This is the tenth funeral parade of the day in Gaza. 15-year-old Hatham Abu Shoka is just the latest in a very long line of Hamas martyrs. The failure of the Oslo peace process and the Intifada has been good for Hamas. Its support has doubled. Here in their stronghold of Gaza, that support has reached 30%, edging out Fatah, Yasser Arafat's political party. Arafat did not provide his people with a state, and now Palestinians are embracing Hamas's radical Islamic ideology, Hatham's martyrdom is an inspiration to others.
CHANT AT FUNERAL PROCESSION: The martyr didn't hear. Our aim! Allah! Your role model - The Prophet! Your leader - The Prophet! Your way - Jihad! To die for the cause of Allah is the finest of your wishes. To die for the cause of Allah!
The Israeli military has delayed its expected offensive into the Gaza Strip. Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's policy of targeting the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat has handed more power to Hamas. Tonight we secure rare access to four out of the top five Hamas political leaders - Ismail Abu Shanab, Mahmoud Zahar, Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Ismail Hanihyah. Together they make up the Central Committee and take all decisions for the movement. Israel is now targeting them for assassination. They meet daily in secret locations around Gaza and have vowed revenge for Israel's offensive in the West Bank with a campaign of suicide bombings.
ISMAIL ABU SHANAB, HAMAS CENTRAL COMMITTEE: We will find ways to kill more numbers on your side. We do not have your planes, we do not have chemical weapons, we do not have nuclear weapons to threat Israelis, so we do use our own bodies as a reaction to your attacks.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR, HAMAS CENTRAL COMMITTEE: No-one is admiring the bloodshed, whether on this side or that side. But I would remind you, an eye for an eye, nose for nose, tooth for tooth. Within the last Intifada, more than one third of the Palestinian victims were children. So they killed everybody, they killed the children, they killed women. And you can see...I think this question should be...should not be answered after the massacre in Jenin. Massacre in Jenin justify every operation against everybody in what is called Israel.
Last Wednesday's suicide bombing by Hamas, which killed 16 Israelis at a pool hall near Tel Aviv, shows how emboldened and powerful Hamas has become. Yasser Arafat promptly went on Palestinian television announcing in Arabic that he would stop the terrorist attacks. His police force arrested 16 Hamas militants, but none of their leaders. In doing so, Arafat threatened his own position. Hamas accuses him of being an Israeli collaborator and is calling on Arafat to step aside.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: How any Palestinian man will cooperate with his enemy to put his colleague, father, brother, neighbour in jail in order to satisfy Israel or to satisfy America? I think a new era should be established with new leadership.
And despite Israel's constant assertion that Arafat has control over Hamas, Hamas is determined to continue the suicide attacks.
ISMAIL HANIYAH, HAMAS CENTRAL COMMITTEE (Translation): I don't remember Arafat ever speaking on the phone to any Hamas leader about any particular tactics. That has not happened.
Arafat knows he cannot seriously challenge Hamas's power. When he tried in December last year, it brought Palestinians to the brink of civil war. Under pressure from America and Israel, Arafat tried to arrest the senior Hamas leaders featured in this report. He sent hundreds of Palestinian police to do the job. But they ended up shooting at their own people, who'd come out to protect the Hamas leadership. Hamas believes Arafat sold out the Palestinian cause by accepting a two-state solution with the Oslo peace process of the 1990s. Hamas does not believe in the existence of Israel and to prove its point, it derailed the Oslo peace plan with its series of suicide bombings in the mid-1990s.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI, HAMAS CENTRAL COMMITTEE (Translation): Arafat told the occupiers "Take 80% of Palestine and give us 20%." Yet they still refused that. Now we face an enemy that only thinks of war. How can we talk about peace plans when we face an enemy that only thinks of fighting?
Hamas has always spoken with a clear vision. It has fought against corruption in Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and is now seen as the real champion of the Palestinian cause. Hamas has tapped into the people's anger at still not having a homeland.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: I think, as every Muslim thinks, that every inch of Palestine should come back to the lap of the Islamic side - to the Palestinian side. Believe me, if our generation fails to achieve this point, the next generation will do it. So, sooner or later, we are going to establish our Islamic state. At that time, Jews will have the right to live here, but Zionists as a nationalist, secular, foreign system will be eliminated.
