much of their budt is devoted to identifying who will be care and didn't take the steps to exclude those people from their policy roles. anothe major part of their budget is based on aggressive efforts to deny reimbursement plans. so if you do have a policy enkidu get a procedure and you seek reimbursement for it, they have experts who get bonuses if they deny your claim. they get extras out if they do not higher proportion of claim their . . a public plan that

will take all-comers. it will be a public plan that you can carry with you wherever you go. it will be a public plan that will not charge you a heavy premium if you have previous conditions. and so if people have access to that plan and for reasons of their own choose, not buy it be well and good. but as long as that' part of the mix, then i think the healthcare reform effort can be said to have done its job. can it cut costs? i think it can. we provide care in the least efficient way of any modern industrial country. on average countries spend half as much per capita as we do. people complain there are waiting linesn those countries and it's true inome there are. we can spend three-quarters as much if we did it more efficiently and have no waiting lines. so it's up to us how we want to spend the money. we can have a moral plan with

shorter waiting lines. we have waiting lines in effect. there are a lot of people who are denied care forever. that's a waiting line. >> our thanks to robert frank, professor of economics at cornell university, a "new york times" columnist and the author of the new book. we also thank our audience here and on radio, television and the internet. i'm joe epstein and now this meeting of the commonwealth club of california celebrating more than a century of enlightened discussion is adjourned. [applause] >> professor frank will be outside to sign books. [inaudible conversations] >> okay. thank you very much. nice job. >> pleasure to meet you, too. >> robert frank is the henrietta johnson lewis professor of

management at cornell johnson school of management. he's an economics columnist for the "new york times" and the author of six books including principles of economics written with federal rerve chair ben bernanke. to find out more, visit frankhfrank.com. >> paul mcgeoug is the former editor and current chief correspondent for the sydney morning herald. next he talks about the failed poisoning of khalid mossad and his rise in hamas. this is an hour. >> thank you all for coming this

evening and thank you for welcoming me in your beautiful city. one of the advantages of where i'm staying was to be able to come to the city this morning by ferry, which was a lovely way to arrive in town and see the bay, the bridge and where you all live. that pleasure has a intimidating personal size, which is the first time ever in 10 years of talking to forums such as this i had some members of my own family in the audience. [laughter] >> so i'll take that as it comes. [laughter] >> but thank you all for coming. first of all, i'd like to give a broad look at hamas, where it fits into the middle east crisis, how it has evolved. i expect that one of e wondrous things about hamas and the middle east crisis generally

is that people all have their pet aspect of the crisis on which they want an explanation. they want an understanding. they want some light shed or they want to shed some light of their own and that comes through in questions. so what i'll do first is to set out where i see it after rtually two years of intense immersion in hamas and also in the crisis generally. you'd have to say that it's truly remarkable that f more than six decades, the palestinian crisis has been such an enduring element of u.s. foreign policy. one that imposes itself on president after president defeating administration after administration. for a good deal of that time, yasser arafat was the best known, but not necessarily the best-understood leader othe palestinian people. for much of tt time he was treated as an enemy and others sometimes an ally.

always indefatigable. arafat was observed by administration and admiration as he slipped and slid between the layers of his own personal and political complexity. he was the one man band who single-handedly created and then ok as his own the powerful fatah movement and the plo. for all his failings, all his foibles it was arafat who kept alive the flame of palestinian nationalism. but for the last 20 years, a parallel palestinian force was emergi. known to us today as hamas, this organization's first few years were devoted to secret underground anning. it was not till the harrowing early days of the first fatah that this new movement burst only the palestinian scene launching itself on a trajectory by which it finally and

undeniably overhauled and overwhelmed the fractured remnants of arafat's fatah movement to become the most distinct, most organized and the most efficient nationalist voice in both the world bank and the gaza strip. for all that, hamas was shaped and is laid today by a man who outside the circles of the middle east is hardly known in western capitals. khalid mossad was a child of the world bank in the 1960s when arafat was girding himself for war in israel. with an exception of a brief holiday return west bank he has not been backed after the days of the six-day war in 1967. his family ed. driven by fear of a repeat of the israeli excesses of 1948.

