Transcript of the video:

Helena Cobban:

Hello, everybody. Ahlan wa sahlan, bonjour, bonsoir, dobriy vecher, shalom, buenas dias, it is good to have you all with us for this important initiative. I’m Helena Cobban. I’m the president of Just World Educational, a small but feisty educational non-profit, and I’m speaking with you from Washington DC, on the traditional lands of the Piscataways. Thank you for joining us for the first webinar in what we think is a timely and much-needed initiative.

For several decades now, the organization Hamas has been subjected to constant vilification by the main corporate media here in the United States and in the Anglophone and Western worlds more broadly; and at important points this vilification has prevented diplomats from pursuing the kinds of initiatives that could, even many years ago, have served to radically lead the conflict in historic Palestine to a full and final peace agreement based on international law and the whole array of rights that international law mandates...

So many tens of thousands of lives could have been saved if that had happened! Of course, as we know, it didn’t. And since October 7, the vilification of Hamas has increased a hundredfold, as has the rate of killing, death, and destruction. Yet publics in the Western world still know stunningly little about this organization. This is the gap that our project seeks to fill. I am delighted that one of our new Just World Ed board members, Rami G. Khoury, has worked closely with me to organize this project, and the main part of today’s program will be a conversation that Rami conducts with our first guest expert, Dr. Paola Caridi. I will provide short introductions of both them in a moment. But first, a couple of housekeeping notes. If you have any tech questions about the webinar, please send them via the chat to our back-stage guru Mustapha Muhammed, who will answer them for you there. Second, a quick preview of how today’s session will run: After my introduction, Rami will engage Dr. Caridi in a conversation that they have designed to cover some of the basic facts about Hamas.

That will last around 35-40 minutes. You can submit questions to the Q&A function while they talk but I hope that they-- and you!-- can keep centrally focused on their conversation, as long as it runs. Mustapha and I will meantime be reviewing the questions that come in via the Q&A; and after the end of Rami and Paola’s main conversation I will rejoin the session and we will start to address some of the main questions that we have seen come in. And that Q&A session might last about 20-25 minutes, after which I’ll do a quick closing of the session. I am sure we cannot get everybody’s questions answered today! That’s why we have four or five more sessions planned for this webinar series. And we’ll also be posting the records of all the sessions onto a special dedicated Online Learning Hub on our website, which we’ll hope to unveil for you and your friends, starting tomorrow or Saturday.

So before I introduce Rami and Dr. Paola to you more adequately, I want to spring on all of you attendees the first of the three little pop-quizzes we have designed, that will help us understand the level of knowledge that you come into this project with. Rest assured that all three of these little polls are completely anonymized. Not even I will know how any individual answered! Also, a quick apology. I’d promised earlier that our polls don’t have “right” answers—but actually, the first two of them do. So, bear with me a moment while I poll up Poll #1. Okay. People, what is the name Hamas an acronym for, In English?

Super! Well, thank you people! Actually both of the bottom answers were kind of true because Hamas is a word— Yeah, the word “Hamas” is an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement, Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, and it is a word in itself which means enthusiasm or zeal. Somebody said it is like zealot but I think that’s not exactly how it goes.

Now we go to Poll #2. What year was Hamas founded? 1947, 1967, 1987, 2007 or I don’t know. So, 58 people answered and 64% of you got it right. It was founded in 1987. Thank you for the 14% of you who said “I don’t know” because that is actually also important information for us to know.

here we have one that does not have a RIGHT answer and you are invited to give me your best and most honest answer on assurance that it is anonymous. So, the question is “the policy of my government toward Hamas should be… Thank you all for thoughtfully considering these options because I think this really does help us. You know, the participants in this project are not representative of anything except yourselves but it’s nice to see what your attitudes are. Thank you very much everbody for answering that one and thank you for participating in all those little polls which I think will be really helpful for us as we design the project going further forward.

... So now, I am delighted to bring in Rami G. Khoury, one of our new board members at Just World Ed. Rami is a Palestinian Christian from Nazareth, and a distinguished writer, book author, and analyst who has been writing about the Palestine Question since 1968. He is a citizen of both Jordan and the United States. He currently writes columns for Al-Jazeera and serves as a Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut. Good to have you running this for us, Rami!

