Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

Young men with fuzz on their chins not yet thick enough for full beards stand on busy streets directing traffic. There are more on each corner of the congested Omar Mukhtar Street in Gaza City. They wear yellow and green t-shirts that enable everyone to know who they're working for long before they get close enough to read the Hamas logo emblazoned upon them.

It's the most visible sign of the violent takeover by the militant Islamist group after it pushed out the secular Palestinian Fatah party from the Gaza Strip three weeks ago. But it also represents much more: It's the irrefutable evidence that the Islamist international network of the Muslim Brotherhood has, for the first time, become the sovereign power over a piece of territory. One of the world's most densely populated and troubled specks of land has suddenly become a laboratory for political Islam in the Middle East.

"We've freed the people from a corrupt regime," says Khalil Abu Leila. The 55-year-old with the speckled gray beard sits in the courtyard of an apartment building wearing a plain gray suit and leather sandals. On the table in front of him is a copy of the Koran.

Like many Hamas leaders, Abu Leila studied in Egypt. And like many Islamists, he chose to become a pharmacist because he wished to heal mankind's ills. While in Cairo he first came into contact with the Muslim Brotherhood. After returning to the Gaza Strip he opened a pharmacy in the Khan Yunis refugee camp and met Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a doctor. Together they created their own Gaza branch of the Brotherhood in the late 1970s. According to Abu Leila, they founded Hamas in 1987 as the military wing of the Brotherhood. It was the beginning of the First Intifada.

Abu Leila does his best to play down the violent reputation of the Muslim Brotherhood. "We want to bring peace and justice to the entire world," he says. Western society is sick, its families are falling apart and its children threatened by drugs. And most Arab countries are being destroyed by corruption. "We have the proper medicine against it all," he says pointing to the Koran. "Islam. We want to spread this medicine throughout the whole world."

For many Muslims, Hamas is the tip of the Brotherhood's spear, the polished diamond of political Islam. The neighboring secular Arab regimes see it as a threat to their very existence -- or in Syria's case -- as a means to an end in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Both Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah moved quickly to support moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last week. Mubarak said Hamas had undertaken a "putsch" in Gaza. He sent his diplomats stationed there to Ramallah in the West Bank, where Abbas' Fatah party remains in control, and he closed the border crossing into Egypt at Rafah.

But Mubarak and Abdullah already seemed to be plagued by doubts at a summit Sharm el-Sheik. The number two leader of the Islamist terrorist network al-Qaida, the Egyptian Ayman al Zawahiri, had called on all Muslims to support Hamas only a few hours earlier. Mubarak that evening quietly urged Fatah to negotiate with the new rulers in Gaza.

No other regime in the region is as concerned about the implications of the takeover by Hamas as Egypt is. The most populous Arab nation has good reasons to be so. The newspaper Al Ahram, which acts as an Egyptian government mouthpiece, commented that "the problem of Hamas isn't limited to Gaza. Here in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood does not recognize the legitimacy of the government, the constitution and the law. Whoever ignores that takes us to the gates of Hell, which Gaza has opened."

The Egyptian authorities have arrested over 600 members of the group since December. They are students, businessmen, doctors and engineers. They also confiscated large amounts of assets. The state-controlled press compares the Brotherhood to a "tumor in the populace" and a constitutional amendment in March was intended to finish off the organization politically.

It's the toughest crackdown in some time and it seems as if it could spell the end of the fleeting historical flight of fancy that started five years ago under the moniker of the " democratization of the Middle East."

Gaining Political Traction in the Region

The drama, however, is far from over. The United States government might have hoped to implement an "agenda of freedom" for the Arab world following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but other priorities have taken over in the meantime. Indeed, Washington hasn't even bothered to comment on the latest mass arrests diplomatically. Further, political Islam -- with the Muslim Brotherhood at its vanguard -- has emerged stronger from the current episode of US policy in the Middle East. It is now a power in both its moderate and militant manifestations from the shores of the Atlantic all the way to the Indian Ocean.

