CBS News senior foreign correspondent Deborah Pata gives a rare interview with a Hamas commander and recruiter in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, four months after Hamas launched a bloody terrorist attack against Israel. I did it. war in gaza.Combatant He said the war was helping Hamas attract new members. IN THE WEST BANK — One veteran Israeli hostage negotiator didn’t dispute that. Below is the inside story of Pata’s interview with a wanted man who is a key member of a terrorist organization designated by the United States and Israel.
West Bank Jenin — Our interview with a Hamas recruiter was scheduled for February 9 in the vast Jenin refugee camp, long considered a hotbed of extremist activity in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
We met our contact at a designated location and were told in advance that we would have to leave our car and hop into another vehicle deemed reliable by Hamas forces.
The meeting point wasn’t that far, but the route we took was a circuitous one. The driver deftly maneuvered the road strewn with rubble and ruins.
Israeli security forces are Strengthen attacks on Jenin And they frequently bulldoze streets, making further movement difficult. Sometimes we encountered deep ditches or piles of broken concrete slabs that we could not bypass and were forced to turn back and look for another route.
The Jenin refugee camp is home to around 10,000 people, packed into squares with concrete houses and low-rise apartment buildings separated by steep, winding alleys.
Eventually we stopped and were instructed to continue walking along the narrow path. There were bullet holes in the walls of some of the houses. Two armed, masked Hamas fighters escorted us quickly up three flights of stairs to the roof of one of the houses.
It was damp and dark inside, with very little furniture and it looked like no one was actually living there. When I went out to the sunny rooftop, another man greeted me.
He spoke softly and called himself Abu Abed. He said he was the commander of Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, in the Jenin camp. Only 25 years old, he joined Hamas when he was 16 and has already spent four years in an Israeli prison, he said.
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Unlike his two bodyguards, I couldn’t see his weapon, but I found a pistol tucked in his jacket pocket.
Two masked gunmen stood by his side the entire time, their fingers on the triggers of their assault rifles, ready for any sudden movement. One of them seemed nervous, periodically walking and peering over the balcony to keep an eye on the street below.
At one point, Abu Abed abruptly stopped the interview and asked, “Are you almost done? There are planes over the area.”
Their biggest concern was the threat of new attacks by Israeli security forces. The interview was over in just over 30 minutes, and I was immediately led back down the stairs to the street outside.
Our representative was ready to escort us to our car. Our masked Hamas guards disappeared, disappearing into one of the many alleyways.