Behind the evil

The spiritual leader of Hamas, the wheelchair-bound Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin - assassinated by the Israelis in 2004 - argued to his followers, including Mishal, that the Jews could be kicked out of Palestine only after the brotherhood established an Islamic state in Egypt, Syria or Jordan. Hamas’s 2006 election win in Palestine, shunned by the international community because the “wrong” side prevailed, caused some in the movement to seek a more moderate position. It has since offered a long-term truce and a willingness to accept a Palestinian state along 1967 borders. In other words, the two-state solution long said to be the goal of the UN, US, Israel, the European Union, Arab League and Australia.

From Hamas’s perspective, that Israel continued to build illegal settlements in the West Bank and imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza was a clear indication - after Fatah negotiated with Israel for years and achieved nothing - that resistance was the only path towards self-determination.

McGeough neither glorifies Mishal, now based in Damascus, nor ignores the brutality and terrorism wrought on those who stood in the way of establishing “a multimillion-dollar global apparatus [that] delivered in arms and blood, dollars and diplomacy”. A recent example was the murder of Fatah rivals in the wake of the Gaza war.

As far back as the mid-’80s, Mishal recognised the importance of incorporating violent resistance and political development. He realised the duplicity of Arafat long before the vast majority of Palestinians did. Hamas, an Arabic word meaning zeal or enthusiasm, thrived on the rivalry between itself and Fatah. After more than two decades of squabbling and revenge attacks, the uneasy relationship exploded in 2007 when Hamas pre-empted a Fatah coup in the occupied territories and assumed control of the Gaza Strip. Israel and Washington backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan but the civil war that followed left Hamas stronger.

McGeough, who interviewed many of the key players in the drama, including Mishal, constantly aims to challenge the reader’s point of view. The Hamas leader comes across as intriguing, determined, pedantic - and ferocious:

Mishal was a complex individual with a personal charm that belied the caricature and his cutthroat reputation. He had a broader interest in world affairs than his remorseless public rhetoric would suggest. The man who presided over a killing machine had the fastidious personal habits of a hospitable Arab chieftain. He would polish grapes one at a time with a tissue, or he would produce a knife to slice pieces from a ripened peach, before distributing the fruit to a visitor. If the visitor’s eye wandered, he would interrupt his delivery, which was principally in Arabic, and switch into English to command eye contact with the words, “Excuse me!”

That passage is eerily reminiscent of Robert Fisk’s encounter with Osama bin Laden in Sudan in 1993, and some readers may condemn McGeough for supping with the enemy. Each journalist tries to deconstruct figures who are, in Fisk’s words, “monstrous beast-men” in the Western imagination. McGeough and Fisk attempt to explain the reasons behind terrorism but never defend its use.

During the Gaza war Mishal used an opinion piece in the Guardian newspaper in Britain to issue a warning to his Western critics. Israel, he wrote, should expect violence against its people until the Palestinians were treated with respect. “The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd,” he argued. “They absolve the aggressor and occupier of responsibility while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied.”

This defiance has defined the Palestinian struggle for more than a half century. McGeough’s interpretation of the Hamas movement is rooted in realism.

Whether realism can provide a solution is another question. Realism almost certainly means engaging with Hamas, as even Tony Blair acknowledged to The Times in late January: “In a situation like this you need to talk to everybody.”