The Palestinian Hamas: Chapter 2

The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence

Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela

2000

2. Dogmas and Dilemmas

The “return of Islam” in the Middle East was the result of a host of underlying processes, beginning with the searing Arab defeat in the 1967 war, which demonstrated the failure of the dominant nationalist and socialist ideologies to address the social and political problems in the Arab states. The perceived success with which the Arabs emerged from the 1973 war and the consequent rising expectations for political and economic gains deriving from the unprecedented flow of Arab oil wealth paradoxically led to a deepening sense of alienation toward the ruling elites among growing segments of the Arab public.

The failure of the Arab states to make the social and economic progress their people yearned for, the widening socioeconomic gap between rich and poor, and the growing phenomenon of social and moral anomie identified with Western culture especially affected the urban, educated, lower middle-class Muslims. Their disillusion with modernity and revolutionary secularism heightened their inclination to seek refuge in religious traditions as a cure for the current social malaise and as a source of individual and collective hope. The growing trend of Islamization and institutionalization in the cultural and social spheres soon assumed a political, sometimes violent, form.

The revival of Islam as a collective cultural and political force and its return to the center of the public stage were relatively rapid, not least because the secular political discourse itself had drawn heavily on Islamic symbols and terminology, reflecting Islam’s primacy in the social and cultural life of the Arab Muslim peoples. ₁ The new Islamic discourse became the primary means of preserving collective identity and unity, as well as for legitimizing political movements and regimes. Its spokesmen portrayed Islam as the sole normative option capable of guiding public conduct and individual behavior in the face of internal and external challenges to the Islamic society.

The Islamic trend was significantly encouraged by the permissive policy of Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat toward the Muslim Brothers (MB) in Egypt, which allowed the movement to renew its public activity, as well as by Saudi financial aid to establish and institutionalize communal Islamic activities in both the Middle East and the West. Since the 1920s, advocates of a return to Islam had urged the adoption of the ideals of the Prophet’s community of believers as the proper response to moral disorientation, social disintegration, and the political weakness of Islam vis-à-vis the West. The call for a return to basics thus became the guiding tenet for modern Islamic movements. The early Muslim faithful—the “Righteous Ancestors” (al-Salaf al-salih)—were portrayed as an exemplary religious and political community in which Islamic law (shari`a) prevailed as the sole source of guidance and in which the community of believers (umma) determined the boundaries of the Islamic state, cutting across ethnicity and national identities. Even though this universal approach has marked many of the more extreme Islamic groups, mainstream Islamic movements have increasingly assumed a national character, acquiescing in the emerging international order of independent and sovereign states and confining their activity in state boundaries. ₂

Indeed, contemporary political Islam has displayed diversity not only between but also within states, in the form of diverse political groups, social movements, and parties that differ in their platforms, priorities, attitudes, and relations with the ruling elites. Students of contemporary Islamic movements have discerned two poles of Islamic thought in the twentieth century. One is revolutionary, holding that society should be “Islamized” through the seizure of power, legally or violently, after which the state machinery is used to re-Islamize the society from above, as happened in Iran and Sudan. The other pole is reformist, for which the advent of the Islamic state is the result of a long-term, continuous, incremental process of Islamization, achieved primarily by education and social action from the bottom up (neofundamentalism). ₃

Reformist Islam was espoused by the founder of the MB movement, Hasan al-Banna, following the Indian example of associations for Islamic education and missionary activity (tabligh wa-da`wa). Al-Banna assumed a comprehensive approach to society and politics, envisioning a gradual change from the bottom of the pyramid up to the state’s power base. He did not restrict himself to education and preaching, however, and in the late 1930s when his movement began to assume mass dimensions, he also tried to enter the political arena. Although he failed as a candidate for the Egyptian parliament in the 1945 elections, his approach until his assassination in 1948 reflected an attempt to combine reformist missionary activity with revolutionary methods, including penetration of the military, the use of political violence, and the creation of an armed force, leading to a clash with the regime. Al-Banna’s combined strategy of da`wa and militancy for creating an ideal Islamic society may explain the sharp fluctuations in relations between the MB and the Egyptian regime since the 1940s. With some variation—avoiding the use of armed force—al-Banna’s reformist-political strategy was adopted by Islamic movements in other Arab countries where political conditions allowed, as in, for example, the Jordanian MB’s lengthy record of coexistence and cooperation with the Hashemite regime, and the movement’s similar pattern in Sudan.

Revolutionary, violent Islam has been identified primarily with Sayyid Qutb’s militant doctrine, which viewed non-Islamic rule as jahiliyya (the pre-Islamic era, portrayed by Muslims as a period of ignorance and darkness). This sort of regime, which contradicts the principle of “the sovereignty of God” (al-hakimiyya li-llah), is inherently heretical and therefore must be fought through a holy war. At the same time, the true believers must separate themselves from the contaminated society by means of migration (hijra) and create their own Islamic space, protected from the omnipotent state machinery. ₄ Qutb’s views, shaped during the mid-1950s, the worst years of persecution and violent repression of the MB by the Nasserist regime in Egypt, had by the mid-1970s become a beacon for extremist Islamic groups in Egypt and afterward in Syria and Algeria. These militant groups adopted the idea of a violent “internal jihad” in the Muslim community, making it a cardinal element of their theory and practice. ₅

The idea of violent revolution as a means of imposing Islamization from above and restoring the Islamic caliphate has been preached by the Palestinian “Islamic Liberation Party” since the early 1950s, and an offshoot of this group staged a violent coup attempt in Egypt in 1974. But it was the 1979 Shi`i Islamic revolution in Iran that seemed to seal the triumph of the revolutionary approach in political Islam, inducing previously reformist-minded groups to shift to revolutionary Islamism. The revolutionary approach also was adopted by Islamic groups, including Palestinians, in the Arab countries as the operative model against regimes that refused to implement Islamic law. ₆

The use of violence by Muslims against other Muslims has remained generally unacceptable to the mainstream of radical Islam. In fact, such violence has been repeatedly depicted as civil strife (fitna), a loaded term evoking the recurrent civil wars in Islamic history, which are considered to have caused the decline of Islam’s political power. But the use of violence by Muslims against non-Muslims in military confrontations, notably in the Arab-Israeli conflict, is viewed in an entirely different light. In the early 1980s, the ethos of Islamic mobilization for a defensive war against Islam’s enemies was invoked in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Israel’s 1982 incursion into Lebanon. The effective elimination of the Palestinian armed struggle as a result of the expulsion of the PLO and its armed forces from Lebanon, and Israel’s continued presence in southern Lebanon, paved the way for the emergence of Lebanese radical Shi`i resistance to the Israeli occupation. The continued armed struggle against Israel in southern Lebanon, conducted primarily by the Iranian-backed Hizballah, affirmed the militant Shi`i movement as the true carrier of the Islamic ethos of defiance of foreign invaders by holy war. ₇

The perception that Islam was under political attack by non-Muslims, coupled with the rise of radical Islam in the Arab world, rekindled the debate over the use of jihad. Though theological in character and taking as its point of departure the Islamic perception of jihad as a fundamental duty, the new discourse reflected a struggle between rival social and political viewpoints that might be explained in the context of state-society relations. Clearly, for militant Islamic groups, jihad in defense of Islamic lands was a useful rallying myth and a potential instrument of political mobilization. Hence, they adopted the classical interpretation of defensive holy war, elevating it to a primary precept—second only to the Islamic credo (shahada)—of the individual Muslim. The definition of jihad as an individual duty (fard `ain) clashed head-on with the traditional perception of holy war as a collective duty of the Islamic community (fard kifaya) or as the prerogative of the political authority. ₈ To support this militant interpretation, exemplary Islamic figures were evoked, such as `Izz al-Din al-Qassam, whose individual jihad against the British Mandate authorities and the Jewish community in Palestine in the early 1930s became a role model for the current Islamic generation. ₉

Between Revolution and Reform: Palestinian Militant Islam

It might have been thought that the Jewish domination of historic Palestine and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would decisively turn Palestinian Islamists toward the revolutionary version of Islam. In fact, the MB in the occupied territories oscillated between two main attitudes and strategies: revolutionary versus reformist.

