Behind The Lines with Arthur Snell

EMERGENCY PODCAST

We’re only 4 days after the stunning horror of Hamas’s attack on Israel. Much remains unclear, but we now know that a major Hamas operation completely blindsided Israel’s defences and nearly 1,000 Israelis, mostly civilians are dead, with several hundred taken as hostages to Gaza. Israel has regained control of the towns that were seized by Hamas fighters, but there remain gunmen at large in what is obviously a chaotic situation.

Israel has responded with a huge mobilisation of forces against Hamas, with 600 killed in Gaza, according to the BBC. Gaza is officially under siege with no access to supplies of water, electricity or food and Hamas are threatening to kill a hostage every time Israel carries out an air strike without warning Palestinian civilians.

To help us come to terms with these extraordinary events, I was joined by Jason Pack. Some of you may have heard him speak on Libya and the disordered world in episode 6 of this podcast. But Jason is very much a Middle East specialist: he lived 7 years in the Middle East, speaks Arabic and Hebrew and lived 3 years in East Jerusalem, 2 years in Syria, and 1 in Egypt... He is of course presenter of the Disorder podcast and Founder & Director, NATO & the Global Enduring Disorder Project. 

Some of you might have been surprised to hear Jason say that Israel had a hand in Hamas origins. There are various articles that describe this background, this in The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-create-hamas/ and particularly this detailed account in the Wall Street Journal (archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20090926212507/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123275572295011847.html). The important point to make here is that Israel encouraged an Islamist charitable entity that was there to act as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of FATAH, also known as the PLO. The Israelis were not trying to create a militant terror group (this is a conspiracy theory that has flourished online), although one of the retired Israeli officers interviewed in the WSJ article acknowledges that he "had no illusions about [Hamas founder] Sheikh Yassin's long-term intentions or the perils of political Islam”. This is, as ever, a complex story.

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