bcc9048de?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM"
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style="align-items: center; border: none; display: block; flex-direction: column; height: auto; margin: 0; padding: 0; position: relative; text-decoration: none; width: auto;"
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data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/809a77ff-e119-4a8b-b8fd-3d969da4bac3_2048x1118.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":false,"imageSize":"large","height":795,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":1200,"bytes":196669,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/jpeg","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null}"
alt="" class="wide-image"
src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2400,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F809a77ff-e119-4a8b-b8fd-3d969da4bac3_2048x1118.jpeg"
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moz-do-not-send="true" width="550"
height="300.3090659340659"></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><br>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<figcaption class="image-caption"
style="box-sizing: content-box; color: #777777; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: -.15px; line-height: 20px; margin-top: 8px; padding-left: 15%; padding-right: 15%; text-align: center; width: 70%;">Screenshot
from an Al Quds video of a parade in Gaza City
marking the 36th anniversary of the founding
of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, October 4, 2023.</figcaption></figure>
</div>
<h3 class="header-anchor-post"
style="-moz-appearance: optimizelegibility; -moz-osx-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-appearance: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; appearance: optimizelegibility; color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-family: 'SF Pro Display', -apple-system-headline, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol'; font-size: 1.375em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.16em; margin: 1em 0 0.625em 0; position: relative;">One
State, Two States, or Perpetual State of War?</h3>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>You also have forces in
other areas of Palestine, in the occupied West
Bank and elsewhere, and I’m wondering why there
weren’t then coordinated uprisings in other
areas beyond Gaza in the immediate aftermath of
October 7. I’m wondering if that was a strategic
decision or if the leadership of Islamic Jihad
held their forces back. I’m trying to understand
why this operation did not spread to other areas
of Palestine.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>In the West Bank, the
resistance is present and escalating and the
Islamic Jihad takes part in it or even takes the
lead in it. There are arrests in the West Bank
on a daily basis. Not a day passes by without
arrests and other crimes being committed. There
have been more than 500 martyrs in the West Bank
since October 7 and around 10,000 detainees in
addition to thousands of wounded people. So the
West Bank is indeed taking part. However, due to
the magnitude of crimes committed in Gaza, this
does not feature much on the media.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Internationally,
there are also other open fronts in Lebanon and in
the Red Sea in Yemen. Their fronts are backing the
Gaza front. They have decided that the battle on
those fronts will not end until the aggression on
the Gaza Strip stops. The Islamic Jihad is present
in Lebanon, given there are refugee camps in
Lebanon and it is part of this confrontation in
Lebanon. However, it is Hezbollah that constitutes
the main part of this front.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> Do you think the
conditions are present for a full intifada at
this point?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>I believe the
political horizon in the West Bank is blocked.
We have an extremist government in Israel which
does not believe—the program of the members or
components of the government is publicly known.
When [Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich
talks about the options for Palestinians being
either to completely surrender and work as
wageworkers for Israel, to be displaced, or to
be killed. This is what they call the resolve
program. It is a declared program. And he is a
fundamental part of this Zionist government.
[Israeli National Security Minister Itamar]
Ben-Gvir also has a similar program. So the
political horizon for a Palestinian state is
blocked and the Palestinian people know it. On
the other hand, the magnitude of crimes Israel
is committing in the Gaza Strip have shown they
could not come from a state which claims to be
the oasis of democracy in the region nor an army
governed by laws and rules. Rather, it is a gang
of murderers and criminals killing civilians,
women, and children, whose leaders are being
prosecuted in international courts for war
crimes. So, the blocked horizon and the
magnitude of these crimes leads precisely to an
intifada. </span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">The
form the intifada is currently taking in the West
Bank involves little popular participation due to
the huge security crackdown by Israel. As I
mentioned, there are more than 10,000 detainees in
the enemy’s prisons. Also, the operations have not
ceased. These people are not without families,
supporters, organizations; the same goes for
detainees. This magnitude paves the way for a big
popular uprising in the near future hopefully.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">I
would like to add that there is no Hamas in the
West Bank nor is there an October 7. What is there
in the West Bank is Oslo. Nonetheless, assaults by
settlers in the West Bank are commonplace.