The interpretation of a defensive jihad as the principal religious duty of a Muslim became increasingly popular among Palestinian Islamists during the 1980s, along with the MB’s growing presence and influence among the people. Palestinian Islamic radicals, however, took conflicting approaches toward the implementation of a defensive jihad, between a universal Islamic view, represented by Sheikh `Abdallah `Azzam, and an ultranationalist trend, embodied by the group called Islamic Jihad (al-Jihad al-islami).

Defending Islamic lands in the face of the infidels’ invasion was deemed tantamount to defending the Islamic community as a whole, since any political or military success by the infidels might sow doubts about Islam itself. The most conspicuous spokesman of this approach was Sheikh `Abdallah `Azzam, who issued a scholarly religious opinion (fatwa) to this effect, supported by highly respected scholars in Muslim countries. Individuals were thus enjoined to undertake the duty of jihad on their own, in disregard of basic social norms and commitments—the child without permission from his father, the wife without her husband, and the slave without his master. ₁₀ `Azzam, who represented the young militant leadership in the MB movement in Jordan, had spearheaded their military activities against Israel in the late 1960s. ₁₁ In view of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he fulfilled his own fatwa by leading a group of Jordanian and Palestinian volunteers as mujahidun in the guerrilla war against the Soviet invaders, where he was killed in 1989. `Azzam’s explanation why the duty of jihad in Afghanistan should take precedence was circumstantial, namely, the Muslim rebels’ commitment to establish an Islamic state and geographic and social conditions favorable to guerrilla warfare. ₁₂

`Azzam’s all-Islamic approach to the fulfillment of a defensive jihad, however, has remained marginal among Palestinian militant Islamists. Rather, the mainstream of Palestinian adherents of jihad has given clear priority to the armed struggle against Israel, a preference that carries a clear nationalist imprint. In the early 1980s, the Palestinian Islamist spectrum was mainly inspired, at the revolutionary pole, by Jihad groups in Egypt and the Iranian Shi`i revolution. The leading figures in this current emerged from the ranks of the Islamic Liberation Party, which since 1974 had been active against the Egyptian regime. The usual spokesman of this activist stream among Palestinian Islamists was Fathi Shiqaqi, a physician who in the mid-1980s became the leader of Islamic Jihad.

Shiqaqi called for the unification of Sunni and Shi`i Islam and the mobilization of all Muslims for the liberation of Palestine through jihad. Other Islamic figures who subscribed to an Islamic type of Palestinian nationalism were Sheikh As`ad Bayyud al-Tamimi (aka “the commander of Jihad”), the leader of Al-Jihad al-Islami—Bait al-Maqdis (the Islamic Jihad—Jerusalem), and Sheikh `Abd al-`Aziz `Awda, who, like Shiqaqi, was influenced by Egyptian jihad groups. These spokesmen of holy war against Israel, however, were fully aware of the division in the Muslim world and so were impatient to turn to arms “here and now.” It was this motivation that underlay the new agenda they offered to Palestinian Islamists, as well as to MB worldwide: jihad for the liberation of Palestine should precede any other defensive holy war. Indeed, the spokesmen of Islamic Jihad perceived the idea of Islamic revolution as a means to promote the armed struggle against Israel rather than to pave the way to the Islamization of society. ₁₃

Contrary to the Islamic Jihad, which prescribed a revolutionary holy war without delay, the mainstream of MB in the Gaza Strip identified with al-Mujamma` al-Islami, adhered to the reformist concept and refrained from violent activity against Israel. Al-Mujamma` leaders in Gaza envisioned a transformation of the society from below through the creation of an Islamic space. That the Mujamma` continued to focus on a reformist approach to Islamic action was due mainly to Israel’s tacit consent to Islamic education and preaching and the establishment of a social and religious infrastructure in the occupied territories. Apparently the Israeli authorities considered this brand of Islamic activity harmless and able to offset the nationalist militant movements operating under the PLO’s umbrella. ₁₄ Thus, whereas al-Jihad al-Islami adopted an unequivocal Palestinian national identity, the Mujamma` claimed allegiance to an imagined Islamic community. And contrary to the Islamic Jihad, the Mujamma` blurred the boundaries between a narrow territorial state (dawla qutriyya) and a broad Islamic nation (umma), following instead the “great religion” (al-din al-`azim) and its written law, the Qur'an. ₁₅

Before the Intifada, the Mujamma` gave priority to an “internal jihad” in the Muslim community over an “external jihad” against Israel and the West. The Mujamma` founders believed that the external jihad should be postponed until the advent of the Islamic state, which would assume responsibility for it. Moreover, since Israel’s very existence was the result of the abandonment of Islamic norms, only when the Islamization of society was completed and the shari`a fully implemented would the Muslims be capable of defeating Israel. ₁₆ Thus, although the Mujamma` identified Israel as a religious and political enemy, the military option seemed premature as long as the Islamic state had not been established and preparations for a prolonged armed struggle remained inadequate. The MB’s passive approach to the armed struggle against Israel drew fire from the nationalist Palestinian factions, which accused the MB of collaborating with Israel. This criticism, combined with the violence launched by Islamic Jihad against Israel and the growing number of young Islamic activists imprisoned by Israel, caused the young militants of the Mujamma` to press the veteran leaders to take up arms against Israel. ₁₇

The PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon in 1982 effectively nullified the Palestinians’ military option and weakened the PLO politically in the Arab world. More specifically, the first three years after the Lebanon debacle witnessed a deepening rift between the PLO and Syria, a Syrian-backed revolt in Fatah against the PLO leadership, the disintegration of the PLO on grounds of ideological differences, and a prolonged siege imposed by the Shi`i Amal militia on Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. At the same time, the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, although living under stressful economic and psychological conditions, were trying to build institutions and strengthen the civilian society, which, particularly in view of the PLO’s situation, was demonstrating greater self-reliance and motivation for collective political action. Indeed, after the Lebanon war, the center of gravity in the Palestinian national movement shifted from the neighboring countries into the occupied territories, which were now perceived as a crucial political asset and the only one that could reactivate international interest in the Palestine national cause. ₁₈

The implications of the PLO’s situation after its expulsion from Lebanon and the developments in the Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza were clearly reflected in the MB’s thought and practice. The perception that the PLO was militarily and politically bankrupt apparently induced the Mujamma` leadership to contemplate the possibility that it could become a political alternative. Such a radical transformation in the Mujamma` strategy necessitated conceptual and structural changes, expressed particularly in actions of a national nature, which meant, in practice, armed struggle against Israel. Already in 1983, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, the founder and first president of al-Mujamma`, ordered members of the organization to secretly gather firearms, which were then distributed among selected operatives. In 1984, this effort was discovered by the Israeli military authorities, who also found weapons in the home of Sheikh Yasin himself. Yasin claimed that the weapons were intended for defense against rival Palestinian groups and not against Israel. Nonetheless, he was sentenced to thirteen years in prison but was released after less than a year as part of a prisoner exchange between Israel and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command. ₁₉

