UH session 4, Mouin Rabbani, transcript

[Helena Cobban] (0:11 - 1:03)

Hello, everybody. I'm Helena Cobban, and I'm the president of Just World Educational. A big welcome to all of you who are with us for this fourth session of our much-needed webinar series, Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters.

My co-host on this project is Rami G. Khoury, a valued board member at Just World Ed, who's a Palestinian Christian from Nazareth and a distinguished writer, author, and analyst who's been writing about the Palestine question since 1968. Rami currently writes analytical pieces for the Arab Center Washington and serves as a distinguished public policy fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at AUB. He has recently been in Qatar and is with us today from Amman, Jordan.

So it's good to have you with us, Rami. And our guest expert today is Mouin Rabbani, a super smart Dutch-Palestinian researcher and analyst who specializes in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and contemporary West Asia, the region formerly known by its Eurocentric moniker, the Middle East.

Mouin Rabbani has previously served as principal political affairs officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria, as senior Middle East analyst and special advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group, and as a researcher with Al-Haq, the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. He's currently co-editor of Jadaliyya and has numerous other important affiliations.

He's also a master of the art of writing cogent, brilliant short commentaries on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. So you all should follow him there. Good to have you with us here today, Mouin.

[Mouin Rabbani] (2:12 - 2:15)

Very good to be with you, Helena and Rami.

[Helena Cobban] (2:18 - 4:18)

We have a very rich conversation planned today. Before we dive into it, I want to remind you that the multimedia records of all the webinars in this series are being posted in a very speedy manner onto the online learning hub that we're creating for this project.

And a big thanks to Mustafa for his superb help in compiling the online learning hub. We have several ideas we're mulling over for making this learning hub optimally useful for the learning public. One of these ideas might be to make a written digest of the most important things we learn during the webinars or to make a 30-minute video montage of the key insights that get shared, or perhaps to make a series of fairly simple informational toolkit flyers, easy to download, print out and share with those flyers containing links back to the more complex resources that we will build up on the learning hub. Big thanks to those webinar attendees who last week wrote in their evaluation exit survey that they would be eager to help us design and organize the learning hub and any other products we generate from this project. Anyway, that gives you a general idea of the broader context for this project, of which today's webinar will be one very valuable part.

And when you leave today's webinar we'll once again be asking for your evaluation of the project and your suggestions for going forward. So now let's hand over, or let's bring in Rami and Mouin to get the conversation started. Over to you, Rami.

[Rami Khouri] (4:20 - 5:12)

Thank you, Helena. Marhaba, Mouin, and hello to all our audience. So let's start by talking about the broader Palestinian resistance front or groups. Hamas is often seen as the leading militant movement in the Palestinian national movement, but there's the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, and other smaller groups. So tell us what you can about what is the nature of this group? Is it a group? Do they coordinate? Do they work together, as far as you know? Or do they just happen to share certain tendencies and therefore we group them together?

[Mouin Rabbani] (5:14 - 7:48)

Well, I think in recent years, there has been increasingly close coordination and cooperation among these groups, particularly in the Gaza Strip. Hamas, as you noted, is the largest of the Palestinian resistance factions. And I would say that within the Gaza Strip, while Fatah might be numerically larger, I think the Quds Brigades, the armed wing of , is by far the larger and more active and better resourced one.

What we've seen in recent years is that these various groups have established what they call a joint operations room, where they actively coordinate. For example, during the current war, we've repeatedly seen reports of joint operations between Hamas and Islamic Jihad, between Hamas and the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades that operate under the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and various others. So I don't think it's really a situation of Hamas utilizing these others as proxies.

Hamas is, of course, the hegemonic power in the Gaza Strip, but I think it sees an advantage also in having this broad front in which others from various political and ideological persuasions work together with it for the same goal. So that's how I would see it. But having said that, indisputably, Hamas is by far the largest armed force, the best armed, and I think ultimately key decisions are taken by Hamas.

But there have been exceptions. For example, in the most recent two rounds, between October 7th, Israel very specifically targeted Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, and Hamas at that point did not participate in any way, even though it claimed it was coordinating with Islamic Jihad.

[Helena Cobban] (7:48 - 7:54)

Hang on just a moment. I think, Mouin, you're talking about prior to October 7th.

[Mouin Rabbani] (7:54 - 7:54)

Correct.

[Helena Cobban] (7:54 - 7:56)

That was like the 2021.

[Mouin Rabbani] (7:57 - 8:15)

No, more recently. There were two rounds where, after a Palestinian prisoner belonging to Islamic Jihad died in Israeli prison after a prolonged hunger strike.

[Helena Cobban] (8:16 - 8:24)

Oh, right. So that was when Islamic Jihad countered against Israel with some rockets, and Hamas did not take part.

[Mouin Rabbani] (8:25 - 9:39)

Yes. And then there was a more recent round, I believe, in early 2023, where Israel launched an attack on the Gaza Strip and knocked out six Islamic Jihad military commanders in the space of a week. And there too, Hamas did not participate.

In hindsight, we know why. It didn't want to reveal or risk its capacities or manpower. But the point is that there have been instances where these other groups have taken the liberty to act autonomously.

