War in the Holy Land: A PBS News Special Report

NARRATOR: October 7, a day now seared into the memories of Israelis and Palestinians, by air, land and sea, a surprise terrorist attack, a swift Israeli declaration of war, and a relentless campaign, thousands of Israelis and Palestinians, men, women, and children, killed, continuing attacks from Hamas, and Gaza under near-constant bombing.

Peace now even further from reach.

Tonight, we look at this latest brutal chapter of conflict and what the future holds, A PBS News special report, "War in the Holy Land."

GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett in Washington.

It has been a horrendous and seismic week in the Middle East, a surprise terror attack, a ferocious response, and yet more dead amid intractable decades of conflict.

We are going to spend the next hour looking at the past, present and potential future of Israel, Gaza, and the wider Middle East.

Amna Nawaz is in Tel Aviv for us tonight -- Amna.

AMNA NAWAZ: Geoff, one week after those brutal Hamas attacks, there is a sense of shock, grief, and uncertainty here in Israel.

Just an hour south, in Gaza, there's desperation amid cuts to power and fuel and a sense of fear under a night sky lit only by relentless Israeli airstrikes.

So far, at least 1,300 Israelis and 1,800 Palestinians have been killed in the past week, one week alone.

We've been speaking with Israelis and Palestinians in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in recent days, trying to understand the human impact of this latest war.

It seems like he loves being around the family.

NOAM PERI, Daughter of Hostage: Yes.

AMNA NAWAZ: Yes.

Just one week ago, Noam Peri's entire family gathered for Shabbat on Friday evening, with her father, Haim, at the center of it all.

NOAM PERI: He's a father of five children and a grandfather of 13 grandchildren.

So, we are a big family.

AMNA NAWAZ: Later that night, her parents returned to their home in the Nir Oz kibbutz.

Just after dawn the next morning, they awoke to terror.

The community in which Noam grew up was destroyed by Hamas, dozens killed, homes burned to the ground, an entire community gone within hours.

NOAM PERI: It's a small community, 350 people, more or less.

Almost 80 people are missing, are kidnapped.

AMNA NAWAZ: Eighty people... NOAM PERI: Eighty people.

AMNA NAWAZ: ... out of a community of 350?

NOAM PERI: Yes, 24 of them are above the age of 75; 15 of them are kids.

Some are even babies.

AMNA NAWAZ: Noam's mother survived, but her father, 81 years old and dependent on medication for his health, was taken hostage.

It's been almost a week since your father was taken.

How do you think he's doing right now?

NOAM PERI: I honestly try not to imagine it.

AMNA NAWAZ: Why not?

NOAM PERI: It's hard, it's hard to imagine.

But I told my kids when this started that their grandfather is a strong man, and he will survive this.

And this is what I hope for.

AMNA NAWAZ: Her family has clung to that hope since the coordinated attack by Hamas last Saturday.

An estimated 150 hostages were taken.

More than 1,200 Israelis were killed.

In the following days, Gaza has been under near-constant bombardment.

The Israeli military has leveled entire neighborhoods.

Inside Gaza, Israeli cuts mean supplies are dwindling, no water, no fuel, and food is running low.

Israeli officials are blocking aid until the hostages are released.

Now Israel has told more than a million Gazans to move to Southern Gaza to escape an expected ground invasion.

In less than a week, the brutality of the Hamas attacks and the ferocity of the Israeli military response have already reshaped everyday life here and could reshape the region.

ASEEL MOUSA, Gaza City Resident: My family and I are leaving our home.

AMNA NAWAZ: They have already reshaped 25-year-old Aseel Mousa's future.

Born and raised in Gaza, she hastily posted this video earlier today.

With limited connectivity and electricity, we could only speak by phone as her family fled Western Gaza.

ASEEL MOUSA: No one is safe.

We are being targeted.

We are in the south.

We still are hearing Israeli bombardments around us.

Everything is targeted in Gaza, hospitals, civilians.

There are no safe places in Gaza.

AMNA NAWAZ: Aseel, your life changed so much in the last week.

What do you think the next week will look like?

ASEEL MOUSA: Absolutely, my life has changed.

I'm doing nothing but waiting for death, waiting for being killed.

My family are around me.

We are looking at each other as if we are bidding farewell to each other.

AMNA NAWAZ: In the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya, Hala Aleyan Derbas waits for word from her younger sister, Mahah (ph), who lives in the Southern Gaza neighborhood of Khan Yunis with her family.

It's been five years since they saw each other, and communication has withered with the start of this war.

HALA ALEYAN DERBAS, East Jerusalem Resident (through translator): She's living in danger.

What do you think when my sister is just living her life, and, suddenly, airplanes bombing their homes while people are sleeping?

I mean, at night they don't sleep, and there's no food, no water, no electricity, no communication.

They're being displaced, having to leave their homes.

I can't not constantly worry about her.

AMNA NAWAZ: Life for Gaza's two million-plus residents under blockade for 16 years was already dire before this war.

A U.N. official once described it as hell on earth.

Now a punishing Israeli military bombing campaign has displaced hundreds of thousands in a matter of days.

HALA ALEYAN DERBAS (through translator): They are not safe in their own homes because of the bombing.

Yes, there was something in Israel, but you can't compare.

When they bomb Gaza, it's collective punishment.

When they retaliate, they retaliate on everyone.

They even bomb mosques.

They bomb ambulances.

And, still, despite all of this, countries support the Israeli government?