they joined tens of thousands who took flight compounding a preexisting palestinian refuge crisis that already had become a linchpin in regional and cold war politics and policy. his family resettled in kuwait whereby age 11 he was an avowed nationalist. by age 15, he declared himself to be an islamist, adopting the strict spiritual regiment of the muslim brotherhood which inspires much islamic risk and terrorism today. at that time, according to one of his brothers, he became a religious reformer in the home checking daily who had said their prayers and giving them a whack if they hadn't. as a physic student he went head to head with the fatah-controlled palestinian student union challenging its morality on control of all

things palestinian. in the 1980s, mishal's work as a physic's teacher in kuwait provided him with excellent cover for his covert activities on behalf of the movement that was to become hamas. it was an underground cell led by mishal that devised the plan for an islamist-oriented jihad in the terse in a move that amounted to a declaration of a war on yasser arafats much as israel. mishal revealed a flair for fundraising on a ground scal at the same time, he proved to be a sound disciple of a warrior preacher called sheik abdul azam. his regular travels between pakistan and afghanistan and the middle east always included transit stops in kuwait city, much of which were spent at the

home of khalid mishal teaching the dark art of jihad, the management of resistance and the sense of being a government and a leader in exile. the amalgam emerged from this is an international movement which today is controlled by khalid mishal from the capital of capital with a bunker if he is tuned with security cameras. hamas became a nationalist and a religious movement that would eclipse arafat his fatah movement and the plo. hamas was better organized, more frightening in if its tactics, more resolute. hamas would not renounce violation. it would not recogze the state of israel. by its world view, there was eminent logic in its stand. the palestinian people were acutely aware that in making both of these gestures to an american sponsored peace process, yasser arafat had

achieved nothing for his movement or for the palestinian people. hamas contributed to that stalemate for the palestinians with its waves of brutal suicide bombings. but so too did successful israeli governments which pled fatah and hamas against each other demanding that as israel's partner in peace, arafat must guarantee israel's security by putting a stop to the hamas bombs. but at the same time, israel refused to deal wit arafat either because of the excesses of the hamas violence or because of arafat's own back-sliding when he felt threatened byhe rise of hamas. frequent error in western attempts to understand hamas was a failure to grasp the organizational breadth of what was a global movement. with its roots deep in palestinian diaspora and other islamic communities around the world.

because hamas was seen to have emerged from the caldron of gaza and be under the local leadership, it was not until after the horrors of the september 11 attacks on new york and washington that authorities in the u.s. andn europe made serious attempts to coral the terrorists in their own backyards. just how hamas survived for as long as it did in the u.s. is one of the more surprising elements of a worldwide story -- the worldwide story of these radical islamists. i want you to picture washington, d.c., in your minds put yourselves on the mall at the foot of the washington monument. few hundred yards away on pennsylvania avenue is j. edgar hoover building, home to the fbi. just a few doors up is the u.s. partment of justice, maybe 12 miles to the northeast the cia

headquarters at langley, virginia. all points covered you would have thought. but just a few miles south from the cia is leafy falls church over the state line in virginia but still a part of greater washington. that's where a man who lived in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. on south 6th street. apart from observing him mowing his lawns occasionally, the neighbors knew nothing. the authorities even less. he was a renter, no driver's license, no property tax. his business card named a firm but stated no line of business. his company was not registered locally. in the phone book it was unlisted. yet, in america, this was mr. hamas. living in the shadow of the washington monument. turning millions of dollars in his bank account, he was a big

wheel in the hamas fundraising machine. but heas more than that. when israel demolished several layers of the hamas leadership in the occupied territories in 1989, he dropped his doctoral studies in the u.s. to dash to gaza where he steadied and rebuilt the leadership and it's vital funding channels from abroad. he moved up and down the gaza strip handing out checkbooks for an account at the bank of america in whiche had pre-signed allhe bank forms. when they needed cash, hamas operatives merely had to fill in the amount they required and get the checks presented at any bank in the region. he was only -- was not the only senior hamas figure operating from a u.s. base. in 1993, the fbi it had hit the jacpot with information on a group of high ranking hamas operatives and sympathizers tea

conference in the unlikelie inventory use just off the delaware expressway next to philadelphia international airport. the bureau had the place wired. every word spokenas laborious explained and the discussion about donuts instead of bread and hummas for breakfast. fbi photographers were in the shrubbery snapping everything that moved. the american authorities piled up the information from philadelphia and other investigations but they didn't seem to know what to do with what they had. finally, it was in 1996, a complex investigation was established in chicago under the name vulgar betrayal. but it became so cumbersome, it caved in on itself. hamas fundraising had become a

