GEORGE: Just a few short weeks ago, the Palestinians chose the Arab worlds first democratically elected Islamist Government. Its called the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas and its rise has appalled the Israelis, astonished the West and surprised not a few Palestinians themselves.
Gaza sets the scene. A narrow strip of land 45 kilometres long on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Behind the dunes, a million refugees. Three out of four of them live on less than three Australian dollars a day. Israel ended almost four decades of occupation last August but its presence is still felt, still resented by those whod been on the frontline of resistance.
YOUNG MALE PALESTINIAN #1: The Israelis still raid our homes, theres no hope of peace with Israel.
YOUNG MALE PALESTINIAN #2: In Gaza we have a big problem. Every family has at least one martyr, every family is hurt, everybody has someone in jail, every family is poor, and suffers from unemployment.
YOUNG PALESTINIAN MEN SINGING: We are the pioneers of Palestine. Were living, but were not living at all.
GEORGE: From the frustration of dispossession and economic despair has risen a new leadership radical, untested, unpredictable, impenetrable and Islamic.
YOUNG PALESTINIAN MEN SINGING: Despite our sighs and our wounds we will overcome.
DR IYAD SARAJ: [Human rights campaigner] Its like a big political tsunami hitting the whole area and at the same time, it tells me really that the Palestinian people are so politically aware and the day of judgment has come and they are taking this to the ballot box to judge their government.
GEORGE: Jamila Shanti, teacher, conservative, religious a Gazan refugee and a new face in politics Hamas style. Dr Shanti is one of the seventy four candidates who swept to a democratic victory in January to the shock of much of the West who officially describe her and her organisation as terrorists.
But while the world holds its breath and wonders what it means to peace, Dr Shanti tours Hamas funded schools and speaks of her constituents other priorities.
DR SHANTI: The people are very politicised, and interested in foreign relations but the first thing they expect from us is domestic reform making life here better and safer. These are fundamental requirements.
GEORGE: So what about hopes for peace? An end to the violence? A halt to suicide bombings?
DR SHANTI: No, I dont say that. I say resistance of all kinds is a legitimate right for us. International law allows an occupied country to fight back in all possible ways in any way that they see fit.
GEORGE: Gaza is part of what was left of Palestine after Israel carved a nation out of it in a war against the Arabs in 1948. The other bit is the West Bank. Israel occupied both these areas in another war in 1967. Limited Palestinian self rule came in a rare moment of hope in 1994.
The promise of the Oslo Peace Accords a dozen years ago, slipped through the fingers of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, leaving very little goodwill or hope on either side. As for the Palestinian leadership, well that was so hopelessly botched and utterly corrupted under the now dead Yasser Arafat that hundreds and thousands turn to an Islamic movement, that promised at the very least, to make their daily lives better.
Hamas is characterised today by militancy, suicide bombings and a charter that calls for Israels obliteration but its roots lie in the Muslim Brotherhood that arrived in Gaza in the 1940s from Egypt.
DR IYAD SARAJ: It was a social charity organisation but also talking about good Islam. In the early 40s and during the final campaign and the war between the Palestinians, the Arabs and Israel which was about to be established, the Brother Muslim group came from Egypt and many Palestinians joined them to fight as part of their guerrilla warfare against the Zionists.
GEORGE: The Palestinians were defeated but Gaza remained fertile soil for the Brotherhood as it set about building charities, schools and clinics. They built Gazas first university, a strictly Islamic one, thirty years ago and the watchful, occupying Israelis encouraged them, hoping to split Islamic Palestinians from what they saw then as their most dangerous enemy, Yasser Arafats secular PLO.
DR IYAD SARAJ: Those were Israels thoughts at the time, closed their eyes to say the least when it comes to, it came to supporting Hamas or not I dont know.
GEORGE: But its a great irony isnt it that an organisation that was supported once by the Israelis has now become their worst nightmare.