AMNA NAWAZ: Meanwhile, support for Israelis from their country men and women is pouring into this parking garage at the Tel Aviv Expo that's become a distribution hub.

OHAD BEN HAMO, Tel Aviv Resident: Here is women and men and kids stuff.

AMNA NAWAZ: Last week, 40-year-old Ohad Ben Hamo's full-time job was running a digital marketing company.

Today, he's helping to run this all-volunteer army thousands' strong.

Every day, donations come in, food, clothing, household, and medical supplies.

And, every day, they are packed and shipped out to soldiers on the front lines, families who lost their homes and Israelis displaced by the fighting.

Why is it important for you to do this right now?

Why are you doing this?

OHAD BEN HAMO: Because I'm doing it for my country, for my people.

We are one big family.

Israel is a small -- one small big family.

And we have this bond.

AMNA NAWAZ: Upstairs in the expo, another mission, this one fielding search request for hundreds of Israelis still missing, then using social media and artificial intelligence to try and find them.

OHAD BEN HAMO: This is our only option, or to fight over there or to be here, backing the families and the soldiers.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tel Aviv resident Gil, who asked that we not use his last name, knows what it's like to fight on those front lines.

He was army infantry in the Israel Defense Forces, serving in Lebanon during Israel's occupation there in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

His 20-year-old son, whom he's calling Bavo to protect his identity, followed in his footsteps.

That training saved Bavo's life when Hamas attacked a music festival he attended last week.

GIL, Tel Aviv Resident: I called him right away and I told him: "Fly over to Tel Aviv.

Don't stay there."

And he said; "Father, you have nothing to worry about.

We're in the car already.

Everything is OK." AMNA NAWAZ: But the Be'eri kibbutz they fled to was also under attack.

Gil got word from Bavo's friend that his son had found a rifle and joined the defense effort.

Bavo fought and survived, but not unscathed.

GIL: He saw stuff that nobody on earth should even think happens, families getting dragged out of the kibbutz homes, from the grandfather and grandmother to the parents, to the children, to the babies, slaughtered.

AMNA NAWAZ: The day after the attack, Bavo was called up by his military unit.

And Gil, who has protested the Netanyahu government and marched against Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, hugged his son goodbye and sent him off to war.

You have served in the military.

You have been in combat.

You lost family in the Yom Kippur War.

Your son is now out there in another war.

How do you look at this moment for your country, for your family?

GIL: The reason I went to a combat unit was to defend my country and my fellow citizens, even though I believed we're doing something wrong in occupying the territories.

I would be at the barricades protesting against bombing cities to protect innocent people if it wasn't for what happened on Saturday.

But, I'm sorry, we don't have the privilege to let this thing ever happen again.

NOAM PERI: These are my parents.

AMNA NAWAZ: Noam Peri is focused on freeing her father and says her own lens has shifted in the last week.

NOAM PERI: I used to be one of those people who see complexity and see the rights of Gaza people, and I care about it deeply.

But what we saw on this Saturday, I definitely think this situation is different from anything we saw before.

I know this country won't be the same.

I know my family won't be the same.

AMNA NAWAZ: The same is true for Aseel Mousa's family, running for their lives with no sign of safety ahead.

What do you want the rest of the world to know about what you want right now, about what you see as your future?

ASEEL MOUSA: All we need is peace.

All we need is to be free, to not losing people from our families and friends.

AMNA NAWAZ: Hala Aleyan Derbas's family too has been forever changed.

She sent this message to her sister in Gaza.

HALA ALEYAN DERBAS (through translator): We are with you always, and our hearts are with you.

And the war will hopefully end soon and you can go back to your home safely, and the conditions will be better than they are now, and we will see each other in better conditions.

AMNA NAWAZ: Those better conditions seem farther away as a new war now one week in rages on with no end in sight.

And, just today, an official from the Israel Defense Force briefing reporters stressed that the war will move into new and different phases in the days and weeks ahead.

In the meantime, joining me here in Tel Aviv is my colleague Leila Molana-Allen, who has been reporting from across the region all of this week.

Leila, good to see you.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Hi, Amna.

AMNA NAWAZ: Let's start with the news today that Israel ordered an evacuation of over a million Gazans to leave the northern part of Gaza, move to the south.

It's an enormous amount of people.

How is this even possible?

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Amna, it's not possible.

And, in fact, an IDF spokesperson acknowledged that later in the day to other journalists, saying: We understand this takes time.

We are trying to warn people.

Really, they are just trying to cover their backs.

They're trying to be able to say: We have encouraged civilians to get out of the strike zones where we're going to hit.

Now, again, as you say, later in the day, they also said it's going to be a phased operation, which again suggests that it's not all going to happen at the same time.

But we are talking about trying to evacuate half of the Gaza Strip.

We're talking about over a million people.

Now, they're under blockade.

They don't have petrol for their cars.

The roads have all been bombed.

Their houses have all been bombed.

Where are they going to go?

How are they going to get there?

On foot?

So many of these people are wounded.

And people are desperate.

I have been talking to doctors in a hospital that's in the evacuation area all day.

They're saying: We don't know whether we're evacuating or not.

We don't know how we will take these people out.

And people in the main hospital in the south, where all these people are going to be heading, completely overwhelmed already.

They don't have beds.

They don't have fuel for the generators to run the equipment.

There's no way they can take all these wounded.

So, it's really an impossible situation and an absolute humanitarian disaster.

