After renewed violence, Israel set up roadblocks and deployed soldiers across the country this week. With no end to Palestinian oppression, liberation movements like Hamas continue their resistance. Janet Smith went to Doha to meet Hamas leader Khalid Mish’al.
Janet Smith: What is the ideological base of Hamas? You’ve described it as a national freedom movement with an Islamist bias.
KhalId Mish’al: We are a national liberation movement. Our main goal is to enable the Palestinian people to get rid of the occupation and live freely on our land, to establish a sovereign state on our land and to live as any people of the world, without invasion, without aggression and without settlements.
At the same time, we are part of our Arab-Islamic environment, we are Muslims but we belong to a part of the world which has all religions living together. There are Muslims, Christians. We have Arabs, non-Arabs. This part of the world has a long, rich history. We have a long experience of tolerance and coexistence of those ethnic and religious groups
Some look up to Hamas as a part of the Islamic phenomenon. But we don’t fight for a chair to get the authority.
Yes, we abide to our Islamic teachings. We are proud of that. We are part of this umma (the Muslim community), we are part of its culture, its civilisation, but without being extreme and without trying to alienate others. We accept the other. We are open-minded on all the components.
This is Hamas.
JS: Hamas has long been in the vanguard of the struggle for the freedom of Palestinians, and armed struggle is familiar to South Africans. It is partly the reason why we have the freedom we have today. Our own president was a leader in that armed struggle.
Yours is not very different to the armed struggle of the ANC. Before taking up arms, they had tried other means, but the regime was unmoved.
However, you have made it very clear that your armed struggle doesn’t exist ubiquitously. You don’t have militia on a daily basis going into Israel or foreign territory. It exists as part of warfare and on specific targets. Is this correct?
KM: Yes. There’s an end, a goal and a means in that sense. Our target is to reclaim our land. We claim our rights, Palestinian rights. How do we achieve this goal? We are open to all options.
One hundred years of Palestinian people’s struggle, we practised all options, all types of struggle – first against the British Mandate and then the Israeli occupation.
We practised the armed struggle. We practised the popular resistance. We have many famous strikes like the one that happened in 1936. We practised intifada, the uprising. Many revolutions since 1921, done by our people.
We negotiated even with the enemy. We practised also the diplomatic engagement. We worked on the regional, international arenas. We dealt with the UN and its resolutions. We acted positively towards all international initiatives sent to try to resolve the conflict. We heard a lot of promises by leaders, by countries, but till now, we are still under occupation.
What do we do? Do we stop? We can’t. So these are not goals by themselves. We understand it as a means to an end.
We would prefer a peaceful route to achieve our goals, rather than the armed struggle. But if we realise that through such peaceful practices or peaceful means we are not achieving the goal, so we are obliged to resist the occupier.
Is this obscure in the world? On a human level, it is understood. It was practised by all peoples of the world. You mentioned South Africa, Vietnam, all over the world, this is common practice. All international laws and human rights conventions over the years have stressed upon the rights of people to resist their occupiers.
Even all the divine religions have also made it legal to have such practices against the oppressor. It’s the right of self-defence, preserved for every human being whatsoever, any religion, any race, from wherever.
It is by Geneva Accord laws, by humanitarian law, that he has the right to self-defence for his land, belongings and life.
It’s a reaction, not action. A reaction against the occupation – and where did we practise that? On our own occupied land – and against who? Against the occupier.
So this is a very legitimate resistance. We didn’t fight anybody but the Israelis who are occupying our land, and we didn’t fight off the borders of Palestine. We would like them to respect our rights.
Some countries, some governments, do not want to understand because they are biased to Israel or they would like to change the world’s mindset, with very unjust terms. Such governments do understand the rights of different peoples of the world to fight their occupier. Why did they respect the right of the people of South Africa to fight or have their legitimate struggle against apartheid, but they don’t when it comes to Palestine?
Why did they respect the right of the French to revolt against the Nazis when they occupied their land?
Why was it legitimate for the Americans to fight the British when they wanted to establish their state?
JS: It’s troubling that international solidarity has not always been there for the Palestinians. Many South Africans, including those in the ANC, don’t understand this, because our natural inclination is to act in solidarity with the oppressed.
What is special about the state of Israel?