DR IYAD SARAJ: Yes it is, it is. I think the Hamas rise to power is definitely a reaction to accumulating events over the last fifty years. I think the Hamas rise to power is a reaction to the Israeli occupation policies and to the American policies in the Middle East.
GEORGE: The university is now Hamas political powerhouse. Seventeen thousand male and female students, strictly segregated on adjoining campuses, are being nurtured here.
PALESTINIAN MALE STUDENT: I think Hamas have a good... a good looking for the future to change this situation... that a better economy and security and policy you know?
GEORGE: And policy too...
MALE STUDENT: Yes.
GEORGE: Last year Hamas took credit for making life so uncomfortable for the occupiers that they retreated, destroying their Jewish settlements as they left. Forty years of occupation left behind rubble, poverty, unemployment and a brooding anger.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: [Hamas leader & Foreign Minister] Our policy is not to consider Israel as our neighbour, that should be cooperated with him because such big crimes cannot be forgotten in a short time.
GEORGE: Mind you, Palestinians have been appallingly served by their own leaders too. A lot of fingers have been in the till. A lot of noses in the trough. The favoured sons of Yasser Arafats Fatah movement stand officially accused of ripping off at least a billion dollars in the ten years theyve been running things.
DR IYAD SARAJ: See, Hamas as a religious group should not score more than 12%. What happened is Hamas was eroding from the authorities popularity and Fatah popularity all the time, mainly because of the mismanagement of Fatah and the Palestinian authority, the corruption and all the stories of arrogance of power which has come to Fatah all the years with the violation of basic human rights, with arresting people, torturing people and then of course the scandals one after the other, then of course the disillusionment with peace process.
GEORGE: In Gaza then its hardly surprising that people have turned to Hamas, untested in government but clean, moral and clear in its resistance to Israel. Gaza though, is a special case, conservative and sealed off for decades from the West Bank by an Israeli imposed border.
Raeds a taxi driver and a pretty typical Gazan.
RAED: I havent left Gaza for 17 years.
GEORGE: And why has it been so long?
RAED: The Israelis wouldnt give me permission to go to any other country not even the West Bank or Israel.
GEORGE: To understand the full force of the political tsunami thats washed over Palestine, youve got to get out of Gaza through an Israeli bunker, a walk very few Palestinians are ever allowed to make.
From Gaza, the most direct route to the West Bank takes you through Jerusalem and on to Ramallah, sealed off by an Israeli wall built as part of its de facto international border. With more freedom to move and more contact with the outside world, the West Bankers were always much more attracted to Yasser Arafats secular Fatah movement than to the Islamists.
Now in the wake of defeat, Fatah supporters young and old can only lick their wounds.
PALESTINIAN MAN IN CAFÉ #1: One of the most surprising things was that Hamas turned out to be such a strong contender in the 2006 elections. It was as big a surprise for us as I assume it was for Hamas.
PALESTINIAN MAN IN CAFÉ #2: If you add up the numbers, youll see that Fatah actually won, not Hamas. But Fatah split they lost their internal discipline and that led them to losing the election.
GEORGE: With Hamas in power, do you think your way of life will change? Your ability to live the sort of life you want to do, to be able to come to cafes maybe even drink and so on? Will, will Hamas restrict that in the future do you think?
PALESTINIAN MAN IN CAFÉ #3: Our Palestinian society allows for everything. We follow different religions so these individual rights cant be changed for a political point of view.
PALESTINIAN MAN IN CAFÉ #4: Hamas wont change anything in fact everything will be worse.
GEORGE: On to the city of Nablus, a hotspot in an uprising against Israel thats taken more than four thousand lives, three quarters of them Palestinian. In the citys Balata camp live refugees like the Shaker brothers waiting forty years to go back to homes they lost in 67. Once a prominent Fatah family, their loyalties have been shattered.
OMAR SHAKER: We have some differences of opinion. My dad is pro-Fatah, I voted for Hamas, my brother voted for a cocktail of people. In the first presidential election I gave Arafat my vote. We had different ideas then. There were peace proposals, and some hope of gains maybe some return of our lands, improvements in the economy and our way of life. But it all came to nothing.