part of the american charity establishment. its front organization sucked in millions of dollars at fundraising events in american cities with big muslim communities. one of the star turns of these events was a song and dance troupe led by a man who by say was a double degree engineer employed by the dallas city council in texas and who by birth was a brother of the hamas leader. khalid mishal. it took the jolt of the 9/11 attacksnd groundbreaking civil legal work to break the logjam. but it s not until just four months ago that the authorities finally won substantive terrorism convictions against a group of hamas fundraisers in the united states. 15 years after the breakfast in philadelphia and almost 20 years after there was a man parachuted

into gazaa showering the local hamas leadership with signed blank checks drawn on an american bank account. despite setbacks in the u.s. risdiction and to lesser degrees in the middle east and in europe, hamas thrives. notwithstanding the best efforts of the israeli government and the security forces along with those of the united states and the remnants of arafat's fatah movement. today, fatah is led by mahmoud abbas who conducts himself more according to his own needs than those -- and those of an aging fatah clique with which he must march in lockstep than he does with the nationalist aspirations of his people. abbas, like many of his left tennats. before he sees himself before all leader of palestinians

confronting or negotiating with israel on the west bank and in gaza on their behalf. the middle east crisis might have bn played differently. in the aftermath of its annexation of gaza and the wt bank in 1967, israel could have negotiated with jordan's king hussein and because it didn't, it ended up being confronted by arafat and the plo and because israel refused to deal meaningfully with arafat, it was faced by hamas. in refusing to deal with hamas, we can only wonder about the nature of the movement that might supplant today's islamists. it's worth noting that for all the talk and all the seeming participation i peace processes israel has concededly virtually nothing since 1948 and more recently since 1967. against a backdrop of u.s.-managed on again/off again

dialog, the reality of the process is that more and more palestinian land has been taken for more and moresraeli settlements, roads, and checkpoints, all of which serve to shrink palestinian hope and dignity. through this innovating process, hamas has fought its way to a seat at the top table, it recognizeds a player or not. any doubt about its state has evaporated after the election of president bill clinton in the race to save khalid mishal after he was injected with poison in the streets. in the region hamas is seen as a legitimate player. outside the middle east, more often than not, it has denied legitimacy and designateds a terrorist organization although significant cracks now are emerging in what for years was a

firm, united stand by the united states and eope. all too often, the middle east diplomacy focuses on the geopolitics and on the leadership frictions and factions and on they might be played against the other. d palestinians describe as desperation or hopelessness. these are sentiments that rise and fall according to the fluctuating levels of their faith in what they are told over and ov again is a fair peace process, a process by which their rights will be knowledged and protected. workinggainst them is a massive spin operation which has varying degrees of success in stopping the clock. for instance, we were asked to

accept that the recent gaza conflict was caused by hamas rockets alone. and that israel's conduct in the preceding months simply was not an issue. for all the squabbling on how the gaza truce was breached through the latter half of last year and by which party, hamas and israel actually did agree to a six-month ceasefire which hamas more or less held to despite its view that israel did not keep its side of the deal. there was no agreed text. this was an indirect understanding arrived at through talks by negotiators for hamas and israel who met separately with egyptian middle men. israel believed that hamas had agreed to stop the reign of rocket fire from gaza into nearby israeli communities. hoping to breathe some life back into gaza's coma toes's economy hamas understood that in exchange, israel would open the border crossings into gaza

ending a siege that had been in force for more than two years. figures quoted by the "new york times" indicate that the rate of which rockets were fired from israel was reduced by as much as 80 to 90%. as hamas curbed its own fire and that of the lesser militia groups in gaza. in comparison, the number of trucks that israel allowed to enter gaza increased only marginally. by closing the border crossings, israel stops the movement of goods, fuel, and people often allowing a trickle of movement that imposes a level of hardship that save for what is smuggled in through tunnels through egypt is a total economic lockdown. under t june ceasefire deal, the daily rate of trucks entering gaza did increase but only from about 70 a day to about 90 a day, which according to the "neyork times" figures

was well short for presiege delivery rate of 500 to 600 trucks a day. opinion polls taken in the occupied territories and its important to state that it's in both gaza and the west bank, since israel invaded gaza in christmas week reveal an interesting story. in terms of the response of ordinary palestinians to the january onslaught by the israel defense forces. the jerusalem media and communicationsenter found that virtually half of its sample of voters believed that hamas had defeated israel. it's one of the problems with insurgency and resistance movements is that a resistance movement doesn't have to win to win. it only merely has to not lose. as long as it's still standing in the eyes of its own supporters, it is still winning because it's still there so, hence, this belief that hamas had won.