And our Guest Expert today is Dr. Paola Caridi, who is with us from Rome, Italy. She is a historian and journalist who’s a Lecturer at the University of Palermo. Dr. Caridi is a founding member and the president of the News Agency “Lettera22”. She was their correspondent in Cairo, 2001 through 03, and their correspondent in Jerusalem, 2003 through 2012. During her time in Jerusalem, she was able to cover from close up, the many important changes that Hamas underwent in those years.

The second of Dr. Paola’s three published books was Hamas: From Resistance to Government, which first appeared in Italian in 2009, and then in English in 2012. An updated version of the book was released, in English, last October 10th. As a publisher I tell you that was an interesting timing. You can find it wherever good books are sold. So now, without further ado, let me hand over to Rami...

Rami G. Khouri:

Thank you, Helena. And thank you, Mustapha, for your behind the scenes work. Thank you for all our audience for joining us. And a big thanks and hug to Dr. Paola Caridi for being our first guest on this new series that we're doing, Understanding Hamas & Why That Matters. This is obviously a timely, important topic, one that is drenched in ideological opposition and really weaponized analysis by most people around the world who only look at Hamas as a terrorist group, while other people in the region and around the world see Hamas as part of a noble resistance movement, which is part of the whole global anti-colonial struggle that is still going on.

And we've set up this series to have the best scholars we can get who know Hamas, either personally or have studied it, to give us their analysis. So, Dr. Paola, thank you so much for being with us.

Dr. Paola Caridi:

Thank you for the invitation.

Rami G. Khouri:

You lived in Jerusalem for a few years, around 2011 to 2013, and you lived in the Arab world. So, you followed this process, this question, this movement. You've met some of its leaders and members, so you know this firsthand. And you were in Jerusalem when there were some suicide bombings by Hamas and other people as well. So, you felt what many people have felt when they interact with Hamas in different ways.

My first question to you is, how should we understand Hamas? It has many dimensions, which you can tell us about. But what is the most important way to understand what Hamas is and why it matters?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

This is a very, very hard question, Rami. Hamas is a political movement with a very, sometimes a rigid structure that used different tools, political, armed tools, even terrorism. We don't have to fear words. So, suicide attacks against civilians were terrorism. But, on the same level, we can't avoid the political dimension of the movement that started in a way some years before 1987, when there was the meeting in Gaza that paved the way to the movement. And it's important to underline why there were years of thought regarding the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, that is Hamas.

It started in 1982 in your Beirut, not in Beirut, but because of Beirut, because of the Israeli Operation Peace in Galilee and the PLO's expulsion from Beirut. The idea that the PLO failed was one of the things that paved the way to an Islamist political movement born from the Muslim Brotherhood. After that, there were different chapters, and I don't want to take so much time, but there were different chapters in the life of Hamas. There was an initial chapter that started with the first intifada. There was a second one when, where after the Ibrahimi massacre done by Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli settler in Halil, Hebron, the movement decided to use, and it was the political movement that decided to use the armed struggle and the terrorist tools like the suicide attacks.

And then there was in 2005, I guess, the most important chapter from the political point of view that means a suspension of the suicide attacks and the idea of participating in the Palestinian Authority elections for the parliament of the Palestinian Authority. That was a big change because, in a way, it recognized the PA through the parliamentarian elections, and nobody in the international community stopped this idea.

Israel, the United States, the international community, the European Union, and the Arab states, including Egypt, paved the way to the elections where Hamas had a list and paved the way to the success of Hamas on the political level. Then there was 2007, the coup. But the most important thing is that, from the beginning till now, the structure of Hamas is extremely relevant four constituencies, a spread of activism, members in the West Bank, in Gaza, abroad, in the refugee camps, and a very strong organizational structure.