FATHER OF SHAKER BROTHERS: They got too big for their boots.
GEORGE: Do you think that a Hamas Government will deal better than Fatah with the economy, with corruption and with the prospect of peace for the Palestinians?
MAHMOUD SHAKER: It is a hard question. They havent been given a chance by the Americans or the Israelis. Hamas has a clearer vision, and they are tougher than Fatah.
OMAR SHAKER: Weve been going backwards all the time Jewish settlements expanding... people are hungry, corruptions getting worse people who once had nothing have become millionaires.
[Omar on walk in street with George] We like our prophet more than ourselves
GEORGE: Yes...
Ten years of Fatahs failure have destroyed the faith of men like Omar and his brother. Secular or observant, theyve turned to an Islamic movement because it offers hope amidst despair, honesty amidst corruption, purpose amidst uncertainty.
OMAR SHAKER: Any one know God, believe in God I dont think that he can do anything wrong cause he always being afraid that his God watching him and he will punish him if he do anything wrong.
GEORGE: Do you think that Fatah forgot this?
OMAR SHAKER: I think most of them forgot this thing.
GEORGE: The US and Israel didnt see the political tsunami coming but one person who did was Nick Pelham.
NICK PELHAM: Bethlehem as been organically linked to Jerusalem for thousands of years, at least two thousand years and that separation is now total.
GEORGE: A researcher in Jerusalem for a respected global think tank, Nick regularly takes the public bus to the Christian Palestinian city of Bethlehem through yet another one of Israels concrete barriers.
NICK PELHAM: The city is effectively stifled and that is having a huge impact on what essentially has been a pilgrimage site for two thousand years. The life blood of the city is being stopped.
GEORGE: In the past twelve months as Hamas has won municipal elections in city after city, even in Christian Bethlehem, Nicks witnessed how these representatives of the movement publicly espousing the destruction of Israel, are in fact far more pragmatic then they may seem.
NICK PELHAM: You cant be a Palestinian without dealing with the Israelis at every level of your existence - for travel, for permits, for supply of electricity. It recognises that this is a reality that it cant change.
What youre seeing essentially is a game of poker in which there is going to be mutual recognition at some point in the future of a Palestinian State and an Israeli State and its at what point you put your cards on the table. Hamas have said that theyre not ready to put their cards on the table until such a time as Israel is ready to do so, until it ends the occupation and until there is a just and legitimate resolution of the refugee issue.
GEORGE: Unlike Fatah, Hamas is known to be a disciplined force. It wont escape blame for any violent outbreaks on the streets here or in Israel. A year ago Hamas called a temporary halt to its campaign of suicide bombings against Israel and thats still holding. For their part, Israeli leaders who face their own election in a weeks time, continue to talk tough about terrorist Hamas of course. More reflective players, including a former security adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, see grounds for optimism.
YORAM SCHWEITZER: [Fmr Security Advisor to Israeli PM] Look in the Middle East you dont trust definitely not your adversaries, if not use the term enemies. However these gentlemen are serious people and if they behave as pragmatic, as seriously as they are then we can have a common ground with them, with dignity for each other. I think we have to focus on what they are doing, not what they are saying.
GEORGE: The whole world I think is holding its breath and asking the question will there be peace with Israel? Will Hamas deal with Israel? What is your answer to that?
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: The questions will be for Israel. Israel is ready to recognise the right of the Palestinian people. What is the border obviously they have to speak about, what about the aggression of the Israelis, what about the occupation, what about the [INAUDIBLE], what about the threatening our economy and the closure of all borders even after they withdraw from Gaza? So these questions should be answered first.
GEORGE: Was it a mistake and has it undermined your moral standing to launch suicide attacks against Israelis?
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: Its not, it is not a suicide attack if you... if you are ready to give us M16s and to give us tanks... we are going to use it army against army.
