Hamas political spokesman gives combative interview to CBS News

We go now to Imtiaz Tayyip, who interviewed the political spokesman for Hamas yesterday. Imtiaz? Well, Margaret, as you can imagine, this was a challenging and often combative interview with Dr. Ghazi Hamid, a spokesman for Hamas and senior member of its political bureau. Now, Dr. Hamid denied Hamas received any outside support for its attack on Israel, including from Iran, which contradicts earlier statements to the BBC that it did. Did you receive support from outside? Did you receive support from Iran? No, no. It is just a decision taken by Hamas only. You received no support from any country outside of Gaza? No, no, no, no, never. Now he also denied Hamas fighters deliberately targeted civilians, saying their target was only the Israeli military and Israeli military infrastructure, something we, of course, challenged them on, given the vast amount of video evidence of Hamas fighters shooting at civilians in civilian areas. Now, as for why Hamas carried out such a brazen and brutal attack inside Israel, Dr. Hamid blamed successive Israeli governments for refusing to end the now decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories. He said Israel's current government, which is often described as extreme far right, has pursued an agenda of such harsh and punitive measures against Palestinians, which is why, he says, Hamas carried out the devastating attack, an attack which, of course, has resulted in Gaza being bombed like never before, and a death toll there that already exceeds the four previous wars, something he blamed squarely on Israel, but he would not take any responsibility for the Hamas attack being the trigger for this extraordinary violence. Now, when questioned about the dozens of hostages abducted by Hamas fighters and still being held captive inside Gaza, including some Americans, here's what he said. Why don't you just release the people who are abducted? OK, we want, first of all, we want to stop this daily death in Gaza, daily killing in Gaza. It is our priority now. Your priority should be how to stop killing, and this is genociding us. It is really genociding us. And you heard that even international Red Cross, all the international organizations, all of them say that situation in Gaza is catastrophic, is a big disaster. We have to stop this. Maybe after that we can talk about anything. Thank you. Mtsas Tayeb in Jerusalem.