The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence

Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela

Columbia University Press

2000

3. Controlled Violence

 

Hamas was a product of the new circumstances imposed on al-Mujamma` al-islami by the Palestinian civil uprising. This quandary was further compounded by the PLO’s endeavor to reap political fruits through international diplomacy and a propaganda campaign, both of which the Islamic movement and Hamas had been lacking. A visit by U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz to the region in early 1988, the November 1988 PNC proclamation of an independent Palestinian state (based on the November 29, 1947, UN resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab), and the beginning of a U.S.-PLO dialogue in December of 1988 all indicated that the PLO was rapidly attaining the status it had long craved, that of an equal partner in the Middle East peace process. Thus, in addition to Hamas’s daily competition with the UNC over shaping the agenda for the Intifada, the PLO’s possible inclusion in renewed peacemaking efforts threatened Hamas’s political future and compelled it to address this issue immediately.

It was against this background that Hamas embarked on an intensive propaganda campaign against the PNC’s resolutions, invoking deep-rooted Islamic symbols and beliefs to delegitimize the PLO’s diplomatic efforts to achieve a settlement in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. More effectively, Hamas challenged the PLO by reviving the ethos of the armed struggle against Israel, combined with continued civil revolt in the occupied territories, as a vehicle of political mobilization that would avert any serious Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. Whereas Israel was a target to fight, Hamas condemned the PLO—and, later, the PA—for their willingness to recognize Israel at the price of abandoning most of the Palestinian territories. Nonetheless, Hamas was aware of the limits of its power on both the intra-Palestinian and regional levels and therefore calculated its strategy on the basis of cost-benefit considerations. Jihad, as we will show, was subordinated to political calculations. A policy of controlled violence became a key component in Hamas’s political strategy and daily conduct.

The Jihad Ethos

A primary aim of Hamas was to establish an Islamic state in the territory of Palestine whose liberation was to be achieved by holy war. As we saw, the emphasis on this term was congruent with the Islamic symbols and beliefs that constituted Hamas’s political doctrine. Defined as an Islamic endowment (waqf) of the Muslim world as a whole, jihad was adduced not only as a duty that devolved on individual Muslims but also as the sole legitimate way to retrieve Palestine in its entirety. Hamas thus adopted the principle contained in the PLO’s National Charter of 1968, which defined armed struggle as “a strategy and not a tactic,” in order to preclude the possibility of a negotiated settlement, which by definition would entail a territorial compromise. To establish the legitimacy and historic significance of an armed struggle in its Islamic meaning (jihad), Hamas presented itself as a link in the chain of holy war against Zionism and Israel in the defense of Palestine. The inevitability of jihad was strictly linked to religious faith. Because to forgo parts of Palestine was tantamount to forgoing part of Islam, Palestine as a whole could be liberated only by armed struggle. However, jihad, as explained earlier, also had another meaning, namely, the internal jihad that entailed the enforcement of Islamic social and moral norms. Interpreted in Islamic terminology, such a mission provided Hamas with a legitimate avenue by which to impose its authority among the Palestinians.

Another similarity between Hamas and Fatah in its early years was the revisionist, antiestablishment nature denoted by their respective concepts of individual jihad and “popular armed struggle.” Fatah’s concept of guerrilla warfare for the liberation of Palestine challenged Nasser’s doctrine of Arab unity as a prerequisite for a decisive war against Israel and sought a shortcut to the liberation of Palestine. By the same token, Hamas’s concept of jihad challenged the PLO and its main arm (Fatah), which by the mid-1980s had virtually abandoned guerrilla warfare against Israel and drifted toward a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Both Fatah and Hamas in turn represented a revolt against the current military inaction toward Israel, underpinned by raison d’état—equivalent to the Islamic concept of jihad as a collective, or state, responsibility (fard kifaya). And both movements suggested instead an alternative concept, which meant not only to subordinate the “reason of state” to the revolution but also to legitimize autonomous action by peripheral social and political groups.

Hamas’s adherence to the principle of “not [ceding] one inch” and its emphatic claim to all of Palestine found frequent expression in its leaflets. Leaflet no. 28 (August 18, 1988), entitled “Islamic Palestine from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River,” asserted:

The Muslims have had a full—not a partial—right to Palestine for generations, in the past, present, and future. . . . No Palestinian generation has the right to concede the land, steeped in martyrs’ blood. . . . You must continue the uprising and stand up against the usurpers wherever they may be, until the complete liberation of every grain of the soil of . . . Palestine, all Palestine, with God’s help.

Leaflet no. 22 (June 2, 1988) declared: “For our war is a holy war for the sake of Allah unto victory or death.”

In Hamas’s eyes, the Muslims’ right to establish an Islamic state in the territory of Palestine leaves no opening for a dialogue or a political settlement with Israel. Hamas believes that the jihad against Israel articulates the true aspirations and needs of the Palestinian people, expressing the real meaning of the Palestinian national ethos. The following quotations from Hamas leaflets exemplify this approach:

Let any hand be cut off that signs [away] a grain of sand in Palestine in favor of the enemies of God . . . who have seized . . . the blessed land. (March 13, 1988)
Every negotiation with the enemy is a regression from the [Palestinian] cause, concession of a principle, and recognition of the usurping murderers’ false claim to a land in which they were not born. (August 18, 1988)
Arab rulers, who invest efforts for the false peace . . . and who entreat Israel to agree to a “just” peace. . . . We hope you will fight at least once [in order to prove] that you partake of Arab boldness or Muslim strength. (leaflets of January 1988)

And in a rhetorical appeal to Israel: “Get your hands off our people, our cities, our camps, and our villages. Our struggle with you is a contest of faith, existence, and life” (undated leaflet).

Hamas also used political arguments to reject any attempt to achieve a political settlement with Israel. Thus, in leaflet no. 28: “Israel understands only the language of force and believes in neither negotiations nor peace. It will persist in its evasiveness and in building a military entity, in exploiting the opportunity for attack, and in breaking the Arabs’ nose.” And in the same leaflet: “The Arab world is not so weak as to run after peace, and the Jews are not so strong as to be able to impose their will. . . . How long can Israel withstand all the forces?”

Furthermore, Hamas ascribed to Israel and the Jews demonic traits that justified its refusal to hold a dialogue: Israel is a “cancer that is spreading . . . and is threatening the entire Islamic world” (May 3, 1988). The Jews, according to another leaflet, are “brothers of the apes, assassins of the prophets, bloodsuckers, warmongers. . . . Only Islam can break the Jews and destroy their dream” (January 1988).

Hamas often drew on images and events from the history of Islam to underscore the religious character of its conflict with Israel and also to substantiate its claim for perseverance (thabat, sumud, tamassuk) and faith (iman) in the final victory of Islam, no matter what the current difficulties of the Arab and Muslim community (umma) were. To validate its argument that Israel was bound to be defeated by Islam, the leaflets of Hamas frequently rehearsed Islam’s great victories over its enemies in Palestine, upholding the names of Muslim military heroes: Ja`far Ibn Abi Talib, who fought Byzantium in the Battle of Mu`tah (629 c.e.); Khalid Ibn al-Walid, who commanded the Battle of Yarmuk (636 c.e.) and was called by Muhammad “the sword of Allah”; Salah al-Din, who vanquished the Crusaders at the Battle of Hittin (1187 c.e.); and the Mamluk sultan, Baybars, who defeated the Mongols in the Battle of `Ayn Jalut (1260 c.e.).

The Khaybar affair also attracted Hamas’s attention. Many Hamas leaflets concluded with the call “Allah akbar [Allah is great]—the hour of Khaybar has arrived, Allah akbar—death to the occupiers.” Khaybar was a wealthy Jewish community in the Arabian Peninsula. According to a Muslim tradition, the Jews of Khaybar betrayed Muhammad by serving him poisoned meat that eventually killed him. The Prophet and his followers had conquered Khaybar in 628 c.e., allowing “the Jews their land in return for binding themselves to turn over half their harvests.” ₁ For Muslims, Khaybar became a symbol of Jewish treason. Similarly, the Muslims who reside in the territories are looked upon as mujahidun—the warriors of the holy war—or as murabitun, inhabitants of the frontier (ribat). These were Muslims who settled in the countryside during the period of the Muslim conquests to defend the borders; they were considered to be fulfilling a religious precept. By emphasizing the Muslim nature of Palestine in the past and present and advocating a Muslim state throughout Palestine that would ameliorate the ills of the Muslim community, Hamas ignored the Palestinian Christians while demonstrating closer links to Muslims outside Palestine.

