As long as there is occupation, there will be resistance, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal tells Amira Howeidy The thick curtains were drawn across the windows, completely blocking out the daylight and the view of Cairo outside. The security check was thorough: bag searched, some devices checked, others taken away altogether. "We're very sorry for the inconvenience," a smiling intelligence officer told me. The apology sounded surreal. This officer and a dozen of his colleagues were there to protect Khaled Meshal, Hamas's political bureau chief, and Israel's most wanted man. After murdering both the movement's spiritual guide Ahmed Yassin and its second-in- command Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi, Israel has vowed to liquidate Meshal as part of its "targeted assassination policy". It is surprising he's still alive at all -- let alone meeting journalists. Meshal arrived in Cairo on 18 September for talks with high-ranking Egyptian officials concerning preparations for a possible Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as well as various inter-Palestinian issues. It was the first encounter between the Hamas leader and the Egyptians since Cairo proposed a security plan for Gaza in the event of an Israeli withdrawal last June. Back then, Hamas vehemently opposed "an Arab security role" in Gaza, which it interpreted as a plan to contain or quash the resistance once Israel pulls out. But judging by Meshal's relatively long stay in the Egyptian capital (just over a week), Hamas and Cairo appear to have reached a common understanding, if not necessarily an agreement, on their attitudes to the coming phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This development coincides with the fourth anniversary of the Intifada, and reflects the continuing repercussions of the uprising on Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas itself. For close to two years now, Cairo has been hosting a series of meetings with the various Palestinian factions in an attempt to reach consensus on a unified Palestinian leadership. It has also tried several times to devise a ceasefire formula that could convince the armed resistance groups to replace military operations with realpolitik. Only one of these ceasefire agreements was actually accepted, and it quickly collapsed when Israel went back on its word and assassinated a senior Hamas political figure in August 2003. Since then, the position of both Hamas and Jihad has been total rejection of any initiatives that do not come with real guarantees or concrete political concessions from the Israeli side. The faction talks in Cairo had shown no progress either, due to irreconcilable differences of opinion on the sensitive issue of who should represent the Palestinians. It therefore came as a surprise when Egyptian officials announced two weeks ago that Cairo would be hosting a final round of talks. Even more confusing was the subsequent abrupt and unexplained postponement of these talks that followed soon afterwards. It was at this point that Meshal appeared in Cairo. In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly shortly after his arrival, Meshal said that the main talking points for his visit revolved around "putting the Palestinian house in order", determining common "points of reference for Palestinian decision-making" and "finding a common inter-Palestinian understanding on how to handle" a potential Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. He contended that the two-year long factions dialogue "is beginning to mature". There are "no huge differences of opinion" amongst the factions on Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Meshal insisted, "especially since Israel has yet to resolve the withdrawal issue. We as Palestinians don't want to start arguing with each other until we know what the Zionist position is." Asked about Hamas's current position on Egypt's proposed role in Gaza, Meshal argued that all the Palestinians, not just Hamas, "are sensitive about the security plans that are continuously being imposed on the Palestinians, while leaving Israel free to manoeuvre. The Palestinian case is not a security issue -- it's a political issue. There is an occupation that has to end, and until it does, resistance will continue." But as the Intifada enters its fifth year, "resistance" has clearly taken the place of what had begun as a popular uprising which won the overwhelming support of the Arab world, as well as much sympathy beyond. As this resistance becomes increasingly militarised, many now question the validity of the term "Intifada", which no longer seems like an accurate reflection of the situation on the ground today. Meshal, however, is unambiguous on this issue. "The Intifada is still ongoing," he says enthusiastically. "It is only its form and its rhythm that have changed." "The Intifada and resistance are two sides of the same coin. There is a vicious war between us and the Zionists. Israeli aggression is in full flood, invading our land, expanding settlements, constructing a wall, demolishing houses and streets, and assassinating, killing and besieging our people. Because of this difficult situation, the Intifada cannot express itself in just one single form." And while non-Palestinians may still sympathise with the Intifada, Meshal warns that the Arab nation should not restrict itself to the status of an observer; nor should it expect the Palestinians to go back to their ways of the first months of their rebellion. "We are in an uneven war. We are facing a full-fledged aggression against an almost defenceless people with very limited weapons." Despite all this, he says, "we believe that our people will remain steadfast: there are no signs of surrender." "The main reason for this is that there is no other option. This option may be a very costly one, but that is the price of freedom." Costly sounds like an understatement. Since the eruption of the Intifada in September 2000, the Israeli army has demolished 4,500 Palestinian houses and killed approximately 3,500 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Of their victims, only 308 were activists or leaders of the resistance. It would follow from this that Israel killed 3,192 Palestinians in the course of four years for no substantial reason. Turning to the other side, Israeli human rights centre B'Tselem calculates that Palestinian fighters killed 919 Israelis over the same period, one third of whom were military targets. "The biggest mistake an observer can make is evaluating one particular moment in the lives of a people under occupation in terms of the scale of their latest victory or defeat, or the volume of their sacrifice and losses. If the criterion was the quantitative loss of any given people, then no one would ever be liberated. The Vietnamese people lost three million, the Algerians lost 1.5 million, and so on. Human loss is just a given in situations like that. But it is the outcome of the conflict that really matters." In the eyes of Meshal, the outcome has been especially bad for Israel, not just for the Palestinians. He cites Israeli writer Amos Harel's recent book on the war, in which Harel describes the state of frustration it has generated in Israel. Meshal argues that the resistance has scored important points by pressuring an Israeli prime minister into wanting to withdraw from Gaza -- and that this will be a victory for the Palestinians, if it does indeed come to pass, even though this victory will have been won at a heavy price. "But what is the alternative?" asks Meshal. "If it is to reverse what has been described as 'the militarisation of the Intifada', so as to take it back to its earlier popular form, we say that in both 1987 and 2000 the Intifadas started out as popular revolts. But when bare chests are met with bullets, when the masses are met with fighter jets and missiles and mass killings, the Palestinians find themselves forced to escalate in order to defend themselves. No one can dictate that the Intifada should remain non- violent, that it should remain a popular uprising." At the same time, the path of political negotiations has also been proved futile in Meshal's opinion. "The Palestinians tried the political option in the form of Oslo and the various other agreements. None of them worked, because Israel never truly committed itself to any of the agreements it signed. The political option in isolation is absurd. It is wrong to assume that peace can be achieved without power or pressure. Balance on the ground is necessary to achieve peace. Egypt couldn't conduct a political battle with Israel until it had scored an outstanding position in the 1973 War. You can't succeed in a political struggle by simply begging the enemy to be fair to you." "Of course the choices we face are difficult," Meshal says, "but it is terribly unfair to ask the Palestinians to make different choices than those we do. Believe me, if we had other options, we certainly wouldn't be giving our precious lives away." But neither should we forget the other side of the conflict, the Hamas leader insists. "We need to remember the scale of the damage inflicted on Israel. The Palestinian picture is not just about misery and human loss; there is also a heroic aspect. The Palestinians have succeeded in creating a psychological balance with Israel, which is the most powerful entity in the region."