AMNA NAWAZ: Leila, you have been reporting from here all week, of course, but you have also lived in Lebanon.

You have spent a lot of time reporting around the region over the years.

How are you viewing this moment, big picture?

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Well, firstly, inside Israel, we have seen a year of more political discord than we have seen in years here between secular Israelis in central towns, who feel that they are working hard, sending their children to serve in the IDF, while ultrareligious Israelis, who don't have to do that, either go to the IDF or work and contribute to society, are not contributing in that way.

And now their children are dying protecting areas that they don't necessarily believe in, because this right-wing government is very supportive of settlers in the West Bank who other people believe create more violence.

Now, right now, this is a moment of unity.

Everyone's come together.

That doesn't mean they support the government.

It just means they are coming together as Israelis for this conflict.

So, we will see how that plays out.

The second issue, of course, is the Palestinians.

And we're seeing them divided into two separate areas, Gaza and Jerusalem and the West Bank now, and Israelis encouraging them to see themselves as different and separate themselves, because Gaza now is under attack.

And, thirdly, of course, in the regional context, we're seeing the coming together of several wars over the last couple of decades, different alliances, wars in Syria, wars in Lebanon, Hezbollah, Iran, all of these different areas now allying with Hamas as well.

We are potentially heading towards an extraordinary conflict between these two parties on either side, and Israel completely surrounded.

AMNA NAWAZ: Leila Molana-Allen, fantastic reporting all week.

We will be following your reporting in the days and weeks ahead.

Thank you.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: To understand this conflict, you first need to understand the geography.

Israel is a nation of nearly 10 million people living in an area about the size of the state of New Jersey surrounded by mostly hostile neighbors.

The Gaza Strip is sandwiched between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, with more than two million people packed into an area about the same size as the city of Philadelphia.

The West Bank, home to some three million Palestinians, stretches along the Dead Sea and Jordanian border to Israel's east.

There have been so many people over the years who've sat at negotiating tables and tried to work toward peaceful solutions, only to find them repeatedly dashed.

For them, this week's events have put a grim punctuation mark on these efforts.

I spoke to two such people today, Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel, and Hanan Ashrawi, a longtime Palestinian leader and adviser in the West Bank.

The command from the Israel Defense Forces was unlike anything from previous wars with Hamas, 1.1 million Gazans told to head south within one day.

HANAN ASHRAWI, Former Minister, Palestinian Authority: This is mass expulsion.

This is clearly ethnic cleansing.

This is a continuation of the Nakba.

What they're trying to do is get rid of the Palestinians in Gaza.

AMNA NAWAZ: The Nakba, or Catastrophe in Arabic, is the 1948 displacement of Palestinians from their homes after the founding of Israel.

Hanan Ashrawi was 4 years old then and, for decades since, has championed the Palestinian cause as a politician and scholar.

She spoke to me from her residence in Ramallah in the West Bank.

How do you see this unfolding?

HANAN ASHRAWI: This is not just a benign evacuation where people get in their cars and leave.

Most of them don't have cars.

Most of them, their homes have been demolished.

These are people who are thirsty and hungry and terrified, and they have lost families.

Whole families have been eradicated from the population register.

It is -- it's a massacre.

AMNA NAWAZ: I sat down with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak this morning in Tel Aviv.

If you're speaking directly to the vast majority of innocent Gazans who have nothing to do with Hamas, many of them are asking, where should we go?

EHUD BARAK, Former Israeli Prime Minister: So, we don't ask them to immigrate.

We ask them to leave it for a certain time.

And, in any case, there is no way to argue with us about this question.

It is not the result of our initiative or objective or purpose.

It is direct result of a murderous, barbarian attack on Israeli innocent citizen.

AMNA NAWAZ: The latest and most violent escalation follows seven decades of intermittent conflict and Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

At the crux of it are Israel's security concerns, clashing with Palestinian aspirations for statehood and competing claims to the land.

Today, the prospects for peace seem as bleak as they have ever been.

A veteran of the peace process, Barak came perhaps closest to reaching that lasting peace a generation ago.

All that is a memory now.

When you stood side by side with Yasser Arafat at a summit hosted by Bill Clinton at Camp David, it feels like a world away.

And I wonder if you think there is any road towards any kind of negotiated settlement out of this conflict.

EHUD BARAK: At the present, it seems totally impractical.

I strongly believe that necessities will impose upon both sides when they really, actually face the choice between having one state or two states.

We should stick to two-state solution.

I believe the other side as well.

The other alternative is, in my judgment, nonviable.

So, basically, it's so impractical now, that it will be a waste of time to discuss it.

I think that we Israeli should never lose eye contact with the long-term objective of disengaging ourselves from the Palestinians, having an Israeli state with probably 80 percent of the settlers and over several percent of the area, with a viable demilitarized Palestinian state side by side.

AMNA NAWAZ: But, to be clear, you have not given up on the idea of a two-state solution?

EHUD BARAK: No, no, I don't think that there is any other viable option.

I think that any other option, one-state solution, is a recipe for disaster.

AMNA NAWAZ: Do you believe that a two-state solution is dead?

HANAN ASHRAWI: I believe Israel has systematically and deliberately destroyed it, because they want to superimpose greater Israel on all of historical Palestine.

So, I think it's very difficult now to talk about a two-state solution, when everybody in the whole world was watching Israel destroy the two-state solution with a massive land grab.

