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The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence
Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela
2000
1. Social Roots and Institutional Development
Much of the politics of Hamas can be explained in terms of the tension between the movement’s dogmatic ideology and its pragmatic approach to political and institutional survival. This tension is between Hamas’s adherence to the Islamic vision of holy war (jihad) against Israel as the most effective instrument of mass mobilization and its awareness of the necessity of reckoning with political considerations without abandoning the armed struggle. The origins of this tension and its impact on Hamas’s political behavior are intimately bound up with the historical development of the Palestinian national movement.
Palestinian nationalism emerged as a construction of British colonialism, its ideology and strategy shaped by its confrontation with the Zionist movement and the state of Israel, as well as by its interaction with the surrounding Arab states. As in similar cases of constructed nationalism, the Palestinian national movement sanctified territorial boundaries—in this case, those demarcated by the British Mandate from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea—and gave them the symbolic political status of a historic homeland. And like other national movements in which a religion based on scriptures and universal ends played a role, Islam was an instrument, not a key factor, in constructing the Palestinian national identity, both before 1948 and afterward. 1
Since the early 1920s, the legitimacy of any political leadership in the Arab-Palestinian community has been conditioned on its adherence to an unequivocal rejection of the Zionist enterprise and a commitment to the just cause of Palestinian Arabs. This approach characterizes the Arab-Palestinian national movement and its political institutions, of which the most conspicuous has been the PLO from its advent in 1964 but mainly after 1967. In addition to its demand for the total reversal of the outcomes of the 1948 war—reclamation of the lost land of Palestine from which Israel was created and repatriation of the Arab refugees—the PLO also articulated essential values and symbols underpinning Palestinian nationalism. In its National Charter, the PLO defined the Palestinian people, asserted its inalienable links to the national homeland within its Mandatory borders, and sanctioned “armed struggle” as the only way to its liberation.
After the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, the PLO was known for its popular mobilization for a military struggle against Israel and its uncompromising political goals. Indeed, the PLO’s National Charter of 1968 defined these goals as the liberation of all of Palestine by armed struggle and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with a negligible minority of Jewish citizens. However, years of frustrated hope of total Arab mobilization for the sake of Palestine, military debacles suffered at the hands of Arab regimes and Israel, political constraints, and growing involvement in international diplomacy induced the PLO to retreat from its goal of a Palestinian state in all Palestine. Instead, the PLO has been forced to acquiesce in the political reality by adopting a two-state solution—Israel within its 1967 borders and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. By the late 1970s, the two-state solution had won the support of the Palestinian leadership in the occupied territories as well as that of most Arab states and other members of the international community.
The PLO’s loss of its autonomous territorial base in Lebanon as a result of the Israeli incursion into that country in 1982 generated mounting ideological and structural crises within the organization, which had effectively been deprived of its military option and had its political options severely curtailed by being forced out of Lebanon. A deep sense of hopelessness gripped the Palestinians, who perceived a widening gap between their expectations for the imminent removal of the Israeli occupation and the PLO’s state of fragmentation and political weakness. 2 It was under these circumstances that the national discourse began to change, prompted by marginal Islamic groups. By presenting an alternative orientation and strategy that seemed to address the needs of the people, these groups were able to break through to the center stage of the Palestinian political community. Deriving their political thought, terminology, and values from radical Islam, the upstart groups offered a different perspective on the collective reality and a redefinition of the Palestinians’ national goals and means to achieve them. At the same time, they identified themselves with the history of Palestinian struggle and its symbols and myths, appropriating them from the national-secular stream led by the PLO. 3
One such group was Hamas, a product of the Intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied territories that erupted at the end of 1987. At the time and place of its emergence, Hamas appeared to address more authentically and appropriately the expectations of many, if not most, Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, thereby supplementing the usual Islamic interpretation of essential elements of Palestinian nationalism, such as “people,” “territory,” “history,” and “interrelations with the Arab-Muslim world.” At a time when the PLO appeared to have abandoned the armed struggle and to be willing to accept a territorial compromise that would leave the Palestinians only a small fragment of Mandatory Palestine, Hamas clung to established national values, which were encapsulated in the notion of relentless armed struggle until the complete liberation of Palestine. Moreover, Hamas conferred an Islamic meaning on its version of Palestinian nationalism. That is, the Palestinian state envisioned by Hamas would come into being through a holy war (jihad), encompass all of Palestine, and implement the Islamic law (shari`a).
