Analysing a 2006 BBC interview with Khaled Meshaal

Analysing a 2006 BBC interview with Khaled Meshaal

Hamas ready to negotiate after election win

Giacomo Aghina

UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE MADRID

Master en Estudios Árabes e Islámicos contemporáneos

2 ANALYSING A 2006 BBC INTERVIEW WITH KHALED MESHAAL

Abstract At the end of January 2006 Hamas unexpectedly won the Palestinian elections and became entitled

to rule the Palestinian Authority. This situation provoked a radical change in Hamas from previous

years when it boycotted negotiations of al Fatah and ignored the Palestinian Authority. Several

documents show this new will of Hamas to reconsider its original purpose of destroying the Israeli

state, as it was stated in its 1988 foundation chart. We will analyze in detail the transcript of an

interview given by Khaled Meshaal to the BBC on February 5th, 2006, where the leader of Hamas

politburo talks about all major issues concerning Hamas and Israel.

Keywords

Israel, Hamas, Palestinian National Authority, Palestinian National Council, Gaza, PLO, al Fatah,

terrorism, Palestine, nakbah, Khaled Meshaal, Muslim Brotherhood, intifada, West Bank

Summary In the interview Khaled Meshaal discusses all major aspects of the political program of Hamas in

respect to negotiations with Israel. In 2006 Hamas’ attitude was changing drastically from a total

refusal of recognizing the right of existence of Israel to a readiness to negociate details of a peace

process in order to reach a two-state solution.

The analysis of the interview is structured in a way that makes it easy for the author to comment on

each single subject discussed in the interview. The transcript of each individual question (indicated

by Q) asked by BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, is followed by Khaled Meshaal’s

transcripted answer (preceded by A). After that the author’s personal comment (marked with C)

tries to identify the spirit of the answer and attempts to perform an analysis of the discourse of the

Hamas leader and to put it in historical perspective using contemporary sources of reference.

Resumen Khaled Meshaal en esta entrevista analiza el programa político de Hamas con respecto a las

negociaciones con Israel. Durante 2006 la actitud de Hamas estaba cambiando drasticamente,

pasando de un rechazo total de reconocer la existencia de Israel a aceptar de negociar los detalles de

un plan de paz para llegar la creación de dos estados.

La estructura de la análisis de la entrevista permite al autor de introducir su comentario personal por

cada contestación. A cada pregunta (Q) de Jeremy Bowen, el responsable de BBC por el Medio

Oriente, sigue la respuesta de Khaled Meshaal (A). El comentario personal del autor sucesivo (C)

trata de identificar el espíritu de la respuesta y de realizar una análisis del discurso del líder de

Hamas, utilizando fuentes variadas de referencia, con el objetivo de poner los conceptos expresados

en una perspectiva histórica.

ANALYSING A 2006 BBC INTERVIEW WITH KHALED MESHAAL 3

Introduction Hamas until the second Intifada of 2000 had decided to stay out of the Palestinian National Council

(the Parliament) and of the Palestinian National Authority (the government) (Herzog, 2006). This

was consistent with its absence in the Oslo process and with the refusal to recognize the outcome of

any deal with Israel, a counterpart considered illegal by its foundation chart. Only unilateral Israeli

moves, like 2005 Sharon’s disengagement in Gaza, were acceptable for paving the way for a Hamas

participation in national politics (Rabbani, 2008).

But during 2005 Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement, or Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya)

created a new team of politicians with a new political line in order to compete in the coming

Parliament elections. Instead of proclaiming Islamic ideology and promising territorial conquest,

the electoral program concentrated on Change and Reform – the motto and the list name (Hamas,

2006) - targeting the Palestinian dissatisfaction with the incompetent and corrupted ruling of al

Fatah and the inefficient state machine it had built (Klein, 2007).

This pragmatic turn won Hamas unexpectedly the majority of votes and the absolute majority of the

parliament seats putting it in the position of leading a government and rule.

