[R-G] Fwd: Mohamed Hassan answers your questions about Hamas

[Anthony Fenton]

Mohamed Hassan answers your questions about Hamas :
“Gaza is a normal place with normal people”
INTERVIEW : Grégoire Lalieu & Michel Collon

Many readers reacted positively to our Mohamed Hassan’s interview  
about the Hamas. A lot of people expressed indeed their need of clear,  
precise and contextual information. So we are going to make with our  
Middle East specialist a series of interviews “Understanding the  
Muslim world”. Our goal is to give you the keys to understand the  
issues specific to this region, rich in resources and coveted by the  
great powers. The next chapter of this folder will be about the Darfur  
crisis and will be published next month. Elsewhere, some readers asked  
further questions on the previous interview (see below). Mohamed  
Hassan answers in a second discussion that closes the first chapter  
dedicated to the Hamas.

The Hamas is presented as a terrorist and fundamentalist movement. But  
in a sociological view, what kind of leaders and active militant  
compose the Hamas?
Mohamed Hassan. What you’ve got to understand is that Gaza is a normal  
place with normal people. But, in a new colonial type, Israel doesn’t  
allow the Palestinian economy to develop because it is a real danger  
for them. Gaza has a really good base of traditional artisans. It’s  
for that reason that Arafat told to the European Parliament: “If you  
help us, we’ll make our country a new Singapore. If you don’t, it will  
be Somalia!” Israel is afraid of that. That’s why they stifle the  
Palestinian economy to keep the monopoly. Gaza is an urban society  
with very active people: intellectuals, clericals, petite bourgeoisie,  
women associations, businessmen who work in the import export... All  
those classes compose the Hamas as a nationalist movement. You’ve got  
also peasantry but in a very small proportion. Gaza is indeed one of  
the most densely populated places in the world so there is not very  
much land to exploit.

So, the Hamas is composed by all the classes of the Palestinian  
society. Does it lead to contradictions among the movement?
Mohamed Hassan. Of course it’s not perfectly homogeneous but  
currently, the Hamas is unifying all those people in the resistance.  
And the main contradiction among the movement is to be more or less  
radical in that struggle. I know that some Europeans wish that the  
resistance could be led by a more progressive movement but History is  
not an exact science. Let me make a comparison with Indonesia. The  
first anticolonial movement was Sarakat al Islam, an Islamic  
nationalist movement created in 1920 to fight against the Dutch  
occupation. In this situation, Lenin sent a Dutch communist, Henk  
Sneevliet, into Indonesia. When he arrived in Indonesia, he found that  
young nationalist movement Islamic. What would you do in his position?  
Henk Sneevliet decided to work with them. He was very wise and patient  
and turned the movement into a communist movement, which will become  
the Communist Party of Indonesia, the second biggest communist party  
in Asia. Patience in politics is essential.

Are there communists in Palestine? Is an alliance with the Hamas  
possible like the Hezbollah did with the communists in Lebanon in 2006?
Mohamed Hassan. In Palestine and in the other Muslim countries, you  
need specific communist like the Dutchman; communists with patience,  
vision, independence of their ideas to develop their tactic on the  
ground. They don’t need what I call some “fax communists”, communists  
who give their orders from the outside. All successful revolutions  
have been homemade. But some Arab communists are like hot pepper, red  
on the outside and white on the inside! Every Arab communist must do  
his job with the base specific to his area. In Palestine, they must  
find the most democratic elements who want to struggle against the  
occupation. If it is the Hamas, the communists must be close to them  
and work with them.
You know, I can have contradictions with my wife, my son, my daughter,  
my dog and my cat! But all those contradictions are among the family  
and I must resolve them with discussion and negotiation. But if  
someone puts a gun on me, that will be a main contradiction!  
Palestinian communists have to clarify who are their allies and who  
are their enemies. They can have contradictions with the Hamas and the  
other parties. They need to clarify it in family because those  
contradictions are secondary compared to the problem they have with  
Israel.