Hamas thus confronted the PLO’s secular nationalism with an Islamic-national concept, which needed no alteration of the PLO’s original goals or its strategies for achieving them, but merely their Islamization. Thus, in its religious vision, political goals, and communal concerns, Hamas challenged the PLO’s claim to be the exclusive political center of the Palestinian people. Hamas infused religion with nationalism, thus implying a claim for the Islamization of the Palestinian society and state. This entailed a new interpretation, anchored in Muslim history, of the parameters of the struggle against Israel.
Whereas the doctrine of Arab nationalism had initially incorporated Islamic values and symbols into its secular viewpoint, mainly in order to appeal to the masses, Hamas reappropriated the secular elements and symbols of Palestinian nationalism as already defined by the PLO. Indeed, Hamas offers the Palestinian masses an alternative religious narrative whose powerful message is embedded in its religious authenticity, clarity, and familiarity. Hamas thus sanctions its doctrine regarding both the means of struggle (jihad) and its strategic goals—an Islamic Palestinian state and society—by means of Islamic law and tradition, thereby clearly differentiating itself from the PLO’s political goal of a secular state-to-be.
Origins
Hamas’s origins are rooted in the Muslim Brothers movement (MB) and, more specifically in its main institutional embodiment since the late 1970s, the Islamic Center (al-Mujamma` al-islami) in the Gaza Strip. Islamic political activity in Mandatory Palestine appeared as early as the late 1920s in the form of local branches of the Egypt-based Young Muslim Men’s Association (Jam`iyyat al-shubban al-muslimin). The Haifa branch was headed by Sheikh `Izz al-Din al-Qassam, who in the early 1930s led a group that assassinated Jews and British officials. These actions were portrayed as a jihad for the liberation of the land of Palestine. In 1935, al-Qassam was killed in an armed clash with a British force in northern Samaria, in what he had intended to be the beginning of a guerrilla war. His religious status and his fall in battle against the British turned Qassam into a national symbol and role model of self-sacrifice and dedication to the duty of war against foreign intruders in the land of Islam. Some of his companions (qassamiyyun) later became the hard core of the 1936&-;1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine. 4
In 1945, the first Palestinian branch of the MB was opened in Jerusalem as an extension of the movement in Egypt. Soon, with the assistance of the latter and close affiliation with the mufti al-Haj Amin al-Husseini, other branches were established in most of the major Palestinian towns and villages, and by 1947, there were thirty-eight branches with more than ten thousand registered members. The MB in Palestine generally focused on social and cultural activities and, unlike their colleagues in Egypt, refrained from active involvement in politics or violence. 5 Indeed, during the first Arab-Israeli war, in 1948, the Islamic movement in Palestine had little impact on the fighting, apart from the mufti’s “sacred jihad” (al-jihad al-muqaddas), a popular militia that operated in Jerusalem, Ramla, Lydda, and Jaffa. By the end of the war, the MB as an organized movement had disappeared, caught up in the social and political collapse and territorial fragmentation of the Arab-Palestinian community.
Between 1948 and 1967, Jordan and Egypt ruled the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, respectively, and shaped the development of the MB movement in accordance with their attitudes toward pan-Arab nationalism, the Palestinian issue, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. During the Jordanian rule of the West Bank, the MB renewed its activities as an organized political movement. The official annexation of the West Bank into Jordan in April 1950 and the regime’s relatively tolerant policy toward opposition parties enabled the MB to become established as an open but moderate opposition group. During the 1950s, the MB maintained a policy of “loyal opposition” to the Hashemite regime, which was manifested in the MB’s participation in all parliamentary elections and facilitated the development of the movement’s modest social infrastructure. The political truce with the Hashemite regime derived from common values and shared interests, primarily their adherence to social traditionalism and rejection of revolutionary Arab nationalism led by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. It was the MB’s tacit alliance with the Hashemite regime of Jordan that led to the split in 1952 that created a militant group with strong anti-Western and revolutionary inclinations and headed by Sheikh Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani, who established the Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb al-tahrir al-islami). 6