This situation forced Hamas to depart from its traditional anti-establishment, oppositional character

and to look for a more responsible and constructive attitude. Between January and April 2006

Hamas developed a completely new approach to its mission in Palestine, no more ideology and

Islamism at the forefront, but pragmatic approach to all aspects of social life (Long, 2010). It started

planning how to take care of education, health system, employment, transportation and social

services and how to campaign on how to promote governmental reform, national unity and

democratic rights (Hroub, 2006). This inner contradiction reminds me previous cases inside the

Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist ideology that was started in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna in 1928

and that was at the origin of the Hamas movement (Pargeter, 2010). Sometimes a more moderate

approach (typical of the founder’s ideology) prevails and the organization does a great job in

providing social services, whereas in other historical phases the radical approach forgets moderation

and pursues extremist, dogmatic and even violent positions, Sayyid Qutb being the most famous

representative of this alternative cultural approach.

Many interviews and public speeches of its leaders attest Hamas’ turn for a moderate approach

(Travin, 2007). The Draft National Unity Government Program, and the March 2006 Cabinet

Platform for example focus on the effort that Hamas intended to dedicate to form a National Unity

government together with all other Palestinian parties, on its goal of reforming the whole apparatus

of the Authority and on making Palestine a more efficient, richer and modern state (Hroub, 2006).


Khaled Meshaal interview - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4693382.stm

Q: Would Hamas renounce violence?

A: When countries are free and you are independent, of course democracy does not go with

violence.

We would practice democracy peacefully without violence - but when there is occupation, there is

no contradiction between democracy and what the West calls violence, which is in this case

resistance.

Violence in independent countries is totally rejected. But when you resist occupation, resistance is

legal and democracy is a mechanism to choose Palestinian leaders based on democracy and

sharing of authority.

C: Asked about Hamas intention to give up violence, Khaled Meshaal links the violent practises of

his movement to the Israeli occupation. It calls it resistance instead of violence and considers that

lack of freedom and independence is the natural source for it.

Although the last paragraph might be a bit ambiguous creating an apparent link to external

resistance and the democracy of the internal electoral mechanism – link hard to understand -, the

spirit of this first answer can be interpreted as a relatively clean claim that without “occupation”

there will be no violence.

Let’s understand what does this mean. The main issue might well be what Khaled Meshaal mean by

the terms of independence and freedom and in what extent.

Q: So does that mean then that you are not going to change the Hamas charter as the big donor

countries have requested?

A: Why doesn't the international community ask Israel to determine its borders? Why doesn't it ask

Israel to recognize Palestinian rights? Why doesn't the international community put pressure on

Israel to implement agreements it has signed with Palestine?

Why is pressure always applied on the weak side, the one that is under occupation and suffers from

killing, assassination, the building of the wall, confiscation of land and building of settlements?

Why does the international community always stand with the strong side, even though he is the

aggressor, and stands against the weak, even though he is being attacked and has all the rights?

C: Khaled Meshaal does not answer the question, which is trying to ascertain if Hamas is ready to

change its foundation chart, which de facto prevents it from participating into a peace process with

Israel. Khaled Meshaal claims instead, that the international community should address first the

historical behavior of the Israeli state and its oppression of the Palestinian people.


The spirit of Hamas 1988 foundation chart is very strongly impregnated of two themes that “the big

donor countries” distrust - a very strong Islamic spirit and an unconditional refusal of recognizing

the existence of the Israeli state (Hamas, 1988).

Both of these themes are interrelated. Hamas was born from the traditional Muslim Brothers

Palestinian branch and as such had Islamic values at its roots. Among these values it considered the

Palestinian territory as a Waqf, meaning that it was a sort of heritage left to the Palestinian people

from Mohammed to administer (Gruber, 2007) and losing it would have been like committing a sin.

Similarly to the history of the Muslim Brothers, Hamas has had periods of more intense

intransigence towards political and social alternatives and moments of increased tolerance and

readiness to compromise (Travin, 2007). The chart was redacted during the first intifada and by

older sheiks, which might have been more intransigent than the new party leadership.

The whole process of participating into the Palestinian elections and the electoral platform was

already showing a new attitude of Hamas, who for long refrained from recognizing the Palestinian

Authority, viewing it as the outcome of an illegal peace process. But by not rejecting the original

principles of the chart, Hamas position internationally is strongly weakened. Only a clear

positioning on the chart would give credibility to the new political course (Klein, 2007).