In Morocco the Party for Justice and Development is on its way to becoming the largest opposition party in elections this September. And in Algeria the Movement for a Peaceful Society supports President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's ruling coalition. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt increased its number of independent parliamentarians from 15 to 88 in the 2005 election. The group even managed to quadruple its number of seats despite having candidates in only 160 from 444 districts in order to avoid an early confrontation with the ruling regime. The Islamic Action Front in Jordan is the political wing of the Brotherhood, accounting for 17 out of 110 parliamentarians. The group has become part of Jordan's political establishment.

In Yemen, Bahrain and Kuwait the Muslim Brotherhood operates as part of the parliamentary opposition. They have learned to cope with political defeats -- such as women's suffrage in Kuwait -- but their victories are growing.

What exactly is the Muslim Brotherhood? What do they want in Egypt and Jordan? What do their ideological counterparts in Morocco hope to accomplish?

Birth of a Movement

A ramshackle brick house in Mahmoudiya, a small town in the Nile Delta is falling apart. The beams have collapsed, it stinks like trash and it is infested with rats. This is where Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, was born 101 years ago. He started the organization in 1928 in Ismailiya, where the administration for the Suez Canal is located. "Allah is our highest truth, the Prophet our leader, the Koran our law, the struggle our path," so begins the movement's credo. From the outset, the Brotherhood has been dominated by two seemingly contradictory aspects: It has a charitable side that has acted as a reform-oriented social movement and the other is its undeniably authoritarian and dogmatic politics.

Its antagonistic attitude to Britain's colonial power, the Egyptian monarchy and later to the totalitarian regime of Arab nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser brought forth the group's militant side early on. Banna, who always emphasized the educational aspect of the movement, never shied away from radical rhetoric. "Victory can only come from mastering the art of death," he wrote. The joy of martyrdom and jihad as armed struggle -- both still some of the group's central precepts today -- were developed early on.

In the early 1940s, Banna created a paramilitary "secret apparatus" that initiated its members in freemason-like ceremonies. Their assassinations of politicians, judges and British soldiers would soon come back to haunt Banna, however. As he got into a taxi in Cairo on Feb. 12, 1949, he was shot dead -- most likely by government agents. His grave in a cemetery in the poor district of Bassatin is distinguishable from the anonymous dead only by its epitaph: "This is the temple of the martyr Hassan al Banna."

After a failed attempt to assassinate Nasser in 1954 by a member of the Brotherhood, the movement came under much greater pressure from the authorities. Still, it also began to flourish as many activists fled abroad to set up new networks. And just as Egypt was struggling to cope with a growing number of rural inhabitants moving to the cities and growing poverty, so too were many other Arab countries, helping the Brotherhood to quickly establish itself across the entire region as a reliable charity for the struggling millions.

At the Farouk Clinic in Cairo's Maadi district men, children and veiled women sit under a corrugated tin roof on green plastic chairs. Nearby there's a blood-smeared stretcher and a pharmacist hands a patient medicine through a window.

A list of prices hangs in the hallway: A simple checkup costs around €1.50, a birth €100. It's less than one-tenth of what a private hospital charges, but the hygienic standards are still much better than those of a state clinic. "Some patients are treated for free," says the doctor Abel Fatah Risk. The hospital is partially funded from fees and partially from donations.

The Islamists run a number of similar institutions throughout the Arab world -- be it in the slums of Casablanca, the overfilled streets of Gaza City or the Sunni-dominated western part of Baghdad. They are always there were the governments have most failed their people. They offer healthcare, education and when someone is in trouble and needs it, a loan or legal help.

The average member of the Muslim Brotherhood isn't a rabble-rouser, either -- he's a doctor, pharmacist, teacher or lawyer. He wears Western trousers and shirts, not the ankle-long dishdashah garment traditionally worn by Arab men. He's middle class -- and he's filled with rage. Rage over what he sees as the close cooperation between his government and the hopelessly corrupted West. Kept from pursing his political aims, he is often a functionary amonst his contemporaries in Arab professional associations for doctors, engineers and attorneys.