Unlike Jordan, Egypt refrained from annexing the Gaza Strip and preserved the military administration established during the 1948 war. Under this military administration, the MB’s activity in the Gaza Strip was either tolerated or repressed, in line with Egypt’s policy toward the MB’s mother movement in Egypt itself. Thus, when the MB was banned in Egypt in early 1949, the MB’s branch in Gaza was reorganized by its local leadership and turned into a religious-educational center entitled Unification [of God] Association (Jam`iyyat al-tawhid). During the short-lived honeymoon, from 1952 to 1954, between the Free Officers’ regime and the Muslim Brothers, the latter’s branch in the Gaza Strip flourished, attracting many young Palestinians from the refugee camps as well as Palestinian students in Egyptian universities. But a new ban on the MB in Egypt in 1954, following its attempt on Nasser’s life, began a long period of brutal repression, which created the hostile relationship between the Nasserist regime and the MB in Egypt and the Gaza Strip. This ban forced the MB in Gaza to conduct its activities secretly until finally, under the joint pressures of the Nasserist regime and the wave of Arab nationalism in the early 1960s, the movement was forced to go underground and significantly limit its public presence. Nasser’s harsh policy against the MB reached a peak in the aftermath of the alleged coup attempt in 1965, which led to the arrest of thousands of the movement’s activists in Egypt and the execution of their leading figures. Most important of the executed leaders was Sayyid Qutb, whose writings and school of thought were adopted by many Islamic groups advocating violence against non-Islamic regimes. 7 In 1965, one of the MB members arrested was Ahmad Yasin, who later became the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. 8
The differences between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in terms of opportunities for political action—reflecting the better economic and social conditions in the former—left their imprint on the nature and structure of the MB in each region. In the West Bank, its activities were open and moderate but in the Gaza Strip, they assumed a clandestine, militant form.
With Israel’s conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, a new era began for the MB movement in these areas. Israel was more permissive regarding social and cultural Islamic activity, and the very fact that the West Bank and Gaza Strip were now under one government enabled a renewed encounter between Islamic activists of both regions. This in turn paved the way to the development of joint organizational endeavors, backed by mutual coordination and support, which allowed the West Bankers to learn from their Gaza colleagues’ experience with clandestine activities and apply it to the West Bank. In the late 1960s, a joint organization of Islamic activity for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—the United Palestinian [Muslim] Brotherhood Organization—was founded. Israel’s policy of “open bridges” across the Jordan River facilitated the establishment of organizational links and close cooperation between the MB movements under Israeli occupation and in Jordan, where Palestinians constituted a large portion, if not a majority, of the population. Jordan, too, benefited from this situation, as its interest was to secure its political status in the West Bank and counteract the influence of the PLO. The 1970s witnessed growing links between the MB in the Israeli-occupied territories and Israel’s Arab citizens. Thus, leading MB figures from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, like Sheikh Yasin, visited Israeli Muslim communities from the Galilee to the Negev to preach and lead Friday prayers. 9
Hamas’s semiofficial history points to 1967 as the date of the movement’s genesis. According to its own historical narrative, Hamas evolved through four main stages:
In fact, these stages, as will be explained later, reflect the development of the MB movement in the Gaza Strip, but not in the West Bank. Moreover, it describes the development of the mainstream MB and ignores other Islamic groups that were active in the Gaza Strip from the late 1970s. The first period, 1967–1976, was indeed marked by the meticulous construction of the MB’s institutional and social infrastructure under the leadership of Sheikh Ahmad Yasin. Yasin was recognized as the preeminent MB figure in the Gaza Strip in 1968, following the departure from Gaza of Isma`il al-Khalidi, the movement’s leader until then. Yasin now became the driving force behind the rapid rise of the MB movement in the Gaza Strip, which was spearheaded by his institutionally based efforts to imbue the society with da`wa, that is, religious preaching and education. 11
The young sheikh’s charisma, Islamic scholarship, and organizational mastery proved particularly influential among the youth of the refugee camps. His focus on da`wa was the result of a major lesson the MB had learned from its experience in Egypt: as long as it confined its activity to education and preaching, the regime would leave it alone. Operating out of his home in the Shati' refugee camp, Yasin embarked on a systematic penetration of the society by creating cells of three members each throughout the Strip, reaching even the neighborhood level. With the expansion of the movement, the Gaza Strip was divided into five subdistricts under the responsibility of Yasin’s close aides or disciples. 12
The movement’s inroads were made possible largely by the depressed socioeconomic conditions of the local population, more than half of whom lived in refugee camps. These teeming camps in the Gaza Strip, which housed the world’s highest population density, provided fertile soil for communal activism informed by radicalized religiosity. This striking social reality welcomed the Islamic option as an alternative way to challenge poverty and life under Israel’s military occupation.
