Mahmoud Zahhar
From AICbackground
Mahmoud Zahhar
Gaza-Based Senior Leader of Hamas
Quotes:
"‘When we left the field to Fatah, everything was corrupted. So it is essential to have an alternative, and to rebuild the areas from which Israel withdrew’.
"We have never loved weapons. But whenever we tried to organize peaceful demonstrations, the Israelis fired at us, arrested us, threw us into jail, and tortured us. In 1987 we therefore decided to resort to every available means to defend our people. The United States and the Zionist media then invented this myth - that a small organization such as Hamas could destroy a state such as Israel, which has nuclear weapons. It is ridiculous."
"We will find the paths to peace if the Palestinians are at last offered a just solution. Let us not forget the 5 million Palestinians living in exile. If the Jews talk about their historical right to return to the land of Israel after 3,000 years in exile, why should the Palestinians expelled 57 years ago not have the right to return home?"
"We don’t want to turn our people into a people of handout-seekers in the guise of donation recipients. Many countries live in dignity off their meager capabilities, and they are also advancing. A government that receives aid relinquishes its faith and begins to serve the will of the donor. The donating hand has the advantage over the receiving hand. Our jihad-fighting people will not become a people of beggars’."
"Israel is rejecting our existence. Israel has refused to allow our people to come for the right of return. Israel is expanding their settlement. Israel is still putting more than 10,000 of our Palestinian people in arrest. And still they are threatening our lives as human beings."
You were born in Gaza City in 1945, the son of a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother. You grew up in Egypt, ultimately attending medical school at Ain Shams University in Cairo from which you graduated in 1971. After completing a surgery residency you returned to the Occupied Territories to teach at the Islamic University of Gaza. It was there that you met Abdel-Aziz Rantissi and became acquainted with the organization that would become Hamas.
You were well acquainted with the Muslim Brotherhood from your Egyptian upbringing, and were sympathetic with the organization, and so it was only natural that you would connect with Hamas, which was very much a Palestinian offshoot of the Brotherhood. The organization was formed in the late 1960's as the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, and for the first two decades of its existence, it maintained a rather low profile. However, with the outbreak of the first intifada, in 1987, the leadership saw themselves losing members to more militant organizations. They reconstituted themselves as Hamas in 1988. The name, which is the Arabic word for zeal, is an acronym of its full name, "Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya,’ or Islamic Resistance Movement. It should also be noted that, in these latter years of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and the early years of Hamas, many have suggested that the Israelis saw your organization as having the potential to weaken Yasir Arafat's PLO and offered clandestine support for your organization.
Hamas, which formed under the leadership of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, swore itself to the destruction of Israel, vowing to reject any and all compromise with the Israeli nation that occupied the land on which Hamas envisioned an Islamic-based, Palestinian nation. Hamas soon evolved into an organization of two discrete parts. One part of Hamas was its military wing, the part that would soon become well-known (and reviled by many) for its often brutal aggression against Israel's civilian population. Hamas' Izzedine as-Qassam Brigades conducted numerous suicide bombings in Israel, as well as mortar attacks on Israeli settlements both in the occupied territories, and within Israel's pre-1967 borders. Hamas also serves as a social service organization, funding everything from orphanages and clinics, to soup kitchens and sports leagues. Indeed, the vast majority of Hamas' work, as an overall organization, falls into this second category. This is especially important to note in the wake of Hamas' stunning, and overwhelming victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections. Hamas, as too often contrasted with the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, has earned a reputation as being able not only to deliver needed services to impoverished Palestinians, many living in refugee camps, but also as being an organization whose members were honest and incorruptible. The Palestinian government was too often seen as hamstrung by corruption and inefficiency.
In 1989, Sheikh Yassin was arrested by the Israelis, who had outlawed Hamas, and was sentenced to life imprisonment, convicted for ordering the death of supposed Palestinian collaborators with the Israeli Army. Together with Mr. Rantissi, you led Hamas in the Sheikh's absence. In 1990, you took on the role as the Hamas liaison to the PLO. Then, in 1992, you and Rantissi were among a group of some 400 militant activists who were deported by Israel to southern Lebanon, and you weren't allowed to return to Gaza for a year. In the ensuing months, the decision was reached to set upon a policy of suicide bombings against Israeli civilian targets. This policy was decided upon, in part, as a response to the 1993 Oslo Accords in which the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established, and through which the PA formally recognized the state of Israel. From the perspective of your organization, this was a sell-out, and an appeasement of an occupying power that would result only in disaster. It was directly stimulated, according to you and other Hamas insiders, by the 1994 massacre of 29 Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Hebron, a massacre carried out at the hand of a radical Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, during Ramadan prayers. The first Hamas suicide bombing took place just over a month later in April 1994 (precisely at the end of the 40 day Muslim period of mourning), killing eight residents of the northern Israeli town of Afula.
In the years that followed, you often found yourself at odds with not only the Israelis, but also the Palestinian authorities. You were arrested several times by PA security forces, at one point spending seven months in a Palestinian jail. It is probably safe to say that you and your fellow Hamas leaders felt yourselves to be most threatened by the Israelis, though. This was made manifest in 1997 when Hamas' political leader, Khaled Meshaal, then living in Jordan, was poisoned by the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad. Fortunately for Mr. Meshaal, the Mossad agents were captured by Jordanian police, and a livid King Hussein contacted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu demanding an antidote, which was delivered in time to save Meshaal's life. Israel ultimately was made to free Sheikh Yassin, along with other prisoners, in return for the captured Mossad agents.
This was all the more the case in the wake of the second intifada, which broke out in September 2000. The Izzedine as-Qassam Brigades carried out several suicide bombings in the ensuing months, and Israel came down hard on Hamas leadership. In September 2003, the Israelis bombed your house in Gaza, completely destroying it and killing your son as well as a bodyguard. Then, in March 2004, Israeli agents assassinated Sheikh Yassin and, just weeks after his promotion to replace Sheikh Yassin, the Israelis assassinated Mr. Rantisi as well. In the ensuing months, you and the rest of the Hamas leadership kept an exceedingly low profile. Indeed, as the time to decide whether or not to contest the 2006 parliamentary elections approached, many in the West knew precious few names of the Hamas leadership. Those that were known, however, were the municipal officials elected in 2005, the first instance of Hamas participation in the electoral process. Despite your shunning the spotlight, you and Mr. Haniya were clearly the successors to Rantissi and Yassin.
You were a key figure in Hamas' reaching the decision to take part in these municipal elections, and in the parliamentary elections of 2006. Your involvement was all the more significant because you, in contrast to Mr. Haniya, represent the more militant perspective within Hamas. You were quoted as saying that "(t)he Israelis are continuing their aggression against our people, killing, detention, demolition and in order to stop these processes, we run effective self defence by all means, including using guns." Yet, to the surprise of many, you were also a key figure in Hamas' agreeing to an informal truce with Israel in February of 2005, as Hamas contested the municipal elections, and once again in the months leading up to (and following) the January 2006 municipal elections.
Role Playing Notes
You are seen as the hardliner among Hamas' leadership, but you have also shown a very practical side. You have a dry wit that tends to disarm skeptical journalists. You are also experienced at presenting yourself publicly, skilled both at avoiding questions you don't wish to answer, and reframing questions targeted at you so that they are pointing in another direction. You are a disciplined and patient man with no apparent need of the spotlight, as exemplified by your years in Hamas leadership without being at all well known outside of the Territories. Many are curious to see whether, despite your reputation as a militant, you will show a more pragmatic, less doctrinaire side. Your religious faith is a vital part of who you are.
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