Hamas is Israel's Creation
By Farooq Sulehria
29 November 2012
The Blockade denies the Palestinians in the Gaza strip their basic human rights. The blockade itself is the main reason that Hamas is still in power
'Hamas activists gave hints to my father that I was about to turn into a woman and it was time for me to put on the Islamic Hijab. I refused until Hamas begin to threat to throw acid in the face of any young woman who would refuse to wear the Hijab,' says Wafa.
Wafa Jamil is a third generation Palestinian refugee from the Nakba. Her family originally comes from Akkā (now in 'Israel'). She was born in Gaza 1975, and moved to Ramallah 1994 to study Media in Birzeit University. She works as a documentary film director. Read on:
Can you briefly describe how life is like in Gaza and how Israeli aggression affects the life there?
Well, I have not been able to visit Gaza since September 2000. First it was impossible for me to go there to visit my family because of my ID. In 2000 I was able to change to a West Bank ID in order to stay legally in Ramallah, but the Israeli computers still had me registered as a Gaza citizen until 2011. When my ID said one thing and the Israeli computer another thing, I had no guarantee to be let back to West Bank if I would go to Gaza.
In 2008 I made the film "Hamas under Palestine", that criticised the Israeli occupation, Hamas and Fateh. After that Hamas threatened me and it´s still dangerous for me to go to Gaza. But I have my whole family in Gaza: Four sisters and two brothers with families (totally more than 40 persons).
We have daily contact by phone. During the recent attack it was really painful to hear the constant sounds of drones and occasional explosions on the phone when I called them to see if they all were safe. My family home would only be one hour away by car from Ramallah if there would be no siege or checkpoints. But still it feels like light-years away. It´s very frustrating to have your loved ones so close but yet so far away, especially when there is a war going on and you sit in front of the TV and try to map each air-strike and estimate how far away the shelling is to the places where your family lives.
In general life has gotten more and more hard for the average Gaza citizen since Hamas started to gain a bigger influence. In this context we must remember that Hamas is Israel's creation. This fact is not that well-known outside of Palestine. Israel watched the Islamist movement take shape, get stronger, start challenging secular Palestinian rivals and then transform into what today is Hamas. Instead of trying to stop Gaza's Islamists, Israel for years tolerated and encouraged them in order to undermine PLO and Yasser Arafat's Fatah. It is a similar story to how USA armed Usama Bin Laden to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and this way created a monster that later turned against its own creator.
My personal life in Gaza started to be affected by Hamas when I reached puberty. Hamas activists gave hints to my father that I was about to turn into a woman and it was time for me to put on the Islamic Hijab. I refused, and the Hamas sympathisers started to write bad words about me on the wall of my family house. My father supported my decision, so I refused to cover my hair until Hamas begin to threat to throw acid in the face of any young woman who would refuse to wear the Hijab. So during my High-school years I was forced to wear scarf in public. As soon as the Palestinian Authority entered Gaza in 1994 I removed my headscarf.
But of course the biggest problem for the people of Gaza is the Israeli siege. The Blockade denies the Palestinians in the Gaza strip their basic human rights. It stops them from import and export of products and to travel in and out of their own country. It denies them access to their farming lands and fishing grounds. The Blockade is a form of collective punishment which makes it is impossible for the people to support themselves, secure food supplies, get medical care, education, drinkable water and cultural exchange. The siege puts Gaza's population totally in the hands of Hamas who today controls everything from the tunnels to Egypt, the distribution of foreign aid, to the way women dresses in public. The blockade itself is the main reason that Hamas is still in power.
Why do you think Israel attacked Gaza this time?
Officially Israel justified the aggression on the Palestinians on grounds of self-defence. But Israel is a country of 7.5 million people with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery, helicopter gunships and Air-Force. Gaza is a small occupied territory of 1.7 million which has no heavy weaponry.
And in reality, it was civilians in Gaza that paid the price of the Israeli attack, rather than Hamas.
So what was the real reason for the attack on Gaza? I would say Politics: the upcoming elections in Israel. The assassinated leader of Hamas in Gaza was ready to sign a truce and ceasefire immediately. With Hamas fully ready to negotiate, why else would Netanyahu increase the aggression into a major conflict? The victims here are the people in Gaza, and the man who holds the main responsibility for this violence is Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel. This was happening just before the Israeli elections, and Netanyahu's support was poorer than expected. It seems he was trying to use this murderous tactic to gain support from the voters. The last thing Netanyahu wants is peace, because peace is not on the agenda of the current Israeli leadership. Hamas is a useful tool that Netanyahu can use to stir up hate, and to get support from Israeli citizens for more war.