Zaki bin Rashid is a 50-year-old engineer with a carefully trimmed full beard and brown callus on his forehead. The spot is a symbol of his piety, since he got it from bending over and putting his head to the floor in prayer. Rashid is the secretary general of the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. He lives in a clean new building in the center of Amman. The party's flag on his desk shows two joined hands and his computer's screensaver is a picture of a sword and the Koran.

Jordan is an exception. The Muslim Brotherhood has been tolerated here for almost 60 years. The small Hashemite kingdom has chosen to pursue dialogue and understanding with the Islamists. "We don't want install a theocracy like in Iran. We are moderate Islamists," says Rashid.

In countries where the Brotherhood is well established like in Jordan, the foundations usually go back to the 1970s and 80s. Backed by the West during the Cold War, many autocratic Arab regimes specifically catered to the Islamists in the hope they would provide a counterweight to the communists. In the end, though, it turned out to be a miscalculation of historical proportions.

Egypt was the first to discover what the militant spin off of political Islam was capable of: During a parade on Oct. 6, 1981 in Cairo members of the group Islamic Jihad stormed the stands to murder President Anwar Sadat.

One of the leading figures of Islamic Jihad, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al Zawahiri, is now considered the textbook example of a member of the Muslim Brotherhood turned terrorist. Once the talented scion of a bourgeois family, as a student he was enthralled by the fiery writings of Muslim Brotherhood ideologist Sayyid Qutb, which would lead him to later become a mujahedeen in Afghanistan and the trusted lieutenant of Osama bin Laden. Zawahiri's path has inspired al-Qaida supporters all the way from the Middle East to Europe and is simultaneously concrete proof for the security forces of the Arab world of just how dangerous the Brotherhood is.

But it was al-Qaida's most successful operation that also led to a split within the political Islam movement. Despite Zawahiri's recent plea for Muslim solidarity with Hamas, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 caused a rift between the jihadists and the reformists. Zawahiri complained that the Brotherhood was luring "thousands of young Muslim men to voting booths instead of recruiting them for holy war."

A Safety Valve for Moderate Islam?

And that's exactly what many of the Brotherhood's leaders claim is their main duty. "Without us most of the youth of this age would have chosen the path of violence," says Essam al Eriyan of Egypt. "The Brotherhood has become a safety valve for moderate Islam."

But are statements like that worth anything? Is the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world truly determined to follow the example of the Turkish Islamists and become a part of the democratic process? Or is what the Cairo weekly Rosa al Yousef wrote last week true? "For the Brotherhood democracy is nothing but a dance with the devil," the paper wrote. "It is the means to come to power. Afterwards they will whip democracy and behead it with the sword."

Political Islam has many faces -- one wears modest makeup and brown headscarf and a matching brown silk outfit. Devout while still chic, Nadine Yassine is the 48-year-old spokeswoman of the illegal but tolerated Justice and Welfare association and the face of Morocco's Islamists, who have so far been kept out of parliament.

Whoever wishes to speak to her must travel to Salé, Rabat's nearby sister city. The slums there are an Islamist stronghold. A car with darkened windows is parked in front of her apartment. "I'm under surveillance," she says apologetically while offering sweet peppermint tea and pastries.

Across the Maghreb, it's small extremist groups that have been particularly active in recent years, including carrying out terrorist attacks in Casablanca in May 2003 that killed 45 people. After Morocco's King Mohammed VI responded by announcing an "end of the laxity," Justice and Welfare had to move quickly to avoid being equated with the bombers. "We are a violence-free, a spiritual movement," says Nadia Yassine, the daughter of a prominent Sufi sheikh.