Thousands of settlers are being armed away from
any formal structures even the Zionist army and
police. These are Ben-Gvir’s militias. The crimes
being perpetrated in the West Bank are
unprecedented. The settlements that are being
built today and recognized are arbitrary settler
clusters which even radical Israeli governments
had refused to recognize. Nonetheless, they are
being legalized now.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Palestinians
in Gaza are killed. In the West Bank, however,
they lose their lands which are turned into
settlements and lose their livelihoods. That’s why
the situation in the West Bank will explode, and I
believe it is going to be a big bloody conflict.
The West is now turning a blind eye and talking
about Gaza and the administration of Gaza, but
Israel and Netanyahu refuse even the presence of
the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. He is trying to
come up with alternatives away from the
Palestinian Authority, which is working in the
West Bank in accordance with the Oslo Accord,
restricting itself by the so-called “security
coordination.” Hence, the horizon is completely
blocked. The conflict in the West Bank is going to
be bloody. Then the West would turn and say,
“two-state solution.” But that’s nonsense because
what we see on the ground is more relevant than
the statements we hear and which have no value.</p>
<div class="pullquote"
style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e6e6; border-top: 1px solid #e6e6e6; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px auto;">
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px 0; text-align: center;">“The
situation in the West Bank will explode, and I
believe it is going to be a big bloody
conflict.”</p>
</div>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> The most cliché question
any reporter asks any Palestinian is, “What do
you think about the two-state solution?” But
that is what is being pushed by the Biden
administration. When I’ve interviewed officials
from Hamas, they say that if the democratic will
of the Palestinian people was to establish a
state along the 1967 borders, Hamas would not
stand in the way of this. What is the position
of Palestinian Islamic Jihad on this?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> This is not a realistic
question. It is not as though anything depends
on this question. Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo
Accords and accepted the two-state solution and
he was the head of the PLO; he signed on its
behalf. Thirty-one years later, the lands on
which the Palestinian state was supposed to be
established have become the second Israel. They
have become a state for settlers. It seems that
a two-state solution was about the first state
of Israel of 1948 and the second Israel in 1967.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Even
Gaza has been under a suffocating blockade for 17
years because no one wants Gaza, this narrow strip
of land on which 2.5 million Palestinians live. So
with the question of the two-state solution, the
West asks, “What is Hamas’s position on the
two-state solution?” But Yasser Arafat had already
signed off on the two-state solution 31 years ago,
and it was for nothing. Some journalists ask about
the position of Islamic Jihad of a two-state
solution, but no one asks the Israeli parties who
constitute the government and are members in the
Knesset and who are calling for eliminating the
Palestinian cause and displacing the Palestinian
people in whole, calling for a transfer while
being in the Zionist decision-making position. So,
we object to putting the Palestinian people to a
test by asking, “What is the position of the
factions on the two-state solution?” This is not
logical.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">On
the other hand, Hamas is sometimes forced to
answer this question because it is administering
the Gaza Strip and everybody wants to ask Hamas,
“What if it were the wish of the Palestinian
people?” But Israel refuses that solution, objects
to it and resists it. It is building a state on
the lands that were supposed to become the lands
of the Palestinian state. Now some propose a
one-state solution. If they are really keen on
democracy, there is a Palestinian population in
the occupied lands across historic Palestine. What
about state governance? Why doesn’t anyone ask
about one state where all citizens enjoy the same
rights?</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">So
as a matter of principle, I believe we are in a
national liberation stage which requires
resistance. When there is a partner willing to
solve the Palestinian issue, whether in Israel or
the West, especially the United States, only then
they can talk. Now, however, talking of a
two-state solution offers the Palestinian people
mere illusions as though the U.S. administration
and the West are keen on the two-state solution.
The American wizard has just pulled this out from
their pocket to throw it against Al-Aqsa Flood.
That’s all! They are even talking about a renewed
authority, not even about the Palestinian
Authority which is the partner in the two-state
solution. They are talking about a new authority
and no one even knows what that is. Nonetheless,
Israel refuses that proposal. It says the Israeli
army will re-occupy the Gaza Strip, but because of
the security concerns and the heavy cost of such
return, Israel wants to find some sort of agents
in the administration of Gaza and when they fail,
then [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken for
example would make a statement saying we don’t
accept occupation, we don’t accept that Hamas
manages Gaza, we don’t accept chaos. Tell us
please, what is the alternative? Make a proposal.