AMNA NAWAZ: As Israel prepares for a ground invasion into Gaza, dozens of families wait for any news of their loved ones still held hostage by Hamas.

And wounds will be difficult to bind, much less heal for a country that's been shaken to its core, the illusion of security pierced.

Do you believe the attacks were a result of a failure of intelligence by this government?

EHUD BARAK: Sure.

Sure, there was the failure on the intelligence level, on the operational level, even on the political level.

AMNA NAWAZ: There's a number of Israeli citizens we have spoken to who said the attacks pierced what they saw as an illusion of security.

And they're not sure that they trust this government can continue to keep them safe, if they couldn't last week.

What would you say to them?

EHUD BARAK: You heard it from whom?

From Israelis?

AMNA NAWAZ: Yes.

EHUD BARAK: Yes, it -- for sure, it shakes the self-confidence.

I believe strongly that it could be resumed, if you analyze the -- honestly, the failures, if you can make the people responsible accountable, if you teach the lessons to those who make, and you make the corrections.

AMNA NAWAZ: We have heard eyewitness accounts of people who testified to the raping of women and also seen images of some of the burned bodies.

HANAN ASHRAWI: If there were atrocities in this confrontation, we are heartbroken.

We don't want to see any atrocities committed against anybody.

We don't want to see them committed against Israeli civilians or against Palestinian civilians.

But you know what smarts, what makes people really, and Palestinians really angry, is that these atrocities are committed against us all the time, and nobody cares.

But when it happens to Israelis, the whole world, Western world, sits up and takes notice.

AMNA NAWAZ: As this new war darkens a region already traumatized by decades of bloodletting, it can be hard to see a promising future.

Israel can conquer Gaza, says Barak, but then what?

EHUD BARAK: There is a question hovering in the air.

So, to whom will be passed the torch?

Ideally, it was to some multi -- kind of multinational Arab force led by, say, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Emirates, Moroccans, Bahraini that will take it for a temporary period, let's say six months, and pass it to the Palestinian Authority, which is the formal representative of the Palestinian people.

The Hamas took over.

Hamas took over Gaza by violent attack on the Palestinian Authority.

So, that's another constraint, because I'm not sure that anyone will agree to it.

HANAN ASHRAWI: There can be no peace, no security, no stability for anybody in the region and even beyond unless the Palestinians get their rights and their freedom and their dignity and their sovereignty on their own land.

This is the key.

You may kill, you may punish, you may expel, you may do whatever you want, but the Palestinians not just only need, but they deserve, we deserve our rights and our equality and our dignity and our freedom.

GEOFF BENNETT: Of all the regions in the world, none may have as complicated a history as the Middle East.

The center of three religious faiths, the area has been conquered, contested, and ruled by various empires across millennia.

John Yang takes a look at the most recent history of conflict and conquest and of suffering and strife that has led the region to where it is today.

NARRATOR: Israeli armor is... JOHN YANG: From its very founding, the state of Israel has been shaped by modern war and ancient narratives inscribed over thousands of years about who controls the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.

MAN: Saudi Arabia, no.

Soviet Union, yes.

United Kingdom, abstain.

United States, yes.

JOHN YANG: In November 1947, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the United Nations voted to partition what was then the British mandate of Palestine into two independent states, one Jewish, one Arab.

Jerusalem, fought over for centuries, was to be under international administration.

The city is central to three major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

A small area of the city is one of the most sacred sites for both Jews and Muslims, the Western Wall, the remnants of the First and Second Jewish temples, and, above it, Temple Mount, also hallowed ground for Muslims, who refer to it as Haram esh-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary.

In 1948, Israel declared independence, which was followed by the first of what would be many wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Hundreds of thousands of Arabs were evicted, an event known in the Arab world as the Nakba, the Catastrophe.

More than a half-million fled to refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

YEZID SAYIGH, Senior Fellow, Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center: Some were expelled by force.

Some were terrorized and fled.

JOHN YANG: Historian Yezid Sayigh was a Palestinian negotiator in peace talks in the 1990s.

YEZID SAYIGH: These were the people who went from being farmers and peasants to being refugees totally dependent on handouts.

JOHN YANG: In 1967, with stunning speed, Israel defeated a surprise attack by Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in the Six-Day War, seizing Gaza from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and, from Jordan, the West Bank and the jewel in the crown of three faiths, East Jerusalem.

Thousands of Israelis would move to those territories and settle, violating international laws set by the United Nations.

Palestinian resistance groups stepped up terror attacks, a tactic backed by the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, which started to represent Palestinians on the world stage in the mid-1960s.

This included airliner hijackings and the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, a terrorist attack that played out on television screens around the world and ended with the deaths of 11 Israelis, one German police officer, and five Palestinian gunmen.

Then, in December 1987, a combination of factors led to largely spontaneous Palestinian protests, civil disobedience and violent attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians.

It was the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

The Israeli military responded with brutal force.

And out of the First Intifada emerged Hamas.

YOSSI ALPHER, Former Mossad Official: When Hamas emerged under Israeli military occupation, the Israeli approach was to tolerate it.

JOHN YANG: Yossi Alpher is a former Mossad official and the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

YOSSI ALPHER: It was considered to be strictly religious, not political.

That illusion didn't last long.

It was seen as a kind of foil that Israel could manipulate against the PLO.

JOHN YANG: In 1988, PLO leader Yasser Arafat recognized Israel's right to exist, but Hamas held to its belief that Israel should be eliminated.

