LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For more on this, we turn now to Stephen Farrell. He co-wrote the book "Hamas: The Quest For Power" and was a longtime correspondent in the Middle East for The Times of London and The New York Times. He's now with the international affairs think tank Chatham House in London. Stephen, good morning.
STEPHEN FARRELL: Morning.
FADEL: Thank you for being here. So as someone who has spent a lot of time reporting on Hamas, talking to Hamas, did it surprise you at all when the ceasefire started and almost immediately, videos began to emerge of these field executions, these gun battles with rival clans?
FARRELL: Sad to say it didn't. I'd - it's exactly what has happened in the past in Gaza. It was - I think everyone could have predicted this. I did - I am afraid I did not expect the ceasefire to be bump-free. It - I did not expect it to be immediate. I did not expect it to be full. Hamas is - it looks like Hamas is ready to step back politically in Gaza and hand over to a technocratic group of Palestinians. I think it realizes that it can't possibly rebuild Gaza with the billions of dollars necessary. It needs international aid.
FADEL: But will it disarm?
FARRELL: But on the arms side, it is very unlikely to give up its weapons. There may be a handover ceremony at some point - rocket-propelled grenades, bigger stuff, whatever, so a show, if you like. But the - all the Hamas military wing people I've spoken to over the last two decades - it would be highly uncharacteristic of them to lay down their Kalashnikovs, give them up. A, because they're afraid Israel might come back in, and B, because it would make them highly vulnerable to the other armed groups, militias and splits within Hamas, rival factions within Hamas who might then turn on them.
FADEL: So then what does this mean for the future of this deal? Because that is a key part of it, that Hamas disarms.
FARRELL: Well, it's not a key part of it that Hamas actually signed up to in the part of the agreement with a - that was signed about a week or so ago. I mean, they were very careful not to put pen to paper and sign up to that. I think the overall view is that what is going to happen is that an international force, international stabilization force, will go in. And by international, that's more likely to be regional than properly international. You know, the - we know that the - the Egyptians have told us that they and the Jordanians are training Palestinian security forces. The French foreign minister came in yesterday and said that the EU mission in Gaza will be to help deploy a Palestinian police force. So it hopefully - I'm sure Israel will want a proper buffer zone security force in Gaza to make sure we don't get another October 7. And certainly, Gazans will want a force there to hopefully make sure that Israeli forces don't come back in in force into Gaza.
FADEL: But an eventual police force is not today. I mean, who fills the security vacuum of today? I mean, because Hamas was the governing authority before the war, right? They oversaw the police, civil defense. Who fills the security vacuum right now?
FARRELL: Well, the blunt answer to that is Hamas and will continue to be Hamas for a while. There is - there are other militias. There are clans. As I said, there may be splinter groups within Hamas. There are other - there was - there's videos doing the rounds on social media in Arabic of armed groups in northern Gaza, one calling themselves the national army, effectively setting themselves up as an opposition. But Hamas ruthlessly and effectively ended the presence of Fatah, the armed presence of Fatah in Gaza during an effective civil war in 2006 to '07. And I think they probably got enough weapons to make sure they would be in control of the Palestinian part of Gaza for the foreseeable future.
FADEL: Is that the path that Gaza is on now? Another civil war for Hamas to reassert power?
FARRELL: Well, I spoke to somebody in Gaza a couple of days ago. And he was saying everybody talks about taking the weapons away from Hamas, but it is actually the weapons in the hands of lots of different groups that people are worried about. There's genuine fear of a civil war.
FADEL: Stephen Farrell is with Chatham House in London. He co-wrote the book "Hamas: The Quest For Power." Thank you very much for your time and your expertise.
FARRELL: Thank you.
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