a separate poll by the palestinian center for policy and survey research found that 60-plus percent of palestinians favored further abductions of the israeli troops and they wanted to keep the rockets firing on israel. the same polls showed that the deposed hamas prime minter had outstripped washington's ally and fatah leader mahmoud abbas as palestinian president and that hamas had closed the gap between itself and fatah by half. the logic of the israeli attack on gaza was to dinish if not to destroy hamas but these poll findings indicate that what they achieved was the exact opposite. whether the rest of the world likes it or not, the parties in the middle east crisis locally are israel, less so abbas' fatah and more so khalid mishal's

hamas. u.s. foreign policy inevitably is entwine here too. along with that of the united nations, europe, russia, which together with the u.s. make up that diplomatic oversight body known as the middle east quartet. when it comes to the middle east question, what mishal initiates from damascus shapes the stage on which barack obama and hillary clinton operate. either by their silence or in whatsoever has been a cautious commentary that has done little to lift palestinian expectations of the new administration in washington. khalid mishal does not articulate it as such but when he is made to examine recent history, as i asked him to do during almost 60 hours of interviews while researching him, h seems to keep a mental ledger. on one side, he adds up the many mistakes of israel, fatah and the united states as they have

tried to tame or to defeat hamas. on the other side of this ledger, mishal notes the moves made by hamas as it has guardedly moved towards a middle ground. hamas is a resistance organization but it is a resistance organization in transition. and in transition, it is only so up to a point. in keeping with its own agenda, its own world view, not of israel the quartet or the worl the mistakes or the miscalculations made by israel and the united states which helpedamas to become the force that it is today are covered in detail in the book. but let them skip through some of the highlights. in the 1980s, israel encouraged the emerging islamist movement in gaza believing that it woul serve as a foil for arafat and his fatah movement.

in the early 1990s, israel deported hundredsf hamas activists to where? to southern lebanon where they learned the art of terror from hezbollah. in the mid-1990s, american authorities arrested an unusual u.s. friendly hamas figure at the time. the leadership vacancy created by his detention for two years in manhattan became a stepping stone for the more hard-lined khalid mishal to make his move for the leadership of hamas as an organization. in september, 1997, israel refused to consider a offer that came with the king of hussein of jordan to initiate a decades-long ceasefire with hamas. a few days later, still in september, 1997, the bungled attempt to assassinate khalid mishal in the streets of amman. at the time, u.s. diplomats in

the region were reporting to washington that hamas was on its knees under the weight of a crackdown by the combined forces of israel and arafat's palestine authority. in the wash-up mishal survived a hero. and isel is forced to release dozens of palesnian prisoners, most amazingly of all among them was a sheik, the crippled wheelchair-bound spiritual leader of hamas who virtually all palestinians by then had resigned themselves to seeing die in an israeli prison cell. in truth, hollywood could not have come up with a more amazing plot. 2005, the bush administration ignores israel's pleas that hamas be made to renounce violence before it can stand candidates in the palestinian elections. mas campaigns, ballot in one hand, bomb in the other with the blessing of george w. bush, no less.

to the amazement of observers on all sides, hamas wins complete control of the palestinian government. 2006, washington and israel cling to abbas' movement as the battering ram with which it plans to defeat hamas but hamas survives. despite diplomatic isolation and a constant israeli military campaign, despite being challenged by an american-trained and funded fatah security force, which hamas whipped in less than a week. and despite a global act of collective punishment for all 1.5 million gazans as a penalty for how they express their democratic will. much of the research for "killing khalid," i was in between what was grand celebrations. in june that year, israel marked

the 40th anniversary of the six-day war and its conquest of both the west bank and gaza. great planning was underway, too, to commemorate the 60th anniversary lasyear of the founding of the state of israel. for israelis, these were -- these celebrations were meant to be great monuments to centuries of jewish struggle and survival. but after 40 years of bod and summitry, israel had achieved neither the security it craved nor total control of the land to which its people felt entitled. by clinging to the illegal settlements, it had created the justification for the harsh security regime that encircled millions of increasingly embittered palestinians and left many of its own citizens living a reality tinged with fear and anger. 40 years on, as israeli analysts want to say, israel was still