YEZID SAYIGH: They wanted to appear more militant.

It's hugely ironic that, of course, Israel at that time had an interest in tolerating Hamas, if not actively encouraging it, until the apprentice turned on the sorcerer, so to speak.

JOHN YANG: In 1989, Arafat spoke from exile in Tunisia with the late Jim Lehrer.

YASSER ARAFAT, Former President, Palestinian Authority: You can't imagine how difficult our life are as refugees, as homeless, stateless.

JIM LEHRER, Co-Founder and Former Anchor, "PBS NewsHour": Do you feel that you are close to achieving this, achieving your state?

YASSER ARAFAT: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: How close?

How much time will it take?

YASSER ARAFAT: Not more than a distance of stone throw.

JOHN YANG: A distance that, for Palestinians, proved too far.

The intifada lasted another four years.

In all, almost 2,000 were killed, with Palestinian deaths outnumbering Israeli deaths three to one.

Hope for peace came in 1993, when the PLO and Israel signed the first Oslo Accords, the product of secret talks overseen by the Norwegian government.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) JOHN YANG: Both sides committed to negotiating an end to the conflict and charting a path to Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

It triggered a violent backlash from religious extremists among both Israelis and Palestinians, including Hamas.

YASSER ARAFAT: I am very sad and very shocked.

JOHN YANG: And, in 1995, a right-wing Jewish extremist assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The next year, Benjamin Netanyahu, an outspoken critic of the accords and leader of the right-wing Likud Party, was elected prime minister.

YOSSI ALPHER: Netanyahu basically said, Oslo is a mistake.

This was the position of the settlers, the position of the right wing.

Netanyahu very much rode to power presenting himself as the expert on terrorism.

JOHN YANG: By 1999, Likud had been defeated, and Netanyahu had been replaced as party leader by Ariel Sharon, a former military commander.

A year later, Sharon led a march on the Temple Mount to assert Israeli claims to the bitterly contested site.

The streets of East Jerusalem and Ramallah in the West Bank erupted in violence.

The Second Intifada was under way, five years of Palestinian suicide bombers detonating themselves in Israeli buses and cafes.

Sharon, by then prime minister, ordered Israeli troops into the West Bank and Gaza.

The Second Intifada's death toll surpassed 4,300 people, again more Palestinians than Israelis.

YEZID SAYIGH: Rather than immediately clamp down, in order to preserve a peace process, Arafat cynically thought that the violence would act as leverage.

This was a total misreading of dynamics on the Israeli side, a total strategic mistake.

YOSSI ALPHER: The Second Intifada killed any residual readiness on the part of the Israeli public to back the Oslo process and to continue turning over territories.

JOHN YANG: Israel began building a security wall between the West Bank and Israel and renewed expansion of West Bank Jewish settlements.

In late 2003, Prime Minister Sharon proposed unilaterally pulling all Israeli troops from Gaza and dismantling the settlements.

ARIEL SHARON, Former Israeli Prime Minister (through translator): It pains me a lot, but I have reached a decision, and I am going to carry it out.

JOHN YANG: In August 2005, some 8,000 Israeli settlers abandoned 21 settlements.

Israel gave up all governing authority inside Gaza, but continued to control its borders.

The next year, Hamas won Gaza's first legislative elections in a decade.

Fatah, the party affiliated with the PLO, placed second.

Tensions among Palestinian factions would go from bad to worse.

The Hamas leaders in Gaza pressed their hard line toward Israel.

MAHMOUD AL-ZAHAR, Hamas Leader in Gaza (through translator): Israel is our enemy who occupied our land and killed our leaders and demolished our homes and jailed our sons and uprooted our trees.

We will never be its ally.

JOHN YANG: Hamas routed Fatah from Gaza in early 2007, putting control of the territories under different governments, Gaza ruled by Hamas, the West Bank governed by the Palestinian Authority.

Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, limiting the movement of goods and people in and out.

It was in part a response to continued Hamas attacks out of the Gaza Strip.

The U.N. says the blockade has deepened the humanitarian crisis for the more than two million Palestinians living there.

YEZID SAYIGH: You can imagine socially, politically, personally, ethically what that meant, an immense pool of bitterness and resentment.

JOHN YANG: For the past 15 years, tensions have simmered between Palestinians and Israelis, occasionally erupting into a full boil.

Recurring rocket fire from Gaza into Israel has led to a series of major Israeli air and ground assaults on Gaza.

More recently, there's been friction over Israeli restrictions barring young Muslim men from visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount and, earlier this month, over Israeli settlers gathering at the mosque for Jewish prayers.

And now the newest, most violent chapter is being written in the blood of both peoples.

GEOFF BENNETT: The grisly attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians was carried out by Hamas, but what exactly is Hamas?

Who are they?

And what do they want?

Nathan Brown has written extensively about Arab politics, Palestinian society, and governance.

He's a professor at George Washington University.

Thank you for joining us.

And let's start with a basic question.

What is Hamas?

NATHAN BROWN, Professor of International Affairs, George Washington University: Well, Hamas is an acronym and it stands for Movement of Islamic Resistance.

So, essentially, it began in the 1980s by a group of Palestinians, religious Palestinians, who said, we have got a lot of resistance movements going on.

They're all from the leftist nationalist camps.

We need an Islamic resistance movement.

And the resistance is obviously to Israel, the occupation, Zionism, and so on.

But the movement part is important as well.