GEORGE: But to attack and blow up a bus full of civilians, surely...
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: Okay....
GEORGE: Strips you of any moral righteousness that you might claim?
YORAM SCHWEITZER: This is, this is one point. This is one eye. This is the only eye, one eye open and western people who are not looking to the other, by the other eye. More than one third of the Palestinian people killed by the Israeli are children and women.
GEORGE: Hamas says it plans to roll its militia into the mainstream Palestinian security forces, perhaps embarking on a journey that takes it from global pariah to international recognition as the legitimate voice of Palestine. Itd take time but theres a precedent. Men condemned as terrorists sixty years ago emerged from the Jewish underground to become acknowledged Israeli leaders.
Is it your belief that Israel will actually come to deal with Hamas sometime in the not too distant future?
DR IYAD SARAJ: I believe that the majority of Israelis are willing to have peace and security with Hamas in power or without Hamas in power and I believe that once they get out of, they get rid of their fear and insecurity and even paranoia, they will come out of their shells and stretch their hands to whoever is there in Palestine including Hamas.
GEORGE: When Jamila Shanti and her Hamas colleagues were sworn in as MPs in Gaza, they used a video link to the Parliament in the West Bank because the Israelis wouldnt let them go there. Hanging over them was a threat by Israel and the US to starve their new government of funds. Then last week, came their first test of political maturity.
Israel demolished a Palestinian gaol and seized militant inmates. Palestinians responded with outrage. Hamas will be judged on whether it keeps a lid on violent reprisals and how it manages the competing demands of international credibility and Palestinian militancy.
DR SHANTI: Im interested in stopping the violence and killing from both sides. I dont want to see blood flow any more. Im concerned about a Jew as a person but if a Jews a killer I have to protect myself and in protecting myself, I may kill him.
GEORGE: Ordinary Palestinians dont want to see the blood flow anymore either. What theyd like is recognition of nationhood, a better way of life and a bit of peace. Any attempt to destroy the leaders theyve chosen to achieve that will make them more angry, more militant and thats not in anyones interests.
Gaza sets the scene. A narrow strip of land 45 kilometres long on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Behind the dunes, a million refugees. Three out of four of them live on less than three Australian dollars a day. Israel ended almost four decades of occupation last August but its presence is still felt, still resented by those whod been on the frontline of resistance.
YOUNG MALE PALESTINIAN #1: The Israelis still raid our homes, theres no hope of peace with Israel.
YOUNG MALE PALESTINIAN #2: In Gaza we have a big problem. Every family has at least one martyr, every family is hurt, everybody has someone in jail, every family is poor, and suffers from unemployment.
YOUNG PALESTINIAN MEN SINGING: We are the pioneers of Palestine. Were living, but were not living at all.
GEORGE: From the frustration of dispossession and economic despair has risen a new leadership radical, untested, unpredictable, impenetrable and Islamic.
YOUNG PALESTINIAN MEN SINGING: Despite our sighs and our wounds we will overcome.
DR IYAD SARAJ: [Human rights campaigner] Its like a big political tsunami hitting the whole area and at the same time, it tells me really that the Palestinian people are so politically aware and the day of judgment has come and they are taking this to the ballot box to judge their government.
GEORGE: Jamila Shanti, teacher, conservative, religious a Gazan refugee and a new face in politics Hamas style. Dr Shanti is one of the seventy four candidates who swept to a democratic victory in January to the shock of much of the West who officially describe her and her organisation as terrorists.
But while the world holds its breath and wonders what it means to peace, Dr Shanti tours Hamas funded schools and speaks of her constituents other priorities.
DR SHANTI: The people are very politicised, and interested in foreign relations but the first thing they expect from us is domestic reform making life here better and safer. These are fundamental requirements.
GEORGE: So what about hopes for peace? An end to the violence? A halt to suicide bombings?
DR SHANTI: No, I dont say that. I say resistance of all kinds is a legitimate right for us. International law allows an occupied country to fight back in all possible ways in any way that they see fit.
