The relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas has been bitter
Where is the keffiyeh? What is the next step in Israel’s destruction of Hamas? A Palestinian woman’s story of the 1982 Gaza massacre
Down the street, a former PLO fighter, 67, with a black-and-white scarf, known as a keffiyeh, around his neck, sits on a plastic chair in front of a shop.
Israel isn’t going to destroy Hamas. He wondered what sort of Hamas was left. Is it possible for Hamas to be more moderate and pragmatic? Or will it be a more radicalized Hamas?”
At a shop selling small toys, the owner, Nohad Ma’rouf, says she has to believe that the killing of children in Gaza will result in a Palestinian homeland through “determination, fighting, war and faith.”
Near a crowded vegetable market in Shatila, a simple granite monument rests in a field containing a mass grave for massacre victims in 1982 — those who couldn’t be identified or had no relatives to bury them.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israel’s bombardment of the territory has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians, including more than 10,000 children. Israeli leaders believe that they are targeting Hamas to destroy it after the group’s attack in southern Israel in October that killed 1,200 people.
Estimates for casualties in the massacre vary. A Lebanese historian conducting field work after the massacre identified 906 dead and 484 missing in field work after the massacre.
“Orabi was an Egyptian who worked at the hospital. He said to me, ‘Today we will all be killed,’ ” Khatib says. He found his friend’s body, he was shot in the face and in the chest.
From the Sabra neighborhood to the Shatila camp: Israel Gaza War for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, firming up support for Hamas
Khatib says once most Palestinians believed they could regain their homeland and live in peace with Israel, but now Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows not to allow the creation of a Palestinian state.
The camp and dozens of others in the region were established a few months after the 1948 war that led to the creation of the state of Israel. Today Shatila is also home to people from Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Bangladesh and other countries who can’t go home or can’t afford to live anywhere else.
The militias were on a rampage after the assassination of then-Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel, which they wrongly blamed on the PLO. A court in Lebanon gave a conviction to a member of a Syrian party in absentia after he admitted his part in the killing.
The day 42 years ago that the Sabra neighborhood and Shatila camp were attacked by militias from Lebanon and Israel, his mind wanders to it.
The two models of houses are on a table top. Each model is painstakingly detailed, down to the black and white checker pattern on the floor.
When his village fled to Lebanon in 1948, Khatib was just a few months old. Seventy-five years later, he says his family home in northern Israel still stands, taken over by a Jewish Israeli family. He knows that, he says, because a relative with a Western passport went back a few years ago and knocked on the door.
The electricity comes on only a few hours a day in the camp and the windowless room is completely dark. Khatib, who is 76, lights a kerosene lamp that belonged to his grandmother, its base decorated with glass beads.
The Battle of the Shatila Refugee Camp with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during a Crucial Breakdown of Israel in 1996
Now with each day bringing new media images of the dead and wounded in the Gaza Strip, it’s war and not peace that’s on the mind of most Palestinian refugees.
Market stalls and motorcycles can be found on the streets of the camp. Many Palestinians who were forced from or fled their homes in Lebanon were thought to be housed in a temporary refugee camp because of the disrepair of the electrical wires between the tall concrete homes. The settlement is permanent and it has become painfully permanent.
The Shatila refugee camp has an image of Yasser Arafat on the concrete walls.
Arafat’s death and expulsion from Lebanon 42 years ago are the only times since then that he has been seen in public. The political group he founded was a rival to Hamas and is still declared loyalty by most banners.
There have been no serious negotiations for a long time. Hamas has been in control of Gaza for 17 years, while Netanyahu has been Israel’s prime minister for more than a decade.
Over 20,000 Palestinians were allowed to work in Israel. $30 million a month was allowed by the Saudis to be sent to Gaza. This approach was called quiet for quiet.
This was a good match for Netanyahu according to Ghaith al-Omari. It allowed Gaza to work at a very low level. The Israeli leader was able to say that it could not be possible to negotiate with the Palestinians as long as Hamas was in control of Gaza.
“That incident set the kind of tone for the relations between Netanyahu and Hamas. And things have been complicated ever since,” said Ghaith al-Omari at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Israel had a critical election in 1996. The conservative candidate, Benjamin Netanyahu, was the underdog. The dovish incumbent and leader for a peace agreement with the Palestinians was the heavy favorite for prime minister.
The game of Hamas and Netanyahu: How Israel tried to kill Mishal, but Israel couldn’t fend off the Israelis
They may be sworn enemies, yet they also kind of need each other. One of the hardline policies was used to the advantage of the other.
“Hamas became useful to Netanyahu as a way to ensure that a cohesive Palestinian leadership did not emerge, and therefore there couldn’t be a Palestinian state,” said Elgindy.
If we don’t eliminate Hamas, evil will spread, Netanyahu said. “But once we defeat Hamas, we have to make sure that there’s no new Hamas, no resurgence of terrorism.”
In 1997, just a year after Netanyahu was first elected, he approved an attempt to kill Hamas leader Khalid Mishal, who was then in exile in neighboring Jordan.
The peace treaty with Israel was at risk according to the King of Jordan. Netanyahu’s government was forced to send the antidote for the poison to Jordan. The Israeli leader also had to release Hamas’ imprisoned spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
Yet this game — which helped Netanyahu and Hamas stay in power — was a chronically tense standoff, not a solution. It collapsed when Hamas unleashed its massive attack on Oct. 7.