But I think, as a general rule, it's fair to say that Hamas sets the tone. Hamas makes the ultimate decisions, but at the same time can also cooperate closely with these other forces, even including, both in Gaza and in the northern West Bank, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which are, of course, affiliated with its ostensible rival, Fatah. But that, I think, also reflects various divisions within the Fatah movement.

[Rami Khouri] (9:42 - 10:24)

Mouin, one of the things that is surprising to many people is the resilience, the durability of Hamas. For a group that keeps getting into tit-for-tat exchanges with the Israelis, but suffers much more massive attacks by the Israelis, destruction of facilities, civilian and presumably some of Hamas's military facilities, whether those are launch sites or production sites or whatever they are, but they're still there and still active. So how do you explain that?

[Mouin Rabbani] (10:25 - 15:29)

Well, I don't think we can give a definitive response to that question at this point, but I do think that there are several factors that are already clear. On the one hand, you have to look at the Israeli military. It remains a very efficient killing machine in terms of reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble, killing tens of thousands of people and so on.

But it's not a particularly effective fighting force, particularly when it comes to ground operations, seizing and holding territory. So we've seen repeated declarations of victory by Israeli leaders. But even this week, there are now still Hamas or Palestinian attacks ongoing, not just in Gaza City, but in Beit Lahya and Beit Hanun, the very first towns in the Gaza Strip that Israel invaded after October 7th.

That can only mean one of two things. Either the armed Palestinian battalions in those areas were never eliminated to begin with and managed to withstand the Israeli onslaught in October, November, December, or they've been very capable of reconstituting themselves once the Israelis withdrew from these areas. So I think an important part of the explanation is Israeli military incompetence when it comes to dealing with military adversaries as opposed to a civilian population.

I think the other part of it, it's quite clear that Hamas prepared very well for a prolonged Israeli onslaught. They don't seem to be suffering a significant shortage of either men or material. I think part of it also has to do with their main arsenal being locally produced. So they're not entirely dependent on receiving weapons and supplies from foreign supporters. And they seem to still have the capacity to manufacture many of their weapons within the Gaza Strip. But I mean, let's be clear, we're not talking about ICBMs and tanks. We're talking about fairly rudimentary weaponry. You know, Hamas doesn't really have a significant anti-aircraft capacity, for example, or armored forces. And I think another part of it, of course, is that they're fighting on home turf.

They're defending their own territory against a foreign invader. And another part of the explanation would have to be that although Israel keeps putting out differing and often contradictory statistics about how many thousands of Hamas and other Palestinian armed militants it has killed and captured, clearly the casualty rate of these groups has been much less than Israel claims. And in addition to that, the sheer savagery of Israel's onslaught, although designed to turn the civilian population against these armed groups, appears also now according to American assessments to have assisted these groups to continue recruiting even during wartime.

I think another issue that, of course, we need to understand is that Hamas has built a very extensive -- how extensive, we really don't know -- underground network, tunnel system for camouflage concealment and being able to withstand these massive Israeli air raids that have been taking place on a daily basis against the Gaza Strip since October 7th. These appear to be people who have learned from their mistakes, who have improved with time. And if I can just mention one last one, let's not forget that quite a few members of the Israeli armed forces, including members of its intelligence services, and including senior officers, were captured on October 7th.

And it seems reasonable to assume that a large number of documents and disk drives and so on were captured by Hamas as well. So it would be interesting in the future to learn to what extent the interrogation of these captives and the information at their disposal helped them anticipate Israeli military moves and respond to them in a way that exposes Israeli weaknesses and manages to conserve their own strength.

[Rami Khouri] (15:30 - 16:00)

Yes, one last point before I turn it over to Helena. Is it also likely that we can assume that, like Hezbollah, Hamas has over the years developed much more sophisticated weaponry, not only producing its own weapons, but with guided systems, electronic systems. Do we have any evidence from Hamas's trajectory over the years? Is it getting better at targeting and hiding in its military equipment?

[Mouin Rabbani] (16:01 - 17:50)

I think that's clear. I mean, Hamas now has not only capacity to use drones, for example, but also various electronic warfare systems that have allowed it to down intact a number of Israeli drones. If you look at the development of their missile and rocket capabilities, for example, when this started during the Second Intifada, they could barely reach the boundaries between Gaza and Israel.

And now they can reach Beersheba, Tel Aviv, north of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv airport, and so on. Having said that, I wouldn't want to exaggerate Hamas's military capabilities. These are primarily locally produced, fairly rudimentary weapons that are an absolute shadow of, for example, Hezbollah's capabilities.

I do think it's true that, for example, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Libyan state in 2011-2012, there have been numerous reports that Hamas was able to bring in quite a few more advanced weapons from Libya, that they have also received supplies from Hezbollah or from Iran at the time through Sudan. And clearly there's been also quite a bit of training and advice involved as well. But I haven't come across anyone who considers Hamas's military capabilities as anything approaching those of, for example, Hezbollah.

[Helena Cobban] (17:52 - 18:31)

Yes, I think that was really a wonderful explanation, Mouin, so thank you. I think you're right to note the importance of the tunnels, not just for camouflage and concealment, but also for mobility, because they can actually travel, as far as I can understand, up and down the whole of the Gaza Strip or large portions of it, underground. And it reminds me of the classic Maoist doctrine of you dig deep and that's the core in Maoist doctrine of a defensive guerrilla.

