Hamas interview with Jamal Abu Alhija.

• Author: Kennis, Andrew C.
• Position: Interview

[Andrew Kennis] I am here with a leader from Hamas in the middle of the Jenin refugee camp, and my first question was going to be, what is Hamas? This is an especially important question because most Americans have one idea of Hamas, and that is crazy, terrorist, Islamic people. I wanted to hear from him a more accurate and comprehensive picture of Hamas.

[Jamal Abu Alhija] In fact, Hamas is a Palestinian movement and it was founded to help the Palestinian people here, to help them realize their rights. It is a movement that has introduced many activities, not only political activities, but also educational activities, sanitation projects, sports programs and social projects. In terms of cultural activities, Hamas has been active in maintaining sports programs. Hamas has contributed to many activities in the Palestinian society. We have also participated in many workshops, conferences and conventions in calling for the peace process. During this Intifada, Hamas has done excellent work and has distinguished itself from other Palestinian movements and groups.

[AK] What are the differences?

[JAA] A lot of people belong to Hamas--it is a mass movement. Hamas has organized mass demonstra-tions and the people have reacted positively to such demonstrations, which have been against the Israeli occupation. They have also reacted positively to the other social and cultural activities that Hamas has engaged in.

The first phase of [this second] Intifada, was to engage in peaceful demonstrations. However, the Israeli army killed our sons, our brothers and wounded thousands of our people. And they killed a lot of people. I want to clarify that Hamas is against the occupation. We are against the occupation because we see our friends and our sons killed by the Israeli army...our trees and our lands have been taken by the Israelis in light of this aggression and with these victims, we have found ourselves obliged to fight and struggle against the Israeli soldiers.

We are obliged to undertake operations inside Israel, to stop the Israeli aggression. We don't like to do this, but we have found ourselves obliged to do as much, to defend our sops, our lands, our people in our struggle against the occupation.

The Hamas movement wants to find a strategy as to how to fight the Israelis. The strategy that we have found to work now, is to sneak our people into Israel and to undertake operations. The last strong operation was near the Haifa airport, which was very...