Whereas the PLO perceived the conflict with Israel in national-secular and realistic terms, Hamas regarded any possibility of a political settlement based on compromise as a violation of Palestine’s status as an Islamic endowment (waqf) as well as the Islamic precept of holy war against the Zionist invasion. Hamas maintained that the peace process intended to legitimize the “Zionist entity” and clear the way to further usurpation of the Muslim and Arab wealth by the foreign invaders.

The conflicting stands of Hamas and the UNC regarding a Palestinian state and the political process often created friction between the two contenders. The disagreements grew worse as the UNC began to express support for a peaceful solution, and the PLO intensified its diplomatic activity. When Hamas drew up its charter in August 1988, it demonstrated an inclination toward autonomy in its political activity, ceasing its coordination with the UNC. Thus, in leaflet no. 25 (September 6, 1988), the UNC assailed Hamas’s decision to call a two-day general strike on a date different from that set by the UNC. The UNC termed this a blow to the unity of the Palestinian ranks and a boost for Israel. The UNC also decried acts of violence against those who did not respond to Hamas’s call for a strike. Hamas was quick to retaliate and in its leaflet no. 30 (October 5, 1988) absolved itself of all blame:

The Jews and their supporters are striving to split our ranks and generate disputes by spreading rumors that Hamas is competing [with other movements] or seeking to replace them. In reaction to these virulent rumors, we call on the people to peruse the charter of the Islamic resistance movement [of August 1988] in order to acquaint themselves with it and learn its goals. The competition will consist of confrontation against the [Israeli] enemy and inflicting grave damage on his camp. We reiterate that we are for unity of ranks, against schism, and for everyone who works faithfully for the liberation of Palestine—all of Palestine. We are against conceding so much as an inch of our land, which is steeped in the blood of the Companions of the Prophet and their followers.

Tension between Hamas and the UNC mounted in the wake of the events at the PNC meeting held in Algiers in mid-November 1988. At this meeting, the PNC declared the establishment of a Palestinian state on the basis of the UN General Assembly resolution 181 of November 1947 calling for the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. In leaflet no. 29 (November 20, 1988), entitled “The Joy of the Palestinian State,” the UNC issued

[an appeal to] a number of fundamentalist elements to favor the general national interests, our people’s national interest, away from their basic assumptions and factional interests . . . and to cease presenting negative stands and manifestations. For they serve the enemy, whether they wish to or not. They must draw the conclusions from the mass celebrations . . . marking the declaration of the [Palestinian] state, reflecting the deep roots of our legitimate leadership and sole representative [the PLO]. It is still not too late to fuse all the loyal forces in the melting pot of the uprising and its United National Command.

In reaction, Hamas declared, in leaflet no. 31 (November 27, 1988), that it opposed splitting the Palestinian ranks but that this might result from “leaflets being planted in the name of Hamas that the [Israeli] occupier circulated in order to split the ranks and cast aspersions on the [various] currents.” And above all, Hamas believed, they should “preserve the unity of the people. Pay no heed to the enemy’s attempts to cause a rift in families, clans, currents of thought, and ideas.”

Hamas’s response to the UNC’s charges attest to its complex attitude toward the national camp. On the one hand, Hamas was not eager to aggravate its disagreements with the UNC to the point of a head-on clash, as that would be counterproductive in the struggle against Israel. On the other hand, Hamas did not back away from a confrontation in the future should the UNC, together with the PLO, assent to a political settlement that jettisoned the principle of liberating all of Palestine. Its military weakness might have influenced Hamas’s approach, explained by its desire to refrain from civil strife (fitna), a notorious recurrent phenomenon in Islam’s history. Yet while repeating its determination to prevent fitna and its menace to the Palestinian people, from the early days of the Intifada Hamas also maintained that preserving the national unity must not be at the expense of its independence and distinctiveness. ₂

The Intifada as a Controlled Revolt

Hamas’s Intifada activities were conducted under the direct guidance and control of Ahmad Yasin, who was behind the contents of the movement’s leaflets, in consultation with his close aides. Like their UNC counterparts, Hamas’s leaflets also included directives for social conduct. On the anti-Israeli front, Yasin directed his followers from the outset to use firearms against the “occupation troops,” though such actions must not be identified with Hamas, he told his followers, fearing a backlash that could paralyze the nascent movement. At the same time, “strike groups” (al-sawa`id al-ramiya, “the shooting arms”) were founded, similar to Fatah’s “strike committees,” to carry out most of the daily Intifada activities, such as blocking roads, throwing stones, writing slogans and directives on walls, and enforcing Intifada directives on the population, including work strikes and not working in Israel.

Yasin also maintained Hamas’s links with the Islamic movement in Jordan. According to his testimony to the Israeli authorities, he received financial aid from the “general guide” of the movement in Jordan, `Abd al-Rahman Khalifa, totaling until August 1988, about half a million dollars, brought in by money changers and emissaries. At the same time, Yasin built up the movement, appointing his close aides to key positions. He gave his aides considerable operational and organizational freedom, reflected in the timing and character of the violence perpetrated by Hamas activists, which originated at the local, grassroots level and at times was the work of unorganized supporters. Indeed, from the beginning Hamas was organized into a small number of hard-core activists who coordinated and activated a wide network of supporters through the mosques whose preachers were often members of the movement or had close acquaintances in the Islamic students’ associations and communal services. ₃

In the early months of the Intifada, Hamas did not call for mass demonstrations, fearing that this might lead to a direct confrontation with the Israeli security forces and jeopardize the movement’s fragile existence before it took root among the Palestinian public. Another concern was that Hamas’s public weakness and its limited support—compared with that of the UNC—would be exposed; indeed, there might even be a violent collision with the UNC in which Hamas would emerge as the loser. Hamas therefore directed its followers to take only those actions that had religious overtones and thus would be easily understood as integral to Islamic ritual—such as fasting, praying, and exploiting dates of religious significance in order to escalate the Intifada under its leadership. This perhaps was the reason for the relatively tolerant attitude displayed by the Israeli government toward Hamas during the first year of the Intifada, as compared with that toward other Palestinian organizations, reflecting its perception of the PLO and its factions as Israel’s most dangerous enemies. It was not until June 1989, fully eighteen months after the outbreak of the Intifada, that the Israeli government declared Hamas to be a terrorist group, along with the Islamic Jihad, outlawing both and imposing tight control over them. A year later, in the summer of 1990, the Israeli security authorities began to raid and search mosques in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, even closing some of them for short periods. ₄

Hamas’s establishment involved a functional division between the internal security apparatus and the Islamic Holy Warriors Organization (Munazzamat al-jihadiyyin al-islamiyyin), the movement’s military units. ₁ From the beginning, Hamas’s organization had a clandestine, decentralized character. To ensure compartmentalization and secrecy, recruitment was based on personal acquaintance, and communication was through messages, directives, leaflets, and weapons left in apparently innocuous places, often in or around mosques. Hamas’s focus never wavered from maintaining a horizontal separation between active members, in an effort to slow the arrests of leading figures. Still, imprisoned Hamas leaders managed to maintain contact with the movement and smuggle out operational orders even from prison. Hamas’s organic nature, rooted in its social institutions and communal infrastructure, with its network of mosques and large following of believers, offered the movement a better chance of survival in the face of repeated Israeli repression. Hamas’s existence was secured by the steady stream of followers from which new activists were enlisted or emerged spontaneously, becoming spearheads of the movement’s violent and political activities.

