Why Hamas Keeps Fighting, and Losing

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After 11 days of fighting over the skies of Israel and Gaza, a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel was announced last week. The conflict wrought devastation in Gaza. Yet Hamas’s leaders took to television and declared victory. We look at where the organization comes from and their objectives to understand why it has, for decades, engaged in battles it knows it can’t win. Guest: Ben Hubbard, the Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm like a barrow. This is a daily.
0:04.0	Today, the 11-day war over the skies of Israel and Gaza was the latest in a decade's
0:18.3	long pattern of Hamas engaging in a battle that it knows it can't win.
0:25.8	My colleague, Beirut Birochif, then hovered on why Hamas keeps fighting.
0:33.6	It's Wednesday, May 26.
0:39.1	Then when a ceasefire was announced after this 11-day war between Hamas and Israel last
0:43.7	week, Hamas declared victory.
0:53.3	Because victory was a strategic victory.
0:56.1	Its leaders came out and said in TV interviews that they had won that this was a great success.
1:01.6	Therefore today, we consider that this battle is a quantum leap in the history of the conflict
1:06.9	with the enemy.
1:08.7	And that felt difficult to understand because in every way it felt like Hamas had not
1:14.5	prevailed in this conflict.
1:16.5	Hamas fired the first rocket and the ensuing conflict with Israel ended up killing more
1:22.1	than 230 people in Gaza, many of them children.
1:27.1	The Israeli counter strikes destroyed hundreds of buildings, including schools, hospitals,
1:32.2	basic infrastructure like sewers and water pipes.
1:35.6	And it ended with the suffering of Palestinians inside of Gaza greater than when the war started.
1:42.6	So how should we understand that claim of victory by Hamas?
1:47.6	Yeah, if you're sitting in the West and you're watching TV and seeing the images that
1:51.3	have been coming out of Gaza, what it looks like after this conflict, it's pretty hard
1:55.4	to understand why a group like Hamas thinks they can come out and declare victory.
	...

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