Hamas recruiter tells CBS News: "Israel lost, what, 1,000 or 2,000 people killed? That's nothing."
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Hamas recruiter tells CBS News that Israel's actions in Gaza are fueling a West Bank recruiting boom.
By Debora Patta, Agnes Reau
February 14, 2024 / 1:09 PM EST / CBS News
Jenin, West Bank — After more than four months of war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and despite mounting international pressure to limit the devastating impact on Palestinian civilians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel's goal remains the same — to destroy Hamas.
But in the other Palestinian territory, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the seemingly endless war in Gaza is having exactly the opposite effect: It is fuelling Palestinian rage, and that rage is finding a receptive home in thousands of young Palestinians who are increasingly disenchanted, and increasingly defiant.
There's been mounting anecdotal evidence that the steadily rising death toll and grim humanitarian conditions in Gaza is eroding support for Hamas in the decimated enclave. But in the West Bank, the number of people who tell pollsters they support the U.S.- and Israeli-designated terror organization has soared from 12% to 42% since Hamas launched its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
A masked Hamas commander who agreed to speak with CBS News at an undisclosed location in the West Bank was proud to confirm that he's a wanted man. Calling himself Abu Abed, he said he joined Hamas nine years ago, when he was just 16. Almost half of his time since then was spent in an Israeli jail, but now he works as a recruiter for Hamas.
CNS News correspondent Debora Patta interviews a Hamas recruiter who identified himself as Abu Abed, in Jenin, Israeli-occupied West Bank, in miB-February 2024.
CBS NEWS
We asked him if his job had become easier, with more recruits signing on in the West Bank since Hamas launched its brutal terror attack.
"For sure," he said, grinning. "All the Palestinian people are standing by Hamas."
The world recoiled in horror at the savagery of the Oct. 7 attack, when women, children and the elderly were slaughtered in their homes and taken hostage, but Abu Abed described it chillingly as a legitimate act of resistance.
"We see death every single day," he said. "Israel lost, what, 1,000 or 2,000 people killed? That's nothing."
He parroted Hamas' lies that no civilians were killed in the attack, and showed no remorse either for the more than 28,000[sic] Palestinians who've been killed in Gaza — by Hamas officials' own count — as the Israeli military retaliates for his group's actions.
We asked him directly if there was any regret for the suffering of Palestinian civilians, as Hamas surely knew Israel would respond harshly to the unprecedented attack.
"We are not pleased with that, but this is the path of the armed struggle," he said.
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Hamas recruiter tells CBS News that Israel's actions in Gaza are fueling a West Bank recruiting boom CBS]