fighting the last day of the six-day war. now, sandwiched between those two israeli anniversaries was a milestone for hamas. the 2h anniversary of the founding of the movement. in those two decades, hamas had withstood evething that israel, fatah and the worldad thrown at it. hamas had defied all of the early predictions of its demise. israel's deportation of its senior leadership in 1992 was thwarted by hamas' careful attention to succession planning. fatah power brokers were forever claimi that the movement would splinter as pushy young militants ovean the cautious old guard of the muslim brotherhood. they were wrong. israel's targeted assassination, and arafat's crackdowns had broken neither the spine nor the spirit of hamas. on the israeli assassinati of the sheik in 2004, israeli

commentators insisted that there would be a leadership void in which the young turks would tear the movement apart. they too were wrong. despite the focused strategic efforts of israel and the united ates, and the overwhelming impact of worldwide sanctions, hamas has held together. a senior fatah leader who's well placed to observe, sees what he describes differences in governance a effective control within the movement. however, when he shared a late night coffee with me in amman, he told me, but in hamas, this does not go to dissent or mutiny. i just don't see it. and yet the islamist movement of today is very different to the angry and sometimes ugly group that emerged in 1987. with hindsight, hamas over time has been revealing itself as that movement in traition.

the emphasis in its discourse has shifted subtly from jihad to ceasefire. it's territorial claims have shifted from a resumption of the land which ran from the river to the sea to a two-state solution based on the 1967 border. the target has become the israeli occupation less than it is judahism. to this there was a response inevitab you might think. one of the first powerful voices to accept that hamas needed to be brought in from the cold was a formerdirector. authority to voices in the united states added weight and prestige to his calls. and its worth pausing just to think of how he expressed his sense of what ham was about. he did it thoughtfully, contractually in his memoirs tea

end of a long career always on the front line of security for israel. the israeli security services and the point that he made was hamas simply could not be equated with al-qaeda. and his rationale was this. al-qaeda wants to destroy the system. hamas, he argued, wants to be a part of the system. that, he said, meant that hamas was an organization capable of choice and that it had to be negotiated with detest what those choices would be as opposed to being kept out of the diplomatic tent. these new voices that have joined in support of calls for hamas to be brought to the table include former national security advisors, brzezinski and

scowcroft and colin powell said he had to be engaged by american diplomacy because the movement had won the election that washington had demanded the palestinian people hold. more recently, former israeli foreign minister put his name to a similar call along with several of those who played crucial roles in the northern irish peace process. last week new respected names joined the cue, paul volcker, carla hills and paul wolfson. france has indicated a willingness to engage hamas and london surprised preparedness for dialog with the political wing of hezbollahn lebanon would appear to be the opening for a similar deal with the hamas political wing in the near future. hamas, it seems, it on a roll. more than arafat and fatah ever could, hamas has proved that it can fight but it has also demonsated that it can hold its fire.

the movement still has a foot firmly planted in resistance but it has stamped the other firmly in the democratic political process. hamas refuses to recognize israel but it has moved its bottom line. it says it can accept a palestinian state adjacent to a jewish state. the two-state solution that benjamin netanyahu opposes and leaves the question that the provocative question that all of the land that became israel. in traveling to the united states this week i stoppedn damascus to interview mishal for my newspaper. this was the first time for the hamas leader to be interviewed on the implications for hamas of the obama presidency, the outcome of the israeli elections and the aftermath of the gaza war. amidst all the hope that so many around the world have vested

reasonably or unreasonably in the barack obama presidency. i searched for a gesture that hamas might offer to mark the end of the bush years? the hamas banker is a disconcerting place. on the one hand, it's a control center for jihad a national foreign ministry of sorts, a resistance treasury. on the other, it's mishal's family home where his teenage children are just as likely to wander in to take a seat for the most intense discussions on hamas' options and its operations. mishal held forth expansively negotiating the trip wires of the diplomatic and political mine fields that he inhabits daily. he did it with a certainty and a confidence that verges on bombast as he lectures the world on howt should respond to his movement. not the reverse. startling in what he apparently believed was a conciliatory note, mishal declared hamas to

be a strong as ever after the gaza war. his words, however, are more likely to be read here in the u.s. and in washington as a challenge. we're willing to open a new page with the u.s. and europe, he began. but as mishal expanded on this new page theme, it quickly emerged that he believes hamas has already moved far enough and that in his mind, it was the united states d the european union that should be turning a page. obama will continue to repeat the mistakes of those who went before him unless there is a marked change towards hamas was the message hamas -- the message that mishal wanted to send. hamas will not be taking any new policy positions, he said, flatly. my gesture is a readiness on our part to deal with washington and europe but they have to be serious about dealing with us on palestinian rights.