Hamas was born out of the grinding poverty of the Gaza Strip in the 1970s and 1980s. It built a parallel administration, with schools, hospitals and welfare services challenging Yasser Arafat's control. But Hamas also gained backing from an unlikely source. In his book, Israeli academic Shaul Mishal reveals how Israel fostered the creation of Hamas as an alternative to Yasser Arafat's PLO. It was classic divide and rule.
SHAUL MISHAL, ISRAELI ACADEMIC: What Israel did is provide support to Islamic organisations in order to organise their activity within the local population in order to gain its support, hopefully to get one day, good allies against the PLO.
Mishal says Israel's plan backfired in 1987 when Hamas announced it would take up a military struggle against Israel.
SHAUL MISHAL: The question is not if you are ready to go to this kind of strategy. The question is if you know when to get out of it and maybe to form new coalitions. And in this case, I think what Israel did is, maybe in a naive way, they tried to build on something that probably, if you look very carefully, it cannot last forever. I mean Islam and Judaism, Islam and Israel cannot last for a long time. You can use them tactically for a short period, but you can't build on it some strategic relationship.
Today, Islamic welfare societies associated with Hamas provide the only safety net in much of the Gaza Strip, where unemployment averages 50%. Without these handouts, the Al-Masri family would go hungry.
MOTHER (Translation): Sometimes I can't find a shekel to give my son, which is very embarrassing. Before, I used to rely on my parents in Khan Younes. They used to help me, but now I can't go anywhere, to provide for my children. My situation now is very difficult.
The Palestinian Authority has little presence here, allowing Hamas to strengthen its hold on Palestinian society. Gaza psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj says the rise of Hamas has more to do with Palestinian hopelessness than any Islamic agenda.
EYAD SARRAJ, PSYCHIATRIST: I'm saying that people need dignity, respect, they need security, and they need freedom. And if you don't give the Palestinians this, you are only sentencing them and the Israelis to death.
Sarraj says a long history of defeat and humiliation has pushed the Palestinian people into the arms of Hamas.
EYAD SARRAJ: Today the model is the martyr. It is a form of power. It is the ultimate form of power, the power over death and life. In an environment of such despair, these models that tells you exactly what you feel, that life and death are equal, they are exercising it. Right? So they become the models. And this is very sad. If you ask children now in the street - 20 years ago, they would tell you, "I would like to be a doctor when I am an adult, when I grow up". Today, you ask them what they want to be, they say "I want to be a martyr."
For many young Palestinian men, the mosque has become the centre of life. While they all may be Hamas supporters, only a special few will be picked by the leadership to become cadre.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: Just before choosing the candidate from the mosque, we have to sit down with him from 6 to 2 years, teaching him the tradition of Islam, the essential basis of Islam - Koran, Sunna, Islamic history, the fundamental basis of Sharia, which is called Islamic law. And the most fit people will be chosen to be members of Hamas. So, at that time, we are picking up the most intellectual members in the society.
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a co-founder of Hamas, is the only leader who still makes public appearances.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI (Speech at rally): We have to mention what the criminal Colin Powell is doing, side by side with the criminal Sharon, and say to these murderers, to these criminals, to these fascists... "Our people will be victorious, God willing. They will be victorious with their will, their conviction, with their youths and their cubs. We will go after you, occupying Jews. We will go after you everywhere until you submissively get out of our land."
With Hamas gaining the upper hand in the Palestinian street, there will be no talk of peace. The leadership says it will not accept any deal that Arafat brokers with America.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI (Translation): No one in their right mind can consider America a mediator. America sides totally with the Zionist enemy. America supports them with money, by diplomatically using its veto, and with F16s, Apaches, tanks, rockets... America supports them with every means.
Ismail Abu Shanab, an academic at Gaza's Islamic university, is the moderate voice within the leadership. While Hamas does not accept the state of Israel, he is pragmatic enough to consider a truce under certain conditions.