Despite Hamas’s efforts to stay underground, its military and political leadership was repeatedly jolted by the large numbers of arrests and expulsions after September 1988. In response, Hamas tightened its horizontal compartmentalization and turned to vertical hierarchy between local activists and affiliated headquarters abroad. Such contacts, through which organizational and operational orders were issued and financial aid was transferred, were maintained by phone and fax, written messages, and direct meetings outside the country. The result was greater fragmentation of authority and blurred hierarchical links between the political-religious leaders and the military activists.

Hamas’s turn to violence was a matter of necessity in view of its competition with the nationalist Palestinian groups—including the Islamic Jihad—which had led the armed struggle against Israel. In its first year, Hamas’s military activity was relatively limited (ten operations), including shooting at Israeli military patrols and civilian transportation in the Gaza Strip and the use of “roadside charges” against Israeli vehicles. At this stage, Hamas still lacked a solid operational infrastructure and gave priority to acquiring arms, mobilizing cadres, and training its forces in the use of arms and explosives. By the second year of the Intifada, the scope, sophistication, and daring of Hamas’s violent activity (thirty-two actions) had risen sharply. The most conspicuous of these operations were the kidnapping and murder of Israeli soldiers (in January and May 1989) inside Israel, by the same squad (as revealed later). It is noteworthy that following the first kidnapping, Yasin refused to allow the perpetrators to bargain with the Israeli authorities for a trade for Palestinian prisoners. The reason was that Yasin continued to fear that identification of the movement with that action might induce Israel to retaliate against Hamas’s social institutions, particularly the Mujamma`. In the second year of the Intifada, Hamas extended its military activity to the West Bank, notably Hebron, and this was followed by actions inside Israel proper, including knife attacks on civilians and the burning of forests. ₆

Despite these activities, Hamas still lagged behind the Palestinian national organizations in terms of its impact on the Palestinian public. Nonetheless, Hamas’s message of holy war turned out to be a particularly powerful answer to Israel’s violence against Palestinians, for it had the effect of substantiating the meaning of jihad and investing it with a specific, immediate significance. Thus, after the Israeli police killed seventeen Palestinians during a violent clash in the Temple Mount compound on October 8, 1990, ₇ Hamas called for a jihad “against the Zionist enemy everywhere, in all fronts and every means.” The most tangible result was a sharp rise in spontaneous knifing attacks committed by Palestinian individuals against Israeli civilians, police, and soldiers. The perpetrators of these attacks had no organizational connection with Hamas, though many were clearly susceptible to the Islamic message. In any event, Hamas presented these attacks post factum as a manifestation of Islamic devotion and self-sacrifice. In five months after the Temple Mount massacre, thirteen Israelis were killed in such actions. ₈

A roundup by Israel of Hamas’s senior leaders in the Gaza Strip in September 1988 forced Ahmad Yasin, who remained free, to compartmentalize the movement even more tightly. For example, he appointed Isma`il Abu Shanab as the general commander of Hamas in the Strip and Nizar ‘Awadallah as the commander of the military organization. He also divided the Gaza Strip into five separate districts, each under the command of new figures that he appointed. But the kidnapping and murder of the second Israeli soldier, in May 1989, resulted in the arrest of Yasin himself and a number of senior figures of the military branch who were later convicted for their role in the action. The arrests effectively paralyzed Hamas and created a vacuum at the top level of leadership. The result was the working visit to Gaza of a group of Hamas activists from the United States, led by Musa Abu Marzuq, to rehabilitate the movement. The decision to take this action was made following consultations with Hamas leaders in Jordan. Marzuq and his aides introduced a strict hierarchy. They divided the West Bank and Gaza Strip into seven and five subdistricts, respectively, headed by separate headquarters that included four apparatuses—security, religious indoctrination (da`wa), political activity, and coordination—the heads of which constituted each subdistrict’s command. The West Bank and Gaza Strip were linked by a coordinating committee under the movement’s higher leadership, which consisted of three major committees: political, military, and indoctrination.

With the restructuring of the movement, Yasin’s status as the one supreme authority came to an end. For the first time since its establishment, Hamas was controlled from outside the occupied territories—from Springfield, Virginia, where Abu Marzuq resided, and from Amman. The Jordanian headquarters of Hamas served as a vital link to the “inside” leadership of the movement in the Israeli-occupied territories and determined its social policies and its military activities (in 1992/93, Hamas’s military command was located in London). In 1993, after the United States named Hamas as a terrorist organization, Amman became Hamas’s political and military headquarters, where the movement enjoyed a semilegitimate status and could operate openly. This status, which Hamas retained well after Israel and Jordan signed their peace treaty (October 1994), was supported by the widespread presence of the MB in Jordan ₉ —in which Palestinians were a significant and the more radical part—and the Hashemite rivalry with the PLO and, later, with the PA.

The new structure stressed the supremacy of the “outside” over the “inside” leadership, determined primarily by the former’s control of financial resources and their flow into the territories. The external financial aid was necessary not only to maintain Hamas’s civic, political, and military activities and to support the families of the “martyrs” and prisoners, but the inside leadership badly needed the funds also to enhance the movement’s political stature and enable it to compete better with the national-secular groups prevailing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, by expanding its social services and civic penetration. Hamas thus became structurally similar to the PLO, with political representation and supportive groups based in various Muslim and Western countries. The external apparatus played the principal role in the movement’s political decision making, control of propaganda and publications, and activation of the military units. Still, compared with the status and authority of Fatah and its PLO partners vis-à-vis their followers in the occupied territories, the “outside” leadership of Hamas, given its communal character, ultimately enjoyed less power over the “inside” and its social institutions. ₁₀

The power struggle between Hamas and the PLO-based UNC created a potentially irreparable rift between the two camps. Nonetheless, despite their conflicting ideological interests, both groups had common practical interests, namely, the day-to-day struggle against the Israeli authorities. In appeals to the PNC members, Hamas stated that

the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, has already made it clear that it posits [as a goal] an all-embracing jihad until the liberation of Palestine . . . for the people chose the way . . . the way of jihad, honor, and sacrifice, finding that for the sake of Allah and the liberation of Palestine, whatever is more precious and more valuable than money, than a son and a soul, is cheap. . . . Our struggle with the Zionists is not a campaign for partition of borders, and it is not a dispute over the division of land; it is a campaign over existence and destiny. In this position, we see the hope and aspiration of our people everywhere to arouse in you the spirit of the struggle, the spirit of the outbreak of the revolution of 1965 [the beginning of Fatah’s guerrilla war against Israel]. We call on you to take under your wing the spirit of the children of the stones and the continuation of the armed struggle, no matter what the cost. Our people have often confronted plots and have made many sacrifices to thwart them. Our people still possess the same readiness to make sacrifice after sacrifice, and they express this blessed uprising that has been recorded as a phenomenon unparalleled in history. ₁₁

Hamas’s concern about the population’s daily hardships and immediate needs, however, increased its awareness and hesitation to translate its dogmatic vision into actual practice. Hamas thus combined a calculated policy of confrontations with Israeli soldiers—including military actions—with elevated religious rhetoric laced with symbols of jihad, Qur'an-based hatred of the Jews, and calls for mass confrontations with the Israeli occupation forces. This was reflected in Hamas’s directives to the Palestinian public about its role in the uprising, which were almost identical to those issued by the UNC.

Like the UNC, Hamas called on the population to cooperate in both violent and nonviolent actions. The former included throwing stones and firebombs, building barriers, burning tires, wielding knives and axes, clashing with the Israeli forces, and attacking collaborators. In regard to nonviolent activities, the people were asked (1) to sever their economic ties with Israel and develop local institutions that would provide the same public services; (2) to engage in civil disobedience, that is, disobey laws and regulations; and (3) to carry out activities promoting intra-Palestinian solidarity.