[Mouin Rabbani] (18:32 - 19:33)

Yes, and if I could just interrupt you in this case, it's quite clear that Hamas anticipated Israel's tactics and managed to dig significantly deeper than Israel's bombs could reach. And I'm sure the tunnels are used for transportation, but I don't really buy the Israeli argument that everyone they were going after was located in Gaza City and then they all escaped to Khan Yunis, and now they're all in Rafah, in Sinai, whatever. My sense is that one of Hamas's strengths is that its various battalions are very locally based and for the most part have remained based in those regions where they are from, rather than being shunted all over the Gaza Strip.

[Helena Cobban] (19:33 - 21:03)

I think that is kind of like the Viet Cong, back in the day, who also used a lot of tunnels. But in the context of Gaza, which is such a thin piece of land, I think this gives a whole new meaning to the concept of strategic depth. I mean, it's depth down, it's not depth into the rear.

So, I've learned a lot actually from following John Elmer on Twitter. He gives very good analyses of the Al-Qassam Brigade's videos that are continuously being released, which is kind of interesting. You hear a lot from people in Washington about the day after plans, and nearly always they are based on the annihilation of Hamas in Gaza and preferably worldwide, and bringing back in the Palestinian Authority, along with various Arab state actors. And of course, the plans from Washington are always changing. But how do you assess them? And what do you think is going to happen with all these plans?

[Mouin Rabbani] (21:03 - 25:03)

Well, there are two problems with American planning in this respect. The first is that they think Israel can be persuaded to accept any of these plans. And what they don't understand is that Israel already has plans, and its plans are exactly what we're seeing in the Gaza Strip.

Its plan for the day after is making the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation, with a degree of chaos and anarchy within the Gaza Strip that will make its residents feel compelled to leave by hook or by crook. So, you know, all these American plans which are being made with Israel's best interests at heart are of absolutely no interest to the Israelis. This is not about Netanyahu seeking to prolong his term in office, which of course he is trying to do.

But that's not the obstacle here. The obstacle is that what we're seeing is exactly what Israel has been planning for. The second issue, as you noted, is that you can't really impose any of these plans within the Gaza Strip unless you first annihilate Hamas.

Now, at the beginning of this crisis, people were pointing out that Israel may be able to crush Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but it's a movement that has roots wherever there are significant concentrations of Palestinians. It's in Lebanon, it's also in the West Bank, where Israel has been unable to defeat it, and so on. But what we've learned over the past eight months is that Israel is incapable of crushing even this second order militia in this postage stamp-sized territory that is the Gaza Strip and its mere 365 square kilometers.

So, again, you can make all the plans you want, but unless you annihilate Hamas, none of them are going to take hold. And the third is that, you know, there was a recent article by Dennis Ross, I believe in Foreign Affairs, and his day-after plan, he was basically handing out invoices left and right. You know, the Saudis will pay for this, the Qataris will pay for that, the Europeans will pay for this, and so on.

And the idea that all these governments are going to collectively agree to foot the bill of Israel's destruction of the Gaza Strip without any confidence that they won't have to do this again in five years is just pure madness. I meant to say he [Ross] was handing out invoices to everyone except Israel. So, it makes about as much sense as saying Israel is the one that should be primarily responsible for the reconstruction of Haiti.

Even with Washington's closest Arab and European allies and client regimes, on what basis are they going to commit billions to a problem they didn't create when the party that is primarily responsible for creating this problem gets only financial benefit from this? Again, it's the kind of pie-in-the-sky, Alice-in-Wonderland illusion that rules the roost in Washington these days.

[Helena Cobban] (25:05 - 25:48)

Yes, interesting point you make about the invoices. Of course, in all the previous rounds of what the Israelis called “mowing the lawn” in Gaza, it was exactly like that. Afterwards, the Europeans and the Japanese would have to come back in to finance the rebuilding and Israeli entrepreneurs would make a huge profit off all those rebuilding materials.

So I guess Washington was just thinking that just like the five times prior to October 7th, now they'll do it again. And as you say, it doesn't show a chance of working. And I think in terms of the day-after plans, maybe we should just mention the US pier, if you have anything to say about the US pier.

[Mouin Rabbani] (25:49 - 25:57)

I have absolutely nothing to say about it. I mean, you know, it's smoke and mirrors. It's a diversionary charade.

[Helena Cobban] (25:57 - 26:02)

It's $320 million of my taxpayer money that went into this.

[Mouin Rabbani] (26:02 - 26:07)

Yes, but it's for the sacred and sacrosanct cause of Israeli genocide. So how dare you complain?

[Helena Cobban] (26:09 - 26:32)

Okay, so that's the pier. Okay, I actually want to move to the diplomatic arena now and look, Mouin, if you could, at Hamas' current and recent attitudes toward the PLO and toward the two-state formula with which obviously the PLO is currently associated.

[Mouin Rabbani] (26:33 - 31:14)

Well, let's deal with those as two separate issues. First of all, there's a question of the PLO. Hamas, of course, was established independently of the framework of the PLO. Previous efforts to integrate Hamas, and for that matter, Islamic Jihad, into the PLO have failed, either because Hamas was seen as making unreasonable demands or because the PLO leadership was unwilling to consider reasonable propositions to integrate these two movements. I think the current position is that this entire issue, as important and as vital as it is, is an absolute non-starter so long as Mahmoud Abbas remains in control of the formal Palestinian political system. It's quite clear he will not countenance any form of power-sharing with Hamas.