The fact that Khaled Meshaal prefer not to answer the question, might imply that the issue is still

discussed inside the organization, but I presume there are also cultural elements that would forbid

younger generations to disown the chart, a script formulated by older generations of scholars, many

of whom have been martyred like Ahmed Yassin, Hamas spiritual leader, and Abdel Aziz al-

Rantissi, killed in 2004 in two separate Israeli army attacks (Rothmann, 2010).

This inability to move up has to do with the respect of traditions inside the Islamist movements such

as Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood (Pargeter, 2010).

Q: Hamas has been democratically elected but Hamas is an organisation that is listed by the

Americans and the EU as a terrorist group. So they will continue to put more pressure on you, we

can assume, than they put on the Israelis. So what are you going to do about it? Will you want to

stick with your truce or are you going to go back to attacks on Israelis?

A: This is not our problem. This is the problem of the international community and the nations that

deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hamas won an election. It acquired the legal mandate through voting and at the same time Hamas

practises its right to resist the occupation.

Now the international community faces a contradiction. It considers Hamas a terror organisation

and this is an unfair description of Hamas because Hamas does what the British and French did


when they were up against the Nazi occupation.

C: Hamas was put in the 1997 on the US list of terror group and appeared in the EU terror list since

its origin in 2001. Apart from playing a major role in starting and conducting the 2 intifadas, Hamas

has organized major suicide bomb attacks in buses, cafes and public sites all over Israel during the

previous 15 years. Although targeting civilians has been a crime frequently committed in Palestine,

on virtually every war episode from almost every belligerent, Hamas bombings were particularly

aggressive (Rothmann, 2010).

Coming from such a position - a destructive extremist chart and a history of terror attacks - is little

surprise that general attitude towards Hamas were at least of mistrust if not direct condemnation.

The lack of understanding by Khaled Meshaal that Hamas had to proclaim the change in its means

of action before being recognized as a reliable and constructive interlocutor by the international

community is maybe at the root of the problem. It allowed members of the organization to keep

claiming Israel distruction (Herzog, 2006).

Even if Hamas resistance was legitimized by occupation, when it decided to become a fully

representative political organization, it had to renounce violence as a mean of fighting, it had to be

strongly concerned by its appearance on the terror lists1 and to coordinate an effort to be pulled out

of it. We were not completely there yet but making steps toward this admission. Even inside Israel

some scholars started believing in Hamas’ good intentions (Mishal and Sela 2006).

Q: Here's a situation. Imagine that after the Israeli elections, the next Israeli government says to

Hamas: we'll negotiate, we're prepared to talk about everything. What would your answer be?

A: Previous Israeli governments had the chance to negotiate with Yasser Arafat and then with

Mahmoud Abbas.

What did Israel do? Israel welcomed the coming of Mahmoud Abbas to power a year ago. In spite

of that, it did not negotiate with him, didn't take one step towards achieving Palestinian rights.

Do you think the upcoming Israeli government after the elections will take a step towards Hamas

and to recognise the rights of the Palestinian people?

When Israel says that it will recognise Palestinian rights and will withdraw from the West Bank and

East Jerusalem and grant the right of return, stop settlements and recognise the rights of the

Palestinians to self-determination - only then will Hamas be ready to take a serious step.

C: As stated before, Hamas chart is not reconcilable with an open negotiation with the Israeli state.

Although many recent Hamas documents including the 2005 Electoral Platform for “Change and

Reform” hinted to an opening to negotiations with the Israel government and therefore a recognition 1 Almost 10 years later Hamas is now in the process of being taken out the EU terrorist list


(Swiney, 2007), it was not yet clear in 2006 if Hamas was ready to talk frankly and openly.

Khaled Meshaal recalls the broken promises of the Israeli side in the negotiations with Arafat first

and with Abbas later. He is even more skeptical that Israel would be ready to start serious talks with

Hamas, although there is no doubt that Hamas is necessary to guarantee Israel (Zuhur, S. 2008) true

safety. Israel was also involved in an electoral process and at the end of March a new parliament

was elected, sanctioning the end of the government of Sharon and the success of Kadima – newly

created by Likud members supporting his strategy of unilateral disengagement, which culminated in

2005 with the withdrawal from Gaza.