ISMAIL ABU SHANAB: Truce, it means in the Islamic teachings, that people live on the reality. And this reality is enough for the time-being generation. The next generation needs to discuss things. If it is convenient to them, it's OK. If it doesn't be convenient to them, OK, it's in their hands. So now, for our own generation, we offer this. For the next generation, we leave them to decide for themselves.
It was Hamas that triggered Ariel Sharon's West Bank military invasion by sending the suicide bombers who killed 25 Israelis on Passover night in Netanya and three days later at a restaurant in Haifa that killed 15. Hamas see these two operations as their most successful.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI (Translation): Our experience has developed, which is to be expected. Maybe the future will see more development, as long as we are resisting.
But Sharon chooses not to go after Hamas. Instead, he used the Hamas suicide attacks at Netanya and Haifa as a justification to destroy the Palestinian Authority. Analysts say, by crushing Arafat and his Palestinian Authority, Sharon hopes to destroy any symbol and possibility of a Palestinian state.
DR ZIAD ABU-AMR, PALESTINIAN LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL: Sharon, from the very start, opposed the Oslo agreement and he wanted to get rid of these Israeli commitments and agreements which would enable the Palestinians, ultimately, to create a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem.
In his West Bank offensive, Sharon can claim one victory over Hamas here in the village of Tubas. When the Israeli Army stormed this house and killed its five occupants, it went largely unreported, but the Israelis succeeded in killing Hamas's West Bank military commander and five other militants with him. One scrawled his name in blood before he died. But it is only in death that the commander's identity can be revealed. Unlike the political leadership, Hamas's military commanders are never publicly known. His name is Kayes Adwan and Israel claims he had a role in the Netanya and Haifa bombings.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI (Translation): This movement has shown us and the Zionist enemy that it is capable of rebuilding itself quickly. The enemy, several times has banked on an end being put to this movement or to the resistance. But they have failed completely.
These scenes of destruction and devastation at Jenin may suggest Sharon achieved his goal of smashing the Palestinian resistance. But the reality is different. Sharon's campaign has just created more recruits for Hamas.
YOUNG MAN (Translation): It pushes one to carry out a martyrdom operation. My generation is filled with a strong desire for vengeance.
Hamas has already mythologised the battle of Jenin, turning defeat into victory.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: Israel, in 1967, succeeded within five days to conquer three countries. Within eight days they were unable to enter Jenin refugee camp while the fighters, they were not exceeding 500 actually. So you can see how the spiritual level here are too much constructive for the Palestinian resistance than the Israeli side.
The people who were not already radicalised have become so. Mohammad Ali says he was not political until he saw an Israeli bulldozer pulverise his home.
MOHAMMAD ALI (Translation): This is my house. We are a family of 11. The house wasn't even big enough for us. There were no armed men inside. The bulldozer started demolishing while we were inside, screaming. We got the children out through the windows.
And with each body part that is still being pulled from the rubble in Jenin comes grief, disbelief, and eventually anger. These are the remains of a young girl. And this is what is thought to be her plait of hair. The exact death toll is yet to emerge. So far, the United Nations has confirmed 54 Palestinians dead. The Human Rights Watch organisation published its initial report saying 22 of those were civilians. It concluded no wholesale massacre took place here, but say war crimes did. Aisah Wishali, 60, says his wife was shot by an Israeli sniper while they were hiding in their house. He then watched her bleed to death as Israeli troops stopped ambulances coming in to help her.
AISAH WISHALI (Translation): She was bleeding for 48 hours but the army stopped me. She bled for 48 hours, and I was screaming "For the sake of God... for the sake of your religion, for the sake of Moses!" But they wouldn't listen. He'd tell me to get inside and swear at me.
It is inevitable that Sharon will have to confront Hamas and this phase of the conflict may prove to be the most destructive yet.
ISMAIL ABU SHANAB: Now Sharon destroyed all Jenin camp, occupied Jenin camp, what next? The Palestinians will continue the struggle. The Palestinians will continue the resistance. So, he did not solve the problem militarily.
