Israel Gaza War: The Man That Created Hamas | If You’re Listening

[Music] these images have been populating our screens and feeds for weeks now there's a growing sense tonight this war is about to enter a new phase the headlines are shocking but today I want to tell you a different part of this story because it's a story that goes back decades and it starts with a man in a wheelchair on the 7th of October thousands of men from the militant Palestinian group Hamas burst out of the Gaza Strip and into Southern Israel killing at least 1,400 people the vast majority of them Israeli civilians more than 120 Israeli and foreign civilians have been taken as hostages it's the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust Hamas says it's retaliation for decades of M treatment betrayal insults and attacks against the Palestinian population Israel has now launched a Counterattack against Hamas in Gaza which has killed thousands of people in describing this attack the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US President Joe Biden have compared Hamas to Isis Hamas is Isis and just as Isis was crushed so too will Hamas be crushed he's blood thirstiness brings to mind the worst Rampages of Isis while Isis went from creation to almost total Destruction in 15 years hamas's story is much more complex it begins with a young Refugee confined to a wheelchair by a broken neck who became one of the most influential men in Palestine Israel Gaza conflict is complex but over the next few weeks we're going to try and make sense of it together starting with Hamas its surprising founder and how it Rose from obscurity taking total control of the Gaza Strip I'm mat be and this is if you're listening the early life story of Ahmed Yim the founder and first spiritual leader of Hamas is shrouded in [Music] mystery his birth date is reported as being anywhere between the late 1920s and the late 1930s there's also confusion when it comes to where he was born because the town doesn't exist anymore we do know that his family were farmers The Ordinary People of Palestine ask nothing better than to be left in peace his family were likely quite similar to the farmers in these communities this is a British government documentary from the 1940s these beduins lead a quiet and prosperous life in 1948 date life for these peasants was turned upside down following the horrors of the Holocaust in World War II the United Nations decided to petition off part of Palestine to become a Jewish homeland the united states recognizes the new state of Israel the new Jewish state is born in the tense atmosphere of Civil War 700,000 people were forced to leave or fled from the Israeli Army Arab strong points are taken after being blasted to Rubble Yen's family like thousands of others had to run women flee with what belongings they can carry and as Palestine struggles for National existence the conflict catches the inevitable innocent in its toil yin's town like many others was destroyed and a new Israeli city was built on the ruins the family fled to the Egyptian controlled region of Gaza in 1952 teenage jine was playing with friends at the beach one thing people in Gaza share with Israelis is a love of the beach but on this day there was a terrible accident there are conflicting reports about whether he was swimming doing some assaults playing soccer or wrestling with a friend but what's clear is that he somehow broke his neck he was a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair and dependent on others for the rest of his life but he was smart and charismatic and determined and he was able to finish school and then get a job teaching Arabic and Islamic Studies at the same high school he went to he also studied English at a university in Cairo Gaza was under Egyptian occupation after all until suddenly it wasn't it was 1967 and Israel was not feeling very welcome in neighborhood afraid that bordering Arab countries would try to drive them into the sea and return their land to the Palestinians the Israeli Air Force launched preemptive air strikes against Egypt which led to conflict with several countries it was brutal and efficient killing 20,000 Arabs it was called The Six Day War in 6 days it was all over the most one-sided military engagement of modern times this is when Gaza came under Israeli control it was occupied by the Israeli military the 42 km long strip was overpopulated unemployed and angry Israel would not permit the citizens of Gaza to move into their territory but they said they would try and improve their lives by giving them low PA paid work in Israel Arab workers board trucks that will take them across the military Frontier to their jobs in Israel but these convoys of trucks and buses carrying workers into Israel became targets for Arab terrorists who accused the workers of collaborating With the Enemy the Arabs are nervous and they jump aboard quickly because this is a favorite moment for Arab extremists to [Music] attack now it's important to understand that not all political and militant groups in Arab countries are the same but they broadly fall into two groups nationalists and islamists the terrorists attacking these convoys were not Hamas Hamas didn't exist yet these were Arab nationalists they wanted to get rid of Israel and replace it with an independent Palestinian state with a secular government which would function the same as most other countries do Arab nationalist groups are spread out across the Middle East and tend to have a flag with red black green and white colors with horizontal stripes a triangle on the side and no religious icons or text in Palestine the Nationalist group was the PLO led by a guy guy called yasa Arafat there was also separately the islamists islamism is the idea that Islamic teachings should permeate every part of life education business Community Justice and politics and your religion is more important than your national identity you're a Muslim first and then a Palestinian islamist groups tend to have religious symbols and text on their flags and logos in the 1970s Arab nationalists were the primary violent extremists enraged by Israel's presence Israel wanted to undermine the Nationalist popular support they hope that employing and educating the residents of Gaza would help the Israelis hope that an increasingly prosperous and educated population will become gradually less hostile to rule from Tel Aviv but another way was by funding the nationalists opponents the islamists ahed yine had had discovered islamism during his education and had been traveling around doing charity work and building Islamic community centers Israel even decided to help him out and gave him funding for his charitable work it's important to note at this time the islamists were mostly peaceful throughout the 70s yine fought culture wars his movement wasn't ready yet for actual War but when the 1980s arrived yine decided that the time had come he started buying weapons the Israelis found out and threw him in jail on and off for more than a decade in the midst of this he founded a political and militant group called the Islamic resistance movement or to use its acronym Hamas it it makes sense in Arabic in the early 1990s while Yen was in jail the Nationalist PLO under yasa Arafat the guys who had been conducting terrorist attacks began to have a change of heart Israel allowed Arafat to return from 25 years in Exile and he recognized Israel as a state the Palestinian Liberation Organization today issued a statement in which it accepted Israel's right to exist and Arafat swore