Hamas: righteous resistance or genocidal terrorists?

“The righteous Palestinian resistance has nearly brought Israel to its knees,” cries a pro-Palestine activist, at a protest for the SOAS Palestinian Society in London on 9 October. But there

was nothing “righteous” about the slaughter and burning of the innocent. Such absurd rhetoric is creating an inflammatory conflation of the Hamas terrorist attack on Saturday 7th October on

Israel with more orthodox Palestinian resistance. People are increasingly corralled into binary reductionist thinking on the conflict. In part this is due to factions demanding allegiance

and the echo chambers that exist in both on and offline comment. This feeds only one narrative and is due to an innate tribalism, heightened during times of conflict. Consequently,

engagement with facts and complexity becomes ever more challenging.

When people and institutions fail to judiciously engage with a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) situation such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we can expect an escalation

in violent rhetoric, ultimately leading to physical violence, and the cycle of “an eye for an eye” continues. Hamas cannot be part of the solution towards a Palestinian homeland. Appeasing

them undermines both the Palestinian plight and the much needed two-state solution. Here is why.

Hamas, founded in 1987, emerged as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood militant Islamist group . Their mission is to establish an Islamic state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean

Sea, which for all practical purposes means the annihilation of Israel. Article 13 of its original covenant reads “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.

Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors… As is said in the honorable Hadith:

‘The people of Syria are Allah’s lash in His land. He wreaks His vengeance through them against whomsoever He wishes among His slaves. It is unthinkable that those who are double-faced among

them should prosper over the faithful. They will certainly die out of grief and desperation.’”

Hamas remains opposed to the two-state solution.  Its updated policy document, published in 2017, does suggest Hamas could tolerate Israel withdrawing to its 1967 borders, but also says it

could never recognize the Jewish state permanently, and commits itself to continued armed resistance. Subsequent warlike statements from senior Hamas figures have suggested even this

concession is merely tactical.  The Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said recently: “Our struggle will continue until the last Zionist leaves our land.” Then last week, according to numerous

translations, Haniyeh’s predecessor Khaled Mashal, called for jihad against all Jews in the Middle East and elsewhere.[1]

Hamas, like the Muslim Brotherhood generally, are and always have been inspired by the ideologue Syeed Qutb (1906-1966). Qutb himself was inspired by South Asian Islamist and founder of

Jamaat-e-Islami, Sayyid Maududi, who, in the face of British colonialism on the subcontinent, advocated Islamisation and the creation of an Islamic State. Qutb developed this idea into a

call for a global jihad against all infidels, but especially against America and Jews, in order to bring about Islamic global hegemony. Well into the 21st century, both Qutb and Maududi were

Islamist pin up boys on the website of the Muslim Association of Britain.

Qutb literally seethed with antisemitism. For example, he wrote: “Against the first signs of Islamic revival, from every place on the face of earth stood the Jews.” Qutb’s work became an

inspiration for jihadist movements across the globe: ISIS, Hezbollah and Hamas, to name a few. The leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, translated two of Qutb’s books into

Persian.

Iran both funds and provides systemic support to Hamas. Underpinned by pan-Islamist, Qutbist ideals and hooked on extremist interpretations of Islamic scripture, the Iranian regime and Hamas

share an apocalyptic vision: to remove Israel and to eliminate all Jews. They hope thereby to bring about the end days, when Mohammed will return and bring heaven on earth. That, at least,

has been their rhetoric. Given the history of the Jewish people, one can’t blame Israel for taking the Iranians and their allies, Hamas and Hezbollah, at their word. Theirs is a vision of

genocidal antisemitism.

Their ambition to eliminate the “Zionist entity” finds its roots in the widely cited hadith:

“The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a

tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.”

It is this fundamentalist and supremacist thinking that led to beheaded babies, children burnt alive, and a pregnant woman disemboweled on October 7th. These and many other bestial acts were

not a demonstration of fighting for freedom. They were not “gunmen”, “fighters” or “militants” — as the BBC rulebook requires Hamas to be called. They neither fight for an internationally

recognised state nor a recognised government. They were not acting to return land to Palestinians, and they knew their actions would result in immeasurable Palestinian suffering. They were

aiming to eliminate as many Jews as possible, to draw the Western world into war and ultimately bring about Islamist control of the Middle East.

Poor policy decisions, inaction in the face of persecution, and brazen lack of adherence to international law in the West Bank has left Israel unpopular with traditional leftists and given

ammunition to antisemites. It has also fueled radicalisation in Palestine, which only goes to increase the threat to the Jewish state’s survival.

