Hamas' rising popularity in the West Bank
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Transcript
00:00 Asif, who is 64, is a widow. Of her four sons, only Asif is there to help her. Saleh is dead.
00:08 Issam is in prison for life. Mohamed has been detained without charges.
00:12 Her husband, who spent 20 years in Israeli prisons, died recently from COVID.
00:18 "The pain of my grief is very difficult to bear. Often when I'm alone, I look at these photos and
00:27 recall the memories associated with each of them." Her family is irreconcilably and sometimes
00:36 violently opposed to Israel. It has ties to Hamas. Saleh was shot dead after he had killed two
00:43 Israeli soldiers. Umm Asif herself is no stranger to confrontation. She's been imprisoned twice,
00:51 most recently in October, only to be released as part of the exchange for Israeli hostages in Gaza.
00:57 She's dismissive of the idea of peace with Israel.
01:04 "What peace can there be? They've been talking about it since the Oslo Accords,
01:10 but what sort of peace have they given us? The Israelis are like the sea,
01:14 which only spits out dead bodies."
01:17 A view shared by growing numbers of Palestinians in the West Bank.
01:21 At Friday prayers in Ramallah, there's a palpable sense of hostility towards Israel.
01:30 "It's not starting from 7 October. It's about 75 years of genocide and ethnic cleansing by Israel."
01:41 "The prisoners, they're being brutalized on a daily basis. I feel like there should be a
01:47 stronger push to release them prisoners." After prayers, a demonstration organized by Hamas.
01:53 Its popularity is soaring, spurred by the war in Gaza and a surge in Israeli settler violence
02:00 against Palestinians. Opinion polls suggest it's now by far the most popular Palestinian organization.
02:08 Israel's aim in Gaza is to destroy Hamas, which it dismisses as a terrorist organization.
02:15 "Here on the West Bank, things are seen completely differently.
02:19 The vast majority of people here see Hamas not as terrorists, but as heroes."