Israeli bulldozers and tanks may have crushed Hamas martyr billboards, but newer and bigger ones are already taking their place. The first flag to rise above the rubble of Jenin was the symbol of Hamas.
CHANT AT FUNERAL PROCESSION: The martyr didn't hear. Our aim! Allah! Your role model - The Prophet! Your leader - The Prophet! Your way - Jihad! To die for the cause of Allah is the finest of your wishes. To die for the cause of Allah!
The Israeli military has delayed its expected offensive into the Gaza Strip. Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's policy of targeting the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat has handed more power to Hamas. Tonight we secure rare access to four out of the top five Hamas political leaders - Ismail Abu Shanab, Mahmoud Zahar, Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Ismail Hanihyah. Together they make up the Central Committee and take all decisions for the movement. Israel is now targeting them for assassination. They meet daily in secret locations around Gaza and have vowed revenge for Israel's offensive in the West Bank with a campaign of suicide bombings.
ISMAIL ABU SHANAB, HAMAS CENTRAL COMMITTEE: We will find ways to kill more numbers on your side. We do not have your planes, we do not have chemical weapons, we do not have nuclear weapons to threat Israelis, so we do use our own bodies as a reaction to your attacks.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR, HAMAS CENTRAL COMMITTEE: No-one is admiring the bloodshed, whether on this side or that side. But I would remind you, an eye for an eye, nose for nose, tooth for tooth. Within the last Intifada, more than one third of the Palestinian victims were children. So they killed everybody, they killed the children, they killed women. And you can see...I think this question should be...should not be answered after the massacre in Jenin. Massacre in Jenin justify every operation against everybody in what is called Israel.
Last Wednesday's suicide bombing by Hamas, which killed 16 Israelis at a pool hall near Tel Aviv, shows how emboldened and powerful Hamas has become. Yasser Arafat promptly went on Palestinian television announcing in Arabic that he would stop the terrorist attacks. His police force arrested 16 Hamas militants, but none of their leaders. In doing so, Arafat threatened his own position. Hamas accuses him of being an Israeli collaborator and is calling on Arafat to step aside.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: How any Palestinian man will cooperate with his enemy to put his colleague, father, brother, neighbour in jail in order to satisfy Israel or to satisfy America? I think a new era should be established with new leadership.
And despite Israel's constant assertion that Arafat has control over Hamas, Hamas is determined to continue the suicide attacks.
ISMAIL HANIYAH, HAMAS CENTRAL COMMITTEE (Translation): I don't remember Arafat ever speaking on the phone to any Hamas leader about any particular tactics. That has not happened.
Arafat knows he cannot seriously challenge Hamas's power. When he tried in December last year, it brought Palestinians to the brink of civil war. Under pressure from America and Israel, Arafat tried to arrest the senior Hamas leaders featured in this report. He sent hundreds of Palestinian police to do the job. But they ended up shooting at their own people, who'd come out to protect the Hamas leadership. Hamas believes Arafat sold out the Palestinian cause by accepting a two-state solution with the Oslo peace process of the 1990s. Hamas does not believe in the existence of Israel and to prove its point, it derailed the Oslo peace plan with its series of suicide bombings in the mid-1990s.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI, HAMAS CENTRAL COMMITTEE (Translation): Arafat told the occupiers "Take 80% of Palestine and give us 20%." Yet they still refused that. Now we face an enemy that only thinks of war. How can we talk about peace plans when we face an enemy that only thinks of fighting?
Hamas has always spoken with a clear vision. It has fought against corruption in Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and is now seen as the real champion of the Palestinian cause. Hamas has tapped into the people's anger at still not having a homeland.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: I think, as every Muslim thinks, that every inch of Palestine should come back to the lap of the Islamic side - to the Palestinian side. Believe me, if our generation fails to achieve this point, the next generation will do it. So, sooner or later, we are going to establish our Islamic state. At that time, Jews will have the right to live here, but Zionists as a nationalist, secular, foreign system will be eliminated.