Hamas sees itself as a broad-based movement.

It's not just about running orphanages or even about military operations or politics or anything like this.

It's supposed to be this comprehensive movement.

And when you're joining Hamas, the idea is, you're joining something bigger than yourself.

You're joining a comprehensive project to liberate and reform Palestinian society.

GEOFF BENNETT: What is Hamas' ultimate goal?

And has their thinking evolved over time?

NATHAN BROWN: Well, when the movement arose in the 1980s, they said very clearly, our goal is to liberate Palestine.

That means all of Palestine, including all of the state of Israel.

That was the movement in its early guise.

And for many in the movement, that is still the goal.

It's inched forward towards hinting at different kind of solutions, saying, well, we would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines, without saying that they'd actually accept Israel on the other side of that line.

They have said things like, well, that's Hamas' position as a movement, but we would accept any legitimate Palestinian national decision, without saying how they would get there.

So, there are some within the movement who would probably prefer to explore some diplomatic options.

But the movement itself still hasn't changed its fundamental position.

GEOFF BENNETT: How much support exists for that movement in Gaza and in the West Bank?

NATHAN BROWN: Well, the interesting thing is that Palestinians are rich in public opinion polls.

And a lot of those polls show that Hamas is more popular in the West Bank than in Gaza, where it rules.

And Fatah, its rival, is the exact opposite.

Across the political spectrum, though, what I would say is, most Palestinians, even those who detest Hamas, would say it's a legitimate part of Palestinian society.

This is part of our body politics.

This is part of our social fabric.

So, even though we don't like them, even though they're extremist, and they're too religious, and they're too violent and so on, we still recognize them as legitimate Palestinian actors.

GEOFF BENNETT: Let's zoom out a bit and talk about Iran.

Iran has for decades been Hamas' chief benefactor.

Tell us more about the nature of the relationship between Iran and Hamas.

NATHAN BROWN: Iran gives some material support to Hamas.

What I would say is, Hamas, although it's aligned with Iran and aligned with Hezbollah, really sees itself as about the liberation of Palestine.

It's a Palestinian movement.

So, I think it's closely associated with Iran.

It's sometimes dependent diplomatically and financially on Iran, but it's not a direct Iran proxy.

It's got its own command structure, its own priorities, and its own vision.

GEOFF BENNETT: You have met with members of Hamas' political wing, as I understand it.

That's separate from the military wing.

What are they like?

NATHAN BROWN: Well, it's sort of interesting.

I mean, Hamas' international reputation is as a terrorist organization.

That's how the United States government labels it.

And, certainly, Hamas has undertaken actions that target civilians.

So it certainly qualifies as having committed many acts of terrorism.

But when you run into people in the political wing, they're sort of, as I say, members of this movement.

And so they really present themselves as sort of quiet, polite, disciplined, very, very forceful, very righteous, very sound in their personal behavior.

GEOFF BENNETT: What's the connection between them and the military wing, which carried out the heinous atrocities this past weekend?

NATHAN BROWN: Well, there's a single command structure, and where these various wings get together, Palestinians, Hamas members in the West Bank and in Gaza and Israeli prisons and so on.

So the military wing is -- I wouldn't say it's independent of the movement.

It's an integral part of the movement, but it tends to attract different kinds of people.

And it also is not visible above ground, especially in the West Bank.

So you don't meet these people.

GEOFF BENNETT: Nathan Brown, based on your vast experience and deep understanding, why do you think Hamas carried out the attack this past weekend?

NATHAN BROWN: Well, I'm going to be honest.

It surprised me.

It surprised lots of people.

And I think it probably even surprised people within the movement.

It wasn't a shock that Hamas was un -- very, very unhappy with the situation in Gaza.

And, also, it was -- it has been bottled up essentially in Gaza for -- since it took control of the territory in 2007, unable to sketch any path to get out of it.

But my hunch is that what Hamas is aiming at, its primary audience is Palestinian public opinion.

Now, I was over in the West Bank this past summer, and I found just a mood of absolute despair, disengagement.

And younger Palestinians especially that I would talk to, would just say, look, somebody's got to do something.

Any act of resistance is good.

So, Hamas probably saw this as an opportunity to show that it could do what no other Palestinian movement has been able to do in a long, long time, and that is really confront and threaten Israel militarily.

So, it was a -- it was an opportunistic move.

And, again, the entire movement may not have been on board fully with what was going on until after it started.

GEOFF BENNETT: Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas.

Can Hamas, in your view, be destroyed?

NATHAN BROWN: Hamas was born under Israeli occupation, when Israel was occupying Gaza.

So I think the movement will be decimated by what Israel will do, but it's been prepared to go underground.

It's got bases in the West Bank.

It's got bases in the Palestinian diaspora.

So, the movement will definitely come out of this very, very different than it went in, but I don't think it will disappear.

GEOFF BENNETT: Nathan Brown is a professor at George Washington University.

Thank you for sharing your insights with us.

NATHAN BROWN: Thank you for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: Since the attacks last Saturday, there have been mounting concerns about the war expanding beyond Israel and Hamas.

There are multiple powers in this volatile region, both nation-states and various militant groups.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror and political movement, like Hamas, wants to see the total destruction of the state of Israel and is supported by Iran.

And that relationship is the focus of much of the concern from U.S. and Western officials.

To explain how political power may be shifting in the region from this week's events, we're joined by Aaron David Miller.

He was a longtime State Department official under both Democratic and Republican administrations who focused on Middle East peace for decades.