Rami G. Khouri:

Thank you. So, from what you've told us, Hamas has evolved and changed over time. I have two questions related to that. What causes Hamas to change? Is it political pragmatism? Is it desperation? Is it opportunism? How are those decisions made among these different constituencies you mentioned? And the second question related to that is, people who are interested in following Palestinian events, and Hamas in particular, how should they find credible insights or facts about Hamas? Should they read their press statements? Should they read their newspaper? Should they listen to interviews with their leaders? Where are the critical sources that you recommend to people to follow in order to be accurately up to date with Hamas's thinking?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

In a way, I will say that the movement has a lot of pragmatism in a very rigid structure, organizational structure, and a very rigid decisional process. It means that if I have to suggest sources, I would suggest interviews with their leaders and press statements, written statements. If they say that they will do something, they do. And this is also the rigidity of Hamas. Why? Because the constituencies vote for having part in the decisional process.

What does it mean? When they decided to stop the suicide attacks in 2005, there was a sort of poll among the constituencies. I will underline the constituencies because they are very important: the West Bank, Gaza, abroad, that is both the leadership and the activism in the refugee camps, and prisons. Prisons, especially the Israeli prisons, where the activists, Hamas activists, continue to be involved in the decisional process and continue to be politically involved. What does it mean?

It means that, for example, in 2005, 2007, the prison constituency was extremely important. First of all, the participation to the elections, to the PA elections, and second, in the searching for unity among the factions. I was very, let's say, lucky to have the permit to go inside an Israeli jail and meet some of the activists from Fatah, from the Popular Front, from the Islamic Jihad and from Hamas. They showed me the draft of the prisoner's document, and I didn't know at that moment that that draft would be so relevant in the history of the Palestinian politics. So, I mean, this is both the way the movement is acting in the structure, that is also both the rigidity and the pragmatism of the movement when it deals with the outside, when it deals with Israel, with the Palestinian politics, with the alliances and with different actors in the region.

Rami G. Khouri:

So, based on the prisoner's document, I was going to ask you about that, what the Hamas prisoners have done in jail, interacting with other factions of the Palestinian National Movement, what does this tell us about the capacity or willingness of Hamas to actually give and take, to negotiate politically within the Palestinian leadership world, and then possibly beyond that in the Arab world with Israel and with the West? So, should the prison experience of Hamas give us insights into its capacity to negotiate? And then the question, which I'll follow up after that, is to negotiate for what? What do you see, what do you understand, is their ultimate aim today? So, tell us first about the prison experience and what it tells us.

Dr. Paola Caridi:

The prisoner's experience tells us also about the outside, I mean, out of the prison. That means that they are negotiating, they are capable, they are able to negotiate. They did both inside the prison, among the factions, I mean, in the prisoners, among the prisoners' life, and they did outside.

If we think about Hamas during the years, along the years in its life as a political movement, we see that it negotiated with Israel, for example. And it negotiated with Israel, starting from 1988, a few months after it has been founded as a movement. They, I mean, were invited in Tel Aviv. There are some documents that tell us a lot about this. They were invited in Tel Aviv to speak with the Israeli leadership. And they said no to many of the requests, to all the requests of the Israeli leadership.

So, they started since the beginning with a negotiation. And they continued along the years. Of course, they were, I mean, they negotiated also with Arafat, but it didn't, I mean, it didn't take any further. They negotiated with Israel, for example, for Gilad Shalit’s, I mean, in the exchange between Gilad Shalit and the 1027 political prisoners, not only Hamas prisoners. We also have to underline this. And they negotiate also inside the Palestinian political arena, in order to cross the borders of Gaza.

They did a lot along the years. When I say negotiated, it doesn't mean to mediate, to reach an objective. But I say negotiate, for example, when they tried to be accepted inside the PLO along the years. They negotiated for the elections in 2006 and for the non-elections of 2021. They negotiated regarding the prisoners. They negotiated regarding Jerusalem, inside the Palestinian political arena. Because in this way, they tried to cross the border of Gaza and be accepted again inside the global Palestinian political arena.