So the problem is not with the Palestinian people
nor with Palestinian factions to answer this
question. The problem is basically that Israel
does not want to give us any of our rights and the
American administration sponsors this Israeli
position and does not dare, for many reasons, to
face this blocked horizon. </p>
<div class="pullquote"
style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e6e6; border-top: 1px solid #e6e6e6; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px auto;">
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px 0; text-align: center;">“Blinken
for example would make a statement saying we
don’t accept occupation, we don’t accept that
Hamas manages Gaza, we don’t accept chaos. Tell
us please, what is the alternative? Make a
proposal.”</p>
</div>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Our
problem lies in the injustice inflicted upon us,
the aggression against us. Our problem is not with
the Jews, not with the Americans. It is injustice.
So, if Netanyahu stood on the highest minaret in
Palestine, or the minaret of Al-Aqsa Mosque and
embraced Islam, the problem would not be over. Our
problem with Netanyahu and Israel is because they
occupied our land, killed our people, and they are
engaging in aggression against us. Even if he
embraced Islam, the problem would still be there.
The Americans must understand this.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> What would an acceptable
resolution look like from your perspective?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> Look, let’s agree on
some basic rules. After 76 years, the
Palestinian people have not given in, and they
started Al-Aqsa Flood. Israel is governed by an
unprecedented radical government that believes
only in ending the conflict with a resolve that
is full of racism and grudge. This puts things
at an unreconcilable position.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">For
us as Palestinians, and I’m not talking about a
resistance group, Islamic Jihad or Hamas, unless
we achieve our rights, there will be no stability
in the region. The whole world is shifting. There
are ongoing international conflicts which affect
the Palestinian issue and are affected by it. The
region is also changing. The region today is not
what it was ten years ago when it seemed the Arabs
had turned their backs on the Palestinian people
and the whole thing was over. It is clear now that
there are back up fronts supporting the
Palestinian cause. The internal Palestinian
setting is also shifting.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">After
more than 30 years, Oslo is over. The Palestinian
Authority is now being used as a security tool. It
is clear that the constituency of Fatah is also
engaging in the confrontation against Israel and
is not content with the position of the
[Palestinian] Authority. The Palestinian
resistance in Gaza has persevered in Gaza for nine
months and is still in good shape and ready to
persist in a way no one could expect. All those
changes must be taken into account when talking
about the Palestinian cause. The rights of the
Palestinian people at the bare minimum which was
agreed upon involved a state in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. This is the minimum which the
Palestinian people could accept as a first stage.
We are not against Jews living amongst us in the
region, but they can’t dominate, take control, and
lead the region and arrange it on security terms
in accordance with their interests and those of
their allies. This region has its people who have
rights which they will not give up.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Time
is in favor of the Palestinian people, despite all
the pain we experience. All those illusions in the
minds of Israeli leaders are shattering before the
new reality in the region and the world.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> Do you believe that Jews
who emigrated from Europe or the United States
or Australia or South Africa have a right to
live in that state?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>We don’t have a
problem with them if they were not conspiring,
engaging in aggression, inflicting injustice,
controlling the region. We don’t have a problem
otherwise.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> What purpose do Mahmoud
Abbas and the Palestinian Authority serve right
now?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> Mahmoud Abbas has a
vision and a project which were translated into
the Oslo Accord. Now, 31 years on, the vision of
Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority is
evaporating. They’ve become completely
irrelevant whether for political partnership
with Israel or for the resistance. So this whole
project is coming to its long-expected end. I
believe the PA’s project is disintegrating over
time.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">First,
it has not yielded the bare minimum expectations
it was built upon. Second, Israel is only dealing
with it temporarily to manage the situation in the
West Bank while it has no true sovereignty
whatsoever, even in Area B. In Area A, too, there
is no real sovereignty whatsoever. Israel enters
those areas whenever it wants, arrests whoever it
wants in Area A. So with time, I believe any
opinion poll in the West Bank will find that most
Palestinian people are with the resistance, not
with the PA. So the Oslo project was basically
what Yasser Arafat and then Mahmoud Abbas hoped
would evolve into a state in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. Israel, however, wanted it to be a
tool to manage the Palestinian people so it would
be an easy, uncostly occupation. The balance of
power helped Israel achieve that goal, achieve its
vision of this agreement. On the ground, it
stripped the PA of any sovereignty and rendered it
into a tool to manage Palestinian communities.
