Hamas is not the Islamic State. Any comparison on the part of the Israeli leaders is just war propaganda. In fact, they know each other very well, since the radicalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement once served Israel to undermine the Palestinian Authority (PA) that emerged from the Oslo Accords of 1993 and to slow down future negotiations, until who became his great enemy, after bloody suicide attacks.
Although present in both the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas concentrated its power in the strip, led by an elderly quadriplegic and blind Sheikh Ahmed (killed in 2004). In 2005, Ariel Sharon had the revolutionary idea of a "disconnection" from Gaza; that is to say, force the Israeli settlers to leave, close the perimeter, maintaining control of the territory – as an occupying force according to international law – by land, sea and air, and leave the administration in the hands of the Palestinian Authority, directed by Al-Fatah. More sensible Gaza observers then felt that Hamas leaders were wrong to celebrate. Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief, was a naïve. And, the head of the hard wing and old acquaintance of the Israeli services, would increase his influence.
In 2006, Palestinian elections gave victory to Hamas in Gaza; the people, fed up with corruption, voted for them because they saw them as more honest. The response, after a few months, by the strongman of Al-Fatah, Muhammad Dahlan, was to attempt a kind of coup d'état. Hamas knew this and advanced: the men of Al-Fatah fled in a stampede amid gunfire towards Israel; those who were less fortunate were thrown from the roofs of tall buildings in Gaza City. Dahlan landed in the Arab Emirates. It was a real upheaval that meant the breakdown of the unity of the Palestinian factions, which has not been recovered since.
For a while, Hamas kept its form and showed it by protecting the house of Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, in Gaza: the policemen in blue who guarded it could not touch anything in the refrigerator (there was a lot of frozen meat) and they brought them food. But immediately, the heads of Hamas seized homes, liquidated the unions... Islamic law, although it was already quite conservative in Gaza, fell like a slab on the young women. Hamas became the new party-state. In the religious aspect, however, Hamas could be very pragmatic. In fact, some of its leaders took their children to the Catholic school, and they promised reprisals when it was attacked on one occasion by the Islamic Jihad, with no more consequences than the burning of a Bible and a crucifix.
Between 2006 and 2014, this special envoy was able to speak several times with various Hamas leaders, from the local level to the political bureau. All of them were polite, circumspect and cold (except when they wanted to talk about football), and they tried not to say "Israel" (a State they don't recognize) or "Jews", and they always referred to "the occupation". They did not reveal anything, but they made it clear how they had come to the conclusion that, given the thousands of deaths that the Palestinian population was accumulating, and the fact that it was losing in any negotiation, there was no other way but armed struggle, which it had renounced Al-Fatah.
By the elderly and prestigious psychiatrist Iyad al-Sarraj (died in 2013), a refugee from 1948 who lived very close to the separation wall, after the collapse of the so-called "peace camp" in Israel -a what the suicide attacks contributed -, Hamas was to be feared. "They don't belong in this world, they can't go down to reality - he said -. For them, Palestine is a foundation of Islam, it cannot be touched, nothing can be done about it". It was all or nothing.
What support does Hamas have among the population of Gaza? After a short time of taking power, silence prevailed. In 2018, the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies estimated that some 50,000 families (out of a population of 2.2 million) formed the core of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
At the end of July, for the first time there were demonstrations, in Gaza City and Khan Iunis, against Hamas to the cry of "shame!" because of the difficult living conditions. They are quickly repressed. But make no mistake: when Israel bombs, even those who hate Hamas know well who destroys their homes and their lives.