You mentioned a resemblance between the Hamas and the IRA, the Irish  
Catholic movement fighting for the total independence of Ireland. But  
the IRA never tried to install a religious state. Isn’t that point  
that blocks the Europeans progressives in their support to Hamas?
Mohamed Hassan. I told you about the Islamic movement in Indonesia.  
Their maximum program was to kick the Dutch out of Indonesia and to  
put an Islamic regime. But the movement changed by itself and became  
later the Communist Party of Indonesia. How will the Hamas evolve?  
There is no crystal ball to tell us. As I said, History is not an  
exact science. Hamas has a maximum program but today, its main task is  
the resistance against the Zionist state. Tomorrow, there could be a  
combination of several factors such as a new leadership and new ideas  
that could make the Hamas taking a democratic revolutionary way. The  
fact is that the progressives who want to take part to the struggle  
for the Palestinians want to have complete guarantees that everything  
will be fine. But there is never complete guarantee. Who could have  
predicted the degeneration of the soviet communist party which had  
made the first socialist revolution in a country and had supported all  
anticolonial movements in the world? Nobody expected too that Arafat  
would negotiate on that particular way the Oslo Accords. So here we  
are: Hamas is the resistance. I don’t support them in their women  
position, in their economic program or in their fatalistic ideas. I  
support them for the most important point: they are nationalist  
resistant fighting on the ground. And who could tell what will be  
tomorrow? You even got Islamic movements which became pro-imperialist  
agents like in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. Why these people asking  
about the Hamas don’t also ask for those countries?

Amnesty condemned the Hamas for the elimination of some opponents  
among the Palestinian society after the war. What can you tell us  
about that?
Mohamed Hassan. Of course, in every war, you can have accidents or  
excesses. But also a major problem : the infiltrators. A war is not  
only shooting guns, it’s also political. Israel doesn’t only attack  
the Palestinians with bombs, they also attack from the inside,  
creating internal enemies. With Egypt and Jordan, Israel had put a  
very sophisticated system of intelligence service. With the help of  
these countries, Israel wants to crush the Palestinian resistance and  
the Hamas. With all the money they’ve got, they can pay traitors.  
These infiltrators use cellular phone and they call Egypt or Jordan.  
Then, the information goes to Israel.
Israel wants to cut the head of the Hamas to crush the movement. In  
order to do that, they must know which house they have to bomb.  
Something important you’ve got to know: the first attack of Israel was  
on the police station of Gaza at a very specific moment: the team  
swift. That was exactly the particular time when you’ve got the  
maximum concentration of policemen at the station. How did Israel  
know? Through its infiltrators. This is a war, not a party! The Hamas  
is defending.

Why did the Hamas recently appropriate the aids from the UN?
Mohamed Hassan. I think the Hamas was smart when they did. Let me  
explain. By the UNRWA and only them, the food and the help came into  
Gaza and Israel could get tactical information out of that. One  
important issue is that the Israeli war was ignited the 27th of  
December on the base that the intelligence knew that there was not a  
lot of food in Gaza. This is how Israel proceeded: first, they closed  
the border to make sure that food will not get in; then, they  
attacked, knowing that the Palestinians couldn’t hold out more than  
ten days. Tsahal bombed the UN depots thinking that without food, the  
population would turn against the Hamas. But after the twelfth day,  
the resistance was continuing and Israel stopped to bomb the UN  
depots. I think that, in the future, the Hamas will not let the food  
burn again under the Israeli bombs. That’s why they want to provide  
the aid distribution by themselves.

Why does the Hamas still send rockets as Israel use it for its war  
propaganda and as it leads to the repression of the Palestinian  
population? Are the “Qassam” useful?
Mohamed Hassan. For a rat, the most dangerous animal is the cat. He  
doesn’t care about a lion or a hippopotamus. And for the cat, the most  
delicious food is a rat. This is the level in which is situated the  
logic of the Qassam. The Qassam are a violation of the embargo and a  
sign of refusing the concentration of the Palestinian people who live  
in a ghetto. It’s a message that oppressed people send: “We’re still  
alive and we will continue the resistance”. It’s also a message to the  
Israeli citizens who believe that the army and the government can  
guarantee their security. But after sixty years, the security of their  
nation is not yet guaranteed. There are a lot of citizens who’re  
leaving Israel so the government has a problem with a demographic  
crisis. That’s why they made a big war to crush the Hamas. And in  
order to have enough Jews and try to resolve the demographic crisis,  
some Israeli leaders even went to the mountains of Peru! They  
converted Indians to Judaism and then, they bring them to Israeli  
border, in the frontline against the enemy. Those Indians received  
houses and guns. There are the new settlers. The fact is that anybody  
can live inside Israel except Palestinians!

Previous interview :
Mohamed Hassan - How can we explain the success of Hamas ?
How can we explain
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