The directive to sever ties with Israel included refusing to work in Israel and in Jewish settlements in the occupied territories; boycotting Israeli products; withdrawing deposits from Israeli banks; resigning from the Civil Administration; developing a home-based economy, including growing vegetables and raising domestic animals; setting up and expanding committees on education, information, guard duty, and agriculture; and establishing and cultivating local bodies for “popular education”—a directive calling on parents, teachers, and students to uphold the routine of classes despite the protracted closure of educational institutions by the Israeli authorities. On this issue Hamas challenged the UNC, refusing to turn the schools and higher educational institutions into a battleground of protest and civil disobedience and repeatedly calling for the resumption of studies, inside or outside school. Hamas finally prevailed, and after the summer of 1989 the schools ceased to be an arena of demonstrations and riots. ₁₂

Directives regarding civil disobedience included not paying taxes and fines; staging partial commercial strikes, and holding general strikes on specified days. In order to build solidarity, the people, or sometimes certain groups, were called on to stage day-long strikes of solidarity with prisoners and with families of victims; hold memorials for traumatic events such as the civil war in Jordan that broke out in September 1970; help lawyers deal with prisoners; schedule press conferences to expose conditions in the detention camps; stage sit-in strikes by students, teachers, and parents in front of foreign missions and closed schools; volunteer to help farmers with the olive harvest; offer assistance to needy families; refrain from raising rent; reduce doctors’ and hospitals’ fees; and write slogans on walls and raise flags.

In table 3.1, the analysis of the first 30 leaflets issued by Hamas shows that of 139 violent and nonviolent directives, 36 (about 26 percent of the total) appeared in the first 10 leaflets, 40 (29 percent) in leaflets 11 through 20, and 63 (more than 45 percent) in leaflets 21 through 30. The increase in the number of directives was accompanied by a significant change over time in the proportion of instructions calling for violent or nonviolent activities.

Table 3.1: Types of Directives in Hamas Leaflets by Periodic Distribution14          (absolute numbers)
	Period
Type of Directive	1 Nos. 1-10	2 Nos. 11-20	3 Nos. 21-30	Total
Violent	11	16	25	52
Nonviolent:    Severance of contact    Disobedience    Acts of solidarity	10 7 8	11 2 11	3 19 16	24 28 35
Total	36	40	63	139
Percentage	25.9	28.8	45.3

Table 3.2 shows that even though Hamas’s level of violence was consistently high from the start of the Intifada that is, 30.5 percent of the 36 instructions in the first 10 leaflets, 40 percent of 40 instructions in leaflets 11 through 20, and 39.7 percent of the 63 instructions in leaflets 21 through 30, the number of instructions for severing economic and public service ties with Israel drastically decreased. From nearly 25 percent in the first 20 leaflets, the calls to break economic ties with Israel fell to less than 5 percent in leaflets 21 through 30.

Table 3.2: Types of Directives Contained in Hamas Leaflets by Periodic Distribution15 (in percentage)
	Period
Type of Directive	1 Nos. 1-10	2 Nos. 11-20	3 Nos. 21-30
Violent	30.5	40.0	39.7
Nonviolent:    Severance of contact    Disobedience    Acts of solidarity	27.8 19.4 22.2	27.5 5.0 27.5	4.8 30.2 25.4
Total	100 (36)	100 (40)	100 (63)

These trends reflect the contradictory considerations that guided Hamas’s behavior. On the one hand, Hamas, like the UNC and the PLO, was aware of the vital role of violence in propelling the Intifada and securing political prestige. Violence also served as an outlet for the younger generation’s ideological fervor and political frustrations. The demographic weight of the younger Palestinians and their level of education and political awareness, together with the organizational frameworks at their disposal, made them the leading participants in the uprising. Moreover, as the violence grew and claimed more Palestinian casualties, the Intifada’s political gains rose accordingly. The daily skirmishes between the population and Israeli troops, widely covered in the media, thrust the Palestinian problem back into international consciousness. Even public figures, politicians, and the press in countries friendly to Israel were sharply critical of the latter’s policy, and governments and international organizations condemned the methods it used to suppress the uprising, leading to a conviction in Israel of the necessity of finding a political solution to the ongoing violence.

The violence also deeply affected Israel itself. Many Israelis perceived their country’s occupation as morally indefensible, socially deleterious, economically ruinous, and politically and militarily harmful. Israel’s political leadership faced mounting pressure from broad segments of the public to stop trying to quell the uprising by force and instead to propose political solutions. In short, it was the Palestinians’ growing awareness of the role played by violence in promoting the Intifada and producing political gains that accounted for the large number of violent directives in Hamas and UNC leaflets.

On the other hand, the Intifada’s endurance depended on the Palestinian people’s economic health. Without a self-sustaining economy, the Palestinians were dependent on Israel, thereby neutralizing the pressure to sever their economic contact with Israel. Consequently, to intensify the economic boycott against Israel and disengage from its economy would mean economic hardship for more than 100,000 workers who earned their living in Israel and a huge loss of revenue for many local merchants and factory owners who maintained commercial ties with Israeli firms. In turn, a severe economic downturn in these sectors could weaken the influence of Hamas and the UNC, lead to disobedience, and encourage anarchy. If the Intifada’s strength lay in its ability to obtain the cooperation of all social strata and age groups, it is readily understandable how the ideologically heretical suddenly became the economically inevitable.

The inability or unwillingness of merchants, factory owners, and workers to break off economic relations with Israel forced Hamas to adapt to the prevailing conditions. Hence, the number of directives urging an economic break with Israel gradually fell as the Intifada turned into a way of life for the Palestinian population. Instructions in this spirit continued to appear, but more selectively, as in regard to work in Israel and the boycott of Israeli products. Later, Hamas’s leaflets announced that the prohibition on working in Israel was confined to general strikes or to persons employed in sectors that competed with products of the territories, such as the citrus industry. In the same vein, Hamas called for a boycott of products for which local substitutes were available, principally milk products, agricultural produce, cigarettes, and soft drinks.

The decline in the number of directives calling for a total economic break with Israel indicates a reassessment by Hamas concerning the limits of the Intifada. This awareness also explains why Hamas decided not to declare a general civil revolt but instead to hammer home the idea that the uprising was a transitory stage toward general revolt. This change of position is illustrated in the following examples from Hamas leaflets:

Know that victory demands patience [sabr] and God is on the side of the righteous (January 1988).
Know that the road [of struggle] with the Jews is long and will not end soon (April 1, 1988).
Spare no efforts [to fan] the fire of the uprising until God gives the sign to be extricated from the distress. Invoke God’s name often, for with hardship comes ease (January 1988).

This controlled civil revolt, like the continuing decline in the number of directives calling for breaking economic ties with Israel, indicated that from the very beginning of the Intifada, Hamas had calculated its strategy on a cost-benefit basis and so now was trying to avoid a slide into absurdity in its effort to realize its objectives. Hamas recognized the limits of its power and was careful not to cross the line and fall into an all-out confrontation with Israel. Jihad turned out to be not an ultimate goal but a political instrument wielded by political considerations.

Hamas’s ability to differentiate between an all-out struggle and pragmatic considerations depended to a large extent on its leadership’s prestige and authority to justify the deviation from the movement’s doctrine. It is in this context that the religious concept of sabr (self-restraint, patience) proved useful in justifying current policies by adjusting to the change of political environment. Sabr was enlisted to avoid confronting realities without acquiescing to them. It has been explained and justified by the assumption that the true believers will eventually prevail, no matter how desperate the present. The future will reward the believer, but he must be patient (“Allah is with the patient”). ₁₃ Sabr, therefore, was meant to justify the temporary acceptance of, and adaptation to, reality. This principle has been presented in Islamic writings in the context of Islam’s ultimate victory regardless of its weakness at the present. It might also be used to legitimize the current reinterpretation and temporary deviation from hitherto sacrosanct Islamic norms. Sabr thus helped explain that the struggle against Israel should be based on cost-benefit considerations, even though Israel was the enemy of Allah and the Prophet.

Controlled Violence, the Oslo Agreement, and the Palestinian Authority

Despite Hamas’s efforts at reorganization during the second half of 1989, a new Israeli crackdown in late 1990 and early 1991 led to another crisis. These developments underlined its failure to survive as a clandestine movement despite horizontal compartmentalization and separation between its military and civilian apparatuses. Hence, in 1991 the “battalions of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam” (kata'ib `izz al-din al-qassam) were formed and became Hamas’s official military apparatus. The creation of this organization was one of several local initiatives taken by senior military activists, and their recognition by the movement’s leadership as its official military apparatus was due to their success and attractive name.