Global media outlets, BBC and CNN being the major symbols, keep presenting this 'conflict' as an endless war. Similarly, Arabs are routinely vilainised in Western productions, especially in Hollywood. How as a film-maker you would comment on the media depiction of Palestine question?
After Sept 11, and even before that, the images of the Arabs have been negative: If he is a man he is a terrorist or a wife-beater. If she is a woman, she is pictured as a veiled victim. After the fall of "Communism", the western world needed a new enemy. The way Mossad created Hamas, CIA created Bin Laden and al-Qaida.
In the beginning of the second Intifada the typical story in Israeli and international media was: Palestinian mother sending her child to an Israeli checkpoint to become a martyr. This was, and is a distortion of reality. Hardly any mother will be pregnant for nine months just to give birth to a martyr. And most Palestinian kids going to demonstrations and protests throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers with the risk of being killed or sent to prison for years, do it without the knowledge of their parents. When I did the same as a teenager my parents had no clue what I was doing, and they for sure would have tried to stop me if they would have known. Like parents all over the world, Palestinians love their kids and want to protect them.
For any mother it is a tragedy to lose her offspring. But in a Palestinian context, when a child is killed by the Israelis, the mother will of course be traumatised and will not be able to think clear or to act "normal". All the women in the neighbourhood will come to "the Martyrs" mother to show their respect and try to comfort her. And the social codes say that the mother should be strong and pretend to be happy and proud that her son or daughter became a martyr. This does not in any way reflect the real emotions of the women whose children were killed. I know this from my own family: it happened to my grandmother. In the 1940s, before the state of Israel and the Nakba, one of my uncles was killed by Zionist terrorists in a bomb-attack at a market in Akkā. My grandmother never got over this loss. And the death of her son was the single reason that the family moved from Akkā to Yāfā, just to try to escape the pain.
While people in Pakistan were angry over Israeli aggression, media have ignored the attack on Gaza. Press consigned the headlines to back pages while TV channels assigned this conflict a fifth or sixth place in the headlines. This news is no more sexy for commercial media. Do you think Arab media were any different? Also, do you think this may owe to the fact that solidarity for the Palestinian cause is on the decline?
In Arab media it was a different story. When the attacks on Gaza started they flashed it. There was live coverage, most of it good journalism. But after the ceasefire, Gaza disappeared from the headlines. It was like: "No dead bodies - No story." My main criticism against the mainstream Arab media coverage would be that they were focusing a bit too much on the rockets, air-strikes and the dead bodies. They could have given a bit more attention to the stories and the psychological sufferings of the people who survived on the ground, the bombed factories and infrastructure. Another thing that stoked me was how much the Islamist agenda is affecting the Arab media. The focus was only on Hamas, not on other Palestinian factions that also fought in Gaza. And they tell the story about the ceasefire as of it was a big success for Hamas. Truth is that both Israel and Hamas failed.
For me it was very upsetting when Hamas after two days of ceasefire declared that they respect 1967 borders. I find it disgusting to acknowledge the state of Israel and to de facto give up the Palestinian right to return.
On the social sites, certain liberals are always found mocking the Left for agitating in support of Palestine. There are others who wonder why Palestine draws such a big attention even when only a few people get killed while massacres in Africa go unnoticed. What is your reaction, being Palestinian, to such criticisms?
In a way I can understand that criticism. I think that we should show solidarity with all people who suffer and are struggling around the world. We as Palestinians are not more important than Africans. But as a media-worker I understand that Palestine from a dramaturgic point of view is more "sexy" than Congo-Kinshasa. But also, the Americans have more interest in the Middle East and Israel/Palestine than in Africa. If, for example, Obama wants to secure his re-election: he will wag his tail for the Israeli lobby. For historical and geopolitical reasons Palestinian/Israeli issues often get more attention both from the Left and from the political right.
Find out more about Wafa Jamil and her work at: http://www.wafajamil.net/en_index.htm]
Farooq Sulehria is currently pursuing his media studies. Previously, he has worked with Stockholm-based Weekly Internationalen. In Pakistan, he has worked with The Nation, The Frontier Post, The News, and the Pakistan. He has MA in Mass Communication from the University of Punjab, Lahore. He also contributes for Znet and various left publications internationally.
Source: http://www.viewpointonline.net/hamas-is-israels-creation.html
URL: https://newageislam.com/interview/hamas-israel-creation/d/9510