He has sabotaged all previous efforts at what's called Palestinian national reconciliation. But the question after he departs or is removed from the scene becomes, is Hamas still seeking integration into Palestinian national institutions on the basis of some form of collective leadership and decision-making so that these national institutions once again function as an umbrella for all main Palestinian political movements, or will it seek to establish, let's say, an alternative hegemony seeking to translate its growing popularity into political power? I think it's a difficult question to answer at present. I would hope that wiser heads in both Hamas and in Fatah and other movements prevail and work to put the national interest above the factional interest and find some kind of modus vivendi because I don't think that the Palestinian reality can bear any hegemony, whether by the Palestinian Authority or Hamas or anyone else.

Regarding the second issue, the two-state settlement, Hamas leaders have been actually open to this under various formulations since the 1980s and you see all kinds of newspaper reports of the Israeli press and elsewhere about discussions that were held with senior Hamas leaders, whether Sheikh Ahmad Yassin or others when they were in Israeli prisons and there were dialogues about these things and Hamas put forward various formulations that made quite clear that at the end of the day they would accept, let's call it an indefinite cessation of hostilities in exchange for an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

What has happened in 2017 is that for the first time this became the official position of the movement, so Hamas is now formally committed to a two-state settlement. I do think that Israel's genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip is calling that commitment into question. I think it should call that commitment into question and it will be very interesting to see if Hamas views the current developments as accelerating movement towards a two-state settlement and whether it will redouble its official commitment to that outcome or whether to the contrary it will conclude that there can be no peace with this Israeli state and that the state and its key institutions need to be dismantled and replaced by an entirely different form of coexistence.

[Rami Khouri] (31:16 - 32:32)

Yes, Mouin, if I can jump in here on the same issue. One of the fascinating dimensions of Hamas is that they will refuse to give Israel or the United States what they demand in return for being brought into the diplomatic process. The PLO or Arafat and Fatah did this and they didn't get very much.

So it's intriguing when you meet Hamas officials or you read their stuff, they're constantly saying, when you ask them a question, they say let them meet the requirements of UN resolutions and then we will do the same. So they've taken a very clear, hard line that they're not going to make a unilateral gesture. What they've done already to me is quite surprising.

They've gone very far in saying we will coexist peacefully with the state of Israel, but the terms they put are really hard and they're actually in line with international law and UN resolutions that the refugees have a right to return, East Jerusalem is [the Palestinian] capital. How do you interpret those terms that they talk about? Are those negotiable or do you think they're going to stick to those?

[Mouin Rabbani] (32:33 - 35:27)

Well, I would make several points. First of all, Hamas, as you mentioned, looks at the history and Arafat basically gave the Israelis and the Americans all they wanted. And in the end, the only thing he has to show for it was being poisoned and killed.

The second point that Hamas would make is that it as a movement is simply not going to recognize Israel for a very simple reason that any recognition of Israel is done by a state. Even in the context of Oslo, the Fatah movement never recognized Israel. It was the PLO that recognized Israel and no Israeli political party, whether the Likud or the Labor Party or any of these others was ever called upon to recognize the PLO, let alone a Palestinian state, because that was seen as a function of the Israeli government.

The other position that Hamas was espousing, at least during the first two decades of the century, was that all of Palestine needs to be liberated. And then they would say, but we would accept any agreement that is ratified either by legitimate Palestinian institutions or on the basis of a popular Palestinian referendum. You know, “legitimate Palestinian institutions” means a PLO that includes Hamas, and a referendum means one that is held among the various communities. So that's one way of Hamas clearly signaling that it would be willing to live with a two-state settlement, not only one that strictly conforms to international law, as you outlined it, but even one that would be negotiated by the Palestinian leadership that may involve certain minor compromises on that.

But it's also, I think, a way of Hamas saying that we will maintain our purity, and if then the Palestinian people in a referendum or the Palestinian institutions by a majority vote in the Palestine National Council or whatever vote for this, well, then it's on them and not on us.

[Helena Cobban] (35:28 - 35:58)

Yes, actually, if I could just come in with one little follow-up observation here. I think the other part of this, to add to what the two of you have been saying, is the sponsorship issue of any negotiation, because who can trust the United States as the principal sponsor of any Arab-Israeli negotiation in the present era, or indeed for the last 50 years? I mean, the Egyptians got their land back under the peace treaty.

[Mouin Rabbani] (35:59 - 36:02)

But they had to go to war in 1973 to get it.

[Helena Cobban] (36:03 - 36:58)

That's true. But you were quite right to mention what happened to Arafat and the PLO. And it wasn't just that Arafat ended up possibly getting poisoned, but certainly getting enclosed into the Maqataa in Ramallah.

But all his Palestinian followers, the people who lauded his return to the West Bank in 1994, had their lands majorly stolen and their lives significantly affected for the worse and he got nothing. So I don't think anybody would be wise to trust the United States. Whereas if it is the United Nations that takes the lead as the mediator on the basis of the existing United Nations laws and resolutions, that would be a different matter.

