
Inside Hamas
Gaza, home to roughly 1.5 million people, is the subject of this Channel 4 film by Rodrigo Vázquez, which looks at how Hamas actually runs the territory it controls. The film shows the group's dual role: running schools and clinics that keep daily life functioning, while also enforcing its authority through methods critics call authoritarian, including the suppression of political rivals. Interviews and footage lay out why many Palestinians back Hamas as the one force willing to confront Israel militarily, even as others in Gaza argue that its attacks hand Israel justification for the blockade and the continued occupation of the West Bank. Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, a label the film sets against the legitimacy it holds for a large share of the population it governs. The result is a portrait of a movement that is simultaneously a service provider, a government, and a militant group, with no attempt to resolve which identity is the real one.