It was probably Israel’s exposure of the Mujamma`’s new policy that led to Yasin’s decision in 1986 to establish a security apparatus that would collect information about collaborators with Israeli intelligence. Once established, the security unit also became involved in the “internal jihad,” which had the aim of imposing Islamic rules on the society and punishing drug dealers, prostitutes, and purveyors of pornographic videos. The main lessons the Mujamma` drew from the arms-gathering fiasco were to ensure strict compartmentalization and to entrust such activities to junior, less familiar activists, who would be unlikely to attract the attention of Israeli intelligence. The new apparatus was entitled the Organization of Jihad and Da`wa (Munazzamat al-jihad wal-da`wa), abbreviated Majd (literally, glory). This unit carried out violent activities, including arson, kidnapping, and rough interrogations and—with Yasin’s permission, apparently rendered in the form of a fatwa—also executed suspected collaborators with Israel. In 1987, Majd was headed by Salah Shihadah, a well-known preacher, who was in charge of student affairs at the Islamic University in Gaza. ₂₀

The growing tendency of Islamic youth to undertake violent activities against Israel was reflected in the establishment in 1986/87 of the Movement of the Islamic Resistance (Harakat al-muqawama al-islamiyya), the Frontier Guards on the Land of the Travel (al-Murabitun `ala ard al-isra'), ₂₁ the Islamic Holy Warriors Organization (Munazzamat al- jihadiyyin al-islamiyyin), and, as already noted, the Islamic Jihad. Even before the outbreak of the Intifada, then, nascent Islamic military organizations had been formed, presaging the full-blown involvement of the Islamic movement in violence and mass protests. ₂₂

The spontaneous riots that erupted on December 9, 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza and rapidly swelled into a popular uprising, soon to be called the Intifada, underscored both the power of the ethos of armed struggle against Israel and the social and political conditions, which were ripe for its fulfillment in the occupied territories. The volcanic eruption of violence took the Mujamma` leaders by surprise and presented them with a dilemma in view of their previous official abstention from armed struggle against the Israeli occupation and their focus on communal and educational activities. The Mujamma` leaders were also concerned that the PLO would capitalize on the riots to restore its status, which had declined since 1982. Furthermore, the riots offered the potential for mass mobilization; any other course would provoke the defection of young activists. A keen competitor was the Islamic Jihad, which had played a leading role in the armed struggle against Israel in 1986/87.

Faced with this situation, the Mujamma` leaders felt constrained to submit to the pressure of their young militants and adopt an actively combatant posture, consistent with the Palestinians’ public mood and expectations. The young leaders of the Mujamma` consisted of students and professionals who had taken part in confrontations with their nationalist counterparts over the control of voluntary and public institutions, in which they acquired experience in mobilizing, organizing, and leading violent protests. Many of them had also spent time in Israeli prisons, where veteran Palestinian prisoners trained them in clandestine activities. Thus, as the Intifada erupted, these young Mujamma` activists were psychologically and organizationally keyed up for armed struggle against Israel. ₂₃

The Mujamma`’s decision to adopt a “jihad now” policy against “the enemies of Allah” was thus largely a matter of survival. But it also sparked an internal debate revolving around personal rivalries, interests, and worldviews, which eventually resulted in a compromise between the communal-educational reformist approach and the combatant activist approach of defensive jihad. In the early days of the Intifada, the compromise led to the formation of Hamas as a separate body. ₂₄ Ostensibly independent of the MB mother movement, Hamas would presumably ensure the Mujamma`’s immunity from Israeli reprisal and enable it to continue its activities. It was not until February 1988, however, after the Intifada had swept through the Palestinian population in the occupied territories and demonstrated the new popular role played by the Islamic movement, that the name Hamas (an acronym for Harakat al-muqawama al-islamiyya—literally, enthusiasm) was formally adopted. In May 1988 Hamas took another step toward consolidating its image as a combatant movement and an inseparable part of the MB, by defining itself as the “strong arm” of the Muslim Brothers. And in its charter, published that August, Hamas styled itself as a “wing” of the MB. ₂₅

Hamas’s entry into the political arena was announced in a leaflet it published—the first of many—on December 14, five days after the serious rioting had begun. This leaflet reflected an interweaving of Islamic ideology, social institutions, and Palestinian nationalism, which injected a new militancy into the idea of Palestinian national liberation and accorded the new movement an image of authenticity and strong appeal to the masses. By launching Hamas, the founding fathers of the Mujamma` had effectively adopted jihad as a means for achieving national and religious redemption, recognizing the primacy of armed struggle to mobilize the masses, and taking the initiative in guiding the popular uprising. That the advent of Hamas was indeed spontaneous, caused by the riots, is confirmed by the absence of a similar response by the MB in the West Bank. It was not until January 1988 that at Yasin’s direction, an organizational infrastructure began to be formed in the West Bank and Jerusalem. This mission, beginning with the delivery of Hamas leaflets from Gaza and their distribution in the West Bank and Jerusalem, was entrusted to Jamil Hamami, a clerk in the Waqf office in Nablus. ₂₆

It is noteworthy that in retrospect, Hamas invoked its prestige as a jihadist-nationalist movement to embellish its pre-Intifada history and refute the claim that it had been dragged unwillingly into the uprising. To accomplish this, Hamas traced its roots in pre-PLO history, from Sheikh `Izz al-Din al-Qassam in the early 1930s through the MB’s adherence since 1967 to the principle of jihad for the liberation of Palestine. The Mujamma`’s passive approach to the Israeli occupation was now presented as a necessary period of preparation for the Islamic armed struggle, which eventually sparked the uprising. The rewriting of the MB’s pre-Intifada history in a Palestinian nationalist context was a symptom of the intensifying political competition with the PLO over the shaping of the Palestinian agenda. Above all, it epitomized the primacy of the Palestinian nationalist discourse in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an integral element of the Intifada. ₂₇

Hamas’s active participation in the Intifada threatened the PLO’s hegemony and political domination of the Palestinian arena. Concerned that Hamas might fragment and weaken the Intifada effort, the PLO argued repeatedly that it was Israel that had brought about the establishment of Hamas in order to split the forces of the Intifada and degrade the PLO’s status in the Palestinian population. An escalation of the tension between Hamas and Fatah was inevitable once Hamas began to compete with the United National Command (the PLO-based Intifada leadership) over the day-to-day agenda of the uprising, employing similar means of public communication, such as leaflets, and identical strategies of struggle against Israel, including armed resistance. ₂₈

The transition to politics and armed struggle represented by Hamas was intended to complement, not replace, the social activities identified with the Mujamma`. Nonetheless, Hamas also represented a shift of emphasis in the Islamic movement’s strategy from reformist and communal to political and from the spiritual life of the individual to national action. Whereas it had previously been focused almost exclusively on education, welfare, and community life, the Mujamma`’s core now assumed a bifocal form, combining the previous activity with organized political protest and violence against Israel, which posed a challenge to the mainstream Fatah organization. Initially intended to be an autonomous organization within the MB movement, Hamas practically turned into the hard core of the Islamic movement, with its own ideological and political stature, which soon overshadowed and in fact co-opted the MB mother movement.

The founders of Hamas, headed by Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, were essentially the senior figures of the Mujamma` in the Gaza Strip, hence the latter’s significance for understanding Hamas’s conduct and the interplay between the civilian and the military spheres of action and between the reformist and the nationalist-activist approaches of Islamic action. The hard core of Islamic activists in both wings of the MB was composed of young men in their thirties, who were residents of refugee camps, mostly professionals, some of whom were preachers, and the leadership was composed of predominantly white-collar professionals with a secular academic background and, to a lesser extent, of religious scholars. ₂₉

A Pan-Vision and National Perceptions

By adopting the defensive jihad as a pivotal principle in the liberation of Palestine, the Islamic Jihad and Hamas effectively followed Fatah and other Palestinian activist groups, which in the late 1950s and early 1960s formulated the Palestinian revolutionary strategy of a “popular armed struggle” against Israel. This strategy represented not only a Palestinian outcry in reaction to the Arab states’ delay in undertaking the necessary military effort to liberate Palestine. It also embodied the nucleus of Palestinian nationalism, asserting the role of the Palestinians in this effort, though without exempting the Arab states from their overall responsibility to liberate Palestine.