[Mouin Rabbani] (36:58 - 38:58)

Well that was actually proposed at the time in 2006, when Hamas won the PA legislative elections. The head of UNSCO, the United Nations mission in Jerusalem at the time, Alvaro de Soto, he actually proposed this role for the United Nations. And he was basically vetoed by Kofi Annan, because the Americans wouldn't have accepted it. And he wrote a quite detailed account of this when he left office. And it's worth recalling. While I agree with everything you said about sponsorship, there's also another reason that Hamas will not accept the existing political program of the PLO as a condition for joining the PLO. First of all, these is a belief that whatever it accepts will simply lead to more demands. But more importantly, these are major strategic concessions from Hamas's perspective. And it's not prepared to make them in exchange for having coffee with Mahmoud Abbas. It wants to see genuine recognition and acceptance of its role by key regional and international actors in exchange for doing so. So it wants to see Hamas being accepted as a legitimate player, for example, by Saudi Arabia, and by the European Union.

Absent that, I don't think they're going to come out with any further statements of strategic significance.

[Rami Khouri] (39:02 - 39:37)

Mentioning the other countries, this takes us into the next couple of points I wanted to ask you about. Hamas's relationships with the axis of resistance. You know, years ago, people in Arab countries in the West talked about the Shia crescent.

So now has Sunni Hamas become part of the Shia crescent? And what is the nature of the relationship among them, as you see it? And how much importance is this relationship to Hamas's durability?

[Mouin Rabbani] (39:38 - 43:45)

Well, I think it's a very important relationship. I also think it's one that's often mischaracterized by casting Hamas, for example, as an Iranian proxy or whatever. I think we have to understand the axis of resistance as a coalition of states and movements in the region, who are bound together by a common opposition to U.S.-Israeli hegemony, in efforts to reduce that. But if you look at Hamas, it has actually been an almost reluctant member of this coalition. So, for example, from 2001 until approximately 2011, Hamas's headquarters were in Damascus. And Hamas, even though being part of the broader regional Muslim Brotherhood movement, and even though the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was a prescribed organization in Syria, Hamas coexisted quite well with government in Damascus.

Then the Syria conflict erupted, and Hamas broke with the government in Syria. It relocated its headquarters from Damascus to Doha in Qatar. And I think it did so in part, expecting some kind of reward from doing so from conservative Arab monarchies like Saudi Arabia, and recognition of what it had done from the Europeans, and of course, even from the Obama administration at the time.

As anyone could have predicted, what it got in exchange for this move was absolutely nothing. But it did also lead to a rupture between Hamas and Iran. And then, in addition, after the Sisi coup in 2013, there was also a complete breakdown in relations between Hamas and Egypt. Then around the middle of the past decade, and I would say this is primarily the work of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, Hamas began to take the position that Qatar and Turkey may be very useful for funding of the civilian sector in the Gaza Strip and development projects, and perhaps for exiled leaders to set up their presence there. But these countries don't deliver weapons.

They don't provide military training or logistical support. Egypt, whatever one may think of the government there, happens to have the only Arab border with the Gaza Strip. And so Hamas shifted to an attitude that its relations with these various regional powers needed to be based on Hamas' needs and interests rather than its ideological preferences.

And so, in the case of Iran, with the help of Hezbollah, with whom there was no rupture in relations, it repaired the relationship with Iran. Separately, it repaired the relationship with Egypt. Later, it even repaired the relationship with Syria.

So, to think of Hamas as somehow doing Iran's bidding in the Gaza Strip, in my view, it’s incorrect, just as it was concerning the PLO, back in the day, when it was denounced as a Soviet proxy that was basically acting to further the Soviet Union's agenda.

[Helena Cobban] (43:46 - 43:47)

But back when there was a Soviet Union.

[Mouin Rabbani] (43:48 - 45:22)

Yes, correct. It's really a way of saying these Palestinians may call themselves a people, but they're really not. And more importantly, they don't have legitimate grievances. The only reason they exist, and the only reason they're fighting Israel, is on behalf of some nefarious external power that is trying to impose itself on the region. So, the idea that there is a Palestinian people with inalienable rights that are exercising their right to resist foreign occupation to attain those rights, well, that's all just hogwash. What we're really dealing with here is a Soviet agenda or an Iranian agenda. I'm sure pretty soon we'll start hearing about a Chinese agenda, and so on. The point, just briefly to conclude, is that yes, Hamas is a member of the Axis of Resistance. Islamic Jihad is much more closely aligned ideologically with Iran, because Islamic Jihad emerged in the 1980s on the basis of dissidents from the quiescent Muslim Brotherhood, influenced by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, on the one hand, and Egyptian Jihadi groups on the other. So, Hamas, in a sense, has one foot in and one foot out of this coalition.

[Rami Khouri] (45:24 - 45:32)

And talking of Iran, does the death of the president [Raisi] mean anything in terms of what might happen?

[Mouin Rabbani] (45:33 - 46:32)

In terms of this issue that we're discussing, I don't anticipate that it will. Look at the last five Iranian presidents. They've come from very different backgrounds and agendas, while Iranian support for the Palestinians and for Hamas, with the exception of this rupture that we were just discussing, has not really been affected. So, whether it's from the more pragmatic wing, from the more hardline wing, it seems that support for the Palestinians and assistance to Palestinian militant groups like Hamas is a constant of Iranian regional policy for a variety of reasons.