Rami G. Khouri:

And do you see today Hamas, after all these evolutions and modifications, do you see them still seeking to be part of the PLO, which is the only really recognized national movement for the Palestinian people? Even though the PLO is kind of dormant now. But what is Hamas's attitude to being part of the PLO today, in your understanding?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

They started to think about being accepted inside the PLO since 2005, with the Cairo Declaration in March 2005. They continue until now. If you see what they did in Moscow with all the factions, the 14 factions that had this meeting a few weeks ago, and what they did in Beijing, in China, a few days ago, they want to be part of the Palestinian political panorama, let's say of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian population, because they want to be legitimated by the PLO. They want to be part of the international dimension of the Palestinian issue. It was a goal for Khaled Meshal for years and years. But after Meshal, until now, it's part of the discussion.

Rami G. Khouri:

The written texts I mentioned before, particularly the charter, is this a document that you still feel is central to anybody's analysis of the PLO?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

You know, the charter that was published in August 1988, of course, is the pillar of the foundation of [Hamas.] They never rejected the charter. Until now, they never rejected the charter.

It's a sort of heavyweight on the shoulders of Hamas, and it's part, of course, of the narrative on Hamas. They published many texts along the years, and especially in 2017, they published the document on general principles and policies that was very different from the charter. They didn't reject the charter, but they wrote another text.

And this text is part of the rigidity of the decisional process. That means that, I mean, the result of this consultation, very spread consultation on the principlesـــــــــــــــ And if you read the text, it's extremely different. The text of 2017, it's contemporary. It uses a kind of language that speaks about colonialism, settlers, settlements, and so on and so forth. What does it mean?

They tried to put aside the heavyweight of the foundation of charter and to be inside another chapter of their life. It was the last act of Khaled Meshal as the head of the Politburo. He wanted to have this kind of document, especially to be accepted for the goal of being accepted in the PLO. And there is a recognition of the two states. So, there is not a rejection of what the foundational charter sought regarding the destruction of Israel and especially of Palestine as an Islamic waqf, but it compromised on the two-state solution. And why is this?

Because the foundational charter had a different process, or better said, it didn’t have any process at all because it says that the author of the foundational chapter was Abdul Fattah Dukhan, a teacher in the Nuseirat refugee camp. So, there was not that kind of, I mean, consultation among the constituencies in order to accept the letter of the document, the words of the document.

Rami G. Khouri:

Right. So, we now have the revised, I don't know, we should call it a revised charter of the statement of 2017, the recent interview by one of the Hamas leaders, people explicitly saying we will accept a two-state solution. But Hamas has always said that it refuses to recognize Israel. And they also say that, well, we're willing to recognize Israel, but we don't think Israel recognizes itself, meaning Israel has never declared its borders. So, Hamas is saying, well, who do we recognize? Which borders?

How do you interpret that? Is this a way that Hamas tries to avoid coming up with the, you know, to answer the question, will you ever live peacefully with Israel? Or will you recognize the state of Israel? Or will you recognize it as a Jewish state? There's all these different gradations of how Palestinians and others, Arabs, Muslims, whatever, how they relate to Israel, what, which Israel, and in what form? How do you interpret this in view of Hamas's position?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

You know, there is always an ambiguity, an opacity in the statements of Hamas. But when you speak with leaders, they would say, many would say, but we, of course, we recognize Israel. It's a reality. That says a lot, but says also less than you expect. For sure, for Hamas and for all the Palestinians, I think that the core issue is, do the Israelis recognize us? Do the Israelis recognize us not only as a population?

We know that for the majority of the Israelis, the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are Arabs, not Palestinians. So, the question that the Palestinians as a whole and Hamas inside the Palestinian panorama ask is, do they recognize us as the legitimate population inside this land? Or do they recognize the state of Palestine as we recognize the state of Israel?

So, this is the question, because the 67 is even inside the documents, the written documents of Hamas. So, what about the others?

Rami G. Khouri:

So, leaving aside whether logistically it's possible ever to have a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and the settlements leave, that's for the future to determine. But if it were possible, Hamas is, or let me put it as a question, is Hamas basically telling the Israelis and the world, we're not going to do the same thing that Arafat did, we're not going to recognize you, we're not going to admit that we're going to do something or stop doing armed resistance before we get something of equal value in return? Is that an accurate way to describe Hamas's position?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

In a way, yes. And in another way, the veil that Hamas puts in front of it is the veil of the temporariness. So Hodna, Tahdi’a, ceasefire, long-term truce, I mean, these are the words that were used along the dozens of years of the life of Hamas. So, we have to also watch from this side, from this perspective of what Hamas is saying. But when we look at what Hamas did in 2005, 2006, it accepted the two-state solution without saying, only in participating to the elections, not of the PNC, but of the parliament of the Palestinian Authority. I mean, this was the best recognition.

