Look Who it Was Random video

Uri Avnery - Hamas wins the elections (304/315)

127 views · Published 12 July 2017 · 4:19 · Indexed 21 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · News & Politics

Watch on YouTube

To listen to more of Uri Avnery’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFw4EQRLZvAoreWVLWLJDNaI

Uri Avnery (1923-2018) was an Israeli writer, journalist and peace activist. He was editor-in-chief of the weekly news magazine 'HaOlam HaZeh' and founded the Gush Shalom peace movement. [Listener: Anat Saragusti; date recorded: 2017]

TRANSCRIPT: There were elections and Hamas won. The elections were held in the West Bank and Hamas won. Hamas won everywhere. The word 'won' needs to be qualified, because these were personal elections. Candidates were selected. Not national lists as is customary with us. We have a much more democratic method because every vote counts. In personal elections a representative is chosen and all of the votes for other candidates are lost. So these were personal elections − and it is not that Hamas won by a landslide victory according to the number of votes, but that Fatah and its partners could not agree on candidates for each district. So Fatah had two, three, four candidates in every district and Hamas had one, and that is how it won. I don't think that Hamas has ever had a majority amongst the Palestinian people. I estimate, at a guess, that it represents about 20% of the public. But there were elections and a unity government was established. It exploded following pressure from America and Israel, the elections were cancelled, and Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, in a coup. I always have an argument with my British editor as we cannot agree on the word to describe what Hamas was doing there. A coup against whom? Against themselves? They won the election, so it's hard to call it a coup, but it was a coup because it was done using violence, they even killed some people. And now we have two Palestines, and Israel is very pleased. Israel's relationship with these two entities is very complicated. Hamas does not want peace; it is automatically at war with Israel. Islam has many times made peace with countries that are not Islamic, but Islam has a problem with an area which is Muslim. It is very difficult to surrender to the Islamic faith an area that used to be Muslim. I've got some kind of a book, a Muslim atlas, showing the past centuries and where Islam ruled in the 6th century, the 7th century, etc. And you see that it always expands to a certain point, and then Islam loses territories, as with the whole of Spain. There was a theological problem about whether the making of peace was allowed; apparently not, but you can make a "hudna" for a thousand years: 50 and 50 and 50 and 50.

More from this channel