[Rami Khouri] (46:33 - 46:43)

Yes, is this maybe a reflection that the link is with the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guards more than with the executive branch of government?

[Mouin Rabbani] (46:44 - 47:44)

I'm not really going to try to answer a question about which I don't feel I'm qualified to speak, but my impression is that this is not really the project of the Supreme Leader or of the Revolutionary Guard, although they're both obviously on board, but that this seems to be a principle of the state's regional policy. And so, therefore, there was really no significant change when Khomeini died and was replaced by Khamenei, and at least at present, I don't see any reason to suggest that this policy would change either when Khamenei departs the scene, or if the next Iranian president is much less closely aligned with the Revolutionary Guard.

[Rami Khouri] (47:45 - 48:33)

And also, Hamas's relationship with different Arab governments is fascinating. Egypt and Qatar clearly are important because of the negotiations. They give them a window to the world. Who knows what the Hamas representatives in those places, or in Beirut, or in other places, may be doing in terms of contacts with people. How do you see Hamas's relations with governments, it being a non-government militant movement, which reflects the two things that Arab governments most fear, which is militancy by independent movements that are also Islamist?

[Mouin Rabbani] (48:34 - 48:37)

And that won popular elections, on top of it.

[Rami Khouri] (48:38 - 48:57)

That won popular elections, and that generates huge sympathy among the Arab people on the street, which we know from polls and other things. So, how do you see this on-off, or maybe not on-off, but kind of quiet and not so quiet relations with actual governments?

[Mouin Rabbani] (48:59 - 49:07)

Well, it's an interesting question. And let's take the example of Egypt, since 2013.

[Rami Khouri] (49:08 - 49:10)

We have the tunnels also, which is a huge issue.

[Mouin Rabbani] (49:11 - 53:48)

Yes. So, Sisi comes into power on the basis of a coup that deposed the Muslim Brotherhood government. Hamas is, of course, started as the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Egyptian media went into a frenzy demonizing Hamas and basically projecting all Egypt's ills onto Hamas. And there was really a kind of campaign of vilification against Palestinians more generally, and Hamas particularly, in 2013-2014. And at one point, relations had soured to an extent that there were even suggestions that the Egyptian military might march into the Gaza Strip to depose Hamas.

What then happened is that, on the one hand, Hamas ameliorated its hostility to the Egyptian government, which it had previously been denouncing as illegitimate, and began to cooperate more closely with the Egyptian security forces in terms of the insurgency that was going on in the Gaza, in the Sinai Peninsula, and reports that some were seeking refuge in the Gaza Strip. But at the same time, the Egyptian leadership in Cairo came to the realization that the alternative to Hamas' rule in the Gaza Strip is not Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, but either a vacuum that would be total chaos, or some form of, let's say, ISIS-type rule in the Gaza Strip. And so, you had kind of a pragmatic meeting of minds, if you will, that both the Egyptian government and Hamas recognized that they can't replace their neighbors, and that their preferred alternative wasn't anywhere on the horizon, and that they had to establish a way of dealing with each other.

It was on that basis that Egypt once again became a mediator between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. As far as the tunnels, these had become not Hamas, but the Gaza Strip's lifeline to the outside world in the context of the increasingly punishing Israeli blockade. I'm not going to get into the details of that blockade here, but its details are well known.

And these tunnels, particularly after Mubarak was overthrown and before Sisi seized power, were primarily commercial in nature, in the sense that all kinds of goods, even livestock, and automobiles, and other things were, and people were using them to enter and exit the Gaza Strip. And so, they really were Gaza's lifeline to the outside world. And in 2014-2015, the Egyptians, in close cooperation with the Israelis and the Americans, set up all kinds of barriers that more or less wiped out commercial tunnels, and that appeared to have also affected Hamas's military tunnels.

But my suspicion is that Hamas had a more sophisticated and much more difficult-to-detect number of tunnels that it maintained for the movement of its own personnel and weapons. And I suspect those are still there, that try as Israel might, it's not going to get rid of them by taking over the Israel-Gaza border zone, as it's now doing at Rafah.

[Helena Cobban] (53:49 - 54:54)

I'm going to actually consolidate the next two questions that we had. So, the first dimension of this is Hamas's relations with other states that provide it with greater or lesser degrees of support globally. And I was thinking Turkey, Malaysia, South Africa, Russia, China, actually a whole lot of countries all around the world, that it seems to have been strengthening its relationships with even after October 7th.

[Mouin Rabbani] (54:55 - 56:49)

Well, all these states you mentioned, formally recognize the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. They also do have relations to one degree or another with Hamas. But I would argue that their primary relations are still with the official Palestinian leadership. And if you take, for example, the Russians, they have established relations with Hamas. Hamas leaders have visited Moscow on various occasions. But the Russians manage that relationship within the broader framework of their Palestine policy.

I'm not aware of any states that have relations with Hamas at the expense of relations with the PLO. So, for example, South Africa and its current genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. That has nothing to do with their relations with Hamas.

And if you read their submission, they openly condemn Hamas for its attacks on civilians on the 7th of October. So, this is, again, something that they're doing in the context of their broader Palestine or Middle East or Israel policy, if you will. Was there another aspect to that question that I missed?