mishal then threatened if israel was not more amenable in the faltering egyptian-mediated negotiations on his movement on the release of the single israeli soldier prisoner held by hamas, it risked more of its forces being captured b hamas to give the movement even greater leverage in its demands for the mass release of palestinian prisoners held by israel. arguing that washington and its european allies needed to abandon their decision to isolate hamas until hamas agrees to international stipulations on its relationship with israel, mishal countered by saying they are trying the wrong way and the wrong approach and it doesn't work. his view was that there was little value in appointing the experienced northern irish peace broker george mitchell as u.s. envoy tohe middle east if he was not to be authorized to talk to hamas. we've succeeded in belfast,

mishal demanded to know, if he had been ordered to ignore the i.r.a.? mishal's strategy is to give little ground on wt till now have been non-negotiable western demands as a precursor to any dialog. regardless of how far he says hamas has moved already, his language remains steely, combative even. he was against hillary clinton's of the demands ofush administration that hamas denounce violence and recognize the state osrael and abide by all the previo undertakings on behalf of the palestinian people. not surprisingly, mishal vehemently disagreed with clinton's warning that internationa donations for the reconstruction of gaza had to be kept outf what she described as the wrong hands. and he ridiculed the seeming contradiction in her invitation to iran to attend a regional

conference on the future of afghanistan. at the same time as she shuns hamas that it's a terrorist group but as mrs. clinton put it, one that increasingly is a client of iran. so mishal argues, despi a new presidency, there is no change in attitude in washington. they refuse to accept the results of the palestinian election because hamas won, he says, that failed. in order to oppose a siege on the gaza strip, he says, that field. then they went do war against the palestinians, he says, and that failed. spe all this he continues, hamas has advanced and grown so within the logic of realpolitik, it is washington that must consider its position if it wants to achieve an outcome that is not another failure. these are high end issues inevitably they would be

confronted in the bear pit but i wanted mishal's take on what that could serve two purposes, one to give the obama administration room to reciprocate if only symbolically and two, at the same time despite the guns of some of the guns around of the critics around the world. this is the issue of the hamas charter and its implacable rejection of the right of the state of israel to exist. this is one that mishal has the power to settle if he chooses. the charter is rife with offensive language, anti-semitisim and incite the war to eliminate the state of israel. the policy changes by hamas in the intervening years have rendered the charter redundant. but the continued inclusion of the call to destroy israel is a vulnerable pressure point as much as it is a barrier to

support from some quarters which otherwise are sympathetic to the plight of the palestinians. mishal has dug in notwithstanding a move few ars back to redraft the charter, which was pigeonholed in a fit of peek after hamas rejected hamas' win in 2006. to that extent, mishal h become more hard-lined, not less so. i press the point. would the charter be rewritten? not a chance he replied, telling me. judge us by what we are today, not by what was written 20 years ago. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. we have about 20 minutes r questions and a lot of questions. the first one is quite straightforward. as a professional journalist, do you believe the u.s. media is biased in its coverage of the conflict? >> i don't like casting judgment on fellow journalists so i won't.

what i will say is that one of the difficulties of telling the endless permutations of the middle east crisis story is that people resort to short hands and when they do they inevitably choose shorthand descriptions or descriptors, if you like, that are put in the debate by the spin merchants on both sides of the crisis. so we talk about mahmoud abbas as moderate. what that means he's a friend of washington. it doesn't address the issue of his corruption, of his failure to reform the policy and organization and theolitics of his movement. we talk about hamas as extremist but we don't talk about the work, the incredible work on the ground that hamas has done for the people of the occupied

