What is Hamas?

Joel Braunold describes the Shin Bet head characterizing Hamas's diplomatic move as equivalent in strategic shock to the October 7 attack.

“Called the Hamas signing of this a diplomatic October 7th.”

IDF documents captured in Gaza in August 2024 showed Hamas manipulating Khalil Shikaki poll results, introducing margin-of-error distortions of 20 to 40 percentage points.

“The IDF in August of 2024 found documents in Gaza that it released that showed how Hamas was correcting the outcomes of the polls and manipulating them and producing margin errors of a minimum of 20 to 30 and 40%.”

The Gaza agreement contains two conflicting 'yellow lines' (52% and 70% withdrawal benchmarks), creating fundamental ambiguity about what Israel has actually committed to territorially.

“There are two different yellow lines. There's the yellow line of the 52% and the yellow line of the 70%.”

Tony Blair Institute polling (Jim Zogby) found 93% of Gazans wanted Hamas gone and 86% blamed Hamas equally for Gaza's destruction.

“Whereas the Tony Blair Institute used Jim Zugby and who's not exactly a friend of Israel, but used Jim Zugby's polling and they found that 93% of Gazins wanted Hamas gone. 86% of Gazins blamed Hamas equally for the destruction of Gaza.”

The majority of the votes for Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian elections came from the West Bank, not Gaza.

“People forget the majority of votes for Hamas took place in the West Bank, not in Gaza because the elections happened in Gaza and in the West Bank.”

Alkhatib explains the West Bank vs. Gaza divergence using a South Korea/North Korea analogy: the PA's institution-building track went unsupported while Hamas's authoritarian track hardened, and Israeli settlement expansion undermined the moderates.

“I think there wasn't enough support for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to turn that territory that area into essentially a South Korea as Gaza was becoming a North Korea.”

Alkhatib explains how Hamas deliberately suppressed its own pre-election polling in 2006 so the US would not cancel the vote, a strategy later bragged about to a PLO official by senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.

“The US would call off the elections. So Hamas wanted to make sure the elections took place to win.”

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib on the selective invocation of his biographical illegitimacy depending on his political stance.

“If I had a penny for every time I hear the idea that somehow my voice is illegitimate because I only lived in Gaza for a few years and I left as a boy. I mean these and by the way if I were pro- Hamas, if I were pro- resistance, if I people just if I had lived in Gaza for 6 months, people would say he's the real hero. He lived in Gaza. He knows this is only invoked because I am sharing an inconvenient truth.”

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib says he was the first Palestinian from Gaza to receive asylum in the United States on the basis of Hamas's control of the territory.

“I was actually the first Palestinian from Gaza to receive asylum in the United States because of Hamas's control.”

Tony Blair Institute: cited as a source of independent Gaza polling (via Jim Zogby) that cuts against Hamas-friendly survey outputs, worth tracking as a data source on Palestinian public opinion.

“Whereas the Tony Blair Institute used Jim Zugby and who's not exactly a friend of Israel, but used Jim Zugby's polling and they found that 93% of Gazins wanted Hamas gone. 86% of Gazins blamed Hamas equally for the destruction of Gaza.”