He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

That's a D.C.-based think tank.

Kim Ghattas is a senior fellow at Columbia University's Institute for Global Politics.

A longtime journalist in the region, she is author of "Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East."

And Andrew Exum is with us.

He's a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in the Obama administration.

He served as an Army Ranger officer in Afghanistan and Iraq and is now a writer and the author of "This Man's Army: A Soldier's Story from the Front Lines of the War on Terrorism."

Thank you all for being here with us.

Aaron David Miller, we will start with you.

What's your reaction to the Israeli government telling some one million people in Gaza to move south ahead of an expected ground invasion?

AARON DAVID MILLER, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: I think it's largely performative.

I mean, 24 hours is obviously a completely unrealistic time for -- 24 days would be unrealistic time -- time period.

And I think the Israelis feel obligated to do it.

I think it creates the sense that they are expressing some concern for the civilian population of Gaza.

The last several days, however, would suggest the opposite, in terms of the blockade and the airstrikes.

So it may be performative.

It may be what is needed to be done before the launch of a ground operation that is going to be unprecedented in scale, and I suspect disproportionate with respect to the use of - - to the use of force.

GEOFF BENNETT: Andrew, how do you view it from a military perspective?

ANDREW EXUM, Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense: I do not see a way in which the IDF, or even the best-trained military on Earth, could do this without killing a lot of civilians.

And, of course, this -- in some ways, this terrain doesn't play to the IDF's advantages, which has a great -- the IDF has a great -- the Israeli Defense Forces have great special operations forces, great air forces.

But this is going to require a ground assault, and the IDF is comprised primarily of conscripts and reservists.

This is going to be exceptionally challenging for any military, and the terrain would favor the defender.

GEOFF BENNETT: Kim, we should mention you are in Beirut, Lebanon.

Give us a sense of how Hezbollah has responded to the week's events thus far, and how they would likely respond if Israel totally destroys the northern part of Gaza.

KIM GHATTAS, Columbia University: We have seen over the last week regular clashes on the border, but those are still fairly choreographed.

And I know it sounds odd to say that clashes are choreographed, but there are rules of the game that both sides are still respecting for now, because it seems to me that Hezbollah does not, for now, want to be drawn into a wider conflict.

But they do keep warning that, if Israel goes further into bombarding Gaza and with a land incursion, they will be compelled to intervene.

Keep in mind that, in some ways, they're already helping Hamas by keeping the Israeli army on edge on Israel's northern border.

GEOFF BENNETT: Andrew, I see you shaking your head in agreement with Kim.

What do you see as the prospects for a potential second front opening in this war?

ANDREW EXUM: First off, had Hezbollah attacked around the same time as Hamas, they could have created real dilemmas for the Israelis.

I think it's clear that the Israelis were caught off guard and that the units along the borders were complacent.

That's not going to be the case now.

I think Israel is on as high alert as it's ever going to be, including all their units in the IDF.

Israel has already dropped a lot of ordnance on Gaza.

I suspect they have already worked through a lot of their initial target lists that they had and that they'd had prior to the war.

So, at this point, if they needed to, I think the Israeli air forces could turn their attentions to Lebanon, unfortunately.

They have talked since the 2006 war about a Dahiya doctrine, that they would level the southern suburbs, the Dahiya of Beirut, if Hezbollah were to attack.

So I think the risk for Hezbollah going forward is great.

and, unfortunately, I think they're going to come under more and more pressure from their constituents, as well as from the Palestinians, to do something as we see this Israeli ground assault into Gaza gather steam.

GEOFF BENNETT: Aaron, let's talk more about the U.S. approach.

President Biden has said unequivocally that the U.S. stands with Israel.

He says the U.S. has Israel's back.

He's also said that it's really important that Israel operate by the rules of war.

Decipher that strategy, that approach for us.

AARON DAVID MILLER: Look, I think the president has created, for both personal reasons and also political reasons, a frame of reference which essentially is designed to allow the Israelis, give the Israelis the time, the space, and the support that they need to do - - and whether or not they have explained to the administration what their objectives are is another matter -- but to do what it is they feel compelled to do, $2 billion in ammunition, precision-guided munitions, interceptors for Iron Dome, and a supplemental to follow.

At the same time, it's my view, having observed the way presidents sometimes function, that frame of binding the United States with Israel is also designed to preserve what I think is the leverage the administration will need at some point, whether it's days, weeks away, to have the kinds of conversations that only an American president can have with an Israeli prime minister, not a honey conversation, but a vinegar conversation.

And I suspect that that public-private sort of dynamic is going to be very much at play here as this operation unfolds.

GEOFF BENNETT: Kim, on that point, how is the Biden administration's backing of Israel viewed within the region?

KIM GHATTAS: Not very positively, I must say.

I think, including Saudi officials, but also Jordanians and the Egyptians, are very concerned about what they see as a blank check for Israel.

And there's a lot of people pointing out that there are double standards here.

When Russia attacks Ukraine, it is, of course, reprimanded and sanctioned, and it is made clear that targeting civilian infrastructure, stopping food, water from reaching civilian populations is unacceptable and is against international law.

So, when you hear Israeli officials and generals say, we will cut off food, water, and fuel from Gaza, where two million people live, and nobody or very few officials in the U.S. or in the West stand up against that and say, there are, of course, reasons why you want to carry out a military operation, but cutting off water, food, et cetera, from civilian populations is not acceptable, then people in this region say, well, these are the double standards.