KM: It seems that the apartheid regime became obsolete, useless to the international powers at a certain historical moment. And when the time came, they just lifted their hands from supporting apartheid, and they supported the struggle of the South African people to get the right of self-determination.
With respect to the standpoint of the US and some Western countries, it seems that this moment didn’t come yet for Israel. It is still seen as advantageous to have the solidarity with Israel.
It seems Israel is a tool for those Western powers still. They see it as beneficial, not useless, yet.
As you know, this part of the world, the Middle East Arab-Muslim world, with Palestine at the heart of it, it has its own special strategic place.
So maybe those Western powers see that the existence of Israel in the heart of this area would guarantee their control of this region, and it would guarantee that this umma cannot yet be united, and they would guarantee not to see a renaissance of this umma again because of the Israeli occupation in the heart of it.
This region is very important because of the resources – on top, petrol. And it has one of the most important marine routes, like the Suez Canal. This region is significant religious-wise, historical-wise. So Israel’s existence is so important to keep control of.
Some can see that Israel is losing this stance, this importance, as, like an imperial tool in this region, gradually, maybe slowly, it is losing. But I think it will take some time until it is obsolete as an imperial tool. And we can see more and more, mostly after last year’s war waged on Gaza, that Israel is becoming a burden on the shoulders of the Western powers.
There is an even more immoral aspect to look at in terms of this issue.
The Jews in Europe in the late 19th century were becoming like a headache, a burden on those societies. So their intention, those Western powers, they got rid of the Jews who were living among their societies and they punished (all of us) in a very peaceful part of the world, living in a peaceful manner.
It’s so ironic. The contrast is so clear that you see the picture from both sides. It’s very brutal what has happened.
If you look into history, the Jews in societies inside Europe were living in ghettoes, isolated. There was no tolerance with them. There was no coexistence with them among those societies, the European and Western societies. On the other hand, the Jews in our region lived peacefully. We coexisted with them. We were tolerant together. We lived as human beings, common human beings, for hundreds of years, and ironically, the outcome of this was the punishment of the societies who contained Jewish communities.
JS: When he was foreign secretary under Tony Blair, Jack Straw spoke about the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which declared that the British favoured a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and he said Britain didn’t act very honourably.
Islamic State, Daesh, has also often referred to the Sykes-Picot Line when Western powers decided the fate of the Middle East in 1916.
The early history is very important, the Arab Revolt and so on, and we’re not reminded of that. We’re not reminded of the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and how that impacted. What we’re reminded of is the post-1948 situation.
Let’s talk about when Israel was created, and specifically the colonial powers that existed then. Your aggression has not been directed at them. How have you been able to contain what must be a very fundamental anger about what happened?
KM: We need to be more accurate in reading that part of our history, looking at the Palestinian case separately and Arab states in another manner or another aspect before 1948.
Our Palestinian people had their struggle. They fought the British Mandate. They spent 30 years of struggle against the British Mandate, and when the British ended their mandate on Palestine and they surrendered our land, they gave our land to those guerrilla groups, the Jewish guerrilla groups who were in Palestine. So our struggle targeted those groups, and this established entity.
But the Arab world was under occupation either by the British or the French, and the Arab world had the struggle against colonialism, the British or the French occupation, so the whole region was outraged. There was a lot of anger.
We had a very big, great anger against those Jewish guerrilla groups who were having their aggression against our people, and against the Western powers who enabled them to take our land, given that the Arab world was fighting or having their struggle for their independence and to get rid of the occupation.
So it was like a big battle fought for the peoples of the region as a whole, but each people in each country had their own battle against their own occupier. So any regular Muslim, regular citizen, had his mind divided or his one eye on the occupier of his own land and the other eye is keen to see what’s happening in Palestine with having this entity established on our land.
Now the situation is very much different, so our people in the Arab-Muslim world, among them Palestine, they don’t deal with US, Western powers only from a historical background, given that this anger still exists. But additional anger was added to the consciousness.
First of all, the US, the big Western powers, are still very much biased to Israel. They support Israel with weaponry or arsenal. In addition, part of it is accepting Israel with nuclear weapons. They are biased towards Israel with all their practices on the ground, with settlement development, the aggression on our people.
They were biased again with Israel with all their aggression, the war they waged on the Arab-Muslim world and on our people of Palestine, and they are biased with Israel with all its aggression to the shrines and holy places, Islamic and Christian, in Jerusalem.