The new strategy was an effort to reorder the strategic pan-Arab priorities that had been set by Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser, namely, Arab unity as a prerequisite for the liberation of Palestine. Thus, with the establishment of the PLO in May 1964, Fatah and other Palestinian guerrilla groups criticized its founder and first chairman, Ahmad al-Shuqairi, for subordinating the Palestine cause to Nasser’s agenda. Fatah claimed that adherence to a distant vision of Arab unity as a panacea for the Palestine problem effectively meant indefinitely procrastinating the war against Israel, thus perpetuating Israel’s existence and wiping out the Palestinian identity and cause. Fatah suggested that an immediate popular armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine would serve the cause of Arab unity, since it was bound to deepen solidarity among the Arab peoples through their joint military effort on behalf of Palestine. Fatah went still further, declaring that the very fate of the Arab world depended on the liberation of Palestine and the elimination of the “Zionist entity.” ₃₀

Fatah’s revisionist approach intensified the intrinsic contradiction between the raison d’état of particular Arab ruling elites and the raison de la révolution of the Palestinian militants. Fatah did not balk at deliberately embroiling the Arab states in a war with Israel against their will. Rather, by undertaking the role of the vanguard of the Arab world in its struggle to liberate Palestine, Fatah challenged Nasser’s status as the standard bearer of pan-Arab nationalism and the collective strategy in the conflict with Israel. ₃₁ The organization’s revolutionary style did not question the underlying premises of pan-Arab nationalism. On the contrary, it took into account the indispensable role of the Arab world as the mainstay of the material and moral resources needed for the liberation of Palestine. In fact, Fatah strove to subordinate pan-Arab interests and capabilities to the Palestinian cause and, more specifically, to the Palestinian armed struggle, which was meant to be a primary mechanism of mass mobilization and Palestinian nation building. Thus, apart from dragging the Arab world into the fray, the armed struggle was meant to be a rallying ideological and practical force that would unify all Palestinians, regardless of their ideological and political differences or geographical disconnection. ₃₂

This shift among the Palestinians from a visionary pan-Arabism to a territorial-national perception was most vividly expressed in the years after the 1967 war. Following the Arabs’ military defeat and the Israelis’ occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian nationalism underwent radical changes, especially in its operational strategy, institutions, and leadership. It is here, therefore, that one should look to understand how the PLO became more aware of the need for autonomous Palestinian decision making rather than for all-Arab calculations and why the liberation of all of Palestine, through a strategy of armed struggle, became the common goal of all PLO factions.

In retrospect, however, it was this grand PLO strategy that accelerated the thrust toward territorialization and the adjustment of policy to the new circumstances and to “here and now” considerations. In the post-1973 war era, the PLO adopted the “phased strategy,” namely, the establishment of a Palestinian state in a recovered West Bank and Gaza Strip as a “temporary” solution, deferring the realization of the ultimate goal of a state in all of Palestine to an indefinite future. Justification for the process was the PLO’s recognition of its limits and, more concretely, of its diminishing resources and opportunities. Apart from the developing peace process between Israel and its neighboring Arab states following the 1973 war, it was the quest for the “independence of Palestinian decision making” that reshaped the PLO’s preferences and strategies. By the same token, it was this process of accommodation to changing circumstances that led the PLO to gradually forsake its association with the grand Arab vision, which indeed no longer had the support of the Arab states themselves.

This redefinition of aspirations in narrow territorial terms has been a major source of the Palestinians’ national debate, cutting across nationalist and religious groups. Nonetheless, forced by regional developments, the PLO’s focus on the Israeli-occupied territories steadily widened in the 1970s, and its competition with Jordan intensified over representation of the Palestinians in the post-1973 war peace process and the Israelis’ parallel efforts at settling these areas. Seeking to build its political position in these territories as the exclusive Palestinian national authority, the PLO embarked on a process of institution building, in addition to accelerating its dispersal of financial aid. This process was further heightened by the PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon in 1982/83 by Israel and then Syria, leaving it at a political and military nadir and forcing it more than ever before to rely on the Palestinian territorial and communal base of the occupied territories. From the mid-1970s through the uprising in the late 1980s, the significance of the occupied territories as a primary asset for the Palestinian national movement had already been manifested by the PLO’s increasing political involvement and presence through social and political institutionalization in the West Bank and Gaza. Hence, in addition to the diminishing opportunities and resources at the regional level, the PLO was constrained to fulfill its responsibility as the national representative of the Palestinian people by paying more attention to the hardships and needs of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. ₃₃

The Palestinian shift from a pan-Arab vision toward a more particularist perception dovetailed with the larger processes of the nationalization and territorialization of “pan” movements in the Arab Middle East after 1967. This trend was spawned mainly by a conspicuous strengthening of Arab states due to the emergence of military-authoritarian regimes, the expansion of state bureaucracies, and centralized economies. Once they consolidated their power and stability, the Arab ruling elites were better able to reinterpret pan-Arab symbols in accordance with their specific interests and to promote a sense of nation-state at the expense of suprastate identities. Both pan-Arab radical groups and Palestinian organizations were repressed or co-opted into the political system by the ruling elites. Nonetheless, suprastate symbols and values remained a powerful attraction among the masses, spawned by a deep sense of Arab-Islamic solidarity. The restrictions on civilian groups and associations in most Arab states until the late 1980s left the arena free for the Islamic movements to flourish, thanks to their network of mosques and other religious institutions, and access to the media for Islamic preaching. ₃₄ Islamic activism also stepped into the vacuum caused by the ruling elites’ failure to provide appropriate solutions to social and economic distress. As in the case of Egypt in the late 1970s, the strengthening popular power of the Islamic movements and mounting socioeconomic difficulties in the 1980s forced the ruling elites in Tunisia, Jordan, Algeria, and Yemen to adopt a strategy of controlled and limited democratization. Despite its shortcomings, this process enabled the Islamic movements to further penetrate the society through voluntary associations, to establish political organizations, to participate in general elections, to gain a presence in representative institutions, and, for insignificant periods, even to share executive power.

On the whole, the greater the opportunities were for the Islamic movements to engage in legal political activities, the more they were inclined to use this channel to gain access to power, legitimacy, and public influence. In the process, the Islamic movements adopted the concept of a state and territorial boundaries to mark their arena of political action. They also tended to define their goals less in terms of changing the regime and more in terms of a comprehensive implementation of Islamic law in society and state (on the issue of political participation, see chapter 5). The road was thus clear for the emergence of a narrowly defined nationalism based on the territorial state (al-Dawla al-qutriyya) and the rapid Islamization of society. Nonetheless, tension between secular nationalism and Islamic religiosity still prevailed, nurturing ideological as well as political competition.

In the microcosm of the Israeli-occupied territories, these developments took a very localized form. Thus, it was against the backdrop of a PLO-dominated political arena that the emergence of al-Mujamma` al-islami in the Gaza Strip, with its efforts at social penetration and mobilization and also competition over existing institutions and public power bases in the Palestinian society, challenged the established Palestinian leadership. Indeed, by the mid-1980s, the competition between the Mujamma` and Fatah became the hallmark of Palestinian communal politics, especially in the Gaza Strip.

