Johann Hari

We sip sweet tea in a tiny flat somewhere in Gaza
City, my new friends Yousef, Hamid, Mujaheed and I,
and talk about Cheers. Usually, they hate American
television because it is, Hamid explains, "a tool the
Jews use to break our resistance. They show pictures
of naked women so that we will think about sex and
depravity and not about fighting for Islam." But
Cheers - that's a different matter. "It is very
funny," Hamid says. "So very funny. But I think that
since Shelley Long left and Kirsty Alley arrived it
hasn't been so good. And Woody is nowhere near as
funny as Coach. I guess the truth is that it isn't
what it used to be." We all nod sombrely. And, of
course, Mujaheed adds, they disapprove of the whole
idea of a bar that serves alcohol.

Hamid opens the window. We are all sweating. "Is it
true that in London it never stops raining ever? Do
you travel in boats?" he asks. All three of the young
men I am sitting with - chatting about the usual
pop-cultural slurry that is the universal language of
twentysomethings everywhere - are members of Hamas.
The faces of Hamas that we see so often in the West
are old men like Sheikh Yassin, a withered, tiny man
with a long white beard who delivers statements from a
hut. We are being fed a lie: Hamas is, overwhelmingly,
a network of young people like this testosterone-
soaked trio.

If you want to understand the organisation, I was
told, don't go for the polished spokesmen with their
middle-aged moustaches, go for the lads on the street.
They overwhelmingly make up the ranks not just of
Hamas but of the Palestinians, too. More than 50 per
cent of the population of the Occupied Territories is
under 16; a middle-aged Palestinian is in a tiny
minority. So my contact arranges for us to meet in his
friend's flat, but our chat doesn't start well. As I
enter, I offer everyone a cigarette - a gesture I've
never known fail to earn gratitude in the Arab world.
Hamid, the oldest, at 28 and the most serious of the
three, says with a blank expression, "No. Cigarettes
are evil and un-Islamic." Ah, I say, nobody told me.
He nods and goes to get some tea.

Hamid wears small, studious-looking black-rimmed
glasses and has a face that is almost Botoxed in its
inscrutability. Mujaheed is his exact opposite: only
19, and looking younger, he is excitable, prone to
swaggering and totally transparent. He is the first to
open up when I ask the group when they first
remembered thinking about the conflict between Israel
and Palestine. "I have always known they were there.
They are like a black cloud," Mujaheed says. "They
have been there since I was born. I grew up in Saudi
Arabia and we didn't come to Palestine until I was 10,
but I saw it on the television and I knew.

"My father explained that these were the people who
threw us out of our country and took it over. He told
me they were still beating and killing the people who
were left. My brothers - there are six of us - would
beg our father to take us back so we could join the
first Intifada, but we only came in 1992 when it was
mostly over. But I was a fighter even in that
Intifada: I threw stones at the soldiers!" We all
laugh, and the power blinks off. The fan stops
working; while we wait for the electricity to return,
we quietly bake.

Hamid, as he returns with the drinks, explains that he
remembers the first Intifada better, not least because
he spent 1990 in prison for street-fighting against
the occupying forces. He decided he had to fight, he
says, "one day when I was 12 and the first Intifada
was just starting. My mother came home and she was
crying, and I didn't know why. She went into the
bedroom and she was talking to my father, and then he
made a phone call and her sisters came to the house
with a first-aid kit. She didn't come out of her room
for six hours, and when she did, her arm was in a
sling. The soldiers broke her arm because she wouldn't
let them look in her basket. She only had shopping and
didn't see why she should let them look. She cried for
days. I knew then I had to fight."

Yousef, on the other hand, has never been arrested. He
is skinny, pale and geeky-looking. He has a habit of
mumbling. He is 24; he was born two days before I was.
Mujaheed has been trying to cut into the conversation
ever since he stopped speaking, and now speaks over
Yousef to explain, "The day I decided I really hated
the Israelis and I would gladly die for my people was
just after we came back to Palestine. I was about 10,
and my parents took me and one of my brothers to visit
my uncle in prison. When we arrived, they wouldn't let
us in because we were so young, so my parents went in
alone and left us sitting with the prison guards.
There was barbed wire and just these Jewish soldiers
and their dogs, who were snarling and sniffing at me.
Sometimes when I am really angry I can still hear
those dogs and remember how frightened I was that
day."

These three men are part of a generation of
Palestinians that is rapidly being lost to the cause
of peaceful coexistence. They are the children of the
first Intifada, who saw their parents try non-violent
forms of resistance such as withholding taxes and
ripping up their Israel-issued ID cards. They saw
their parents being beaten and shot in return. Then
they lived through the Oslo peace process, during
which time the situation actually deteriorated for
Palestinians. This was partly because of the
corruption of the Palestinian Authority, but also
because Israel introduced new restrictions and doubled
the number of settlers in the Occupied Territories.

I ask if any of them would like to become suicide
bombers. All three of them nod vigorously. "Of
course," Mujaheed says, as though it is a stupid
question. My contact had warned me that the number of
people loudly claiming that they want to be suicide
bombers is high; if they all actually did it, the
whole of the Middle East would be blown off the map.
But Mujaheed, in particular, seems sincerely
enthusiastic. He says breathlessly, "The Israelis are
a fighting people; they are all soldiers so they are
all targets. It is legitimate to kill them all." But
what about, say, Israeli children? "We never attack
them," he says. Er, you do, I add, as politely as I
can. Lots of times. "Not deliberately. And if you ask
about suicide bombing, ask us too what we think of
Israelis killing our children every day. Ask us that."