Palestinians in the West Bank have witnessed the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements. A messianic – and often extreme — minority of Israelis, driven by a dangerous cocktail of theology

and history, also believe that the West Bank belongs entirely to the Jewish nation. This territorial land grab by Jewish settlers is at the heart of the grievances in the West Bank, where

even “West Bank” is impermissible as a term. Not just fundamentalists, but an increasing number of Israelis appear to refer to the area by its biblical name “Judea and Samaria” as part of

their claim that this sacred land should be returned to Jews. More than 500,000 settlers now live in gated communities, and  often engage in violence and vandalism towards Palestinians, to

which Palestinians have no legal recourse as the areas in which they live are under Israeli civil and military control. This instills a feeling of hopelessness among the West Bank

Palestinians and this hopelessness has increasingly translated into support for Hamas. The fact that many liberal West Bank Palestinians don’t share Hamas’s Islamist fundamentalist ideals,

and enjoy a drink at the poolside bars and night clubs in Ramallah, is taking second place to this despair, as Palestinians of all stripes contemplate an occupation without end.

Opinion surveys in September, on the eve of the October 7th massacre, showed that 58% of West Bank Palestinians favoured Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh over PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas as overall

leader of the Palestinian people. Similar polls held in 2019 showed that only 41% of the voters favored Haniyeh over Abbas. Settlement expansion, the growing unlikelihood of a two-state

solution and corruption within the governing Palestinian Authority have fuelled the popularity of Hamas.

A Palestinian friend living in the West Bank, who has spent a lot of time countering Islamist extremism in Palestine and its impact on women’s rights, told me:

“Currently, everyone is celebrating what Hamas is doing… The daily assaults, killings, and violations by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem, especially in

recent times, have made the Palestinian people lose hope in the future and in everything.”

He lamented the squandering of  years of work towards peace and reconciliation, leaving Palestinians with no interest in the help or opinions of the international community. Instead they are

turning to celebrating Hamas in the streets.  

Eric Fromm, the psychoanalyst and political philosopher, wrote that “when a man cannot find space for self-expression, they become destructive”. Hopelessness in the Palestinian people is a

disastrous recipe which will only lead to further radicalisation of young Palestinians. It is inevitable that ever more of those who previously had no interest in Islamic extremism, turn to

Hamas.

Despite the shifting public sentiment, PA’s President Mahmoud Abbas made a stand on 15 October, unequivocally declaring that Hamas’ actions do not represent the Palestinian people. Echoing

his sentiments, another Palestinian leader added: “Our primary goal remains the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state coexisting peacefully alongside Israel. Violence and extremism

will never achieve this.”

It has always been obvious that a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict can never be rooted in extremes – more so now than ever. Compassionate approaches emphasize the mutual benefit of

a strong Israel coexisting with a self-reliant Palestine. At every practical level, two states remains the only show in town – however distant that prospect might seem. The events of recent

months underscore the importance of pursuing this goal allowing both states to flourish side by side.

A solution must include the removal of some of the settlements in the Jordan valley, with a quid pro quo from Palestinians that there can be no “right of return”. Both sides will ferociously

contest such concessions, but there is no viable territory that qualifies as a sovereign state without the Jordan valley; equally, it is just as unreal for Palestinians to expect to be able

to return to homes which may no longer exist or have now been inhabited by Israeli families for generations. Those settlements within the green line along the Western, Northern and Southern

border of Palestine are too populous and too numerous to remove. This  means that a new Palestine will have to concede this territory in exchange for an equivalent amount of land in

uninhabited areas. As for settlements dotted throughout the West Bank, this will be the greatest challenge: either these families can be given large compensation packages to move back to

within Israel, or given the opportunity to become Jewish Palestinians. For the latter, protection will be required for settlements as a part of a collaboration between Palestinian and

Israeli police, unless and until communities over a period of years can be brought to a point where they can live side by side without violence. Only then could an Israeli police presence be

phased out. All that said, the enforced removal of many settlements will be impossible. This is not Gaza in 2005.

The status of Jerusalem will continue to block mutual consensus. It therefore needs to be neither the Jewish nor the Palestinian state capital, with access ensured to holy sites for both

communities. This will be perhaps the most complex to solve as neither will accept splitting the city whilst both make religious claims over each others’ sites. But compromise is the only

way. Ultimately there will need to be a shift in priorities from religious and historic claims to humanitarian aims. The majority in both communities need to accept that fighting and dying

over Jerusalem will lead to nothing but more death and destruction.

Those of us who want to see a free Palestine, eventually controlling its own borders, are left distraught by the antisemitism ripping through our British cities. The potential to irrevocably

damage support for a two-state solution for Palestine is there. Meanwhile, Hamas’s  genocidal attack on 7 October has destroyed whatever claim to be a “resistance movement” it might

previously have had. In fact, it has underlined the need for the Jewish state more than ever.  As for the Israelis and the Palestinians, if the terrible events of 7 October don’t make both

sides see the need for a new start, then nothing will.

[1] Report: Hamas calls for global Jihad, attack Jews worldwide Friday (americanmilitarynews.com)

By proceeding, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and our Privacy Policy.

If an account exists for this email address, you will shortly receive an email from us. You will then need to:

Please note, this link will only be valid for 24 hours. If you do not receive our email, please check your Junk Mail folder and add [email protected] to your safe list.