The battalions were given their name by Walid `Aql, a senior activist of Hamas in the Gaza Strip who was their founder and first commander. In late 1991, squads of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam carried out most of their activities in the Gaza Strip, executing suspected collaborators with the Israeli intelligence agencies and announcing their responsibility for the executions in leaflets and on wall graffiti. The `Izz al-Din al-Qassam apparatus attracted attention in early 1992 when one of its groups assassinated an Israeli settler in the Gaza Strip. Following the assassination, the organization attacked more Israeli civilians, also by using car bombs. As its prestige gained by killing Jews grew, many Islamic adherents previously active in the Intifada began to emulate the militants. Some of them embarked on daring independent military initiatives without the coordination or knowledge of the regional or outside military command but under the name `Izz al-Din al-Qassam, as in the case of the kidnapping and assassination of an Israeli border guard in December 1992. ₁₄

In 1992, similar branches of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam were founded in the West Bank, first in Hebron and later also in Nablus (where Hamas had not been very active). In July 1992, Hamas’s headquarters in the United States sent an emissary to the occupied territories with a large sum of money, the names of activists to contact, and directions for coordinating military activities in the West Bank with those in the Gaza Strip. He was arrested by the Israeli authorities, and his interrogation revealed that the military squads were to be separated into districts and operate under the direct command of the outside headquarters that would coordinate the various districts and supply funds for purchasing arms and cars, renting safe apartments, and training, mostly in Jordan. ₁₅

It is not clear how much the escalation in Hamas’s military activity was affected by Israel’s policies toward the movement or by the international peace conference held in Madrid in late 1991, the first formal public negotiations between Israel and a Palestinian delegation from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Although the conference resulted in a stalemate, the prospects for a breakthrough seemed to grow after the June 1992 general elections in Israel brought to power a Labor government headed by Yitzhak Rabin. In any event, the increase in Hamas’s military activity, indicated by an abortive attempt to explode a car bomb in a neighborhood near Tel Aviv five months later and followed by suicide attacks, was apparently based on Hamas’s closer relations with Iran and consequent beginning of military cooperation with Hizballah. As in its decision on armed struggle, here too Hamas lagged behind the Islamic Jihad, which already in 1991 had begun cooperating with Hizballah against Israeli forces in south Lebanon.

The deportation of 415 Islamic activists by Israel to Lebanon in December 1992 was a milestone in Hamas’s decision to use car bombs and suicide attacks as a major modus operandi against Israel. Shortly afterward, Hamas’s leaders in Amman instructed its military activists to carry out two attacks, one by a car bomb, as a gesture to the deportees. ₁₆ Hamas’s escalated military activity was an indirect result of the presence of the deportees for almost a year in south Lebanon, which provided the Palestinian Islamists an opportunity to learn about Hizballah’s experience in fighting the Israelis, the effect of suicide attacks, and the construction of car bombs. Indeed, it was Hizballah’s spectacular attacks since 1983 on the multinational force in Beirut and the Israeli forces in Lebanon that ended the American presence in Lebanon and forced Israel to withdraw in 1985, except from a self-defined “security zone” along the Lebanese border. Thus it was no coincidence that Hamas’s first suicide operation was carried out shortly after the deportees had returned to the occupied territories. ₁₇ Moreover, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad adopted the same procedure of finding a candidate for a suicide operation, training and preparing him psychologically, writing a farewell letter, and making a videotape before his mission. ₁₈

In April 1993, the battalions of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam scored another victory when a booby-trapped car driven by a Hamas activist exploded in the Jordan Rift Valley between two parked Israeli buses, whose passengers had, by chance, gotten off. It soon became clear that the West Bank was taking the lead in military activity against Israel following the move there from Gaza of senior Hamas figures sought by Israel. The most conspicuous of them was `Imad `Aql, who staged many of the attacks on Israeli targets around Hebron. His killing by Israeli forces in November 1993 triggered a wave of riots in the occupied territories, the declaration of a three-day mourning period by Hamas and Fatah, and his colleagues’ announcement that they would “punish” Israel with five actions to avenge `Aql’s death. ₁₉ Such announcements by Hamas’s military apparatus became the expected response to the killing of senior Palestinian military figures or civilians by Israel. Hamas’s quasi-apologetic approach indicated its continuing need to secure legitimacy from the Palestinian people for its armed struggle against Israel, by presenting this approach as legitimate self- defense, thus absolving Hamas of responsibility for the repercussions of its actions, such as collective punishment by Israel’s total closure of the territories.

The conclusion of the Oslo agreement and the signing of the Declaration of Principles (DOP) between Israel and the PLO in September 1993 dramatically changed Hamas’s strategic situation. Indeed, as a movement whose military activity against Israel now outweighed that of Fatah and the other Palestinian national organizations, the PLO-Israel agreement confronted Hamas with nothing less than an existential problem. To begin with, the agreement put an end to the Intifada, which had provided Hamas with ideal conditions to become a genuine political alternative to the PLO. In addition, the PLO’s agreement to desist from hostile actions against Israel, a commitment to be imposed by the future self-governing Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied territories, clearly threatened to curtail Hamas’s freedom of military action and provoke a head-on confrontation with the PA, which would be fully supported by both Israel and the international community.

The stunning effect of the Oslo agreement on Hamas also was reflected in the internal discourse among its activists. Internal documents circulated among the movement’s senior members in the initial period after the DOP was signed conveyed a sense of despair, stemming from the awareness of Hamas’s political weakness in the face of Palestinian and international support for the agreement. Hamas’s deepest concern was for the future of jihad against Israel. Its conclusion was to continue the strategy of jihad, still perceived as the ultimate source of legitimacy and as a shield against any attempt by the PA to restrict the movement’s activities or eliminate them altogether. At the same time, however, Hamas called on its members to preserve the “unity of Palestinian ranks” and to work to bring together all opponents of the Oslo agreement, Islamists and secular alike. ₂₀

Indeed, in the first few months after the Oslo agreement was signed, Hamas escalated its armed struggle against Israeli soldiers and civilians alike. Overall, though, Hamas’s policy of controlled violence against Israel persisted well after the signing of the DOP. Thus Hamas continued to maintain that its policy was based on pragmatic cost-benefit calculations and was not captive to dogma. Expressing the pragmatic policy on violent attacks against Israel in the wake of the Oslo accord, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, Musa Abu Marzuq, said that “the military activity is a permanent strategy that will not change. The modus operandi, tactics, means, and timing are based on their benefit. They will change from time to time in order to cause the heaviest damage to the occupation.” ₂₁

Given Hamas’s insistence on continuing its violence against Israel, the implementation of the DOP became dependent on the PA’s capability and willingness to prevent Hamas and the Islamic Jihad from committing violence against Israel. Clearly, attacks by Hamas against Israeli targets risked halting the peace process or at least slowing it down. This prospect would portray Hamas among the Palestinians in the occupied territories as an obstacle to further retreat by the Israelis and thus would erode the movement’s popular support. ₂₂ Hamas sought to bridge this gap by walking a thin line between maintaining its political autonomy and coexisting with the PA. Its goal was a policy combining continued violence against Israel, a propaganda campaign designed to expose the DOP’s weaknesses and thus bring about its abolition, and the avoidance, at almost any price, of violent confrontation with the PA and mutual bloodshed (taqtil). To achieve this, Hamas intensified its armed struggle against Israel preceding the founding of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and Jericho and tried by this means to enhance its public prestige and thereby immunize itself from the PA’s attempts to suppress the Islamic opposition. ₂₃