territories where in the absence of any genuine government services, it has raised money around the world in huge amounts and provided incredible service to its people. yes, by most accounts, by most analytical accounts, 10% of that monegoes to the military wing of hamas, but it has shown -- the work of hamas on the grnd, social services work on the ground, is so good that many of the international ngos, u.n. bodies in gaza in particular, when they want to find oud what the real situation is on the ground, they happily consult hamas because hamas' figures are deemed to be the most believable. >> in your book you do an excellent job of contrasting the islamists and the secular folks. this question asks about that. so could you elaborate a little bit on those two definitions and

are all hamas members islamists? >> no, they're not. before they are islamistshey are nationalists. hamas under the credo under t sheik that israel defeated t arab arms in the six-day war because the arab nations had to varying degrees failed to adhere to their religion. the israelis had stuck the jewish community the stuck with their religion and their beliefs and that had empowered them to win. his view was that before the palestinians could regain their land, they had to regain their religion. so within hamas, there is a significant religious underlay, a religious foundation to their platform but analysts from here to washington to london to

paris, to jerusalem to jordan spend hours almost on a daily basis arguing over whether hamas is more religious than it is more nationalist and invariably they cannot agree. i met an american analyst in the u.s. -- sorry, i met an american analyst in jordan a few years ago who came away from one of his secret meetings in those days people hadecret meetings with hamas because it was considered subversive. he came away from his third meeting with khalid mishal and his response was -- literally, he was scratching his head. it's the third time i met him. he still hadn't mentioned the koran and he still hast mentioned islam. fatah is secular. hamas is fundamentalists in terms of its -- its basic beliefs but when you try to ascertain the cause of change on

the ground in gaza, particularly, since it has been under the control of hamas, you get - you get accounts at stop start that hamas is dictating that there be change. go back to the first fatah in 1987 through the early 1990s, it was simply deemed inappropriate in the occupied territories to have cinemas functioning, to have dancing at weddings, to have liquor and they very quicklyisappeared off the palestinian social lendar. they were deemed to be simply inappropriate. more recently i spent time on the ground in gaza after the -- what we call the civil war of 2007 when gaza -- when hamas took control of gaza. and talking to -- it's quite interesting the sources that you can go to to get the information, you want to find out by what women feel about their dress or the best thing to

do is go to the tailors. what's happened to hemlines in gaza. hemlines were alwaysow in gaza although i have to say i've interviewed several people who fondly remember days on the aches gaza in the 1960s and talking of women wearing bikinis. but traditionally, by custom now, women wear very low hemlines but in the aftermath of the hamas taking control, the hemlines have dropped by about 2 inches. now, there was no edict. it was, i suppose -- we talk about journalists self-censoring. it was an act by the community to go that way. even more interesting was the debate about facial hair. it sounds absurd to be standing here talking aut the significance of facial hair but fundamenlists don't shave their face. they just grow -- let tir hair grow. it can be very untidy, i have

khalid mishal wears a trim, neat beard but the fundamentalists exercises ragged hair and secular palestinians settle for a mutab. again, where do you go for the information? you go to the barbers, the hairdressers. and their few again was no edict, no instruction. and there was this process of debate mostly in the chair between customers and barbers where they finally agreed on a style of beard which was called the sword. and it was just a very fine line of hair running along the ridge of the chin to the middle. and the sword is the way to go. >> if humanitarian aid is enable to get into gaza, is there a way of pressuring the egyptian and israeli governments to open the borders for that purpose? >> you would like to think there was. but if the pressure is not coming from washington, it's probably not going to work

coming from anywhere else. the united nations -- i mean, it's quite amazing to think that a single united nations agency has been devoted to looking after palestinians on the ground in gaza since 1948. i mean, it i more than 60 years old. how long does it go on for? the deliveries are still slow. they're far too slow tory to sensibly spend any of the billions of dollars that have been promised for the reconstruction of gaza. there's still no agreement on how gaza should be reconstructed. i made the mistake of writing a piece as the days before the end of the january combat when you could see that it was definitel going to come to an end, i made the mistake of beginning a piece of analysis on the note that here was a victory for hamas given what had happened, the world could not stand by without rushing in to address t

humanitarian crisis that was so apparent, so obvious. put to one side who was right, who was wrong. here were 1.5 million people in dire circumstances and yet we are still arguing, we are still haggling about whether 50, 100, 200 trucks a day is enough to reconstruct a place that has been bombed to bits. >> following up on the distinction between secular and islamists, this questioner asks or says, you appear to describe hamas and fatah as inherent enemies but has not israel used a divide and conquer strategy to strengthen their dominance over the palestinian resistance. >> indeed it has. but they have played their inability to get on. they have reached the point -- it's quite interesting. all the way through the year -- the first years of hamas, through the fatah up through the second fatah and finally the