And if I may say, the mistake of the international community was not in accepting Hamas as part of the elections, but not accepting Hamas as the winner. Because the problem was that Hamas won the elections and Fatah lost the election.

Rami G. Khouri:

You mentioned the international community. I want to ask you a question about both the international community, particularly Europe and the United States. Other people count a lot too, of course, Russia, China, India, Turkey and Iran. But the Western world, the big powers, their relationship with Hamas, you're saying that you think they made, and you've said this in previous interviews, that you think the West made a mistake in not engaging Hamas when there was an opening. And related to that is Hamas has a very complex relationship with the Arab countries, or at least let's say the Arab governments, because there's a big difference between popular sentiment in Arab countries and official sentiment. They don't always coincide.

How do you see the relationship of Hamas with both Western powers and Arab governments? And is that evolving along with their other evolution?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

You know, after 2006 and 2007, some years later, politicians, European politicians and diplomats, they told me, probably we made a mistake after the elections of January 2006, not to build a framework, an institutional framework in which Hamas could be, I mean, let's say, contained. And so that is the past, but nowadays it's very difficult for the West to engage with Hamas. Extremely, extremely difficult.

But to add to this, regarding the relation between Hamas and the Arab, not only Arab, but regional states, I come back to 1982. The first thing that Hamas said was, we will not act as Fatah and the PLO did. I mean, we will not be inside the internal matters of the states with which we build an alliance. So, we will not be part of the Lebanese civil war. We will not be part of Black September 1970 in Jordan. And that was the case.

I mean, they remained as leadership in Damascus, although the Syrian regime was very, very tough and hard against the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. But they didn't leave Damascus for this reason. When they left Damascus in 2012, they left Damascus because they thought that after the revolutions of 2011, they were in the Islamist wave and they can earn something from this Islamist wave that had a big result in Cairo with the election of Mohamed Morsi as the president of the Republic of Egypt.

They thought at that time, they told me in Gaza, actually in 2012, that the Islamist wave will be a very strong protagonist on the regional level. So, this is the reason they had relations with Jordan at the beginning, with Syria, with Egypt in a certain time, I mean, after 2011. But if you think also of the role of Mahmoud Zahar, Palestinian and Egyptian as nationality, and Mousa Abu Marzook, I mean, the king of the mediators inside Hamas, you understand also the pragmatism in their relation with the states that want to engage with them, such as Iran, but not only Iran.

Rami G. Khouri:

Right. "Not only Iran” takes me to the question of the axis of resistance, as it's called, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Ansarullah and others. How do you understand Hamas' relationship with or position within the axis of resistance and the axis members' response to the current war? Do you think Hamas is disappointed or is satisfied? Or how do you see that?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

First, the answer to the last question, I think, is disappointed, because they didn't react in supporting Hamas after October 7, in the way, for example, Hezbollah and Hamas, they were extremely supportive to each other in 2006, during the 33 days war between Israel and Lebanon. In that case, Hamas and Hezbollah's alliance was very strong on the military level, and not in this case. Probably, I mean, it confirms that probably October 7 was decided inside Gaza and not in a consultation between the different constituencies, because there was a transformation of Hamas after 2007.

Hamas, from that point on, had the territory, had the power, the rule, the administration of a piece of land, a complete administration of an open-air prison, but a total administration and rule of a territory. So, I think that the fact that the axis of resistance reacted with, I mean, after weeks, months, on a military level, it meant and it means that in this case, Hamas from Gaza, or the Gaza part of Hamas, acted, if not alone, but pushed, I mean, put a lot of pressure on the other part of Hamas and went alone on the border, in the attack of October 7.