The DOP’s threat to Hamas was indicated by the latter’s willingness—even before Oslo accord was signed, when rumors spread about a possible unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip—to seek agreement with the PLO. Through such an agreement Hamas apparently was trying to prevent the use of force against its members. by the Fatah Hawks in the occupied territories. This attempt became urgent after the Oslo accord and the anticipated establishment of Palestinian self-government in the Gaza Strip. Shortly before the Cairo agreement concerning the implementation of the Gaza-Jericho phase was signed in May 1994, a joint statement by Hamas’s battalions of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam and the Fatah Hawks was published in the Gaza Strip announcing a six-point agreement that the two rival factions had reached. This tenuous collaboration was aimed at enhancing Palestinian national unity and preventing internal war. Under the six-point agreement, the two sides would refrain from both verbal and violent disputes, commence a “constructive dialogue,” and establish joint conciliation committees to resolve conflicts, suspend execution of collaborators for one month, decrease the number of strike days, and lift the prohibition on school attendance. This agreement also served as a model for resolving other tensions between local Hamas and Fatah activists. ₂₄

Peaceful coexistence with the PA at the price of abandoning the armed struggle against Israel, however, would risk the loss of Hamas’s distinctiveness as the leading movement for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state. Without the legitimating shield of jihad, Hamas would be exposed to a process of containment that could eventually destroy it as a political power. Indeed, as one internal document asserted shortly after the establishment of the PA, Hamas was in a “turbulence of contradictions” without a clear policy to meet its specific needs. ₂₅

Indeed, even though Hamas advocated armed struggle against Israel, its leaders were forced to anticipate the expected responses of Israel and the PA and, given the wide public support for the peacemaking process, also of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Yet Hamas’s controlled violence may also have been based on the assumption that selective attacks against Israel might be desirable to the PA, to hasten Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories. At the same time, the Hamas leadership repeatedly instructed its cadres to reiterate to the Palestinian public that the Oslo accord was illegitimate and inconsistent with resolution 242, which stipulated Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders, as opposed to the legitimacy and necessity of jihad under the continuing Israeli occupation. Subsequently, Hamas began to emphasize the PA’s failures and mismanagement, particularly of the humiliating Israeli demand that Arafat and the PA act forcefully against the Islamic opposition. Hamas interpreted Israel’s attempts to use the PA as a means to enhance its security as an absurdity that validated every attempt by Hamas to intensify the struggle against the Gaza-Jericho agreement by means of mass protest and violent struggle everywhere against the Israeli occupation. ₂₆ Thus, whereas Hamas had been accelerating its attacks against Israel’s forces withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, it adopted a “wait and see” position during the first few months of the PA, to test the limits of its freedom of action under the new authority.

Hamas’s insistence on continuing the violent attacks against Israel was facilitated by the massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in February 1994, committed by a Jewish settler, after which Hamas vowed vengeance in the name of the Palestinian people. The timing of the massacre, in the midst of the Israel-PLO negotiations on the implementation of the Gaza-Jericho phase of the DOP, gave Hamas an opportunity to enhance its popularity by escalating the violence against Israel in the form of suicidal car bombings in urban centers, toward the anticipated advent of a self-governing Palestinian authority. Furthermore, presenting Hamas’s violent actions against Israel as a response in kind to the massacre in Hebron could mitigate criticism of Hamas following Israel’s collective punitive measures against the Palestinian people.

The opportunity provided by the massacre in Hebron was doubly appealing to Hamas, due to indications that Arafat had been trying to prevent a head-on clash with the Islamists. This was indicated by the temporary arrests of Hamas and al-Jihad al-Islami members, and Arafat’s permissive approach to attacks against Israeli targets in pre-1967 Israel. Such an approach allowed the PA to deny responsibility, since the perpetrators had arguably launched their attacks from areas under Israel’s administration. ₂₇ Indeed, Hamas’s concept of a continuous jihad was tacitly acceptable to Fatah’s leaders, who believed that it would also prevent a direct confrontation between Hamas and the PA. ₂₈

Israel’s repeated retaliation for Hamas’s suicide bombings by confining the entire Palestinian population to the West Bank and Gaza Strip compelled the PA to reach an agreement with Hamas on the issue of armed struggle. However, the PA-Hamas dialogue conducted in the summer and fall of 1995 to settle their differences—including the dispute over the use of violence against Israel—was marked by the PA’s effort to buy time and peace with Hamas at the expense of its commitment to Israel under the terms of the 1994 Cairo agreement to prevent terrorist attacks from its areas. Hamas’s and the PA’s positions therefore may have been affected by the relatively wide public support for violent actions against Israel. ₂₉

The difference between the PA and Hamas was demonstrated by the PA’s minister of planning, Nabil Sha`ath. Whereas Sha`ath called for freezing the armed operations and giving diplomacy a chance, Hamas leader Mahmud al-Zahar insisted that the employment of arms was legitimate and that the parallel use of war and peace was possible. ₃₀ Hamas was willing to offer only to cease its military operations in and from the Gaza Strip for a period to be agreed on by the two parties. In October 1995, before the actual negotiations began, the PA’s draft agreement had already taken a vague position, contending that Hamas was committed “to put an end to military operations in and from the PA’s territory, or refrain from taking credit for them in any way.” ₃₁

Despite lengthy negotiations, however, Hamas refused to give up the armed struggle, and at the end of the Cairo talks in December 1995, the two parties were unable to sign an agreement. Instead, the heads of the two delegations issued only a joint communiqué, implying that Hamas would try to avoid embarrassing the PA. Accordingly, Hamas would halt military operations against Israel from PA-controlled areas and refrain from publicly announcing or admitting responsibility for them. ₃₂ The parties’ reference to Hamas’s continued violence under the Oslo process made clear their mutual understanding that since the defense of Israel was not the PA’s responsibility, armed struggle against Israel could continue as long as it was not waged from PA-controlled areas. ₃₃

That Hamas’s armed struggle has been perceived as a means subordinate to political calculations was made clear by the movement’s leading figures in Gaza. Probably the most candid statement was by Mahmud al-Zahar:

We must calculate the benefit and cost of continued armed operations. If we can fulfill our goals without violence, we will do so. Violence is a means, not a goal. Hamas’s decision to adopt self-restraint does not contradict our aims, including the establishment of an Islamic state instead of Israel. . . . We will never recognize Israel, but it is possible that a truce [muhadana] could prevail between us for days, months, or years. ₃₄

From the outset, Hamas was aware of the possible consequences of continued armed struggle for its relations with the PA. Indeed, this became evident in view of the PA’s rejection of any attempt to consolidate a legal opposition, Islamist or any other, and even used Hamas’s armed operations against Israel as a pretext for suppressing the latter’s activity. Nonetheless, senior Hamas members in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were divided between two major trends regarding the use of violence: a politically oriented position of being willing to adjust to the new political realities and, from the very establishment of the PA in June 1994, of striving to reach an agreement that would allow it a legal and open political presence and ways to share power through envisioned Islamic party; and a militant position, composed mainly of the military apparatuses, of insisting on continued armed struggle and objecting to any agreement with the PA that would end its activity and organization. The militant position was supported by the “outside” political leadership, whereas the “inside” political leaders in the West Bank and Gaza, weakened by the continued imprisonment of Sheikh Yasin and other leading figures, were paralyzed by pressures and threats from their local rivals. According to one report, these internal differences led to threats to political leaders like Mahmud al-Zahar from Gaza and Jamal Salim from Nablus by members of the Hamas military apparatus. ₃₅

It was against this backdrop and fear of confrontation with the PA as a result of Israeli pressures on Arafat to eliminate Hamas and its social and religious infrastructure that Hamas leaders had repeatedly proposed, since 1995, a conditional cease-fire with Israel, to stop the bloodshed of innocents on both sides. Although many of Hamas’s political leaders spoke out in favor of such a cease-fire, they did not agree on its terms. The terms mentioned by Hamas’s leaders in the West Bank and Gaza were the release of all prisoners, removal of the economic closure of the occupied territories, the eviction of all the settlers (sometimes the Jewish residents of East Jerusalem were also included in this category), and an end to the persecution of Palestinians. In any case, such an agreement would have to be signed by the PA—not Hamas—and Israel. Following a cease-fire, Hamas was reportedly willing to negotiate indirectly with Israel on a time- limited truce (muhadana) conditional on a full Israeli withdrawal to its 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, and the dismantling of all the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. ₃₆