Then it built that separation wall which devoured
large swathes of the West Bank, built these
settlements, Judaized Jerusalem. Thus, the PA
project is almost over.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> Would it be better for
the Palestinian people if there was no PA? What
would replace it?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>The alternative would
be an internal Palestinian agreement. There are
fundamental Palestinian powers which did not
exist when the PLO was built. Hamas and Islamic
Jihad are not in the PLO despite being primary
active powers on the ground. The PLO comprises
factions. Fatah, as a faction, is present and
has its impact and constituency. But most other
factions are marginal factions with no
significant presence. Internal Palestinian
arrangements must now be built on the realities
and the actors on the ground rather than on the
situation back in the 1960s and 1970s.
Therefore, rebuilding the PLO is, in my opinion,
the best way to approach rearranging the
internal Palestinian structure.</span></p>
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<p
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<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> If the negotiations
between Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and
the Israelis result in the freeing of Marwan
Barghouti, would you support his candidacy to
become president of an independent
internationally recognized Palestine? </span><em>[Note:
Barghouti is a Palestinian resistance leader
imprisoned by Israel since 2002. While he is a
member of the ruling Fatah party, he was a vocal
critic of the Oslo agreement, and Hamas and PIJ
have consistently demanded his freedom.
Sometimes referred to as the Palestinian Nelson
Mandela, he is widely viewed as the most popular
choice among Palestinians to be a future
president of an independent state.]</em></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>It is premature to
say. First, there is the issue of releasing
Marwan Barghouti. Of course, we demand releasing
all Palestinian prisoners including leaders of
the Palestinian resistance, Marwan Barghouti,
all of them. The question of running for
president later is something for Fatah to
decide. Barghouti is a leader of Fatah and if
they nominate him, then this can be discussed.
So Islamic Jihad or Hamas, just for being the
reason for his release will not support or
otherwise oppose him. It is for Fatah to
nominate him, and then we look into all the
candidates and we reach certain agreements. So
this is quite premature. But I can say that in
Islamic Jihad, we are keen on having a solid,
strong, and cohesive Fatah that is internally
unified.</span></p>
<h1 class="header-anchor-post"
style="-moz-appearance: optimizelegibility; -moz-osx-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-appearance: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; appearance: optimizelegibility; color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-family: 'SF Pro Display', -apple-system-headline, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol'; font-size: 2em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.16em; margin: 1em 0 0.625em 0; position: relative;">The
Axis of Resistance</h1>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>In the broader news
media there is a lot of reporting that asserts
that Palestinian Islamic Jihad is supported
quite significantly by Iran, and I wanted to ask
you about the relationship with Iran and if
these reports are true that there is military
and financial support being given by Tehran to
Palestinian Islamic Jihad?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>We are a Palestinian
resistance movement. Our struggle started before
the Iranian Revolution. The struggle of the
Palestinian people has been ongoing for 76
years. We are grateful and appreciate all those
who stand by our side. Now, Iran stands by the
Palestinian people and the Palestinian
resistance. It supports the Palestinian people
and resistance with all that the Palestinian
people may need. This is declared and obvious
for everyone. It is no secret. The Islamic Jihad
movement started in terms of discussion and
internal dialogue before the 1979 revolution. We
started in the mid-1970s. We started resistance
in the early 1980s before having any relations
with the Islamic Republic. We were in occupation
prisons in the Gaza Strip and we did not know
anyone from Iran. We started because we had our
vision and understanding of history and politics
in the region. So we fulfilled our duty. Now,
Iran comes and supports us. We appreciate this
support. Especially at a time when the Arabs
abandon us, go to Israel and reach agreements
with it.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">When
it comes to Iran, the big fuss in the Western
media and even in the region was caused by Israel
who is trying to say, in the context of
normalization with the Arabs, that there is a new
enemy for the Arabs in the region while Israel is
becoming an ally rather than an enemy. This is the
context within which the Iranian role is discussed
and the Iranian support for the resistance which
Israel and part of the West designate as
terrorist. Therefore, it invented that enemy
suggesting that the region has Israel, who is an
ally to Sunni states in the region, and there are
agreements and peace deals being reached while
there is an enemy that constitutes a threat to
everyone, both the Sunni states and Israel. This
enemy is Iran which is supporting ‘terrorist
movements’ in the region, namely the Palestinian
resistance. Israel is thus trying to invade the
whole region as such. However, Iran is not a
transient state.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">If
we look at the populations inhabiting this region
for thousands of years, we see Arabs, Persians,
and Turks. Iran is nothing new. It is a recognized
state in the region and has its interests. Arabs
and non-Arabs recognize these interests. It is a
state that cannot be overlooked in the region.