From the outset, the Mujamma` focused on communal activity, which underlay its local nature and link to the specific needs of the population under Israeli occupation. Al-Mujamma` provided civil services that constituted an effective network combining a social infrastructure, political protection, and a popular basis. This network functioned as a parallel system to the absent, or meager, Israeli occupation services, which had been particularly lacking in the Gaza Strip’s refugee camps, whose population comprised more than half the population in this territory. The necessity for such civil services was doubly acute because since the late 1970s, the Israeli military government had gradually reduced its social and economic investments in the Palestinian infrastructure in the occupied territories. Moreover, the very existence of a military occupier encouraged local Palestinian individuals and groups to establish voluntary organizations, mainly with the aim of extending social services, which were generally identified with PLO factions. ₃₅ In retrospect, the image of the Mujamma` as an institution focusing on religious and social activities apparently well served the Islamic trend in the Gaza Strip, which could gather public support without appearing to threaten the PLO’s hegemonic position among the Palestinians.

Hamas and the PLO

As in the case of Fatah, the genesis of Hamas represented a shift from the Mujamma`’s universal Islamic vision to a focus on the Palestinian national agenda and a strategy of armed struggle. In retrospect, this shift was more gradual than it may seem, evolving gradually in the mid-1980s following the PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon and the growing awareness among Palestinians that armed struggle was no longer a viable option. For the refugees especially, their sense of despair at the PLO’s performance was compounded by the organization’s effective abandonment of its national charter, a development manifested in its adoption of a two-state solution. Indeed, the results of the 1982 war in Lebanon, seen in the flagrant discrepancy between the PLO’s conduct and the principles of the Palestinian National Charter, brought about the virtual disintegration of the organization and undercut the charter’s moral force as a rallying call for all the Palestinian factions in the PLO. Particularly crucial were the PLO’s political dialogue with Jordan over the acceptance of the 1967 United Nations Security Council resolution 242 and its consent to participate in an international peace conference with Israel. This perception was apparently one reason for Sheikh Ahmad Yasin’s decision to establish an armed body to resume the military struggle against Israel. ₃₆ Indeed, as mentioned earlier, the emergence of Hamas was preceded by several attempts to combine the nationalist and Islamic visions in a combative jihad movement.

The adoption of a combative jihad by the Mujamma` leaders represented a revolt against the conventional agenda and strategic priorities that was similar to Fatah’s revolt against the Nasserist agenda of “unity first.” Just as Fatah’s “popular armed struggle” had challenged Nasser’s insistence on long-term preparations for the decisive war against Israel, the principle of individual jihad defied the PLO’s authority as the exclusive national force, not least because the PLO seemed no longer involved in an armed struggle against Israel. Furthermore, Hamas espoused political as well as religious fundamentalism, adhering to the basic Palestinian national premises and strategic values at a time when the PLO seemed to have compromised them.

The emergence of Hamas as a full-fledged Islamic-nationalist liberation movement only after the uprising had been perceived as durable reflected an acute internal debate in the Islamic movement. The essential problem was how to combine an Islamic vision with a nationalist one in a “jihadist” movement. At first, the Mujamma` leaders pressed for full involvement in the struggle for Palestinian national liberation. But they had to test the public’s response before finally committing themselves to the new movement and its mélange of Palestinian Islamic nationalism. And as in the case of Fatah, the Mujamma`’s decision to adopt a “nationalist jihad” was meant to serve as an instrument of mobilization and to build a national society driven by a high combative spirit rather than as a means to liberate Palestine physically from Israeli occupation. ₃₇

Essentially, the establishment of Hamas by the Mujamma` sought to bridge the gap between Palestinian nationalism and Islamism, on the theory that a thrust in the direction of one would hasten the realization of the other. Hamas thus adopted both ideas, of a national territory and an armed struggle, in their religious meaning: “To raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” Aware, though, of its inability to liberate Palestine, Hamas also injected an all-Arab and all-Islamic dimension into its goals: it would serve as an exemplary vanguard in the resurgence of the Arab and Muslim world against Zionism and imperialism in order to rescue it from its state of servile inaction. Like Fatah, then, Hamas presented the liberation of Palestine and the Arab-Islamic resurrection (nahda) as a dialectic in which the success of either depended on the advancement of the other. ₃₈

With the outbreak of the Intifada, the advent of Hamas with a discourse fusing Palestinian nationalism and Islamism clashed head-on with the PLO’s claim to exclusive national authority. According to the Islamic movement, this situation was what prompted the secular-nationalist groups to join forces under the Unified National Command (UNC) in January 1988 and impede the rise of Hamas. ₃₉ In a few months, the UNC and Hamas found themselves taking very different paths as the Intifada began to yield concrete results. In June 1988, an Arab summit conference in Algiers allocated funds to the PLO to fuel the Intifada. In late July, King Hussein declared Jordan’s administrative disengagement from the West Bank, paving the way for the publication of a political program to establish a government in exile and bring about an independent Palestinian state, worked out by a Jerusalem-based group of Fatah activists led by Faisal al-Husseini.

The UNC announced its full support for Husseini’s program. It urged the Palestinian National Council (PNC), which was due to convene its nineteenth session in Algiers in November, to adopt decisions that would expedite the end of the Israeli occupation and establish a Palestinian state on the basis of Husseini’s plan. Hamas, however, denounced the plan as “a stab in the back of the children of the stones,” ₄₀ namely, the youngsters who played an active role in the Intifada. Moreover, Hamas protested King Hussein’s disengagement from the West Bank, perceiving it a threat to the unity of the Islamic movement on both banks of the Jordan River. ₄₁ Sheikh Ahmad Yasin came out publicly against the proclamation of a Palestinian state, arguing that such a state would divide the Palestinian people between “within” and “without.” ₄₂ Hamas’s principal response, however, was its formulation of a normative and political alternative to the PLO’s political program in the form of its Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement.

In August 1988, more than eight months after its founding, Hamas presented an Islamic platform that blatantly appropriated the PLO’s national values, as set forth in its charter, cast in Islamic terminology and the Islamic belief system. ₄₃ Hamas effectively proclaimed the PLO’s charter as null and void, asserting its replacement by a true covenant that was uncompromisingly faithful to both Palestinian national principles and Islamic beliefs and values. The Hamas document reiterated the MB’s slogan of “Allah is its goal, the Prophet is the model, the Qur'an its constitution, jihad its path, and death for the sake of Allah its most sublime belief” (article 8). In addition to Hamas’s universal objectives to establish the rule of Islam and combat injustice and falsehood, the charter articulated the movement’s political goals, which were identical to those of the PLO’s charter and boiled down to an armed struggle to retrieve the entire Palestinian homeland. The land of Palestine was held to be whole and indivisible and defined as an Islamic waqf (endowment) “consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day” (article 11). Consequently, any relinquishment of the land was unlawful and forbidden by Islamic law, under any circumstances or authority: “Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president nor all the kings and presidents, be they Palestinian or Arab” (article 11). Indeed, this article epitomized the Islamic movement’s ripening process of territorialization, shifting from a pan-Islamic to a national-Palestinian movement. ₄₄

Hamas resolved the contradiction between the national idea, with its sacrosanct principle of state sovereignty, and the divine law, with its sanctification of the “sovereignty of Allah,” by defining the national struggle in religious terms. Hence, nationalism became an indivisible element in the Islamic creed itself, and the territorial objective and the strategy for its realization were defined as integral to Islamic duties and beliefs. According to its charter, Hamas is a “universal movement” and “one of the branches of the MB in Palestine” (article 2); at the same time, however, Hamas is defined as a “distinctive Palestinian movement” that regards nationalism (wataniyya) as “part of the religious creed.” Unlike other nationalisms, Hamas claims uniqueness because in addition to material, human, or territorial sources, it is also linked to divinity and faith. Hence, “nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than [waging jihad against the enemy and confronting it] in the case when an enemy should tread on Muslim land” (article 12). Hamas “strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” (article 6).

Since Palestine is an Islamic problem, Hamas’s nationalism intertwines with the religious creed, and fighting the enemy that threatens a Muslim land is the most sacred duty of every individual Muslim (fard `ayn) man, woman, or slave (articles 12 and 15). Any exclusive political solution to the Palestinian conflict is rejected as an act against Islam, and so it follows that the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is jihad.

