In 2016, nine years and a lifetime ago, I met in Gaza with Mahmoud al-Zahar, one of the founders of Hamas. At one point in our interview he tried to explain why Hamas saw its control of Gaza as an achievement—even though, by that point, its control had brought three wars and almost a decade of Israeli and Egyptian siege. In the West Bank, he said, Palestinians had to endure the daily abuses of Israeli occupation: checkpoints, home demolitions, deadly raids.