Israel is the transient state. That’s why it is
trying to change the equation. These accusations
are leveled at the Islamic Jihad or Hamas or the
Palestinian resistance suggesting they follow
Iranian commands or as though they are part of
this alliance deemed as “devilish” against Western
and world interests.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>Is it true that there
is a command center of sorts where the
factions—whether it’s Iran or the Islamic
resistance in Iraq or the Houthis in Yemen,
Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad—is
there an official agreement on coordination in
resistance?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> Whether there is or
there is not is not a matter of media
discussion. There is resistance engaged in a
battle right now, a confrontation. There are
back up fronts. That’s all that can be said on
this matter. This is what is publicly known and
declared. I have nothing to say.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>What’s your current
political analysis of what might happen in
Lebanon? It seems as though the Israelis want at
least to engage in some form of more intense
warfare against Lebanon, against Hezbollah. The
Biden administration has indicated it would
support Israel in such a war.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> Hezbollah declared they
opened a backup front since October 8 and that
confrontations on this front will not stop
unless the aggression on Gaza stops. Now, Israel
is threatening to expand the war and some
hardline voices in the Israeli government are
calling for a full-fledged war in south Lebanon.
But I believe it is unlikely. First of all,
Israel is exhausted; its army is exhausted in
the Gaza Strip. For nine months so far, they
have not been able to resolve anything or
achieve any of its declared goals. It is sinking
in the Gaza quicksand. Despite all the violence
and massacres, Israel’s options in Gaza now are
hard. Be it staying in Gaza, or having a partial
withdrawal and redeployment and maintaining the
Philadelphi Corridor or Netzarim Corridor, or
complete withdrawal. Israel is unable to resolve
any of its problems in Gaza. So, how can it take
an exhausted army to a war in south Lebanon?
They know Hezbollah has multiple times the
capabilities of the resistance in Gaza.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">It
also knows that Hezbollah territory is not like
Gaza, i.e., open like a football field. The
topography is quite different. The front in
Lebanon, also, is not closed like Gaza but could
be said to extend from the Mediterranean to the
Caspian Sea.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">On
the other hand, what targets does Israel have in
Lebanon? Are there military targets or economic
facilities of Hezbollah for Israel to target?
Israel might destroy the southern suburb of Beirut
in terms of buildings. But what targets are there
in Lebanon? None. In Israel, there are hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of military and economic
targets for Hezbollah. They have published some
such targets around two weeks ago. The targets
were filmed and published.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Further,
is the decision to wage a war on Lebanon a purely
Israeli decision? Or does it need an American
approval or greenlight in a decision which could
drag the region into a regional war which may be
hard to contain? The Americans are not in a
position now to allow for a war that may expand
into a regional war at such critical times with
the upcoming elections, the war in Ukraine, and
other issues. That’s why I believe all Israeli
threats, particularly by Netanyahu and his
minister Gallant, are just empty words.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill:</strong><span> Do you feel betrayed by
the Arab nations in general in this situation
post-October 7? Do you think the approach to the
Abraham Accords and the other negotiations that
the U.S. is engaged in to try to normalize
relations between Israel and Arab nation states
represents a betrayal of the Palestinian cause?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi:</strong><span> Since the beginning of
the normalization agreements, the Abraham
Accords, it was clear that the Arabs have
abandoned their previously held position adopted
in the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002, which
talks about willingness to normalize relations
with Israel only when the Palestinian issue is
addressed through the two-state solution. Then
they made this leap in the Abraham Accords,
namely normalization; they had made up their
minds. However, now we have October 7. What was
before October 7 is different from what comes
after, including for the regimes which have
normalized relations with Israel.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">The
vision of these regimes depends on the outcome of
this war. So, everybody is waiting to see what
this confrontation in Gaza will bring. It is clear
that Israel has not achieved any of its goals so
far and will emerge in a different light, not the
light in which it was seen when it signed the
Abraham Accords. In the Abraham Accords, it was
regarded as a strong state that can replace the
U.S. when it gradually withdraws from the region
to southeast Asia for its confrontations with
China and the Russians. Israel would take the lead
in the region. This perception has now changed.