Although Khaled Meshaal’s answer could have been more straightforward, there is a clear opening

to negotiations in his words or a readiness to take a serious step – which might have been a formal

recognition of Israel by Hamas.

Q: Let's get this clear - you are saying there's no problem with a two-state solution if Israel

retreats, goes back to the boundaries that existed just before the 1967 borders?

A: If Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders and recognised the rights of the Palestinian people -

including the right of those in the diaspora to return to their land and to East Jerusalem and to

dismantle the settlements - Hamas can then state its position and possibly give a long-term truce

with Israel, as Sheikh Yassin said.

This is a position that Hamas could take but only after Israel recognizes the right of the

Palestinians, to show and confirm its willingness to withdraw to the 1967 borders.

C: In this answer Khaled Meshaal is clear about the conditions that Hamas sets for a long-term

truce, conditions that already appeared in the previous answer (1967 borders, right to return, East

Jerusalem and settlements). Although there is nothing new in them, because they have been the

same points of discussion between the PLO and the Israeli representatives since at least the Oslo

process of 1993, it is now clear that Hamas who constantly opposed the negotiations under Arafat,

at this point in time has endorsed the same targets.

Quoting Sheikh Yassin, the major Hamas founder and as his spiritual leader until his 2004 death,

who several times proposed a truce to Israel and somehow took distance from the chart already in

19992, might give to Khaled Meshaal the authority to pursue truce and peace.

Speaking about a long-term truce (Hudna) might look ambiguous, but it is again something that is

universally accepted as a first step in signing a full peace agreement at a later stage (Rothmann

2 Yassin's boldest proposal was in May 1999 when he told the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram: 'We have to be realistic. We are talking about a homeland that was stolen a long time ago in 1948 and again in 1967. My generation today is telling the Israelis, "Let's solve this problem now, on the basis of the 1967 borders. Let's end this conflict by declaring a temporary ceasefire. Let's leave the bigger issue for future generations to decide."


2010).

I believe this is a very important statement of Khaled Meshaal because at this point Sheikh Yassin

is seen as blessing a long term-truce with the enemy.

Q: Hamas has talked about this truce before and Israel has answered that it would just be a

breathing space while Hamas tried to gather its forces to attack the territory that Israel had

between 1948 and 1967, the original part of Israel. Would this truce that you are talking about be

a long-term thing or a permanent thing or just a respite in the war?

A: Truce would be long term but limited because there is a Palestinian reality that the international

community must deal with. There are those kicked out of their land in 1948 - the international

community must find a solution for those people.

The international community now speaks of lasting and just peace but how can we achieve such a

peace if there are Palestinians who did not get their rights? There is a problem that happened to the

Palestinians. They were a people that used to live on their land and did not find justice from the

international community.

There are roots to the problem. But in reality, we now say that if Israel withdraws to the 1967

borders there could be peace and security in the region and agreements between the sides until the

international community finds a way to solve everybody's problems and to find a way to give back

the rights to the people, to end the oppression of those who used to live on their land and were

forced out of it.

C: Israel suspicion that its enemies use phases of peace or truce to rearm and rebuild forces might

be certainly right, but cannot justify rejecting proposals of pausing or stopping hostilities. Starting

from Yassin’s words to continue with several discourses of Khaled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh, the

designated chief of government, Hamas has shown his readiness to recognize the 1967 borders,

which were the basis for Oslo and then for the Road Map, both negotiated by al-Fatah but until

2005 virtually rejected by Hamas.

Now that the spiritual leader himself has given permission to the younger representatives to pursue

peace, they are the ones who will have to sort all details to make the deal with the counterpart.

The last sentence is very important because it gives an idea of how Khaled Meshaal envisages the

further steps of the peace process, with the intervention of the international community – in a way

that I sense might be interpreted as a call for help from the international community, which should

bring justice to oppressed. In this second part of the interview Israel is presented as an abusive

policeman more than as the enemy in a battle and Khaled Meshal seems like calling for assistance

from the international community.