Many commentators in the West have argued recently
that public opinion is being cluttered with myths
about Hamas: that they are supporters of al Qa'ida,
for example, or that they believe that suicide bombers
end up in paradise with 72 virgins. I wanted these
stories to be myths, too. So I ask, cautiously, what
they reckon to Osama bin Laden.

Yousef's face lights up. "He is our love, he is our
sheikh, he is a symbol for Muslims. He leads the
nation to the shore of safety by implementing the law
of God," he says, in the same tone of calm
reasonableness with which he pronounced upon Kirsty
Alley. Hamid, who is the most politically astute of
the trio, chips in: "But this does not mean we support
everything he does. We do not support the attacks on
New York and Washington." The others shake their
heads. "I support it," Yousef says. "They are the
places that conspire against Muslims. They deserved
it. Look at the world. The Americans support their
government against Iraqis. The Russians support their
government against the Chechens. Why shouldn't we
support Bin Laden?"

At this point, I want to go back to sitcom chat, but I
know I can't avoid discussing such issues with these
men. Their world-view is dominated by ideas in a way
that's hard to explain to young Westerners: if you ask
them practical questions about their everyday lives,
they quickly bring the conversation back to their
politico-religious beliefs. They don't live in a
privatised mental world, where politics happens
somewhere "out there". It determines their every
action. "The moment I wake up," Yousef says, "I say,
bless God for making me live after I was dead.
Mohammed says this in the Koran; he considered sleep a
form of death. God is in my thoughts every second of
the day. Everything I do, I do for God."

Their mental landscape has a far wider scope than
mine. They talk about the battle between the Persians
and the Romans, or Mecca and Medina at the time of the
Prophet, the way I might talk about a holiday I took
last year. They see themselves as fitting into a vast
picture organised and understood by God - and they
have no doubt that God sees them as integral to that
picture. "Bush is right. We are in a war of good
against evil," Yousef says to laughter. "He just got
the sides mixed up. There is an American writer Samuel
Huntington who talks about the clash of civilisations.
He is right. Civilisations rise and fall, and they
fight." So is Islamic civilisation rising again? "Of
this I have no doubt. I know it as surely as I know
you are sitting in front of me."

I ask these lads what they would say to my friends
back home, who drink and smoke and have premarital
sex. "The Jews have destroyed your Christianity just
like they are trying to destroy our Islam," Hamid
says. "You should read the words of the Prophet. Join
us. We do not just want to liberate Palestine. We want
all countries to live under the Caliphate. The Islamic
army once reached the walls of Vienna. It will happen
again. We do not have time for girls and for alcohol.
We think only about the cause." Do you have female
friends? "No," he says, clearly appalled. "Women are
very precious but they are not friends. They are
women." What do you think about the fact that we
tolerate, say, gay people? "This is depraved," he says
as the others look away, disgusted even by the
question. "Anybody who does this sin must be killed."
He begins to explain the story of Sodom and Gomorrah,
which have always sounded like pretty cool places to
me. I nod as strongly as I can.

Their statements about Jews are contradictory. On the
one hand, they claim that Jews could live perfectly
safely under the Islamic Caliphate they want to
create, because they are "people of the Book" and
"sons of Abraham". On the other hand, Mujaheed says,
"The Jews were made to live in ghettos in Europe. It
is true, isn't it? They should live in isolation. They
are the source of all evil and moral corruption. We
will be engaged in a battle with them until the Day of
Judgement." I ask if they have ever met any Jews.
"No," Yousef says. "I have never left Gaza." Hamid is
the same. Mujaheed starts talking about those Jewish
prison guards again.

They all claim, however, that they would settle for a
two-state solution. "If the two-state solution
happens, we will live with it, but we will not
recognise it. Hamas will never recognise Israel, but
if we have our own state, we will not fire at them." I
ask if the claims by right-wing Israeli politicians
that Hamas is using the current hudna cease-fire to
re-arm are true. "Of course," Hamid says. "Just like
the Israelis will be getting new F16s from the
Americans, we build up our little guns."

I try desperately to lighten the tone. So, what do you
enjoy doing of an evening? You know - to relax? Yousef
grins. "I am a juggler," he says. "Shall I show you?"
I nod, and he takes an orange, a remote control and a
hole-punch from the desk in the corner of the room.
Juggling with Hamas: this is not how I expected my
life to turn out.

It is not hard to see why people succumb to this
madness, repulsive though it is, I thought, as my
contact and I drove out of Gaza and back towards
Jerusalem. From one viewpoint, you are the
disenfranchised citizens of a displaced, tiny people
who have been abused by the Israelis, abandoned by the
Arabs and ignored by the world for 50 years. You will
probably never have a decent job; you'll be lucky if
you leave Gaza once in your life. You are nothing. But
turn that around, and you are central to God's vision.
You are part of the revival of a great and true
civilisation. You are at the centre of the fight
between good and evil, a fight that will lead to the
gates of Vienna and beyond. You are everything.