[Helena Cobban] (56:49 - 57:05)

Actually, what I wanted to ask was the potential for one of these outside powers to bring Hamas and Fatah together. I mean, we've seen Moscow try, we've seen China try, but none of them have succeeded.

[Mouin Rabbani] (57:06 - 58:21)

Yes. The Russians have convened meetings, and with the Chinese the result has been these anodyne communiques. And I think there are two reasons. The first, as we were discussing earlier, I don't think any agreement is going to come about and be implemented so long as Mahmoud Abbas is around. You know, there have been previous agreements that have been reached with Hamas that he had formally agreed to, or at least that the Fatah leadership had formally agreed to, and that he [Abbas] then sabotaged in the interests of the Americans or his own instincts. And I think the second reason, and this gets back to an earlier part of the discussion, is that Egypt views itself as the custodian of these negotiations and agreements. And I think Hamas would be very hesitant to reach any agreement outside of an Egyptian framework, because it doesn't want to bring Egyptian ire upon itself, particularly given the absolute importance of the Gaza-Egyptian border.

[Helena Cobban] (58:21 - 59:03)

That's a really important point. Thanks for noting that. I want you to talk a little bit to the splits in the West that the strength of the resistance in Gaza has actually helped to cause. And in terms of the splits in the West, just this week we have additional Western states recognizing a Palestinian independent state, and we have the ICC prosecutors' actions. I mean, since I view the ICC as a kind of a West European...

[Mouin Rabbani] (59:03 - 59:06)

International Caucasian Court.

[Helena Cobban] (59:07 - 59:08)

Yes, something like that.

[Mouin Rabbani] (59:09 - 59:11)

Or international criminal court for Africa.

[Helena Cobban] (59:11 - 59:24)

Yes. But, I mean, it has provoked a real split between the West, many significant West European states and the United States. So the West is now suffering splits.

[Mouin Rabbani] (59:24 - 1:01:08)

Well, let's not exaggerate. We now have four European countries, Norway, Ireland, Spain, and Sweden that recognize Palestine. That's four, you know, if you take the West altogether out of, what, 35, maybe 40 states. Whereas if you look at the international community as distinct from the West, you probably have the same number of states at most that don't recognize Palestinian statehood. So, credit to those four. But I wouldn't, certainly not at this stage, call it a significant split within the West.

There is a significant split within the West, which I think is much more important, which is the growing chasm between public opinion and the political class. You see this very strongly in any number of European countries. You're seeing it even increasingly in the United States.

And I think the real chasm is between a political class that remains thoroughly beholden to the principle of Israeli impunity, and that the greatest crime under international law would be to hold Israel accountable for its conduct, and public opinion, which increasingly sees Israel for what it is, and is increasingly prepared to judge Israel on the basis of what it's actually doing, rather than on the basis of what they're told to.

[Helena Cobban] (1:01:11 - 1:01:39)

So thank you so much for that. I think we'll just go straight to the Q&A from the attendees at this point. So we have some interesting questions here.

I'll just pick out a couple of them. Rick Sterling, who is a board member of ours, is saying, what is Hamas's position regarding one democratic state with equal rights for all? Mouin, if you can kind of just remember these and then give us a kind of a summary.

[Mouin Rabbani] (1:01:44 - 1:02:48)

Well, I would say Hamas's opening gambit, if you will, its position when it was first established, was that the entirety of Palestine is an Islamic territory, waqf, and that Palestine in its entirety should be not only an Arab, but a Muslim state, and in which non-Muslims would be able to peacefully coexist. As we've been discussing today, it has now endorsed a two-state settlement. What exactly its position is on the traditional one-state democratic perspective, I have to plead ignorance. I'm not sure that Hamas has issued a position that speaks of a one-state settlement, one-state solution that is different from the one it adopted in the 1980s. I'm simply not sure.

[Helena Cobban] (1:02:48 - 1:03:04)

I do think there's a kind of a potential disagreement there with the traditional PLO call prior to Oslo and everything, which was for a secular democratic state, and Hamas has always been opposed to that.

[Mouin Rabbani] (1:03:04 - 1:03:46)

Yes. Again, the only one-state solution I'm aware of that I know Hamas has accepted is the one of an Islamic state in which others, whether other Palestinians or Israelis, would be able to live in peace, and then there  are various other aspects about who is defined as a legitimate resident in terms of the Israeli population. But that all goes back into the late 1980s and 1990s and has long been overtaken by new positions.

[Helena Cobban] (1:03:47 - 1:04:08)

We have a question from Kevin Haddock who says that a Gazan journalist had said to him yesterday, “Inshallah we are winning.” Some military analysts, Kevin says, insist that in fact Israel is losing. Do you see that in any sense Israel is losing the war?

[Mouin Rabbani] (1:04:09 - 1:05:56)

Well, I would say Israel is failing, and perhaps in the broader scheme of things, an Israeli failure against a second order militia using primarily locally manufactured weapons in a postage-stamp size territory could and should be seen as a defeat. But I would focus more on Israeli failure to achieve any of its military objectives rather than this idea that Israel is being militarily defeated, for the simple reason that in the broader scheme of things, it is reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble. It has killed tens of thousands of people, and I don't see at present Palestinian military capabilities in the Gaza Strip basically pushing the Israelis back to the border and then continuing to Tel Aviv.