Hamas wish to have international institutions in charge of broking an agreement between Israel and

Palestine is a further proof that Hamas is open to negotiations.

Q: Is there any solution that you see that would involve Palestine existing alongside the Jewish

state of Israel permanently?

A: If the international community is talking about a permanent solution then it has to find out what

the roots to the problem are and what the Palestinian rights are.

The search for a final solution requires us to go back to the roots of the problem and how it began.

Israel doesn't even recognise our basic rights, the international community doesn't either.

Even when Yasser Arafat announced that he accepted a permanent solution on the 1967 borders,

Israel didn't implement it. The problem is not for a Palestinian to come and say I consider this a

permanent solution and then Israel will implement everything.

C: There is certainly a part of truth in Khaled Meshaal’s claim that Israel is unreliable and is not

respectful of agreements reached in the past. Instead of somehow respect the 1967 borders, there

have been continuously new settlements.

The main point of this answer, that we consider almost a breakthrough and the key part of the whole

interview is the concept that a Hamas leader can conceive as a root of the problem, not the existence

of Israel itself, but the defense of basic rights of the Palestinian people.

Q: So if Israel changed would you change? Do you accept Israel? Would you recognise them?

Would you live in peace alongside them?

A: When Israel changes, come and ask me to change.

C: History has gone very far away from the expectations that the changes in Hamas in 2006 had

generated. No government was created and no cooperation of the two main Palestinian parties

turned out to be possible. After a bloody conflict, almost a Fitna, between the two bands, al Fatah

was left in charge of the Palestinian authority in the West Bank, from Ramallah, and Hamas took

over Gaza, keeping a very difficult relation with the Israeli state.


Conclusion I have chosen this subject of investigation, because I have an interest in the peace process in

Palestine and because I believe Hamas’ almost-turnaround is a good exercice to understand how

difficult it is for the Arabic tradition to allow an ideological change. Whereas in the West we have

grown progressively more tolerant to cultural movements breaking with the legacy of the past, I

believe that in the Muslim world, change can only be introduced very carefully. And this is true not

only in religion but in many other fields, like politics, economics and finance, justice and

administration where previous actors’, particularly founders’, opinions must be respected.

I chose this particular interview because it was conducted in English and allowed me to avoid using

a translation process. I tried to interpret Khaled Meshaal’s message with a careful analysis of his

precise wording and a consideration of his cultural bounds. Although this analysis might have

lacked a scientific methodology, due to the fragmentation of the resulting analysis, and because of

the commentator lack of experience in linguistics, it has tried to identify issues that a superficial and

synthetical analysis would have missed.

My target was trying to identify if his talk was dogmatic or flexible, straight or unclear, convincing

or disturbing, pragmatic or rich of generalization. Was he speaking freely or going in rounds,

looking for support internally or to convince the Knesset of his intentions, did he try to please war

mongering or peace prone electors? I believe – as I pointed out throughout the analysis, that no

populistic message shew up and on the contrary Khaled Meshaal was looking for an authorization

of Hamas supreme spiritual leader to negotiate.

The change of attitude is still in the making, but it is clear from this short interview that Hamas is

taking over a moderate and open stance in respect to negotiations. If I try to imagine which points

were missing from the interview - I have noticed that there is no hint to the Israeli disengagement

from Gaza in Summer 2005 and also no word about how to work with al Fatah. Main problem I see

in 2006 Hamas was its ambiguity between armed resistance and negotiaton. Its particular internal

structure adverse to letting one charismatic leader monopolizing the show, and the habit of letting

even marginal figures speak for the group, is again a phenomenon culturally interesting but

weakening univocity of political line. No hint in the interview was given that this might change.

Although we know from history that this attempt towards peace did fail and conflict soon started

again, first as an intra-Palestinian fight, and then as further full-scale conflicts in the Gaza strip, we

believe that the 2006 elections brought out a new political approach of Hamas refraining from

ideological assertions and targeting a more pragmatic approach.

Hopefully this change will constitute the seed for a lasting peace agreement in the future.


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Analysing a 2006 BBC interview with Khaled Meshaal

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