GEORGE: Gaza is part of what was left of Palestine after Israel carved a nation out of it in a war against the Arabs in 1948. The other bit is the West Bank. Israel occupied both these areas in another war in 1967. Limited Palestinian self rule came in a rare moment of hope in 1994.
The promise of the Oslo Peace Accords a dozen years ago, slipped through the fingers of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, leaving very little goodwill or hope on either side. As for the Palestinian leadership, well that was so hopelessly botched and utterly corrupted under the now dead Yasser Arafat that hundreds and thousands turn to an Islamic movement, that promised at the very least, to make their daily lives better.
Hamas is characterised today by militancy, suicide bombings and a charter that calls for Israels obliteration but its roots lie in the Muslim Brotherhood that arrived in Gaza in the 1940s from Egypt.
DR IYAD SARAJ: It was a social charity organisation but also talking about good Islam. In the early 40s and during the final campaign and the war between the Palestinians, the Arabs and Israel which was about to be established, the Brother Muslim group came from Egypt and many Palestinians joined them to fight as part of their guerrilla warfare against the Zionists.
GEORGE: The Palestinians were defeated but Gaza remained fertile soil for the Brotherhood as it set about building charities, schools and clinics. They built Gazas first university, a strictly Islamic one, thirty years ago and the watchful, occupying Israelis encouraged them, hoping to split Islamic Palestinians from what they saw then as their most dangerous enemy, Yasser Arafats secular PLO.
DR IYAD SARAJ: Those were Israels thoughts at the time, closed their eyes to say the least when it comes to, it came to supporting Hamas or not I dont know.
GEORGE: But its a great irony isnt it that an organisation that was supported once by the Israelis has now become their worst nightmare.
DR IYAD SARAJ: Yes it is, it is. I think the Hamas rise to power is definitely a reaction to accumulating events over the last fifty years. I think the Hamas rise to power is a reaction to the Israeli occupation policies and to the American policies in the Middle East.
GEORGE: The university is now Hamas political powerhouse. Seventeen thousand male and female students, strictly segregated on adjoining campuses, are being nurtured here.
PALESTINIAN MALE STUDENT: I think Hamas have a good... a good looking for the future to change this situation... that a better economy and security and policy you know?
GEORGE: And policy too...
MALE STUDENT: Yes.
GEORGE: Last year Hamas took credit for making life so uncomfortable for the occupiers that they retreated, destroying their Jewish settlements as they left. Forty years of occupation left behind rubble, poverty, unemployment and a brooding anger.
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: [Hamas leader & Foreign Minister] Our policy is not to consider Israel as our neighbour, that should be cooperated with him because such big crimes cannot be forgotten in a short time.
GEORGE: Mind you, Palestinians have been appallingly served by their own leaders too. A lot of fingers have been in the till. A lot of noses in the trough. The favoured sons of Yasser Arafats Fatah movement stand officially accused of ripping off at least a billion dollars in the ten years theyve been running things.
DR IYAD SARAJ: See, Hamas as a religious group should not score more than 12%. What happened is Hamas was eroding from the authorities popularity and Fatah popularity all the time, mainly because of the mismanagement of Fatah and the Palestinian authority, the corruption and all the stories of arrogance of power which has come to Fatah all the years with the violation of basic human rights, with arresting people, torturing people and then of course the scandals one after the other, then of course the disillusionment with peace process.
GEORGE: In Gaza then its hardly surprising that people have turned to Hamas, untested in government but clean, moral and clear in its resistance to Israel. Gaza though, is a special case, conservative and sealed off for decades from the West Bank by an Israeli imposed border.
Raeds a taxi driver and a pretty typical Gazan.
RAED: I havent left Gaza for 17 years.
GEORGE: And why has it been so long?
RAED: The Israelis wouldnt give me permission to go to any other country not even the West Bank or Israel.