As the Islamic movement grew in the Gaza Strip, it sought to establish formally registered associations that would accord legal status to the MB’s religious and social activities. However, beginning in 1970, repeated requests by Yasin and his companions to the Israeli military administration were rejected, not least because of the opposition of traditional Islamic elements, especially the Associations for the Learning [by heart] of the Qur'an (Jam`iyyat tahfiz al-qur'an) led by Sheikh Muhammad `Awwad.
The crucial act in the MB’s institutionalization in the Gaza Strip occurred in 1973 with the founding of the Islamic Center (al-Mujamma` al-islami) as a voluntary association, which was formally legalized in 1978. The Mujamma` became the base for the development, administration, and control of religious and educational Islamic institutions in the Gaza Strip, under Yasin’s supervision. One of its major instruments was the Islamic Association (al-Jam`iyya al-islamiyya), established in 1976 as a framework for religious and communal activities, with branches in various parts of Gaza Strip. In 1981 the Mujamma` created the Young Women’s Islamic Association (Jam`iyyat al-shabbat al-muslimat) as another association for social action and mobilization. The Mujamma` was composed of seven committees: preaching and guidance, welfare, education, charity, health, sport, and conciliation. Because the activities conducted by the Mujamma` did not encompass all MB groups in the Gaza Strip, power struggles emerged over resources and social influence. Nonetheless, by the late 1970s, the scope and organizational efficiency of the Mujamma` made it the spearhead of the MB’s mainstream in the Gaza Strip. 13
Neither Fixed Identity nor Distinct Boundaries
Overall, despite external political and military pressures and internal weaknesses and disagreements, Hamas has been able to retain its ideological coherence, political vitality, and organizational unity. Although a relatively young movement entering its second decade of existence, Hamas has become a conspicuous presence in the Israeli-Palestinian arena and maintains a strong social hold in the Palestinian community. It also enjoys increasing support from and broad legitimacy within the Arab and Muslim world. As a movement with institutions closely linked to societal needs and immediate concerns, Hamas has emerged as a political force whose social presence and communal activities cannot be ignored in the foreseeable future.
As long as negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for a permanent peace settlement are marred by rivalry and disagreement, mistrust and mutual recriminations, Hamas will be able to continue mobilizing wide popular support and to maintain its public image as a standard bearer of Palestinian national values. And as long as Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority fail to translate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations into tangible territorial achievements and economic benefits, Hamas will be able to continue playing its role as the guardian of Islam and the champion of authentic Palestinian aspirations.
Social Orientation
The Mujamma`’s activities were directed inward, focusing on the long-term goal of reshaping the Muslim community. Its project rested on a large-scale social program to create a network of schools and Qur'anic classes to preach the message of Allah (tabligh wa-da`wa). The Mujamma` leaders encouraged social activities at both the individual and communal levels conducted in accordance with traditional and Islamic norms. Adherence to the Islamic way of life applied mainly to the family, women, and education. On a wider scale, an intensive effort was undertaken to eradicate “immoral” behavior, such as the dissemination of pornographic material, the drinking of alcohol, prostitution, drug abuse, and joint activities of young men and young women.
The “return to Islam” was envisioned as an evolutionary process to be achieved by means of comprehensive education aimed at everyone, from infants to the uneducated elderly. The Mujamma` followed the MB’s traditional practice of applying the Islamic duty of charity (zakat) to the poor as a central avenue for social infiltration and expansion of its public support among the needy. The movement set up kindergartens and schools, a blood bank, medical clinics, vocal education centers for women, and youth and sports clubs. All these activities revolved around the mosque, combining worship, education, and social welfare with subsidized services such as medical treatment, children’s day care, free meals, and sports clubs. A striking illustration of the Mujamma`’s indispensable social role occurred in 1981 when it extended financial and technical assistance to help rehabilitate more than a thousand homes, mostly in refugee camps, that were severely damaged by a winter storm. 14
The focus of the Mujamma` on developing a civil society by forming voluntary associations did not clash with the hierarchical and secret structure of the MB, whose main units were the “family” ('usra) and “chapter” (shu`ba). In fact, the open communal activities of the Mujamma` acted as a kind of security valve in relation to the Israeli authorities. This dual structure may explain the movement’s ability to turn to violence in due course. The most effective means of expanding the Mujamma`’s influence was the mosque. With Israel’s tacit consent, mosques proliferated in Gaza. As sanctuaries, they were an ideal venue for various public activities, safe from Israeli interference. From this point of view, the MB enjoyed a clear advantage over the nationalist forces represented by the PLO. That is, mosques afforded the MB not only a relatively secure space within which the Islamic movement could flourish, shielded from the Israeli intelligence apparatus, but also an invaluable stage for propagating its message and mobilizing public support.