elections in the occupied territies in 2006, the big nut that neither side could crack was if hamas were to become a member of the plo and significantly hamas has never been a member of the plo and still is not, if hamas was to become a member of the plo, what representation should have it on the executive consul of the plo? hamas always said it represented about 40% of palestinian opinion. arafat said no way. you can have 12%. you can have 15%. that's it. hamas held its view. no. 40, 45, that's what we represent. now, as the election results came in, what vote is hamas get? 40, %. they had an uncanny knowledge of their own place in th palestinian body politic. but having come through the election, having one government

in their own right, which was an amazing achievement for a resistance movement, i mean, rack your brains and try to think of another resistance movement of that kind that has won government outright in its own -- in its own way. having achieved that, it then such was the anger in fatah. fatah's inability to accept defeat, fatah's sense of entitlement, it had been there for so long and in many ways fatah was run and arafat was to blame for much of this, fatah was run just as most of the arab regimes are run. snouts in the trough for the family, the fries, the tribes, for the organization. others who weren't in the network were kept out. it worked for jobs, it worked for running with the government and with the international community and it worked with

spending for huge international funds. so such was the aer that abb on the advice of washington it has to be said, stripped -- tried to strip much of the power out of the ministries of the hamas government before it took office so that it would be less rong so that all of the power would be vested in abbas as president. so there is so much hatred, so much ange so much ill-will and yet at the bottom each side recognizes two things. it has to do a deal and there has to be an agreement between them and perhaps sadly, more often than t, they recognize that that deal is too difficult to achieve at the moment. so, yes, they are played against each other but they're playing into israel's hands on this. >> the same question restated, given the factual -- the fractured state of the various palestinian organizations is the continued existence of the state

of israel secure? >> it depends on who you ask. if you go to the demographic argument, no. if you go to the demographic argument that says that as soon as 15, 25 years there will be an arab majority in what is now the state of israel and the occupied territories, it's very hard to see how the jewish state of israel will be able to argue that it is the, you know, purest democracy in the middle east. it will cease to be it and that will be a significant wound for it. look at it another way, one of the significant achievements of the whole israel venture is that since 1940 -- i have a colleague, a newspaper editor when she briefs reporters, she says -- on a particular sort story that she once delivered, she says, the hand goes uhere,

give me the helicopter view. she wants what it looks like from up here. so if you look from up here, 1948, 1967, first fatah, second fatah, paestinian elections, it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter who's in government in israel, who's government in washington. whether there's any sort of peace process on foot, whether there's the violent interaction of fatah, whether people are talking are not talking. what has happened between 1948 and the present is that israel has succeeded not only in holding what it had but what it took. and is holding that, too. and notwithstanding the requirements of the geneva convention has resettled the occupied territories with its own people. has increased the scope of those settlements vertically as we say and horizoncally, has increased the mileage of roads linking

them, has increased the number of checkpoints that limit palestinian movement around them. so in terms of setting up the state of israel and the fous words after the declaration of independence that we shouldn't worry about borders because we don't have to worry about pushing them out and israel is winning. but whether it can sustain itself in its winning is a moot point. i often see the israelis and the palestinian as inevitable prisoners of each other. >> we have 5 minutes for two important questions. one, the shorter question or the shorter answer, what is the future of hamas? >> i think hamas is a viable organization. it's a more viable organization than fatah. i think fatah has demonstrated again and again that it can't survive as it is and it can't change itself in order to

survive, and the more that the west does and the more that israel does to prop it up, that code word that you would see often in media reports, bolster, we've got to bolster arafat and mahmoud abbas, but in both he's humiliated time and again in the palestinian people. he was humiliated to th retreat of the perimeter of gaza in 2005. that was a golden opportunity for the israelis to show that he was their partner had he been brought in to a dialog instead of it happening as a result of unateral negotiation. he might have been able to present himself as achieving something for the palestinian people. instead, hamas jumped up and down and said we drove the israelis out and aren't we great and most palestinians agree that and his sco to fight hamas, israel felt obliged to reveal publicly that they were providing weapons to fatah to fight ha