Hamas was born out of the grinding poverty of the Gaza Strip in the 1970s and 1980s. It built a parallel administration, with schools, hospitals and welfare services challenging Yasser Arafat's control. But Hamas also gained backing from an unlikely source. In his book, Israeli academic Shaul Mishal reveals how Israel fostered the creation of Hamas as an alternative to Yasser Arafat's PLO. It was classic divide and rule.
SHAUL MISHAL, ISRAELI ACADEMIC: What Israel did is provide support to Islamic organisations in order to organise their activity within the local population in order to gain its support, hopefully to get one day, good allies against the PLO.
Mishal says Israel's plan backfired in 1987 when Hamas announced it would take up a military struggle against Israel.
SHAUL MISHAL: The question is not if you are ready to go to this kind of strategy. The question is if you know when to get out of it and maybe to form new coalitions. And in this case, I think what Israel did is, maybe in a naive way, they tried to build on something that probably, if you look very carefully, it cannot last forever. I mean Islam and Judaism, Islam and Israel cannot last for a long time. You can use them tactically for a short period, but you can't build on it some strategic relationship.
Today, Islamic welfare societies associated with Hamas provide the only safety net in much of the Gaza Strip, where unemployment averages 50%. Without these handouts, the Al-Masri family would go hungry.
MOTHER (Translation): Sometimes I can't find a shekel to give my son, which is very embarrassing. Before, I used to rely on my parents in Khan Younes. They used to help me, but now I can't go anywhere, to provide for my children. My situation now is very difficult.
The Palestinian Authority has little presence here, allowing Hamas to strengthen its hold on Palestinian society. Gaza psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj says the rise of Hamas has more to do with Palestinian hopelessness than any Islamic agenda.
EYAD SARRAJ, PSYCHIATRIST: I'm saying that people need dignity, respect, they need security, and they need freedom. And if you don't give the Palestinians this, you are only sentencing them and the Israelis to death.
Sarraj says a long history of defeat and humiliation has pushed the Palestinian people into the arms of Hamas.
EYAD SARRAJ: Today the model is the martyr. It is a form of power. It is the ultimate form of power, the power over death and life. In an environment of such despair, these models that tells you exactly what you feel, that life and death are equal, they are exercising it. Right? So they become the models. And this is very sad. If you ask children now in the street - 20 years ago, they would tell you, "I would like to be a doctor when I am an adult, when I grow up". Today, you ask them what they want to be, they say "I want to be a martyr."
For many young Palestinian men, the mosque has become the centre of life. While they all may be Hamas supporters, only a special few will be picked by the leadership to become cadre.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: Just before choosing the candidate from the mosque, we have to sit down with him from 6 to 2 years, teaching him the tradition of Islam, the essential basis of Islam - Koran, Sunna, Islamic history, the fundamental basis of Sharia, which is called Islamic law. And the most fit people will be chosen to be members of Hamas. So, at that time, we are picking up the most intellectual members in the society.
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a co-founder of Hamas, is the only leader who still makes public appearances.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI (Speech at rally): We have to mention what the criminal Colin Powell is doing, side by side with the criminal Sharon, and say to these murderers, to these criminals, to these fascists... "Our people will be victorious, God willing. They will be victorious with their will, their conviction, with their youths and their cubs. We will go after you, occupying Jews. We will go after you everywhere until you submissively get out of our land."
With Hamas gaining the upper hand in the Palestinian street, there will be no talk of peace. The leadership says it will not accept any deal that Arafat brokers with America.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI (Translation): No one in their right mind can consider America a mediator. America sides totally with the Zionist enemy. America supports them with money, by diplomatically using its veto, and with F16s, Apaches, tanks, rockets... America supports them with every means.
Ismail Abu Shanab, an academic at Gaza's Islamic university, is the moderate voice within the leadership. While Hamas does not accept the state of Israel, he is pragmatic enough to consider a truce under certain conditions.