Rami G. Khouri:

The Palestinian population is very young. I don't know what the exact demographic statistics are, but it must be something like, 50% of the population must be under the age of 30. Do you have any insights from living there and your research, do you have insights into, is the younger generation, the people say under the age of 35 now, are they evolving in any way? Or are they continuing on the same path of their political and ideological position as their older brothers and sisters and parents? Is there anything happening among younger Palestinians who are either close to or members of Hamas that we should be aware of?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

The transformation was started from 2007, when there was a lot of disappointment inside the younger generations for the failure of the pragmatists, for the failure of the, at that time, the middle generation, Haniyeh, Musa Abu Marzouk, Khaled Meshal, and all the people of the West Bank who decided to go for elections. So, the failure of 2007, the split between West Bank and Gaza, Fatah and Hamas radicalized a lot the youngest part of the activists of Hamas. They said to me, actually, in Gaza, look what happened, we didn't reach any result, so let us go for the mukhawama, the resistance.

Rami G. Khouri:

So we have, as you described, to look at Hamas and understand that it has several components, you call them constituencies or elements or power centers, whatever is the right word, you have the military wing, you have the prisoners, you have the people in Palestine, in the West Bank, in Gaza, and you have the refugee camps around the region and other Palestinians who are not in camps, but are in exile around the world. How would you gauge the balance of power in decision making among those different parts of Hamas?

Because people are going to be asking, now people are asking all over the world, and nobody has a clear answer, but we'll find out in the coming year, I suppose, what is the inclination of Hamas to go along with ideas that are being presented for, say, a governance transition in the West Bank and Gaza after the war finishes? Will they be more flexible?

Will they allow Arab and international forces to play a role? Will they accept an Israeli presence beyond the border? How do you see the different power centers or constituencies within Hamas weighing in on the really big questions of what happens next after this very difficult period of the implausibly genocidal war?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

Let's put it this way. I was very, in a way, lucky as an analyst and a historian from 2004 on, when Hamas, starting from the transitional period after the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, after the death of Arafat, decided to be really part of the new Palestinian politics. I was very lucky because they wanted to show themselves. They wanted to narrate themselves. So, they told me many things because they were not anymore clandestine. Nowadays, the opacity is there, so it's very difficult to understand.

What it seems to me, so it seems to me from a distance, is that the frailty of the movement as a political movement is there, that there are different positions, but there were also before inside Hamas. Today, Osama Hamdan said in a press conference, the leadership abroad is having contacts with Mohamed Daif and Yahya Sinwar. What does it mean? It means that there is a balance of power between Hamas in Gaza, both the political and the military, and the other Hamas out of Gaza?

I don't know. It seems to me that there is flexibility abroad. It seems to me that the fact that Khalil al-Hayya, Musa Abu Marzouk, and that, I mean, and especially the two I've mentioned, they want to reach an agreement, both inside the political arena and outside. They will accept a technocratic government, as, for example, Musa Abu Marzouk said some weeks ago. What does it mean? They have to go out of the war.

They have to go out of the massacre ongoing in Gaza, also because I think they are feeling the pressure of the population inside Gaza. That is, I mean, not only suffering, it's dying. They have been killed for months and months. And in the West Bank, Hamas, from the organizational point of view, is weak since 2007, because many of the leaders are in jail, both in the Palestinian jails and in the Israeli jails. So, I think it's a very, very delicate moment for the organizational structure of Hamas and the balance of power.

Rami G. Khouri:

We have one minute only for last question before we go to the Q&A with the audience. What are you going to be looking at in your research now on Hamas and the wider questions of Palestinian national resistance, Palestinian national struggle, relationships in the region and abroad? Is there one area that you particularly will focus on that you think is important?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

To understand the Palestinian way of doing politics out of Hamas, Fatah and the classical factions. Because, I mean, I think that the population, both in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, we are forgetting East Jerusalem, and in the refugee camps abroad, and in Gaza, they are also using different languages regarding rights, also different nuances about identity, and it started from before.

What interested me, for example, was the protest in Jerusalem in 2021. And that the Habbe, the protest of the youth, and they were youth from whatever, they were youth from West Bank, East Jerusalem, 48, they came to Jerusalem from Nazareth, your Nazareth, and other places. So, I think that we have to look after the Palestinian youth in the same way we look after the non-Palestinian youth in the campuses in the US.