The liberation of Palestine is perceived as the responsibility of three concentric groups: the Palestinian people, the Arab nations, and the Islamic world. Hamas thus adopted both concepts of nationalism current in the Arab world, namely, the territorial-state nationalism (wataniyya) and pan-Arabism (qawmiyya), which in the Palestinian case is clearly equivalent to Islamism. Both are indispensable to Hamas’s ideology. The revisionist nature of Hamas’s nationalist viewpoint is succinctly reflected in the perception that the Palestinian problem is an Arab-Islamic cause, which enables Hamas to deplore the PLO’s secular, narrow nationalism as a departure from the Arab and Muslim worlds (article 15). ₄₅

Despite the similarity of the PLO’s and Hamas’s charters concerning national goals and strategies for their realization, they assume different natures. The PLO’s charter was clearly formulated in national, civil, and legal terms, and one of its articles (33) stipulates that the document can be amended by two-thirds of the Palestinian National Council. By contrast, Hamas’s charter is anchored in religious principles of holiness, divinity, and eternity, with no option for amendment. Moreover, it has the characteristics of a comprehensive cultural, social, and moral charter, encompassing issues such as the role and status of women in society and the national struggle, the importance of educating the younger generation in regard to religious values, and the roles of culture, literature, and art and their contribution to the liberation campaign. The charter also speaks of social and economic solidarity, support for the poor and needy, human rights in an Islamic society, and the correct attitude toward members of the other monotheistic religions. The Hamas charter is saturated with historic examples of the continued clash of Western and Islamic civilizations and the central role of Judaism and Zionism in the West’s offensive against the Islamic world in modern times. Hamas hardened the conventional tone among Arab nationalists toward the Jews, adopting anti-Semitic charges based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion concerning a Jewish conspiracy for world domination.

Despite its rivalry with the national-secular factions, its militant attitudes, and its opposition to the PLO’s policies, Hamas stated its willingness to subordinate itself fully to the PLO if that body were to adopt Islam as its way of life (article 27). Yet even without the fulfillment of this condition, Hamas affirmed the kinship and national bonds linking members of the two rival movements, emphasizing their shared goal and common enemy. Coexistence with the PLO was also mandated by the disastrous consequences of internal strife (fitna) in Islamic history.

Hamas’s drive to become an all-Palestinian political and moral center able to challenge the PLO was manifested also by the immediate concrete goals it set for itself, which were linked to the situation of the Palestinian political community and especially to its struggle for liberation from Israeli occupation. These aims included resistance to Israeli settlement in the occupied territories and to the Israeli occupation policy, that is, the expulsion and administrative detention (arrest without trial) of Palestinians, their brutal daily treatment, prevention of family reunification, the refusal to release prisoners, and the heavy taxes levied on the Palestinian populace. ₄₆

Hamas’s Dilemmas

Hamas’s adoption of Palestinian national values was compatible with its leaders goal of becoming a political alternative to the PLO, although they tried to play down this goal for tactical reasons (see chapter 4). Any other course of action would have been tantamount to accepting marginalization and risking demise. Furthermore, Hamas’s tacit claim to all-Palestinian leadership encouraged the new movement to address a wide range of issues relevant to its constituency. By doing so, Hamas showed that it was attending to the basic needs of the people and was willing to deal with day-to-day issues as well as with national questions significant to the Palestinians’ political future.

The Islamic movement’s shifting focus from building an Islamic society from below to engaging in a program of political action with specific national aims to be achieved by armed struggle is a familiar phenomenon in the social and political life of ideological movements elsewhere. The more that such movements concentrate on territory and community, the more that they must attend to a concrete agenda based on practical problems; and the more that they are involved in practical decision making, the more that they are held responsible for the consequences of those decisions. In the case of al-Mujamma`, and later on of Hamas, the pattern of communal action served as a pillar for building a local political power base. Furthermore, the Islamic movement’s leaders repeatedly announced their recognition of the community as a crucial determinant in defining their strategy and building an infrastructure of civil society. This approach not only remained valid following the advent of Hamas but also became doubly significant for the Islamic movement as a whole in view of the Oslo accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Yet Hamas’s attempt to assume the trappings of a national movement in terms of institution building and mass mobilization has been problematic. In general, Sunny Islamic movements have always had difficulty generating an institutional hierarchy, probably because it would contradict the principle of an open and equitable interpretation of Islamic law by the religious scholars (`ulama'). A formal structure, then, might threaten the logic of religious authority based on scholarship and the informal collective acceptance (ijma`) by the community of the faithful Muslims (umma), one of the four bases (usul) of medieval Islamic legislation. ₄₇ This has been even more complicated with regard to ongoing public and political issues that are not clearly decided by Islamic jurisprudence. Without a separation of state and religion, such issues are effectively left to personal and group interpretation, with endless opportunities to legitimize or delegitimize political authority by employing classic Islamic arguments, oral traditions, and historic precedents to support their views.

The effort to secure a dominant public position through a commitment to advance particular Palestinian national interests and, at the same time, maintain an adherence to Islamic dogma caused Hamas many problems. Although these quandaries had troubled Hamas from its inception at the beginning of the Intifada, they had become grave by the September 1993 Israel-PLO accord and the establishment of the PA in Gaza and Jericho in May 1994. Hamas’s interest in securing its presence and consolidating its influence on the Palestinian people amid competition with the PLO and, later, with the PA necessitated a measure of flexibility, despite its intransigent attitude, toward a settlement with Israel—that is, a willingness to consider measures implying acquiescence and some form of participation in building the PA. Such an approach may serve Hamas’s interest in protecting and continuing its communal activity, thus strengthening its position in the Palestinian society. However, by adopting such a strategy, Hamas also risks losing its authenticity and uniqueness as a normative opposition to the PLO and increasing friction in the movement and subjecting it to manipulation by the PLO and the PA.

By the same token, adherence to the dogmatic vision would also sow confusion and uncertainty. Conformity to Hamas’s stated religious doctrine would certainly signal consistency and adherence to the “great tradition” of Islam and thereby strengthen the organization’s credibility among its followers and adversaries alike. But conformity to the doctrine might undermine the support and sympathy of many Palestinians, particularly those in the Gaza Strip, who hope that the peace process will end their social and economic hardships. Conformity to its doctrine, therefore, might have kept Hamas’s ship afloat for a time but offered little prospect of finding a safe harbor. Political flexibility might enhance the prospect, but only at great risk.

Hamas’s dilemmas over adopting national trappings have been aggravated by the blurring of the social and ideological boundaries separating it from Fatah, the PLO’s principal arm, and, in practice, the ruling party under the PA. Even though both movements appeal to wide and diverse Palestinian public groups, they derive their support mainly from the majority whose social values and collective identity are characterized by a lack of formal political affiliation and who tend to be strongly associated with the Islamic-Arab “great tradition.” Owing to the broad interpretation of reality by both Hamas and Fatah, social boundaries that are supposed to clarify the differences between them seem fluid. An indication of these blurred boundaries can be found in the establishment of the “Islamic Jihad Units” (Saraya al-jihad al-islami) in Fatah’s ranks in the late 1980s. Moreover, it is these blurred boundaries that gave rise to the popular view of Hamas and Fatah as being more complementary than competitive. ₄₈

How did Hamas cope with these dilemmas? More specifically, how could Hamas promote its interests by political means without sacrificing its credibility and unity? How did Hamas’s search for a transition to the political route affect its policy? To what extent was Hamas able to justify shifting from its “unrealistic” attitude in the conflict—from a total commitment to the vision of an Islamic state in the territory of Mandatory Palestine and a rigid rejection of any territorial compromise—to a new pragmatic approach that would not preclude an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, even a temporary one, which entailed a calculated deviation from its stated doctrine? The principle that guided Hamas’s response to these dilemmas was based on the assumption that the more the need for political dialogue, tacit understanding, or cooperation with the PLO (and the PA) could be justified in normative terms—that is, as the right and just thing to do—the less likely that it would be accused by its members and followers of deviating from its ultimate vision and hence the less danger there would be of organizational disintegration.