But again, there are all kinds of very compelling reasons to conclude not only that Israel is failing, but will continue to fail. The more important thing for Israel is that I think what Hamas, and with it Hezbollah and the Houthis and others have managed to achieve since October last year, is to demonstrate not only Israel's vulnerabilities, but to show once again that there may be a credible military option against Israel, a multi-front war of attrition. And this would be, I think, a very serious issue for Israel.

[Rami Khouri] (1:05:56 - 1:06:44)

Let me jump in here quickly to link what you just said with the previous point that I made, that one of the things that's happening in the West now, particularly because of the campus protests all over the world, that started in the U.S., is that the movement to divest from investments that help Israel militarily is growing very quickly. That seems to be the fastest growth area of these protest movements. I was kind of surprised, I met with encampment students and had lunch with them, and they're very impressive. I was surprised that the focus on that point would be so central, but it has been and seems to be successful, and that should scare the Israelis, right?

[Mouin Rabbani] (1:06:45 - 1:08:06)

Well, it should scare the Israelis, and I've been as surprised as you were, and I think part of it is given that protesters today are relating to Israel not only in terms of its genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip, but also seeing it as an apartheid state. In part, I think they're taking a page out of the book of a previous wide-scale campaign on American and Western universities, and that was against apartheid in South Africa. That also took the form of primarily students seeking to force university administrations to address not so much the situation in South Africa, but their own direct relationship to that situation in terms of the investments they make.

That, of course, took the form of a divestment campaign, and so I do think there's a relationship there. And yes, Israel, which has enjoyed nothing but impunity, even the suggestion that it might be held accountable even by a small college in the middle of nowhere is like an earthquake for them.

[Helena Cobban] (1:08:07 - 1:08:26)

So, here we have a question from Mira Al-Hussein, who notes that the Israelis are quite irate about the alleged moral equivalency that was supposedly established by the ICC ruling, but how does Hamas view the ICC ruling?

[Mouin Rabbani] (1:08:26 - 1:11:20)

Well, Hamas has made exactly the same point, and their perspective is that the ICC prosecutor made an egregious error in indicting the oppressor and the victim, as they put it, and that there is absolutely no equivalence between a legitimate resistance against a foreign occupation and that genocidal foreign occupation. Of course, the ICC prosecutor and many legal analysts would say there was no effort to draw any equivalency. It was simply applying the same standards of international law, in this case the Rome Statute, to all participants in this armed conflict.

I think there's something to be said to that, but I think it's also quite clear that Karim Khan, as he has been since he assumed office, is playing politics. I mean, how do you explain that he is seeking the arrest of three Palestinians, but two Israelis? I think that was a deliberate decision on his part.

How do you explain that he is seeking an arrest warrant for the titular leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who, according to the available reports, was not involved in either the planning or execution of the October 7th attacks, but didn't have anything to say about the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, who has made blood-curdling statements about there basically being no innocent Palestinians in the Gaza Strip? If you look at the chart sheet against Netanyahu and Gallant, it's inconceivable that, for example, Israel's chief of the general staff or America's darling in the war cabinet, Benny Gantz, are not as implicated as these two.

But, yes, the idea that law operates above politics is, I think, an illusion. But in this case, Karim Khan has managed to inject law with politics to a very significant extent, particularly if he has supposedly for years been investigating all violations of the Rome Statute in what's called “the situation in Palestine” since 2014. Yet, for him, history begins on October 7th as well.

[Helena Cobban] (1:11:21 - 1:11:44)

Well, thank you so much. I'm afraid our time has run out. So, I just really want to thank both of you very much for your participation. It's really been a wonderful educational experience for everybody attending.

[Mouin Rabbani] (1:11:45 - 1:11:46)

Thank you very much.

[Rami Khouri] (1:11:46 - 1:12:35)

And we should remind all our viewers that all of this material of three previous speakers in action will be compiled and archived and available for people to use. There's an incredible amount of insight and knowledge and factual information here, which is a great antidote to the speculation and the wild attacks and assumptions that you get in so much of the Western media and political sphere, and some parts of the Middle East too. So we're really grateful, Mouin, for you for sharing your thoughts.

[Helena Cobban] (1:12:38 - 1:15:17)

That was really great. So, I also want to remind people to go to our learning hub, which is there. If you go to our website, click on resources, and you'll see it right up at the top, justworldeducational.org.

We hope to have you join us next week for our last webinar in the present series, when our guest expert will be Dr. Azzam Tamimi, who is the editor-in-chief of the London-based Al-Hiwar (Dialogue) TV channel. He's a specialist on issues related to Islamic political thought, the Islamic movements, and Middle Eastern, or as I would say, West Asian, politics, and a distinguished author of several well-received books on these topics. The book on Hamas that Dr. Tamimi published in 2007 was published in the UK under the title of Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, and in the USA, it was published under the intriguing title of Hamas: A History From Within. So, we hope you can join us for this important final session and bring along your questions for Dr. Tamimi. We do offer our programs free of charge to the learning public, but of course, we have a lot of expenses and we need to cover them. We are reliant on the generosity of our donors, so please, if you're able to support us, just go to our website and click on donate.

Thank you so much for being with us for today's discussion. Hope to see you next week, same time, same place with Dr. Azzam Tamimi and Rami Khouri and me. Thank you.