In September 1997, two days before the abortive assassination attempt by Mossad agents in Amman against Khalid Mash`al, the head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Jordan’s King Hussein delivered a message from the Hamas leadership to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In it, Hamas suggested opening an indirect dialogue with the Israeli government, to be mediated by the king, toward achieving a cessation of violence, as well as a “discussion of all matters.” But the message was ignored or missed and, in any case, became irrelevant following the attempt on Mash`al’s life. That such a message had indeed been delivered was revealed by King Hussein himself in the aftermath of the Mash`al affair, which led to Yasin’s release. ₃₇

The Dynamics of Controlled Violence

Hamas’s policy of controlled violence should be examined in the context of intra-Palestinian affairs and intra-Hamas considerations as much as in the context of Israeli-Palestinian relations. However controlled and calculated, Hamas violence could be hardly anticipated, or prevented, raising intriguing questions concerning the dynamics of Hamas’s military operations: Given their critical impact on the movement’s existence, the question is how much such operations were the result of political decisions rather than local initiatives. What level in the movement’s hierarchy, and what considerations, determined the timing and type of the violent attacks against Israel? Were the terrorist attacks a vindictive response to casualties among Palestinian civilians or perhaps to the elimination of senior military figures of the Islamic movements by Israel’s secret agencies?

Hamas perceived the Oslo accord and the 1994 Cairo agreement as a strategic threat to its very existence. The more real this threat seemed—as a result of the progress in the diplomacy between Israel and the PA—the more willing Hamas was to resort to armed struggle despite the risk to its dialogue with the PA. At the same time, Hamas sought to reduce this risk by describing violent attacks against Israel as unavoidable acts of self-defense or as revenge for Israel’s killing of Palestinians.

On April 6 and 13, 1994, shortly before the signing of the Cairo agreement on the establishment of a self-governing Palestinian authority in Gaza and Jericho, two suicide operations were carried out in `Afula and Hadera, two Jewish towns in Israel, by the Battalions of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Hamas’s military wing. Publicly, these operations were portrayed as avenging the massacre in Hebron of thirty Palestinians by a Jewish settler on February 25 of that year. Although this argument was directed to the Palestinian people, these operations also were aimed at enhancing Hamas’s bargaining position regarding the anticipated PLO-based PA, by pressuring Arafat to reckon with Hamas and seek political coexistence with it. ₃₈

Hamas’s fears that any progress in the Israel-PA peace process would mean further restriction of its opportunities as a mass movement, as well as voices in Israel calling for its eradication, prompted Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to use even more violence and to urge their forces to carry out another wave of suicide attacks in Tel-Aviv (by Hamas) and Ha-Sharon Junction (by the Islamic Jihad) in October 1994, and January 1995, respectively. In the summer of 1995, Hamas carried out two more suicide bombings in Ramat Gan and Jerusalem, which coincided with the final phase of the Israeli-PA negotiations over Israel’s withdrawal from all primary Palestinian towns in the West Bank, (concluded in the Taba accord, signed on September 28, 1995) and the general elections for the PA’s Council to be held afterward. Taking into account Hamas’s recognition that it must adjust to the new political reality, one may argue that beyond undermining the peace process, the suicidal attacks were meant to enhance Hamas’s prestige among the Palestinians and to force Arafat to come to terms with Hamas as a legitimate opposition.

The signing of the Taba accord in late September 1995 apparently made Hamas’s leaders inside the territories decide to suspend the terrorist attacks against Israel in order to avoid interrupting the Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian cities and the preparation for elections to the PA Council, which could upset the Palestinian public. These calculations apparently underlay the limited understanding reached by Hamas and the PA in the talks conducted in Cairo in late 1995, according to which Hamas was to avoid embarrassing the PA by refraining from attacks against Israel from areas under the PA’s control. Indeed, between August 1995 and February 1996, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad did not make any terrorist attacks against Israeli targets, a result of the pressure exerted by both Israel and the PA on Hamas’s leaders and the fear of frustrating the Palestinian people’s expectations of the new Israel-PA agreement. Accordingly, various groups of Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip attempted to use this self-imposed truce as a trump card with the PA and, indirectly, with Israel.

One such attempt was Hamas’s offer to stop military operations against Israel in return for the PA’s ceasing to persecute members of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam’s battalions. The talks between Hamas and the PA were conducted with the participation of Muhammad Daif, Hamas’s leading military figure in the Gaza Strip and first on Israel’s list of wanted Palestinians, who expressed a willingness to accept the PA’s demands, as follows:

1. A total cessation of military operations by Hamas against targets in Israel that do not serve Palestinian interests.
2. To help the PA prove that it has full control of the situation so as to prevent Israel from using this as a pretext to violate the agreement. ₃₉

Hamas leaders in the area controlled by the PA sought an agreement with Israel through the PA on a mutual cessation of hostilities. Hamas would sign a formal agreement with the PA, but not with Israel, and in return, Israel would stop pursuing the movement’s activists and release Sheikh Yasin from prison. Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Chairman Yasir Arafat had been part of the effort to reach such an agreement, together with an Israeli rabbi residing in the West Bank. ₄₀

The PA’s response to the Hamas leadership in the West Bank and Gaza Strip deepened the latter’s split with Hamas’s Political Bureau in Amman, whose attitude toward a cessation of violence and further accommodation with the PA remained negative. Thus, although “internal” Hamas activists supported an agreement with the PA for a total cessation of terrorist attacks against Israel, in the PA-Hamas talks held in Cairo in December 1995, the “outside” Hamas leaders refused to accept such a truce. All that they would agree to was a vaguely phrased commitment to temporarily halt military operations against Israel from the Palestinian self-governed areas and refrain from publicly announcing, or admitting to responsibility for, such attacks, in order to avoid embarrassing the PA. It is noteworthy that the PA had initially been willing to accept such a vague commitment by Hamas—apparently as the lesser evil—to ensure trouble-free general elections to the PA Council, scheduled for January 1996. ₄₁

Hamas’s promise not to embarrass the PA by carrying out military operations against Israel from the territories under the PA’s control left open the possibility of terrorist attacks from areas either still under Israeli control or, implicitly, even from the areas controlled by the PA. At the same time, Israel pursued its secret war against terrorism and continued to impose general closures on the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the wake of advance warnings of terrorist attacks. In short, Hamas’s military apparatus could still justify, from its point of view, continuing its attacks against Israel. Specifically, when covert Israeli operations killed two leading Palestinian figures who were behind the suicide bombings—the Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shiqaqi in Malta (October 26, 1995) and the so-called engineer of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Yahya `Ayyash, in Gaza (January 5, 1996)—their respective organizations vowed to retaliate, and the PA could hardly deny their right.

Shiqaqi’s assassination clearly stiffened the PA’s moral stand regarding the repression of Islamic terrorism in Palestinian society. Spokesmen for the PA claimed that the murder of Shiqaqi had undermined their efforts to reach an agreement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad to stop attacks against Israel. ₄₂ Moreover, Hamas interpreted the murder as a “declaration of war” by Israel and declared that “the Palestinian people will avenge the murder,” although it did not take any concrete measures. Then, however, the murder of Yahya `Ayyash two weeks before the elections to the PA Council prompted Hamas spokesmen to announce unequivocally that his death would be avenged. Again they resorted to the argument that the jihad should be continued regardless of the Oslo process, as it complemented the diplomacy by expediting Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank and the establishment of Palestinian self-government. `Ayyash’s assassination in fact triggered a spate of suicide bombings in Israel. The actual instructions and means to implement the attacks were issued by Muhammad Daif, commander of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam in the Gaza Strip, to a senior member of the West Bank military apparatus, Hasan Salama, who was responsible for recruiting and training candidates for these operations.