Yassine, who studied political science and cultural studies, could one day follow in her father's footsteps -- which would certainly be unique in the Arab world. For her part, Yassine doesn't see any contradiction in being what a self-described feminist and Islamist. "Our religion is very much friendly to women," she says, "but the men, these little machos ... it's their fault that the whole world believes the opposite." Would she get rid of the country's growing democracy if an Islamic state was created according to her conditions? "We demand a Muslim pact that includes all social groups," she says. Otherwise it will be impossible to rule out further attacks or even a coup d'état -- in Morocco or other Arab countries. The West will have the choice of whom it supports in the future.

Egyptian Amr Hamzawy admits he's become more cautious with his judgments over the past two years. The renowned political scientist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. is an expert on Islamists movements in the Arab world. Two years ago he was still optimistic. "The moderate Islamists have embraced democratic procedures and have shown a strong commitment to the rule of law," he wrote back then. Europe and the United States would be well advised to engage these "grassroots Islamists" and talk autocratic regimes out of pursuing repressive measures against them.

"Islamists Will never Use the Word Secular"

But these days he's a bit more reticent. There are "gray areas" where the Islamists need to make clarifications on where they stand: for example, their understanding of sharia, or Islamic law, as well as their take on women's rights, religious minorities and violence. But Hamzawy also says the West has to get use to the fact that Islamism uses a different vocabulary than Western political discourse: "Islamists will never use the word secular to describe the impartiality of civil institutions. And one shouldn't expect them to give up their emphasis of Islamic teachings as the foundation for all actions."

The Muslim Brotherhood's success over the years can be attributed to two things: the failings of Arab governments and the charitable deeds they have done for the poor, ill and disenfranchised. Whether they can continue to do so in the Gaza Strip under increasing pressure from the West remains to be seen.

Hamas is already trying to move forward with its agenda. In addition to watching over the new traffic cops, Hamas's paramilitary police force -- decked out in blue trousers and black t-shirts -- has also carried out drug and alcohol raids and confiscated weapons. They've now stopped wearing their balaclavas, or face masks, so that the public won't perceive them as a danger or threat.

"First we gave the people security again," says Hamas leader Abu Leila, who then goes on to explain that the next step is to restore law and order in the Palestinian Authority.

"We will need more time before installing sharia," he says, "but time is working in our favor."

SPIEGEL ONLINE: After heavy fighting, Hamas won control over the Gaza Strip last Saturday. But it's not clear what your party now intends to do. The assumption in the Western world is that Hamas wants to establish an Islamic state in Gaza. Is this true?

Zahar: Of course. We want to do that, but with full support of the people. At the moment we can't establish an Islamic state because we Palestinians have no state. As long as we don't have a state, we will try to form an Islamic society.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How would a Hamas-led Islamic state look?

Zahar: There would be no difference from how it looks today, because our customs and traditions in Gaza are already Islamic. Marriage, divorce, daily business -- everything is Islamic. As soon as we have a state, then everyone will have their freedom. Christians will remain Christians, parties could be secular or even Communist.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: If an Islamic state is the ideal, why are there not more of them?

Zahar: If there were free and fair elections throughout the Arab world, Islamic forms of government would win everywhere. Islam is against the corruption, weakening, and materialism which have destroyed societies in Europe and America. Families are broken (in the West); there are AIDS and drugs. We don't have such things here.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What will Hamas' future relationship to Israel be?

Zahar: We are ready to speak with everyone about everything. Of course we have to speak with the Israelis, de facto, for example over trade. We also have to speak with them about cross-border issues, like the movement of severely ill patients and protection from bird flu and how we can avoid environmental catastrophes. We won't discuss politics, because the Israelis have no political agenda with us. The political agenda of Condoleezza Rice and Ehud Olmert with President Mahmoud Abbas consists of trading kisses every two weeks -- but with empty hands. We will only talk about essential things.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: At the moment there are no attacks on Israel by Hamas' military wing. Is this a new doctrine?