And based on the outcome of the battle in Gaza, it
is clear things will continue to be different from
before.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Of
course, we will not see quick and clear results at
the beginning, but these are states who have
interests. I expect these states would, in the
medium term or sooner, start to act based on the
rules upon which the region would be built after
October 7.</p>
<h1 class="header-anchor-post"
style="-moz-appearance: optimizelegibility; -moz-osx-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-appearance: optimizelegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; appearance: optimizelegibility; color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-family: 'SF Pro Display', -apple-system-headline, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol'; font-size: 2em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.16em; margin: 1em 0 0.625em 0; position: relative;">How
Does the Palestinian Resistance View Biden vs.
Trump?</h1>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>I’ve reviewed your
history going back to the 1980s, and you’ve been
been in this struggle through many U.S.
administrations. What is Joe Biden’s place in
history?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>We kind of miss Trump
now, his debates and statements. President Biden
is not to be seen as one person, but he
represents the Democratic Party which has a
clear policy. He is an expert. President Biden
is not a newcomer to politics. He is an expert
with extensive experience. He spent a lifetime
working in politics as a senator,
vice-president, etc. He is a veteran
[politician]. He represents the Democratic Party
quite well. He has a grasp of balances in the
international arena. He made a mistake,
probably, when he led the battle by coming to
Israel and attending the first cabinet of war.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">I
believe his calculations failed him in this
regard. Netanyahu, who has a long experience in
dealing with the various administrations,
especially during elections, was the winner in
this case with Biden’s blunt involvement in the
war. Netanyahu went to the Congress during the
Obama administration. He has prior experience. He
is going to go there now, too. It is clear he will
try to linger in Gaza until the U.S. elections, in
one way or another, in the hope things will be
resolved if Trump wins the elections.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">The
U.S. administration is restricted, be it Democrats
or Republicans. They are bound by internal
affairs, lobbies, capitalists, businesspeople.
U.S. elections are affected by all those factors.
Quite frankly, we don’t count much on the outcome
of those elections.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">At
the grassroots level in the American society, at
the level of the youth, there are genuine shifts
and many free and humane voices that are spreading
in universities. Even the American officer who
torched himself—we would build a monument for him
not just in Gaza but in our hearts. These are
quite strong manifestations. However, these free
and humane moves would not translate—and we do not
expect them to translate—into policies which would
govern the U.S. administration.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>I’m wondering if you
think the situation for Palestinians would be
better if Trump won instead of Biden?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>I believe this depends
on how things evolve on certain issues. Trump,
at the end of the day, just like Biden, would be
looking after American interests. So,
developments in the region, developments in the
world, the war in Ukraine, tensions with China,
all those are factors that influence any
American president, Democrat or Republican. I
believe the world is shifting, the region is
changing, the Palestinian people are moving, the
Palestinian resistance has proven that it is not
a player that can be overlooked. There are
existing regional powers that support the
Palestinian people. All of this must be taken
into account. The ongoing war in Ukraine, its
outcomes and trends, the rules it instills, the
conflict with China, all these issues will
affect the approach adopted by Trump or any
Democrat president, be it Biden, if he continues
as a candidate, or any other Democrat candidate.