off terrorism I repeat for the record that we totally and absolutely renounce all forms ofis Israel gave Arafat partial control of Palestinian Affairs as the new president of a Palestinian Authority covering Gaza and the West Bank he and his Israeli counterparts Shimon Perez and yitzak Rabin won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to form a two-state solution to the ongoing conflict where Palestinians and is Israelis would each have their own land to control ahed Yin had gone the other way his new group Hamas did not accept that a single acre of what was once Palestine could be handed over to Israel and he Unleashed a wave of Terror to try and wreck the peace process Israel has been plunged back into its National nightmare the early morning explosions claimed by the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas with every suicide bombing the peace process became more difficult Israelis demanded Arafat get Hamas under control before the two-state solution could be adopted we have to tell arat you keep your animals inside your cage well we don't talk with you P but in Gaza which now had a million people crammed into an area not that much bigger than some airports Hamas was becoming more and more popular they were providing Public Services soup kitchens dentistry and Health Care schools orphanages cash payments for refugees armed yine was the second most popular politician in Palestine eventually he became so popular that releasing him from jail became a prerequisite for the next steps in the peace process we are waiting for him and we hope that he will be very soon among his family and among his people heing in 1997 after he'd spent 10 of the previous 14 years in prison the Israelis let him go Israel said his health was worsening the time had come to Pardon him Yen was now around 60 and was frailer than ever his paralysis had worsened he was partially deaf and blind his voice had become a raspy whisper and he had chronic lung and stomach problems this frail man is the spiritual leader of the milit Islamic group Israel wants to crush when he was released from hospital and returned home he was given a hero's welcome Arafat came and met with him personally the two ideological Rivals speaking to the crowd together if Arafat and Israel thought this would convince Hamas to become more moderate they were wrong the militant Islamic group Hamas says it won't halt its armed struggle against Israel despite the release of its spiritual leader while masa's Charter included clear anti-semitic rhetoric Yin said that he didn't have a problem with Jews personally he also said he would stop at nothing to reclaim all of Palestine for Islam from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea he also didn't trust Israel to honor a two-state solution despite their promises to Arafat Israeli governments had enabled more than 300,000 Israelis to build settlements in Palestinian territory by 1997 a number that was growing by more than 10,000 a year to that end you seen continued ordering suicide bombings the settlers always have to be targeted because if they aren't targeted it means we accept the settlements as hamas's attacks on Israel became more and more frequent the Israeli government declared that yine had been Marked for Death a man that is a leader of the terror and to kill him this is what we have to do on March 22nd 2004 as you seen was being wheeled to the mosque near his home for morning prayers a small drone was circling overhead Israeli F-16 Jets roared through the sky the noise of their screaming engines obscured the approaching Apache Attack Helicopters the Drone followed yin's wheelchair marking it with an invisible [Music] laser when it comes to assassinations the Israeli government prefers air strikes they can punish their enemies without unnecessarily endangering Israeli troops the helicopters fired three Hellfire missiles they shot over the rooftops of Gaza City and struck yine directly he and nine others were killed in the attack his killing and as taking him off the way is actually a life-saving action for the rest of of the Israelis who were actually his Target the streets of the city filled to mourn the spiritual leader of what was becoming the most powerful political movement in in Gaza Israel thought that they had eradicated a threat but they' created a [Music] mar in the 19 years since his death Hamas has become stronger and the death toll on both sides has gotten higher between 2001 and the beginning of this month 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Conflict compared with 1,28 Israelis Mr President thank you for coming in 2006 US President George W Bush was keen on some kind of foreign policy victory in the Middle East and convinced the Palestinian leaders to hold their second ever parliamentary elections Hamas had boycotted the first elections 10 years earlier but now for the first time the militant group Hamas will contest the election the polls suggested that the Nationalist governing party F would hold on to power but the polls were wrong in its Gaza Strip stronghold Hamas celebrated its stunning Victory with a show of force the tensions clearly are high and they've exploded here on the streets Hamas was allowed to join the Parliament and their leader became the prime minister of the Palestinian government but they still refus to renounce violence against Israel so Western countries cut off financial support for the whole Palestinian government within months skirmishes between fata and Hamas turned into open Warfare Hamas won and paraded the fata Fighters half naked through the streets driving out any opposition turning Gaza into an islamist enclave almost totally controlled by a group the West considers a terrorist organization Israel fata and Egypt decided to impose an incredibly strict block blade in Gaza hoping that it would force the residents to overthrow Hamas eight organizations say the humanitarian situation there is now the worst it's been since Israel occupied Gaza in 1967 but Hamas is a lot like their founder in comparison with the Israeli Armed Forces they seem like an underdog holed up in their apartment building fortresses with homemade Rockets sneaking supplies in through literal tunnels under gaza's border but they're not as frail as they seem they're ferocious this Hamas cabinet minister openly told the ABC that they tortured anyone they thought was a threat there is going to be a torture if you have a somebody accused of uh security crimes they also they you have to get information for 16 years they've held on to control of Gaza through Force Gaza now has a population of 2 million 3/4 of that population was either not alive or too young to vote when Hamas was elected in 2006 nearly half of that population are children who have lived their entire life under a land sea and air blockade many have never met an Israeli even if this blockade has succeeded in turning the people of Gaza against Hamas this is now a totalitarian state so there's very little that they can do about it the situation is unsustainable the blockade has left the population short of food water and energy and now the status quo is over Hamas has triggered a massive confrontation against Israel we don't know how it will end but things will never be the same in Gaza

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 236,067

Keywords: abc news, australian news, abc news indepth, documentaries, long-form journalism, hamas, israel, palestine, palestinians, gaza

Id: OYJFHtTYc0g

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2023