And then Palestine in general, they are biased to Israel while it’s killing our people, while it’s confiscating land, evacuating innocent people from land and homes where they are putting them away from their country – against all the international law. And they are biased with Israel with all their hideous practices, keeping thousands and tens of thousands of our brothers in custody, and they deal with them in a very inhumane way.
And they are biased with Israel with all their assassination attempts, inside and outside Palestine. They are dealing with Israel as if it is a mutant, an above-the-law entity, and they are biased with Israel even when it’s now being so racist against the Palestinians, when it is becoming an apartheid in Palestine.
And our people, Palestinian-Arab-Muslim communities or people in this world, are outraged against the helplessness of the US, the Western powers, all the international community, to justly resolve this conflict, given that it’s now the last occupation in the world.
Now even the US, the Western powers, they are seen as direct occupiers of our land – like what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was not only occupation what the US committed to in Iraq. It was the destruction of its civilisation, history, resources, art, state, everything was destroyed, demolished. Now the American administration, the Western powers, are practising hegemony on this part of the world. They are trying to control these ruling regimes against the interests of their own people.
What we see is that this free world, which is preaching democracy and development, is supporting such oppressive regimes, and they are supporting those dictatorships and corruption in those regimes. And the citizen in our part of the world, the Arab-Muslim citizen who sees the only obstacle which stands between people in our part of the world, the fulfilment of their dreams of democracy, is this hegemony of the international powers against the will of our people.
So these unjust policies of international powers and the support of dictatorial regimes, this was the root cause of such extreme phenomena like al-Qaeda to appear in our part of the world.
And those groups… part of their outrage, their anger against the US and those Western powers, is against targeting the West, the US, those countries, just because they are Western countries.
We’re against this policy even with all the anger we have against them.
I’m trying to explain why such extreme phenomena appear in our part of the world, but as Palestinians, we concentrate our struggle against the occupier, so if we would like to see an end to such extreme phenomena, to stand against such extreme phenomena in this region, the Western powers should lift their heavy hand on our region.
They should stop supporting oppressive dictatorial regimes, and they should allow our people to fulfil their aspirations of freedom and democracy.
Only then can we see a healthy environment being created in the relationship between this part of the world and the international community, the east and west.
JS: There isn’t a clear understanding for all South Africans about the relationship between Hamas and Fatah, which has its headquarters in Ramallah on the West Bank. Hamas is in control in Gaza. A general impression is that you have a bit of a fragile unity, although this is stronger, for example, around the issues of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, where you may collaborate in condemning Israel. What exists between the two organisations at the moment?
KM: Hamas and Fatah are factions and as Palestinian factions we are all national powers.
We join in common goals, among them resisting the occupation and working to fulfil the aspirations of our people.
We have some joint issues, like the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the settlement expansion in the West Bank and resisting the occupation. But we have different agendas and strategies towards achieving these goals, among them resistance, including armed resistance.
This is something we are in dispute about as some, but not all, support armed resistance, like Hamas.
Fatah and some other factions have their own agenda, with their means being negotiations and the peace process. They are not behind the armed resistance now.
This is the context in general, but in that context also there is political competition among the factions.
This is natural. However, it should abide by the national and ethical routes among the brothers within one country, and according to the democratic outcome – the game of democratic elections.
We are keen to expand collaboration as much as possible and working together as Palestinians, because we have one enemy. This is the main interest of Hamas.
Regrettably, there are two factors that (widened) the gap between us and led to the division that happened in 2007.
The first was that some did not want to respect the outcome of the democratic elections of 2006, which led to a conflict, and contributed to the division among us.
The other factor was the foreign interventions, where (foreign powers) refused or rejected the outcome of the elections in 2006, first of all.
Second, (foreign powers) have worked hard at exploiting the division between Fatah and Hamas. Third, they have prevented, from the first, reconciliation happening on the national agenda between us and our brothers in Fatah.
Their effort was just to (create) obstacles (and set) terms and conditions for such reconciliation among Palestinian factions. Until now you’ll find the reconciliation fragile.
It’s not working as well as we hoped and the main factor is the foreign intervention.
Nevertheless, we are insisting on achieving reconciliation, uniting Palestinians against a single enemy and working together to end the occupation.
JS: What South Africa calls the State of Palestine has an embassy in South Africa, and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and the Palestine Authority was here in November on a state visit. Does that in any way affect your relationship with the ANC, say, or with the government of South Africa?