Zahar: Yes, at the moment we have to deal with two enemies at the same time. Also, the Israelis have halted their aggression. That's a direct result of our attacks on Sderot (in Israel) -- the Israelis have suffered too much. Thousands of citizens had to leave (Sderot), and the Israeli government had to pay for their hotels. Factories and offices in Sderot also had to close.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called this a good moment to push forward with the peace process. Will Gaza and Hamas definitely stay out of any such talks?

MAHMOUD ZAHAR

Mahmoud Zahar, a doctor by profession, is one of the founders of Hamas, the Palestinians' Islamist party. Israel considers him a hardliner and tried to kill him with a rocket assault on his house in 2003. Zahar's oldest son died in the attack. He is a sworn enemy of his rival party, Fatah, and he took over Hamas' leadership after Israel killed his predecessor, Abd al-Aziz al-Rantissi.

During the Palestinians' 2006 parliamentary election, Zahar said Hamas "would never recognize or negotiate with Israel." Israel's existence, he said, was "illegal." After Hamas' victory election he functioned as foreign minister in the Hamas-dominated cabinet, but was recalled in March 2007 after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, pressure from neighboring countries, formed a "unity government" with a power-sharing agreement between Fatah and Hamas.

Zahar: What kind of peace process is it? There will only be lots of chit-chat. Meanwhile the occupation will continue, and the Israelis will remain here to destroy our lives.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In the West there is a fear that the Gaza Strip may become a playground for international terrorism. Is this danger real?

Zahar: Our people can't distinguish between resistance and terrorism. We're fighting for the liberation of our land from an occupation. When people in Europe had to fight the Nazis, they were honored, later, as freedom fighters. No one would have called Charles de Gaulle a terrorist.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: There has been talk in Israel about turning off electricity, water, and gas in Gaza. Could the people in Gaza starve?

Zahar: In that case Israel would have to open its borders. People wouldn't starve to death before violently storming the borders. Israel also loses $2 million in business income for every day the border stays closed.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The international community plans to release all the aid money it has withheld from Palestinians for over a year to the Fatah government in the West Bank. Will the West Bank become a kind of luxury-Palestine, while the Gaza Strip starves?

Zahar: Fatah in the West Bank will receive money, and they will have to pass it on to Gaza. If it doesn't, it will lose Gaza forever. We would also have to search for alternatives. We have a very good image among people throughout the Arab world. If we want, we can get $5 million per month in donations from Egypt. We have also received money from foreign countries in the past -- $82 million from Kuwait, $50 million from Libya. I personally once brought $20 million from Iran to the Gaza Strip in a suitcase. No, actually twice -- the second time it was $22 million.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What will improve for people in Gaza now that Hamas is in control?

Zahar: The good thing is that we can now collect information about our enemies and informants from foreign powers. We will look for Israel's spies.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Last week there were street battles in the West Bank between Fatah and Hamas militias. Fatah maintained the upper hand. How will Hamas loyalists defend themselves in the event of any new fighting?

Zahar: Let me ask you: How have we defended ourselves so far against the Israeli occupation?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: With bombs and attacks?

Zahar: Exactly. But you said that, not me.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The split between Hamas and Fatah has never been wider. Are you still in contact with one another?

Zahar: Yes, we speak to each other. But we're looking for the true Fatah so its members can take part in our new organization and plans for the future. The true, pure Fatah is the real loser (in this conflict) because its party in the West Bank is collaborating with Israel. In Gaza we have beaten those elements that collaborate with Israel. We have beaten everyone who represented an obstacle -- the ones who wanted to keep us from defending ourselves.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The militant wings of Fatah and Hamas have been fully armed over the last few months. Are these weapons still in circulation?

Zahar: There are naturally very many weapons around now. Two years ago, one bullet in Gaza cost around €3.50 -- now it would cost 35 cents. The American aid money has been translated into weapons. Thank you, America!

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Isn't such a large number of weapons in the hands of militias -- some controllable, some not -- a huge security risk? What would happen if splinter groups started to shoot at each other?

Zahar: So far we haven't confiscated any weapons. If there are problems with splinter groups, we will disarm them and take the weapons for ourselves.