From 1967 to 1986, with Israel’s consent, the number of mosques in the Gaza Strip doubled—from 77 to 150, and rapidly rose to 200 by 1989. Most of the new mosques were private, independent of the religious waqf establishment in the Strip. 15
Another social sphere in which the Mujamma` made inroads, through its conciliation committee, was mediation and conflict resolution between clans involved in feuds. In Palestinian society, based on kinship relations with almost no history of civil law and courts, the customary law of mediation and arbitration serves as the principal mechanism of conflict resolution. Given the social prestige of mediators in this society, the tendency of customary law to favor the stronger clan enabled the Mujamma`’s conciliation committee to inject greater equity into this process and thus gain the support of the deprived and the indigent. 16
The Mujamma` leaders did not confine themselves to the local arena. Their ties with the MB in Jordan were instrumental in enabling them to forge close relations with Islamic institutions in Saudi Arabia, which in the 1970s and 1980s provided generous financial aid to Islamic associations and communities in the Middle East and elsewhere. These relations enabled the Mujamma` leadership to select and foster cadres among young Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who planned to attend school in the Arab states. Like the Palestinian resistance organizations, which received stipends and fellowships for Palestinian students from East European Communist states, the Mujamma` cultivated its future leadership and provided for its higher education by means of financial aid, ideological guidance, and scholarships for study in Saudi Arabia and the West.
These international connections abetted the Mujamma`’s fund-raising efforts in the neighboring countries and in the late 1980s contributed to the restructuring of Hamas based on “inside” and “outside” leadership and institutions and facilitated the movement’s activism in the context of Middle Eastern regional politics. During the Intifada, this pattern of relations was consolidated, with the center of gravity moving out of the occupied territories, reflecting the movement’s marked financial dependence on the outside supporting bases, especially those in Jordan.
The early 1980s witnessed a rapid growth of the Islamic movement in the Israeli-occupied territories, the causes of which were both external and internal. The 1979 Shi`i revolution in Iran helped stir the potent brew of militant Islam, especially in the Middle East. The plunge of oil prices caused a recession in the Gulf states and, concomitantly, a significant decrease in the demand for labor migrants, many of whom were Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. In addition, the unstable Israeli economy, battered by a stock market crisis in 1983, soaring inflation, and constraints imposed by the Israeli government or by free-market forces on the Palestinian economy, brought about a grave deterioration in social and economic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza.
Spurred by these developments and encouraged by its growing popularity, the Mujamma` leadership moved to penetrate the public sphere, hitherto dominated by the PLO. The Mujamma` stepped up its communal activities, particularly its attempts to take over mosques from the Department of Islamic Endowments (Da'irat al-awqaf al-islamiyya) and gain a foothold in voluntary and public institutions. The Mujamma` young leaders displayed their assertiveness by their willingness to use violence in confrontations with the nationalist Palestinian organizations, including Fatah. The Mujamma` appointed its own confidants as clergy, turning the mosques into political pulpits. Yet the repeated efforts, often accompanied by threats or sheer force, to take over the mosques officially controlled by the Department of Islamic Endowments and install Mujamma` clergy in key positions were only partially successful. The Islamic Endowment Department continued to finance the maintenance and pay the wages of employees in mosques that were now under Mujamma` control. However, the Mujamma` was unable to gain control of the Department of the Islamic Endowments of the Gaza Strip, which, given the volume of assets and personnel under its control, would have given the former incomparable economic and social leverage over all other institutions in the area. 17
Although so far abstaining from the armed struggle against Israel, the Mujamma` did not rule out violence as a means to impose the “true path” for the Palestinian Muslim community. Violence was built into the movement’s worldview from its very inception. Like other Islamic movements, the Mujamma` employed violence to impose Islamic norms on the population, particularly to prevent the consumption of alcohol and to ensure women’s modesty. Moreover, with the Mujamma` enjoying extensive popularity and undeniable presence in the Gaza Strip by the late 1970s, Yasin and his lieutenants, in their efforts to dominate the public sphere, encouraged the MB followers to join professional associations, labor unions, and other public institutions. Especially targeted for penetration were professional associations of physicians, lawyers, and engineers, in which the Mujamma` achieved rapid influence, reflecting the state of frustration and disillusionment among university graduates.