KM: We had our own links. We communicated from long time back with the leadership and the officials of South Africa. Our relationship gradually developed over the years.
It is based on our vision, as we mentioned, and the respect shown in South Africa to the Palestinian people, our struggle against the occupier to achieve our national rights, and for Hamas, in particular, which has its own struggle against the occupation.
As for the relationship between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and how South Africa deals with its links with Palestine or Hamas, in essence it’s not a problematic issue.
First of all, Hamas is a grass-roots movement.
It’s part of our Palestinian reality. It’s part of the Palestinian Authority.
We had the majority in the in 2006 elections, but it’s also part of the leadership, the body of the Palestinian people, and whoever deals with Palestine should by default deal with Hamas. It’s an essential role-player, and this would hold also for Fatah and all other factions.
The second reason why this issue is not so problematic for South Africa and the relationship with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, is that many Arab-Muslim, even European countries, have their own ties with the authority and Hamas.
We have representative offices in some countries. We have representative figures in some other countries and we have different forums, so this is not a problem because it’s been established as a reality.
Having ties with the Palestinian Authority doesn’t contradict having links and relations with Hamas.
Because we are not a sovereign, independent state, we are not stable as a political system where some ruling party and opposition parties are dealing with the leading of a country.
We are all people in our national liberation struggle against the occupier, and we are not political parties. We are national liberation movements.
We look forward to visiting South Africa because we hold a regard for you as a country, as a people, as a leadership, so it’s natural in this context.
JS: Your younger brother, Maher, spent some time in South Africa. Is that right?
KM: Yes. He was working there.
JS: It was an important moment to see thousands of South Africans come out on to the streets, especially in Cape Town, in protest at the war in Gaza last year and, specifically, to offer support to Hamas and to say they identified closely with your struggle.
But many people were concerned that the South African government did not expel the Israeli ambassador at the time.
How important is South Africa in terms of solidarity with the Palestinian people?
KM: We are grateful to the South Africans for their solidarity on the Palestine issue. We are thankful to the people, to the ANC, to all the political parties who have showed their solidarity with us over the years. We extend our thanks.
But we don’t find this surprising. Why? Because, historically, South Africa is the model for the struggle against the occupier. Also, how tremendous were the war crimes committed against our people by Israel in the last war?
And how magnificent were the heroic practice and attitude of the resistance in Gaza? They did remarkable things, especially Hamas and the military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigade.
We are aware of how complex politics are in different countries, not only in South Africa. There are many political agendas among parties domestically, and different influences of those different parties in terms of foreign parties and financiers, for instance.
So South Africa is not alone. Zionists everywhere are trying to exert their own influence.
Biography
Khalid Mish’al was born in 1956 in the West Bank village of Silwad near Ramallah.
After moving to Kuwait in 1967, he went to the prestigious Abdullah al-Salim Secondary School for high-achieving pupils, and was recruited there by supporters of the resistance against Israel.
He did a BSc in physics at Kuwait University, later becoming a leader in the Jihaz Filastin, the nucleus of a global network of logistical support for Hamas.
After Hamas was founded in 1987, Mish’al led the Kuwaiti branch before moving to Jordan, and then to Doha and Damascus, before returning to Qatar in 2012 as a result of the Syrian civil war.
A member of Hamas’s political bureau since its inception and its chairman, he was the target of a Mossad assassination attempt in 1997 under orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his security cabinet.
Two Mossad agents carrying fake Canadian passports entered Jordan, where Mish’al was living. They waited at the entrance of the Hamas offices in Amman, and as he walked into his office, one came up from behind and held a device to his left ear that transmitted a fast-acting poison. He was left in a coma.
The agents were captured, and Jordan’s King Hussein demanded that Netanyahu turn over the antidote, threatening to void the historic 1994 peace between the two countries should Mish’al die.
Then-US president Bill Clinton intervened and compelled Netanyahu to co-operate, although Jordanian doctors had already administered an antidote which likely saved Mish’al’s life.
Hamas has been the relevant authority in Gaza since its victory in the Palestinian legislative council elections in 2006, but due to persistent threats on his life, Mish’al has not yet been able to return home for good. – Taken from Hamas: A History from Within by Azzam Tamini, and from archives and the internet.
* Janet Smith is the executive editor of The Star
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