GEORGE: To understand the full force of the political tsunami thats washed over Palestine, youve got to get out of Gaza through an Israeli bunker, a walk very few Palestinians are ever allowed to make.
From Gaza, the most direct route to the West Bank takes you through Jerusalem and on to Ramallah, sealed off by an Israeli wall built as part of its de facto international border. With more freedom to move and more contact with the outside world, the West Bankers were always much more attracted to Yasser Arafats secular Fatah movement than to the Islamists.
Now in the wake of defeat, Fatah supporters young and old can only lick their wounds.
PALESTINIAN MAN IN CAFÉ #1: One of the most surprising things was that Hamas turned out to be such a strong contender in the 2006 elections. It was as big a surprise for us as I assume it was for Hamas.
PALESTINIAN MAN IN CAFÉ #2: If you add up the numbers, youll see that Fatah actually won, not Hamas. But Fatah split they lost their internal discipline and that led them to losing the election.
GEORGE: With Hamas in power, do you think your way of life will change? Your ability to live the sort of life you want to do, to be able to come to cafes maybe even drink and so on? Will, will Hamas restrict that in the future do you think?
PALESTINIAN MAN IN CAFÉ #3: Our Palestinian society allows for everything. We follow different religions so these individual rights cant be changed for a political point of view.
PALESTINIAN MAN IN CAFÉ #4: Hamas wont change anything in fact everything will be worse.
GEORGE: On to the city of Nablus, a hotspot in an uprising against Israel thats taken more than four thousand lives, three quarters of them Palestinian. In the citys Balata camp live refugees like the Shaker brothers waiting forty years to go back to homes they lost in 67. Once a prominent Fatah family, their loyalties have been shattered.
OMAR SHAKER: We have some differences of opinion. My dad is pro-Fatah, I voted for Hamas, my brother voted for a cocktail of people. In the first presidential election I gave Arafat my vote. We had different ideas then. There were peace proposals, and some hope of gains maybe some return of our lands, improvements in the economy and our way of life. But it all came to nothing.
FATHER OF SHAKER BROTHERS: They got too big for their boots.
GEORGE: Do you think that a Hamas Government will deal better than Fatah with the economy, with corruption and with the prospect of peace for the Palestinians?
MAHMOUD SHAKER: It is a hard question. They havent been given a chance by the Americans or the Israelis. Hamas has a clearer vision, and they are tougher than Fatah.
OMAR SHAKER: Weve been going backwards all the time Jewish settlements expanding... people are hungry, corruptions getting worse people who once had nothing have become millionaires.
[Omar on walk in street with George] We like our prophet more than ourselves
GEORGE: Yes...
Ten years of Fatahs failure have destroyed the faith of men like Omar and his brother. Secular or observant, theyve turned to an Islamic movement because it offers hope amidst despair, honesty amidst corruption, purpose amidst uncertainty.
OMAR SHAKER: Any one know God, believe in God I dont think that he can do anything wrong cause he always being afraid that his God watching him and he will punish him if he do anything wrong.
GEORGE: Do you think that Fatah forgot this?
OMAR SHAKER: I think most of them forgot this thing.
GEORGE: The US and Israel didnt see the political tsunami coming but one person who did was Nick Pelham.
NICK PELHAM: Bethlehem as been organically linked to Jerusalem for thousands of years, at least two thousand years and that separation is now total.
GEORGE: A researcher in Jerusalem for a respected global think tank, Nick regularly takes the public bus to the Christian Palestinian city of Bethlehem through yet another one of Israels concrete barriers.
NICK PELHAM: The city is effectively stifled and that is having a huge impact on what essentially has been a pilgrimage site for two thousand years. The life blood of the city is being stopped.
GEORGE: In the past twelve months as Hamas has won municipal elections in city after city, even in Christian Bethlehem, Nicks witnessed how these representatives of the movement publicly espousing the destruction of Israel, are in fact far more pragmatic then they may seem.