Most important still was the shaping of the Palestinian public agenda in the Gaza Strip by calling strikes, first on specific sectors and afterward also on trade and services. In January 1980, members of the MB who were identified with the Mujamma` set fire to the Palestinian Red Crescent office in Gaza, which was recognized as the stronghold of the leftist groups. In November 1981, Islamic figures who were identified with the Mujamma` and led by Mahmud al-Zahar imposed a general strike on the doctors’ association in the Gaza Strip to protest Israel’s introduction of a value-added tax into the occupied territories. In 1983, sporadic violent clashes erupted between Mujamma` members and PLO adherents over control of the Islamic University in Gaza, and such clashes became routine in the following years. By the mid-1980s, the Mujamma` and its offshoots had become increasingly involved in a political struggle with the nationalist mainstream. Relations between the Mujamma` and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which represented an ultraleftist viewpoint, were particularly volatile. 18
The Struggle over the Universities
The Mujamma`’s efforts to deepen its influence through lawful institutionalization peaked with its successful takeover of the Islamic University in Gaza. The university was established in 1978 following Egypt’s decision to deny Palestinian students access to its universities owing to a crisis in its relations with the PLO generated by President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem. Its student body grew rapidly. 19 The takeover of the university was brought about by the decline in the funds raised by the PLO for its budget, a shortfall that was made up by the Mujamma`. Until 1985, the PLO had contributed the lion’s share of the university’s budget, utilizing financial aid it received from the Gulf oil monarchies thanks to a decision by the Baghdad Arab summit conference in November 1978. However, the constant decrease in Arab financial aid to the PLO meant that a growing share of university funding had to come from abroad, primarily from the Islamic movement in Jordan, the Saudi-sponsored Muslim World’s League, and the Islamic Conference Organization. The fact that much of this funding was funneled to the university by the Islamic movement in Jordan through the Mujamma` underscored the movement’s developing international reach, albeit mainly in the context of fund-raising. By the early 1980s, representatives of the Islamic movement in Jordan constituted a majority on the university’s board of trustees, and in 1983 the MB-PLO power struggle in the university was decided in favor of the Islamists, leading to the appointment of Muhammad Saqr, a member of the MB in Jordan, as president. Saqr’s expulsion by the Israeli authorities a year later did nothing to diminish Islamic control of the university, which became a bastion of Islamic activity in the Gaza Strip. Parallel to the Islamic takeover at the management level, the Islamic students won a similar victory when in January 1983, the “Islamic bloc,” linked to the Mujamma`, won 51 percent of the votes in the elections to the student union. In 1986, the Islamic bloc obtained 61 percent of the votes, defeating a unified list of candidates linked to the PLO factions.
By the early 1990s, with more than five thousand students, mostly identified as Islamists, the Mujamma` became intensively involved in every facet of the university, from setting the budget to setting the curriculum and appointing the faculty. The university also became a legitimate instrument for channeling financial aid from external organizations and private donors to the Mujamma`. The Mujamma`’s central role in the university was strikingly demonstrated by the fact that more than 10 percent of the 415 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad deported by Israel to Lebanon in December 1992 were students and employees of the institution. 20
The Mujamma`’s growing presence and ideological influence at the Islamic University led to an escalation of the struggle with Fatah and the leftist factions on campus, which by 1985 had assumed an increasingly violent character. The campus clashes between the Mujamma` activists and the nationalist factions were a microcosm of the mounting tension and political struggle between the two currents. The growing violence employed by the Islamists against rival factions reflected their burgeoning self-confidence and their boldness in implementing an “internal jihad” to impose the rules of Islam on the society. This inclination toward violence, later directed also against the Israeli occupation, might have been influenced by the Egyptian MB’s experience and practices, in addition to the extremely poor social and economic conditions of the Gaza Strip: the incomparable density of population, the scarcity of economic resources, and the reality of refugee camps as the single dominant social factor.