Rami G. Khouri:

Right. Well, Paola, we've run out of time for this part of our session. We've learned an incredible amount from you, and you've clarified many things that are really important, and we're grateful to you for that. But you're not done yet, because there's questions from the audience, and I'll turn it over to Helena, and she will handle the next part of our session. But thank you again.

Dr. Paola Caridi:

Thank you. Thank you very much, Rami. I learned a lot from your written articles.

Helena Cobban:

Well, Rami and Paola, thank you both so much. That was just a really important conversation. You know, I've been an admirer of both of you for a long time, so it's goodـــــــــــــ By the way, here's the book for people. I think the new edition looks almost like this, but has a little thing on it saying new edition or whatever. So, from the Q&A box, I have a couple of questions that I want to ask, and then I actually have one of my own.

So, I'll ask the other people's questions first. One is about your understanding of the way that the Israeli government, maybe particularly Netanyahu, used what I think of as a traditional divide and rule kind of approach of trying to support Hamas in order to foment divisions and weaken Fatah and the secular nationalists, and to divide the Palestinians. How successful has that been?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

This is also part of the narrative of these recent months. If Israel had a role in supporting Hamas, I don't believe so. And it didn't start from now, from the Netanyahu years. It started, as I said before, in 1988, but it lasted very few months. And if we think about the wave of arrests in 1988, and in 1989, some of the witnesses, the leaders of Hamas at that time told me that almost Israel succeeded in destroying the movement in 1989. If we think about 1992, when 415 people were deported to Marj al-Surur in Lebanon, in southern Lebanon, in order to disarticulate the movement.

And if we think after 2008, of the at least five wars on Gaza, I mean, this tells us that I don't see a realistic narrative that tells us, you know, Israel founded or created Hamas in the late 80s, or Israel supported Hamas to divide. Because in the same way, Israel didn't support Ramallah and the PA. I mean, it was a fight against the Palestinian politics as a whole, with two different tools: the tool of wars on Gaza with Hamas and the weakening, the extreme weakening of the PA in Ramallah.

Helena Cobban:

Interesting. So, we also have a question, what prevents Hamas from entering the PLO?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

We have to ask Fatah. They, I mean, put a lot of effort to be accepted inside the PLO and many of the factions wanted Hamas and also Islamic Jihad, but more Hamas inside the PLO, one for all is Mustafa Barghouti. Fatah opposed, or some inside Fatah opposed, first of all, Abu Mazen, Mahmoud Abbas. Many inside Fatah, they want nowadays Hamas to be inside the PLO. One name is Jibril Rajoub. He told this many times.

Helena Cobban:

Yeah. As a follow up, do you have any hope that this process that outside powers like Russia and now China have engaged in to try to bring about a reconciliation or a unification of the different factions inside the PLO? Do you have hope that this will work?

Dr. Paola Caridi:

We have hope because the reconciliation, the Palestinian reconciliation will tell us a lot also about what is happening in Gaza right now. So, we have to have hope. I'm not that optimistic, if I may say, and I will quote my friend Mahdi Abdel-Hadi. Once he told me, you know, when the process starts in the Middle East, it will last years and dozens of years. So, it started 17 years ago, a reconciliation process. And we are seeing nowadays the result of the fact that they didn't arrive to a result, a reconciliation.

Helena Cobban:

Yeah. There's also the quote, the famous quote of Lenin that sometimes, you know, history goes for decades with nothing happening, and then sometimes you have a week in which decades worth of history happens. And I kind of feel we're maybe at that sort of an inflection point for a lot of reasons. Actually, I was putting together a little Twitter thread yesterday, which didn't lead anywhere, but the idea was like, what is happening now is a struggle for the soul of Fatah.

Dr. Paola Caridi:

Yes, yes, of course, when Rami asked me, what is your focus now? And I talked about my interest on youth is because there are some souls that have to be revived or resignified, more than revived, resignified. And Fatah soul is one of them, not only Fatah, but it's one of them.