Hamas’s discursive and political maneuvers to escape being defeated by these dilemmas are best analyzed in the context of a triangular sphere of interrelations since the outbreak of the Intifada in late 1987. This refers to the relations between Hamas and the Palestinian arena, with the PLO and the PA as the central actors, on the one hand, and with Israel, on the other. In maneuvering between these two poles, of a rival at home and an enemy outside, Hamas has combined current political interpretation with established norms and beliefs, differentiating between long-range goals and short-term requirements, showing signs of political flexibility while at the same time demonstrating its conformity with formal Hamas doctrine. Political adjustment in terms of controlled violence, negotiated coexistence, and calculated participation in the PA’s system of power and institutions have become the main features of Hamas’s political conduct. To determine the intensity and the effectiveness of these patterns, it is necessary to examine the ideological trends, social circumstances, and political considerations that shaped Hamas’s strategies and to evaluate its options in the shifting political environment of mutual recognition and peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian national leadership.

Endnotes

Note 1: Aziz al-Azmeh, Islams and Modernities (London: Verso, 1993), pp. 64&-;65. Back.

Note 2: James Piscatori, Islam in a World of Nation States (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1983), chap. 4; James Piscatori, “Religion and Realpolitik: Islamic Responses to the Gulf War,” in James Piscatori, ed., Islamic Fundamentalism and the Gulf Crisis (Chicago: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991), pp. 9, 18. Hassan A. Turabi, “Islam as a Pan-National Movement,” RSE Journal (August–September 1992): 608–619; and Hassan A. Turabi, “al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya wal-Dawla al-Qutriyya fi al-Watan al-`Arabi” [The Islamic awakening and the territorial state in the Arab homeland], in al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya: Ru'ya Naqdiyya Min al-Dakhil [The Islamic awakening: A critical view from within] (Beirut: al-Nashir lil-Tiba'a wal-Nashr, 1990), pp. 86–108. Back.

Note 3: On the characteristics of the two approaches, see Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 24, 77–80; Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and the Pharaoh (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 16–20. Back.

Note 4: Ibid., pp. 64–66. On the “enclave” concept in comparative perspective, see Emmanuel Sivan, “Tarbut ha-Muvla`at” [The enclave culture], Alpayim 4 (1991): 50–63. Back.

Note 5: Kepel, Muslim Extremism, pp. 193–204; Islam, Democracy, the State and the West: A Round Table with Dr. Hasan Turabi, May 10, 1992, sponsored by the World and Islam Studies Enterprise and the University of South Florida, Committee for Middle Eastern Studies, p. 19. Back.

Note 6: Kepel, Muslim Extremism, pp. 93–94; Iyad Barghuthi, al-Aslama wal-Siyasa fi al-Aradi al-Filastiniyya al-Muhtalla [The Islamization and politics of the Palestinian occupied lands] (Jerusalem: Markaz al-Zahra' lil-Dirasat wal-Abhath, 1990), pp. 65–75. One of the organizations inspired by this trend was the Jihad Family (Usrat al-Jihad) of Israeli Arab citizens, which was exposed by the early 1980s. See Thomas Mayer, Hit`orerut ha-Muslemim be-Israel [The awakening of the Muslims in Israel] (Giv`at Haviva: ha-Makhon le-Limudim `Arviyim, 1988), pp. 42–55. Back.

Note 7: Wajih Kawtharany, “Thalathat Azmina fi Mashru` al-Nahda al-`Arabiyya wal-Islamiyya” [Three eras in the Arab and Islamic renaissance project], al-Mustaqbal al-`Arabi, no. 120 (February 1989): 4–25. Back.

Note 8: `Abdallah `Azzam, al-Difa` `An Aradi al-Muslimin Ahamm Furud al-A`yan [The defense of Muslims’ lands, the most important of individuals’ duties] (Jidda: Dar al-Mujtama`, 1987), pp. 20–21. For a classification of the types of jihad, see Mustansir Mir, “Jihad in Islam,” in Hadia Dajani-Shakeel and Ronald A. Messier, eds., The Jihad and Its Times (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), pp. 113–126; Muhammad Na`im Yasin, “al-Jihad, Mayadinuhu wa-Asalibuhu” [The Jihad, its arenas and methods], al-Sirat (Um al-Fahm, Israel), December 8, 1986, pp. 29–30; Hamas Charter, articles 7, 15 (see app. 2); Emmanuel Sivan, “The Holy War Tradition in Islam,” Orbis 42, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 173–176. Back.

Note 9: `Abd al-Sattar Tawila, al-Sheikh al-Mujahid, `Izz al-Din al-Qassam [The holy warrior Sheikh `Izz al-Din al-Qassam] (Beirut: Dar al-Umma lil-Nashr, 1984); Bayan Nuwayhid al-Hut, al-Sheikh al-Mujahid `Izz al-Din al-Qassam fi Tarikh Filastin [The holy warrior Sheikh `Izz al-Din al-Qassam in the history of Palestine] (Acre: Dar al-Aswar, 1988), p. 7. Back.

Note 10: `Azzam, al-Difa` `An Aradi al-Muslimin, pp. 21–25. `Azzam’s definitions were adopted by Hamas and incorporated in article 12 of its charter. Back.

Note 11: Shmuel Bar: The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan (Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, 1998), p. 37. Back.

Note 12: `Azzam, al-Difa` `An Aradi al-Muslimin, pp. 31–32. Back.

Note 13: For the origins and development of the jihad concept by Shiqaqi and others, see Tomas Mayer, “Pro-Iranian Fundamentalism in Gaza,” in E. Sivan and M. Friedman, eds., Religious Radicalism & Politics in the Middle East (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), pp. 142–155. On the attitude of the Islamic Jihad toward the struggle against Israel, see Barghuthi, al-Aslama wal-Siyasa, pp. 72–73; Minbar October, no. 20, January 1–15, 1990, pp. 71–72; Hamas (leaflet), “Bayan Yanfi Wuqu` Inshiqaq fi al-Haraka” [Announcement denying the occurrence of a split in the movement], April 15, 1993. Back.

Note 14: Y. Litani, “Militant Islam in the West Bank and Gaza,” New Outlook 32, nos. 11–12 (November–December 1989): 40–42; and also Y. Litani, “Kakh Baninu et ha-Hamas” [This is how we built Hamas], Kol Ha`ir (Jerusalem), December 18, 1992; Housing Minister Ben-Eliezer quoted in Yediot Aharonot, June 17, 1994. Back.

Note 15: Leaflet of the “Islamic Bloc” at the Islamic University of Gaza, n.d. (1986). Back.

Note 16: `Atif `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, Hayatuhu wa-Jihaduhu [Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, his life and struggle] (Gaza: al-Jami`a al-Islamiyya, 1991), pp. 109–111; Hisham Ahmad, Hamas—From Religious Salvation to Political Transformation: The Rise of Hamas in Palestinian Society (Jerusalem: PASSIA, 1994), p. 26; Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 18–20, 47–49. Back.

Note 17: Z. Schiff and E. Ya`ari, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising: Israel’s Third Front (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), p. 224. Back.

Note 18: Helena Cobban, “The PLO and the Intifada,” Middle East Journal 44, no. 3 (Spring 1990): 207–233; Sabri Jiryis, “Hiwar Min Naw` Aakhar Hawl “al-Hiwar” wal-Wahda al-Wataniyya” [A dialogue of another sort over “the dialogue” and national unity], Shu'un Filastiniyya, nos. 170–171 (May–June 1987): 21–29. Back.