NICK PELHAM: You cant be a Palestinian without dealing with the Israelis at every level of your existence - for travel, for permits, for supply of electricity. It recognises that this is a reality that it cant change.
What youre seeing essentially is a game of poker in which there is going to be mutual recognition at some point in the future of a Palestinian State and an Israeli State and its at what point you put your cards on the table. Hamas have said that theyre not ready to put their cards on the table until such a time as Israel is ready to do so, until it ends the occupation and until there is a just and legitimate resolution of the refugee issue.
GEORGE: Unlike Fatah, Hamas is known to be a disciplined force. It wont escape blame for any violent outbreaks on the streets here or in Israel. A year ago Hamas called a temporary halt to its campaign of suicide bombings against Israel and thats still holding. For their part, Israeli leaders who face their own election in a weeks time, continue to talk tough about terrorist Hamas of course. More reflective players, including a former security adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, see grounds for optimism.
YORAM SCHWEITZER: [Fmr Security Advisor to Israeli PM] Look in the Middle East you dont trust definitely not your adversaries, if not use the term enemies. However these gentlemen are serious people and if they behave as pragmatic, as seriously as they are then we can have a common ground with them, with dignity for each other. I think we have to focus on what they are doing, not what they are saying.
GEORGE: The whole world I think is holding its breath and asking the question will there be peace with Israel? Will Hamas deal with Israel? What is your answer to that?
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: The questions will be for Israel. Israel is ready to recognise the right of the Palestinian people. What is the border obviously they have to speak about, what about the aggression of the Israelis, what about the occupation, what about the [INAUDIBLE], what about the threatening our economy and the closure of all borders even after they withdraw from Gaza? So these questions should be answered first.
GEORGE: Was it a mistake and has it undermined your moral standing to launch suicide attacks against Israelis?
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: Its not, it is not a suicide attack if you... if you are ready to give us M16s and to give us tanks... we are going to use it army against army.
GEORGE: But to attack and blow up a bus full of civilians, surely...
MAHMOUD ZAHAR: Okay....
GEORGE: Strips you of any moral righteousness that you might claim?
YORAM SCHWEITZER: This is, this is one point. This is one eye. This is the only eye, one eye open and western people who are not looking to the other, by the other eye. More than one third of the Palestinian people killed by the Israeli are children and women.
GEORGE: Hamas says it plans to roll its militia into the mainstream Palestinian security forces, perhaps embarking on a journey that takes it from global pariah to international recognition as the legitimate voice of Palestine. Itd take time but theres a precedent. Men condemned as terrorists sixty years ago emerged from the Jewish underground to become acknowledged Israeli leaders.
Is it your belief that Israel will actually come to deal with Hamas sometime in the not too distant future?
DR IYAD SARAJ: I believe that the majority of Israelis are willing to have peace and security with Hamas in power or without Hamas in power and I believe that once they get out of, they get rid of their fear and insecurity and even paranoia, they will come out of their shells and stretch their hands to whoever is there in Palestine including Hamas.
GEORGE: When Jamila Shanti and her Hamas colleagues were sworn in as MPs in Gaza, they used a video link to the Parliament in the West Bank because the Israelis wouldnt let them go there. Hanging over them was a threat by Israel and the US to starve their new government of funds. Then last week, came their first test of political maturity.
Israel demolished a Palestinian gaol and seized militant inmates. Palestinians responded with outrage. Hamas will be judged on whether it keeps a lid on violent reprisals and how it manages the competing demands of international credibility and Palestinian militancy.
DR SHANTI: Im interested in stopping the violence and killing from both sides. I dont want to see blood flow any more. Im concerned about a Jew as a person but if a Jews a killer I have to protect myself and in protecting myself, I may kill him.
GEORGE: Ordinary Palestinians dont want to see the blood flow anymore either. What theyd like is recognition of nationhood, a better way of life and a bit of peace. Any attempt to destroy the leaders theyve chosen to achieve that will make them more angry, more militant and thats not in anyones interests.