Unlike the MB in the Gaza Strip, their colleagues in the West Bank engaged in more moderate and traditional public activities and their attempt at social penetration by institutional means came relatively late. The MB movement in the West Bank constituted an integral part of the Jordanian Islamic movement, which for many years had been aligned with the Hashemite regime. Furthermore, compared with their counterparts in the Gaza Strip, the MB in the West Bank represented a higher socio-economic profile—merchants, landowners, and middle-class officials and professionals. The alignment with the Hashemite regime facilitated the MB’s penetration of the religious establishment in the West Bank, which even after 1967 remained administratively and financially linked to Jordan. By the mid-1980s, a significant portion of the positions in West Bank religious institutions were held by MB.
Similar to, and possibly at the behest of the MB in the Gaza Strip, in 1974 a Young Men’s Muslim Association was established in East Jerusalem. The association sponsored various social activities in the fields of culture, education, youth and sports, in accordance with Islamic tradition. In the following years, the association opened branches in West Bank cities, villages, and refugee camps. A sharp shift occurred in the activities of the MB in the West Bank in the late 1970s, caused by the growing influx of students from the Gaza Strip, who were no longer able to pursue a higher education in Egypt, to the universities of Bir Zeit, Nablus, and Hebron. At the same time, increasing numbers of students from the West Bank’s rural periphery entered the higher educational system. By the mid-1980s, the vast majority of university students in the West Bank and Gaza came from rural families, representing a more militant political approach, which converged with the rising tide of radical Islam as an overall ideological system. 21
The widening Islamization of the West Bank society was seen in the growing presence of Islamic students on university campuses, including the reputable nationalist-leftist university of Bir Zeit. In the early 1980s, the Islamic groups were equal rivals of the nationalist factions identified with the PLO in elections for student councils. The trend toward Islamization in the West Bank was more broadly apparent in the intensive construction of new mosques, the closure of film theaters, and a general return to Islam as manifested in greater religious observance by individuals and the modest deportment of women in public. 22
The turn to Islam in the West Bank was probably also boosted by the ascendancy to power in 1977 of a nationalist-religious coalition in Israel. The new right-wing government embarked on a large-scale Jewish settlement effort in the West Bank, in which Gush Emunim (Bloc of the faithful), a religious-nationalist messianic group, played a central role. An intensified struggle by ultraradical Jewish messianic groups over shrines sacred to both Judaism and Islam—the Temple Mount (al-Haram al-sharif—the Noble sanctuary—site of the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques) broke out in the early 1980s in Jerusalem, and the Tomb of the Patriarchs (al-Haram al-ibrahimi—the Sanctuary of Abraham) in Hebron—thereby increasingly identifying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a religious one. A series of violent events linked to sacred sites heightened the image of a religious conflict, including the murder by a Jewish zealot of two Muslims in the Temple Mount compound in 1982, the attempt by a Jewish underground group to blow up the Temple Mount mosques in 1984, and another attempt by Jewish zealots to bomb the Muslim shrines, together with the murder of two Palestinian students at the Islamic University of Hebron. Although the merger of Islam and Palestinian nationalism was fully effected only after the eruption of the Intifada, Islamic verses and motifs appeared more and more often on maps of Palestine, and motifs of violent struggle adorned the logos of students’ Islamic groups. 23
Manifestations of internal violence by the MB in the West Bank were widespread by late 1986. As in the Gaza Strip, this violence was initially directed against individuals suspected of immoral conduct and against rival leftist factions. Yet despite voices in the MB calling for a jihad against Israel, the Israeli authorities continued to categorize the movement as nonviolent, even after the eruption of the Intifada. 24 As in other Arab-Muslim societies, then, the rise of radical Islam in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank soon exceeded its original cultural and social boundaries, spilling over into the political sphere, with a growing impact on the public discourse.
Endnotes
Note 1: Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 67–73. Back.
Note 2: On the development of the PLO’s program from its foundation, see Muhammad Muslih, “A Study of PLO Peace Initiatives, 1974–1988,” in A. Sela and M. Ma`oz, eds., The PLO and Israel: From Armed Conflict to Political Solution, 1964–1994 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 37–53. Back.
Note 3: On the patterns of action and means in such struggles, see Homi K. Bhabha, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation,” in Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 290–322. Back.
Note 4: Yehoshua Porath, The Arab-Palestinian National Movement 1929–1939: From Riots to Revolt (London: Frank Cass, 1978), pp. 183–189, 233–234; Shay Lahman, “Sheikh `Izz al-Din al-Qassam,” in Elie Kedourie and Silvia Haim, eds., Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel (London: Frank Cass, 1982), pp. 54–99. Back.