Note 19: ZHL, Ha-Pe`ilut ha-Islamit be-Hevel `Aza [IDF, Islamic activity in the Gaza region] (Gaza: Civil Administration, 1987), pp. 48–51; `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, pp. 120–124. Back.

Note 20: `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, pp. 125–128. Back.

Note 21: Namely, the land of the Prophet’s night travel, from Mecca to Jerusalem, where he ascended to heaven. Back.

Note 22: “Hamas: al-Haqiqa wal-Wujud,” part 1, pp. 1, 5; Minbar October, no. 20, January 1–15, 1990, p. 67; `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, p. 140; Leaflet distributed in the mosques of Rafah and Khan Yunis, January 8, 1987, signed by “Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya.” This was apparently the first recorded time that this name had been used by al-Mujamma` or possibly by another organization. Schiff and Ya`ari, Intifada, p. 258, maintain that this name was first used in March 1987, with Yasin’s permission. Back.

Note 23: On the significance of the prisons for the emergence of the new revolutionary leadership, see Glenn E. Robinson, Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 22. Back.

Note 24: On the circumstances of the foundation of Hamas, see `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, pp. 137–138; al-Shira` (Lebanon), January 4, 1993; “Hamas: al-Haqiqa wal-Wujud,” part 1, pp. 2–3, 8. This semiofficial history of Hamas refers to Schiff and Ya`ari, Intifada, p. 258, to validate the argument that leaflets in the name of the Islamic Resistance Movement had appeared in March and November 1987; article 7 of Hamas Charter (app. 2). Back.

Note 25: Barghuthi, al-Aslama wal-Siyasa, pp. 77–79. Back.

Note 26: Robert Satloff, “Islam in the Palestinian Uprising” (Policy Focus, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, no. 7, October 1988), p. 9; Barghuthi, al-Aslama wal-Siyasa, pp. 75–76; `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, pp. 131–132. Back.

Note 27: See, for example, Ahmad Bin Yusuf, Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (The Islamic resistance movement] (Worth, Ill.: al-Markaz al-`Aalami lil-Buhuth wal-Dirasat, 1989), pp. 34–35. Back.

Note 28: On the PLO’s accusations that Israel had an interest in the establishment of Hamas, see Schiff and Ya`ari, Intifada, p. 237; interview with the PLO ambassador in Amman, `Umar al-Khatib, al-Nahar (East Jerusalem), January 18, 1995; Arafat to al-Nahar (East Jerusalem), November 29, 1994; al-Sharq al-Awsat, July 26, 1995. Hala Mustafa, “al-Tayar al-Islami fi al-Ard al-Muhtalla” [The Islamic current in the occupied land], al-Mustaqbal al-`Arabi, no. 113 (August 1988): 86. Back.

Note 29: Among the more conspicuous figures were physicians and pharmacists (`Abd al-`Aziz Rantisi, Mahmud al-Zahar, Isama`il Haniyya, Ibrahim Maqadmah, Ibrahim al-Yazuri, and Musa Abu Marzuq); teachers, university lecturers, and officials (Muhammad Sham`a, `Abd al-Fattah Dukhan, Sayyid Abu-Musamih, Salah Shihada, Khalid al-Hindi, Muhammad Siyam, and Ahmad Bahr), engineers (`Imad al-`Alami, Isma`il Abu Shanab, and `Issa al-Nashshar); and clergy (`Imad Faluji and Muhammad Sadr). The founders of Hamas were Ahmad Yasin, Ibrahim al-Yazuri, `Abd al-`Aziz Rantisi, Muhammad Sham`a, Salah Shihada, and `Ali al-Nashshar; see “Hamas: al-Haqiqa wal-Wujud,” part 1, p. 6; `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, p. 139. Back.

Note 30: See, for example, article 14 of the Palestinian National Charter (1968). Back.

Note 31: Yehoshafat Harkabi, Fatah ba-Istrategia ha-Arvit [Fatah in the Arab strategy] (Tel Aviv: Ma`arakhot, 1969), pp. 27–47; Ehud Ya`ari, Strike Terror: The Story of Fatah (New York: Sabra Books), 1970, pp. 49–55. Back.

Note 32: Yezid Sayigh, “The Armed Struggle and Palestinian Nationalism,” in Avraham Sela and Moshe Ma`oz, eds., The PLO and Israel: From Armed Conflict to Political Solution, 1964–1994 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 23–35. Back.

Note 33: Wahid `Abd al-Majid, “al-Intifada al-Filastiniyya: al-Siyaq al-Tarikhi, al-Qiwa al-Fa`ila, al-Masar wal-Mustaqbal” [The Palestinian uprising: The historical context, the acting forces, the course and future], al-Mustaqbal al-`Arabi 113 (May 1988): 8–10. Back.

Note 34: Bernard Lewis, “Rethinking the Middle East,” Foreign Affairs 71, no.4 (Fall 1992): 115. Back.

Note 35: Hillel Frisch, “From Armed Struggle over State Borders to Political Mobilization and Intifada Within It: The Transformation of the PLO Strategy in the Territories,” Plural Societies 19 (1989/90): 92–115. Back.

Note 36: `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, p. 111; ['Uns `Abd al-Rahman], al-Qadiyya al-Filastiniyya Bayn Mithaqain: al-Mithaq al-Watani al-Filastini wa-Mithaq Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Hamas) [The Palestine question between two charters: The Palestinian national charter and the Islamic resistance movement’s charter (Hamas)] (Kuwait: Maktab Dar al-Bayan, 1989), pp. 69–75. Back.

Note 37: `Abd al-Rahman, al-Qadiyya al-Filastiniyya bain Mithaqain, pp. 127–128. Back.

Note 38: Hamas Charter, article 6; Hamas’s spokesman, Ibrahim Ghawsha, to al-Hayat, January 12, 1993; Jawad al-Hamad and Iyad al-Barghuthi, eds., Dirasa fi al-Fikr al-Siyasi li-Harkat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Hamas), 1987–1996 [A study of the political thought of the Islamic resistance movement] (Amman: Markaz Dirasat al-Sharq al-Awsat, 1997), p. 121. Back.

Note 39: `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, p. 138. The UNC included Fatah, the PFLP, the DFLP, and the Communist Party. Back.

Note 40: Hamas leaflet, August 18, 1988. Back.

Note 41: Hamas leaflet, January 30, 1989; al-Nahar (East Jerusalem), October 15, 1992. Back.

Note 42: al-Quds (East Jerusalem), November 22, 1988. Back.

Note 43: For a comparison of the two documents, see `Abd al-Rahman, al-Qadiyya al-Filastiniyya bain Mithaqain, pp. 23–65. Back.

Note 44: Hillel Frisch, “The Evolution of Palestinian Nationalist Islamic Doctrine: Territorializing a Universal Religion,” Canadian Review in Nationalism 21, nos. 1–2 (1994): 51–53. Back.

Note 45: M. I. Kjorlien, “Hamas in Theory and Practice,” Arab Studies Quarterly 1 and 2 (1993): 4. Back.

Note 46: Barghuthi, al-Aslama wal-Siyasa, p. 80. Back.

Note 47: “Idjma`,” The Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1971), pp. 1023–1025; Islam, Democracy, the State and the West: A Round Table with Dr. Hasan Turabi, p. 19; Abu-l-`Ala' Mawdudi, “Political Theory of Islam,” in John J. Donohue and John L. Esposito, eds., Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 254. Back.

Note 48: Barghuthi, al-Aslama wal-Siyasa, p. 66. On Fatah’s link to Islam, see Matti Steinberg, “The PLO and Palestinian Islamic Fundamentalism,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 52 (1989): 37–54. Back.