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Inside Hamas: my journey to its secret heart

Wednesday, 6th February 2008

The film-maker Mike Chamberlain has gained unprecedented access to the Islamist organisation. He recounts the cloak-and-dagger methods that led him to its leaders and its foot soldiers

Later that year I booked a flight to Beirut where one of the Hamas top brass, Osama Hamdan, was in exile. (Half the Hamas leadership is inside the Palestinian Territories or in prison in Israel; the other half is based in Lebanon and Syria, where their cabinet meets). Then war intervened: in July the Hamas military kidnapped an Israeli army corporal from just over the Gaza border and that was followed swiftly by Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. Israel retaliated — and the second Israel–Lebanon war was on. I cancelled my flight, but as soon as the bombing of Beirut ended I hopped on a plane to Jordan and went by taxi through Syria to Lebanon. I was accompanied by Alastair Crooke and another conciliator-in-the-making, Tom Clark, of Clarks shoes, whose family trust sponsors conflict resolution initiatives in the Middle East.

On our second night in Beirut a battered old Mercedes pulled up outside our hotel and a scruffy young man ushered Tom and me in. Squeezed in the back with an old fridge, we were driven to the Shia-dominated southern suburbs. On the way to our destination I scanned the dark horizon for black-clad ninja-style Israeli secret service agents. Pretty soon we were dropped outside a mock castle, which turned out to be a kind of shopping complex with, at its heart, an eating place nicknamed the ‘Hezbollah Restaurant’.

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sebastian

February 7th, 2008 11:02am

Mike Chamberlain has, with all due respect, been but the solitary passenger on a Hamas fairground Ghost Train of stage managed spine-tinglers and dangled, sheeted contents of false, hidden tombs. Probably only the well informed Israelis really know what lies at Hamas' secret heart. And they're no more likely to share this with a man with a notepad and camera, than Hamas is. How does it feel to know you've been taken for a ride, Mr. Chamberlain?

jack jones

February 8th, 2008 5:36pm

"Later on, he offered Israel a traditional Islamic truce — 10, 20, 30 years without fighting, if Israel would retreat back to the 1967 borders." This is known as a "Hudna" and is a temporary cease fire in order for the armies of islam to regroup until there powerful enough to start another offensive. Mr.Chamberlain is either ignorant of islam or like most is choosing to ignore it's basic tenets of perpetual war with the "infidel" because it kills the myth and legend of the "diversity fairy" that most journalists/politicians seem to believe in these days. I hate to burst your bubble but these guys want you dead too...just when they choose. At the moment your useful.You could become even more useful and end up spending several years wrapped in gaffa tape in a cold cell. Two words to look up and study from an islamic context Mr Chamberlain. Taqqiya and Hudna. The former is most important for you because if you grasp it you might realise how you've been played by Hamas and the practitioners of the religion that dare not speak it's name.

jack jones

February 8th, 2008 5:38pm

"Later on, he offered Israel a traditional Islamic truce — 10, 20, 30 years without fighting, if Israel would retreat back to the 1967 borders." This is known as a "Hudna" and is a temporary cease fire in order for the armies of islam to regroup until there powerful enough to start another offensive. Mr.Chamberlain is either ignorant of islam or like most is choosing to ignore it's basic tenets of perpetual war with the "infidel" because it kills the myth and legend of the "diversity fairy" that most journalists/politicians seem to believe in these days. I hate to burst your bubble but these guys want you dead too...just when they choose. At the moment your useful.You could become even more useful and end up spending several years wrapped in gaffa tape in a cold cell. Two words to look up and study from an islamic context Mr Chamberlain. Taqqiya and Hudna. The former is most important for you because if you grasp it you might realise how you've been played by Hamas and the practitioners of the religion that dare not speak it's name.

Maurice Ferera

February 9th, 2008 6:58am

Mr Chamberlain chooses to ignore every anti-Israel statement made by HAMAS leadership, the way in which HAMAS disposed of FATAH prisoners in their recent civil war, their tacit if not overt support of kassam rocket attacks against Israel, their recent handling of protests by unarmed civilian demonstrations etc. etc. Reading this, I got no deeper understanding of Hamas - but got plenty of understanding of Mr Chamberlain's abilities as a journalist. Is this article really supposed to pass for serious journalism?

Napoleon

February 9th, 2008 12:12pm

I was not going to post, but as I have seen that no one(that posted) agrees with Mike, I decided to post just to say that I loved the article, and totally agree with Mike.

Arieh Gertler

February 9th, 2008 1:20pm

Your reporter Mike Chamberlain has unwillingly became a tool in the hands of Hamas terror organization and shows them in a moderate light. Not talking of what Hamas is ready to do to Israelis, not talking of the home made rockets that he sends with a clear intention to kill Israeli citizens, should your reporter see what Hamas did in Gaza to his fellow brothers from Fatah, starting from shooting in knees to throwing them from 17-floor houses to their death. Those moderate Western journalists who try to "understand" the terrorist motives should learn from Winston Churchill - the evil has to be eliminated and not understood. There is only one way to treat those Hamas terrorists - to KILL them.

TDK

February 9th, 2008 10:58pm

but Israel did withdraw to the 1967 border in the Gaza strip. And Hamas responded by immediately launching (or in this naive version, tolerating the launching of) rockets into Israel. I would have though that if Hamas was an honest partner in peace it might have tried to encourage Israel, that it could be trusted to keep the peace, as a prelude to Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

Shimon Felix

February 11th, 2008 8:20am

Well, I guess if you want the access you have to play the game - Hamas's racist, anti-Semitic charter is dismissed as an irrelevant relic,the "traditional Islamic truce" of 20, 30 years, is not just a way for Hamas to arm itself to act on the genocidal aims of its charter, it's "traditonal", Hamas allows deadly rocket fire at Israeli civillians in order to retain credibility as a "resistance group" - resistance to what? Israel's non-existent "occupation" of Gaza, etc., etc. But hey, he got a movie out of all this nonsense. And it will be a good one, too, after all these Hamas guys wear sharp suits and look like George Clooney.

Mikets

February 11th, 2008 7:38pm

Hamas has, as they say, a respect for democracy - 'one man one vote one time'

Elliot

February 13th, 2008 1:19am

What is this apology for Hamas? They are as democratic as Taliban or al-Qa'eda. I gather Mike Chamberlain doesn't wish to be assasinated after his interview, but he really ought to have published it in the Guardian or some other liberal PR mouthpiece.


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