Note 5: Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 3; Haim Levenberg, “Ha-Ahim ha-Muslemim be-Eretz Israel, 1945–1948” (master’s thesis, Tel Aviv University, 1983), pp. 38–44, 100. Back.
Note 6: Amnon Cohen, Political Parties in the West Bank Under Jordanian Rule, 1948–1967 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980), pp. 179, 228. On the origins of the Islamic Liberation Party, see pp. 209–220; Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism, pp. 5–6. Back.
Note 7: On Qutb’s thought and influence, see Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and the Pharaoh (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 36–69. Back.
Note 8: Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism, p. 9. Back.
Note 9: `Atif `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, Hayatuhu wa-Jihaduhu [Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, his life and struggle] (Gaza: al-Jami`a al-Islamiyya, 1991), pp. 42–43, 81–83. On the development of the Islamic movement among Israel’s Arab citizens, see Thomas Meir, Hit`orerut ha-Muslemim be-Israel [The awakening of the Muslims in Israel] (Giv`at Haviva: ha-Makhon le-Limudim `Arviyim, 1988). Back.
Note 10: Hamas, “al-Haqiqa wal-Wujud” [Truth and existence] (a semiofficial history of Hamas), 1990, part 1, pp. 3–4. Back.
Note 11: Literally, a call (for submission to Allah). Practically, it became a code name for social and cultural activities, primarily Islamic preaching, education and social welfare, conducted by the Muslim Brothers. Back.
Note 12: `Adwan, Ahmad Yasin, pp. 27–28, 33. Back.
Note 13: Besides Yasin, among its leaders were Ibrahim al-Yazuri, `Abd al-`Aziz Rantisi, and Mahmud al-Zahar: see Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism, p. 16; `Adwan, Ahmad Yasin, pp. 50–52, 57–64; a request for registration, submitted by Jam`iyyat Jawrat al-Shams al-Islamiyya (the official name of the Mujamma`) signed by Ya`qub `Uthman Quwaiq to the Israeli Military Administration, August 4, 1977, ZHL, Ha-Pe`ilut ha-Islamit be-Hevel `Aza [IDF, Islamic activity in the Gaza region] (Gaza: Civil Administration, 1987), pp. 75–77. Back.
Note 14: A. Shabi and R. Shaked, Hamas: me-Emuna be-Allah le-Derekh ha-Teror [Hamas: From belief in Allah to the road of terror] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1994), p. 56. Back.
Note 15: ZHL [IDF], Ha-Pe`ilut ha-Islamit be-Hevel `Aza, p. 15; Michael Dumper, “Forty Years Without Slumbering: Waqf Politics and Administration in the Gaza Strip 1948–1987,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 20, no. 2 (1993): 186, 198; Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism, p. 16, argues that by the early 1990s, the Mujamma` controlled 40 percent of the mosques in the Gaza Strip. Back.
Note 16: Ifrah Zilberman, “Ha-Mishpat ha-Minhagi ke-Ma`arekhet Hevratit be-Merhav Yerushalaim” [Customary law as a social system in the area of Jerusalem], Ha-Mizrah He-Hadash 33, nos. 129–132 (1991): 70–93. Back.
Note 17: It is noteworthy that these endowments constituted 10 percent of the real estates in the Strip, including agricultural land, garages, bakeries, residential and commercial buildings, cemeteries, and educational and religious institutions, mostly in the city of Gaza, that provided employment for a few thousand of clergymen, officials, and menial workers. ZHL [IDF], Ha-Pe`ilut ha-Islamit be-Hevel `Aza, pp. 13, 22, 48–49. Back.
Note 18: `Adwan, Ahmad Yasin, pp. 89–91, 137; Jean-François Legrain, “Hamas: Legitimate Heir of Palestinian Nationalism?” in J. L. Esposito, ed., Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism or Reform (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1997), p. 163. Back.
Note 19: In 1985–1986, there were 4,315 students: ZHL [IDF], Ha-Pe`ilut ha-Islamit be-Hevel `Aza, p. 37. Back.
Note 20: See `Adwan, Ahmad Yasin, pp. 64–78, 87–88; Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism, p. 17; Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, pp. 72–75. Back.
Note 21: Glenn E. Robinson, Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 35. Back.
Note 22: Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, p. 75. Back.
Note 23: ZHL [IDF], Ha-Pe`ilut ha-Islamit be-Hevel `Aza, pp. 82–85, 89; Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, pp. 61–63, 99. Back.
Note 24: Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, pp. 64–66, 96–97. Back.
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