They want us to support the war in Ukraine, but they're not willing to apply the same standards when it comes to Palestinians.

I want to go back very briefly to the issue of Hezbollah and something that Andrew mentioned.

We had a call across the region today by Hamas to come out in support of the Palestinian cause.

And that call was not answered very enthusiastically in Lebanon, which I found surprising, because Hezbollah is certainly able to bring out the masses into the streets.

And I found the response tepid.

And I think that's also because Hezbollah is very wary of being drawn into this conflict, when it knows that its base, its own core supporters, are tired of the last three years that have been very difficult for Lebanon for other reasons -- we have been through a terrible economic crisis -- and that, generally, they don't have a population supporting them in Lebanon for that, and also because Iran may be willing to sacrifice Hamas.

They're far.

They're not a proxy.

They're an ally, but they're not exactly an agent of Iran, but they have strong relations.

Hezbollah is different.

It's their biggest asset.

It's their foothold on the Mediterranean.

And I don't think they want to risk it at the moment.

They don't want to risk losing that at the moment.

GEOFF BENNETT: Andrew, what's your assessment of Iran's role and its motivations in all of this?

ANDREW EXUM: Well, Iran has always been willing to fight Israel down to the last Lebanese or to the last Palestinian.

But I wouldn't be surprised if Israel is losing patience, to say the least, with the way in which Iran is used its proxies to attack Israel over the past few years.

Again, Hamas and Hezbollah, they're not -- they don't answer -- they're not under the direct command-and-control of Iran, but they are affiliates.

There are Iranian affiliates who receive Iranian funding, who receive Iranian training, Iranian weapons.

At what point -- the one person -- the one actor that I could see wanting to escalate here could potentially be Israel.

At what point do they decide that they have got to send a message to Iran in a direct way?

GEOFF BENNETT: Aaron, as we wrap up this conversation, how do this last weekend's attack and the resulting war, how does it shift the balance of power in the Middle East and the understanding about the region's future?

AARON DAVID MILLER: I think what is at stake here for the Israelis, we really haven't talked about the Israeli equity here.

Not only do the Israelis have to deal with a galactic failure in operations and tactics and intelligence.

What is at stake for them is the fact that the contract between the governed and those who govern on government's capacity to protect its citizens is at stake, because they could not protect those Israelis from the terror rampage of those Hamas gunmen.

GEOFF BENNETT: Kim, how do you see it?

KIM GHATTAS: What I'm watching is what countries like Saudi Arabia are going to do.

Is there a role for them to try to turn this not into the aftermath of 9/11, where it's revenge and 20 decades of war, but the aftermath of the October War of 1973, the Yom Kippur War, where, after a few years, there is actually peace between Egypt and Israel?

I think this is the critical juncture that we're at.

GEOFF BENNETT: Andrew, taking Kim's point that this is a juncture, an inflection point, what do you see on the horizon?

ANDREW EXUM: Well, I think one of the things you have seen is, there has been this normalization movement in the UAE and Bahrain, perhaps in Saudi Arabia, as well as with Israel.

It's been largely driven by political and business elites.

And one of the things that I think this conflict has created is, it's created space for dissent, for public dissent, about the normalization process.

I think it's probably giving Hamas too much credit to say that this was one of their explicit goals of this operation.

However, it's definitely an ancillary benefit, from their perspective.

GEOFF BENNETT: Kim, you were going to add something?

KIM GHATTAS: It's not possible to envisage that Israel carries out its military operation against Gaza and then turns around to the Saudis and says, now let's talk normalization.

It is going to have to come in a wider conversation about Palestinian self-determination and some form of ending the occupation and concessions to the Palestinians.

This is not something that many Israelis want to hear today, but this is definitely the message we're getting or I'm getting from Arab officials that I'm speaking to.

Normalization is not off the table, but, as the Saudis have been saying, it cannot come without concessions to the Palestinians.

And that's why we are at this juncture.

GEOFF BENNETT: Aaron David Miller, Kim Ghattas, and Andrew Exum, our thanks to you three for your insights and perspectives.

AARON DAVID MILLER: Thank you.

ANDREW EXUM: Thanks for having us.

KIM GHATTAS: Thanks for having us.

GEOFF BENNETT: Finally, tonight, we choose to end on a grace note during this extraordinarily painful week, music from the 20th anniversary tour of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performed at the Berlin Philharmonic.

The West-Eastern Divan was founded by the Palestinian author and scholar Edward Said and the Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim.

The founders said they felt there was an urgent need to look for new ways to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and started with a workshop for young Israeli-Palestinian and other Arab musicians.

It has grown into an internationally recognized orchestra.

Here now, an excerpt of that orchestra playing Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony conducted by maestro Barenboim.

(MUSIC) AMNA NAWAZ: Even when words fail us, music can speak volumes.

And, this week, the words have been hard to muster.

You at home have seen the same scenes that we have, homes destroyed, families devastated, children killed.

And there are only so many ways to convey the brutality and the loss.

The week ends with death tolls mounting, violence spreading and tensions rising here in the Middle East.

War moves in one direction, until leaders dare to wage peace.

The question now is, will they?

Geoff.

GEOFF BENNETT: Thank you, Amna.

And thanks to our entire team on the ground in Israel and the region.

We will have much more coverage on "PBS News Weekend" and next week on the "PBS NewsHour."

Thanks for joining us this evening.