ISMAIL ABU SHANAB: Truce, it means in the Islamic teachings, that people live on the reality. And this reality is enough for the time-being generation. The next generation needs to discuss things. If it is convenient to them, it's OK. If it doesn't be convenient to them, OK, it's in their hands. So now, for our own generation, we offer this. For the next generation, we leave them to decide for themselves.
It was Hamas that triggered Ariel Sharon's West Bank military invasion by sending the suicide bombers who killed 25 Israelis on Passover night in Netanya and three days later at a restaurant in Haifa that killed 15. Hamas see these two operations as their most successful.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI (Translation): Our experience has developed, which is to be expected. Maybe the future will see more development, as long as we are resisting.
But Sharon chooses not to go after Hamas. Instead, he used the Hamas suicide attacks at Netanya and Haifa as a justification to destroy the Palestinian Authority. Analysts say, by crushing Arafat and his Palestinian Authority, Sharon hopes to destroy any symbol and possibility of a Palestinian state.
DR ZIAD ABU-AMR, PALESTINIAN LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL: Sharon, from the very start, opposed the Oslo agreement and he wanted to get rid of these Israeli commitments and agreements which would enable the Palestinians, ultimately, to create a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem.
In his West Bank offensive, Sharon can claim one victory over Hamas here in the village of Tubas. When the Israeli Army stormed this house and killed its five occupants, it went largely unreported, but the Israelis succeeded in killing Hamas's West Bank military commander and five other militants with him. One scrawled his name in blood before he died. But it is only in death that the commander's identity can be revealed. Unlike the political leadership, Hamas's military commanders are never publicly known. His name is Kayes Adwan and Israel claims he had a role in the Netanya and Haifa bombings.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI (Translation): This movement has shown us and the Zionist enemy that it is capable of rebuilding itself quickly. The enemy, several times has banked on an end being put to this movement or to the resistance. But they have failed completely.
These scenes of destruction and devastation at Jenin may suggest Sharon achieved his goal of smashing the Palestinian resistance. But the reality is different. Sharon's campaign has just created more recruits for Hamas.
YOUNG MAN (Translation): It pushes one to carry out a martyrdom operation. My generation is filled with a strong desire for vengeance.
Hamas has already mythologised the battle of Jenin, turning defeat into victory.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: Israel, in 1967, succeeded within five days to conquer three countries. Within eight days they were unable to enter Jenin refugee camp while the fighters, they were not exceeding 500 actually. So you can see how the spiritual level here are too much constructive for the Palestinian resistance than the Israeli side.
The people who were not already radicalised have become so. Mohammad Ali says he was not political until he saw an Israeli bulldozer pulverise his home.
MOHAMMAD ALI (Translation): This is my house. We are a family of 11. The house wasn't even big enough for us. There were no armed men inside. The bulldozer started demolishing while we were inside, screaming. We got the children out through the windows.
And with each body part that is still being pulled from the rubble in Jenin comes grief, disbelief, and eventually anger. These are the remains of a young girl. And this is what is thought to be her plait of hair. The exact death toll is yet to emerge. So far, the United Nations has confirmed 54 Palestinians dead. The Human Rights Watch organisation published its initial report saying 22 of those were civilians. It concluded no wholesale massacre took place here, but say war crimes did. Aisah Wishali, 60, says his wife was shot by an Israeli sniper while they were hiding in their house. He then watched her bleed to death as Israeli troops stopped ambulances coming in to help her.
AISAH WISHALI (Translation): She was bleeding for 48 hours but the army stopped me. She bled for 48 hours, and I was screaming "For the sake of God... for the sake of your religion, for the sake of Moses!" But they wouldn't listen. He'd tell me to get inside and swear at me.
It is inevitable that Sharon will have to confront Hamas and this phase of the conflict may prove to be the most destructive yet.
ISMAIL ABU SHANAB: Now Sharon destroyed all Jenin camp, occupied Jenin camp, what next? The Palestinians will continue the struggle. The Palestinians will continue the resistance. So, he did not solve the problem militarily.
Israeli bulldozers and tanks may have crushed Hamas martyr billboards, but newer and bigger ones are already taking their place. The first flag to rise above the rubble of Jenin was the symbol of Hamas.