We prefer to have a candidate other than Biden,
though.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">Israel’s
strategic weight in the region has undoubtedly
been affected. How would regional states, allies
of the U.S., look at Israel now after this failure
on October 7 and for over nine months? This is
important. How would the world regard Israel as
well? In the eyes of the world and the region,
would Israel, who have failed so miserably before
Gaza, be a reliable ally to be trusted with
protecting the region and securing its security
and political and economic future? So, any future
president will find those changes on the table and
they cannot be disregarded. Especially if he is a
businessman like Trump.</p>
<div class="pullquote"
style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e6e6; border-top: 1px solid #e6e6e6; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px auto;">
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 26px; margin: 32px 0; text-align: center;">“Trump,
at the end of the day, just like Biden, would be
looking after American interests. … We prefer to
have a candidate other than Biden, though.”</p>
</div>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">The
UN Secretary General spoke in honest, human and
strong terms and exposed Israel. The ICJ and ICC
are rightly prosecuting Israel. Yet we are
concerned that all the resonance of these crimes
would fade away and cool down with time. That is
why it is very important for us that the U.S.,
especially the new generation, would maintain this
relationship, which is not about Palestine alone.
Rather, Palestine has become a symbol of resisting
injustice, imperialism, and encroachment on
humanity at large. These are crimes unprecedented
in human history being broadcast for the first
time on air around the clock.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">I
would like to stress one more time, there are some
Jewish voices, especially in the United States,
who are better than some Arabs and Muslims.
Zionism is an idea and a policy. One might find
Arabs or Muslims who are Zionist, too. Just like
there are Christian and Jewish Zionists, there are
Muslim Zionists. So, I reiterate again that we
respect all those voices, those free voices who
want humanity to prevail at the end of this
battle, and we believe our battle in Palestine is
the battle of all against injustice, encroachment,
grudge, racism: a battle against all those evils
which the American people oppose.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><span>All
the more so because this conflict will not be
over with the end of this war. It is an open
conflict. So, while we understand these voices
will not be translated into policies overnight,
since this is an open conflict, these voices
will have a significant impact in the future.
There have been some important American examples
such as Rachel Corrie who stood before the
bulldozer in the past in Rafah. </span><em>[Note:
Corrie was an American activist who was killed
in Rafah, Gaza, in 2003 as she tried to prevent
Israeli forces from demolishing Palestinian
homes.]</em></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill: </strong><span>I read the U.S. State
Department designation of you as a specially
designated terrorist and I’d like to hear your
comment on that designation.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>I believe the
Americans do not know Mohammed Al-Hindi. It is
the Israelis who introduced me to them, so this
designation is ultimately Israeli. They said,
“These are terrorists.” At the time, when they
designated me years ago, they said as deputy
secretary general of Islamic Jihad, he holds
responsibility for the movement’s acts of
resistance. So, the Americans took decisions
that had no value whatsoever like freezing
assets. I have never been to the U.S., nor do I
have a dime in American banks or other banks.
So, these decisions are just without any value
and have no bearing on the ground. I believe
these are Israeli decisions par excellence.</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">There
is a sheikh associated with the founding of the
Islamic Jihad movement. His name was Abd Al Aziz
Awda. He returned to Gaza after the Oslo Accord.
An American newspaper wrote about him at the time
saying he was a founding member of the Islamic
Jihad and mentioned his name among four names
which the paper said were dangerous and wanted. He
was told the Americans are saying so-and-so about
you. He said that is not important. What is
important is that Israel knows the truth.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;">The
Americans see the region with only one lens, which
is Israel’s, because it is their project. So, all
those decisions have no bearing and no value for
the resistance but only make us more determined.</p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Jeremy
Scahill</strong><span>: Is there</span><strong>
</strong><span>any message that you would want to
send to the American people or the U.S.
government?</span></p>
<p
style="color: rgb(54, 55, 55); font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; margin: 0 0 20px 0;"><strong>Mohammed
Al-Hindi: </strong><span>The American people
are free people. The movements we see in
American universities and the voices of
important American figures give us hope. We
appreciate all this, and we believe that
humanity will prevail, hopefully soon.</span><strong>
</strong><span>For us, in Palestine, it is our
duty to fight the Zionist project as a threat
not just to the Palestinians but to the whole
region. In short, there can be no security or
stability in the region unless the Palestinian
people access their minimum rights. Now Al-Aqsa
Flood has brought the conflict back to square
one in a way no one could foresee. This is not
the message of Hamas alone. This is the message
of the Palestinian people as a whole.</span></p>
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