And I think that the injection of the new language of the youth, not only Palestinian, but Palestinian as part of a global youth, could lead to interesting developments in the future. Look what we see in the campuses, not only, but as a political practice, I mean, as an inclusive, peaceful political practice that I think it’s also the, I mean, they are also the heirs of the occupied movements from Tahrir to Wall Street. So, I think that we have to watch this injection of new values.

Rami G. Khouri:

Let me add in here. I'm living in Boston in the United States now. And I spend most of my time here. I go to the Middle East two or three times a year. But I've been watching very closely developments here and the last three weeks of the university student protests, and the manner in which the power structure here has responded, which is the media, the mainstream media, the government, and the corporate sector. Those three are the power structure. And they've come down very hard in a militaristic way against these protests.

But what we're seeing here is an extraordinary historical moment where the Palestine issue, the genocidal war in Gaza by Israel, and Israel's responsibility to adhere to international law, these are all now public discussion issues. They're on the news almost every night. And they're now being pushed by the student protesters to discuss these in public. It's an unprecedented moment where Palestine has become a domestic issue, not only in terms of the public debate, but could influence the election in November. We've never had this situation.

The Zionist movement and Israel have always had engagements within the US political system and could always have an impact in one way or another on elections. The Palestinians have never had it until now. So, we have to keep an eye on how that develops here in the United States. And it seems like the students, I've been around to about a dozen universities in the last three months, talking to people, it doesn't seem like the students are going to back down. This is a generational issue.

And it's not just the students, because it's a coalition that first came to light in Dearborn, Michigan in January, February, when Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, labor unions, church groups, Jewish progressives, all together created this coalition that's in the primaries, voted uncommitted. And it's succeeded way beyond their expectations. Like Hamas, they, you know, they didn't expect to do so well, like Hamas didn't expect to do so well when it went into the elections.

So, there's really historic stuff going on here in the US and we have to see which way it goes. And that's why I think the establishment is fighting back so ferociously against this, to stop this. They don't want Israeli policies to be discussed in public. They don't want Palestinian voices to have an audience. And they're losing on both those accounts. I just thought I'd throw that in.

Dr. Paola Caridi:

And there is also Germany. I mean, there are two pillars. One is the US and the other is Germany and Europe.

Helena Cobban:

Yeah, I mean, I want to thank Rami for bringing that kind of sea change into the focus here. And we could have a whole separate probably series of webinars on this, but it's happening so fast, which is pretty exciting. I mean, I was not in this country in 1968. But I watched it from England and it was pretty exciting what was happening then. And, you know, the same kind of social movements that we had against the Vietnam War and for me against apartheid in South Africa, you know, that we had in England a long time before they had them here in the States. So, these kind of movements can bring about real change.

And I think for us dealing with like this big, it's like what we call in the States a third rail in the discussion, which is Hamas. You know, at the beginning after October 7th, everybody had to, before you can say anything, you were called on, do you condemn Hamas? Do you condemn Hamas? And, you know, those of us who refused to play that game just kept quiet for a long time and didn't really think much. But now it's time to talk about Hamas as a representative of an important, very important strand in the Palestinian national movement. And I really want to thank you, Paola, for bringing your direct experience of your nine years living in Jerusalem and watching these things really closely.

Thank you for bringing that for us. Thank you, Rami, for interrogating her a little bit more gently than Israelis interrogate their prisoners, I'm sure. And so, for those of you watching this, as you exit, you will get an evaluation form. And these evaluation forms are really important for us as we constantly try to make our programs better. And so please fill out that form. I think you should get sent to it automatically.

So, we can't answer all the questions that people have. But next week, we're going to have Dr Khaled Hroub of Northwestern University in Doha. He will be our guest expert. So that'll be, you know, another set of eyes and ears, another set of questions that we can ask him.

And I want to remind everybody watching this that we offer all our educational programs free of charge to the interested public, but they do cost money to put on. So, if you are able to dig into your pocket and spare a dime or preferably quite a few dimes for us, that would be great. And you go to our website www.justworldeducational.org and click on donate. And you can find lots and lots of wonderful ways to do that. So, thank you, Rami. Thank you, Paola. And thank you, everybody else who has helped to make this. Thank you, Mustafa, of course. And thank you, everybody who's come and taken part in this. Same time, same place, next week.