Thus, in February and March 1996, after a respite of six months, young Palestinians, supervised by Hasan Salama, carried out a series of suicide bombings in Jerusalem, Ashkelon, and Tel Aviv, calling themselves “Disciples of the Martyr Yahya `Ayyash.” The bombings brought the number of Israeli civilians and troops killed at the hands of the Islamic movements since the signing of the Oslo accord in September 1993 to more than one hundred. By using `Ayyash’s name, the perpetrators appeared to be fulfilling their duty of avenging his assassination and enhancing the movement’s prestige. In addition, the wave of terrorism that jolted Israel served the purposes of intransigent elements in Hamas—the command in Amman and senior figures of the military apparatus in the Gaza Strip—who wanted to undermine the dialogue between the “inside” political leaders of the movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the PA. ₄₃ Indeed, the bombings revealed the weakness of the “inside” political leadership and its lack of control over the movement’s armed apparatuses; at the same time, the “outside” leadership expressed uncertainty about the identity of the perpetrators, perhaps in order to blur their connection with Hamas and save the movement from possible punitive measures by the PA and Israel. Later it turned out that the idea of the bombings originated with a clandestine subgroup in the battalions of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam, consisting of some ranking military figures of Hamas, such as Muhammad Daif and Ibrahim Maqadmah. ₄₄

In terms of lives lost, sheer horror, and the long-term impact on Israeli society, the February–March suicide bombings must be considered the worst terrorist assault ever unleashed against Israel. The repeated scenes of carnage in urban centers and the grief that followed generated worldwide solidarity with Israel and condemnations, culminating in an international summit conference at Sharm al-Sheikh in Sinai led by U.S. President Bill Clinton in mid-March. The PA, under heavy pressure to clamp down on Islamic terrorism, made extensive arrests and confiscated illegal arms, especially among the Hamas military apparatus, in coordination with the Israeli intelligence services. Under the heavy public criticism following the series of suicide bombings, Hamas took a passive line, reiterating that it would not veer from its policy of averting a full-blown internal Palestinian confrontation.

One reason for the PA’s harsh reaction toward Hamas was the latter’s violation of a tacit understanding reached in late December 1995, under which Hamas would not launch attacks on Israeli targets from the PA-controlled areas. ₄₅ In addition, there was unprecedented condemnation by Palestinians of the carnage, and more broadly, the terrorist bloodbath sparked a public debate among Muslim scholars and theologians in the Arab world, revealing a range of attitudes toward legitimate means of struggle against Israel. ₄₆ Criticism of suicide operations was supported by learned religious opinions (fatawa) by Muslim scholars, apparently issued at the behest of the PA. Such acts against civilians and unarmed people, they argued, could not be considered martyrdom (istishhad) in a holy war, thereby implying that they were, in fact, acts of individual suicide (intihar), forbidden in Islam as an act against God’s will. This criticism was the reason for the publication in Damascus of an apologetic book on this theme, apparently at Hamas’s initiative, if not by the movement itself, a few months after the February&-;March suicide bombings. The book’s stated goal was to refute the criticism of the killing of innocent Israeli civilians and to establish the Islamic legitimacy of such acts, carried out by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad against Israel. Those who blew themselves up were made “martyrs” of jihad. ₄₇

Representing Hamas’s militant viewpoint, the book ridiculed the scholarly Islamic opinions of those who opposed the suicide operations and questioned the writer’s religious and moral authority. Hamas enlisted Islamic scholars in its cause as well, who maintained that self-sacrifice in the course of jihad had a sound historical and religious basis, representing the noblest expression of devotion and conferring the status of martyr (shahid) on those who fell. Giving up one’s life in a holy war, these scholars held, was undertaken for the sake of Islam’s domains and shrines, and the mission of every believer was to inflict as many casualties as possible on the enemies of Islam. Suicide for the sake of Islam was implicitly justified by the desperate reality of the Muslim world under the yoke of Western domination. Nonetheless, even this book set limits to suicide, emphasizing that it must be strictly subordinated to the public interest and not be based on emotion or unsound beliefs. ₄₈

The ascendancy of a right-wing government in Israel in May 1996, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, indicated a major shift in Israel’s approach to the Oslo process, in which partnership with the PA was replaced by force and procrastination. The new Israeli approach was demonstrated by the delayed redeployment in Hebron; the opening of the Hashmonean tunnel in the Old City of Jerusalem in October 1996, which triggered armed clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian police forces; and the decision to build a Jewish settlement in Har Homa (Jabal Ghneim) on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem. The tension and mistrust between the sides produced a convergence of interests, though not agreement, between Hamas and the PA in an effort to demonstrate “national unity” and a renewal of the intra-Palestinian dialogue. The stalled Oslo process alleviated Hamas’s concerns, rendering the use of violence less necessary, while the nominal rapprochement with the PA meant an easing of the repressive measures taken against the Islamic opposition, enabling coexistence and uninterrupted development for Hamas. The result was that the first nine months of Netanyahu’s government were marked by the absence of the kind of spectacular Islamic terrorist attacks that had taken place during the previous two years. But in March 1997, the bombing of a Tel Aviv coffee shop ended the respite. The operation, which had mistakenly ended with a suicide, indicated a new policy by Hamas to prevent its being identified with such attacks. Whether the March operation was an expression of despair at the economic deterioration and continued state of occupation, ₄₉ the reflection of the availability of human and material resources, or the order of a Hamas decision maker in response to Israeli policy, it once again demonstrated the decisive weight of the local military squads in carrying out terrorist attacks inside Israel.

In two other suicide operations in August and September of that year, in Jerusalem, Hamas also tried to avoid being identified with the attacks, probably for tactical reasons involving Hamas-PA relations. Hamas was supported in this effort by the PA’s senior spokesmen, including Arafat himself, who stated that the perpetrators had come from abroad. At the same time, unofficial announcements in the name of the military apparatus took responsibility for the suicide bombings, claiming they had been in reaction to the Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem.

The announcement by Hamas’s headquarters in Amman regarding the suicide bombings was apologetic, trying to justify the return to armed struggle and suicide operations as the only way to block the Israeli settlement efforts and the “Judaization” of the Islamic holy places in Jerusalem. At the same time, the Hamas “inside” leaders demonstrated their solidarity with the PA as a gesture to Arafat, who had rebuffed Israeli pressure to take measures against Hamas’s civilian institutions. However, in January 1998, the instigators of the suicide bombings were identified as members of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam, and a well-organized Hamas “explosives laboratory” and operative cell were uncovered in PA-controlled territory near Nablus. The PA reacted by taking punitive measures against the Islamic movement. A number of Hamas’s political leaders were arrested, and some of the movement’s charitable organizations were closed down. Once again, the PA’s harsh response was in answer to Hamas’s violation of the 1995 understanding that barred it from launching operations against Israel from Palestinian-controlled areas. ₅₀

The interrogation of the Nablus group revealed an extensive, compartmentalized, military apparatus, which maintained close contact with the Hamas headquarters in the Gaza Strip, Jordan, and Lebanon using advanced communications methods, including the Internet. The activities of the `Izz al-Din al-Qassam squads were divided among several senior regional commanders, whose names were on Israel’s “wanted” list. They thus were constantly on the move from one district to another, assisted by the clergy and personnel of the mosques. These senior activists organized new military cadres and supervised their training for military operations. According to Israeli sources, students (including women) of Bir Zeit University in the West Bank also helped manufacture explosives in the “laboratory.” Yet it still remained unclear whether the suicide bombings had been specifically ordered by the Political Bureau or were the result of local initiative and operational availability. ₅₁

On July 19, 1998, a van loaded with fuel, gas containers, and a large quantity of nails went up in flames in the heart of Jerusalem, seriously burning the Palestinian driver but not exploding. Subsequently it emerged that the man, a resident of a refugee camp north of Jerusalem and known to be a Hamas activist, had undertaken the presumed suicide bombing attempt on his own. Both Hamas and the PA charged that the incident had been provoked by the Israelis to justify the continuing stalemate in the peace process. ₅₂

Hamas’s policy of controlled violence and its willingness to consider a cease-fire with Israel were also a function of internal Palestinian politics—both PA-Hamas relations and politics in Hamas itself. This connection was revealed after the assassination—apparently while he was preparing a car bomb—of one of Hamas’s two senior military commanders in the West Bank, Muhyi al-Din al-Sharif, on March 29, 1998, in Ramallah, an area under full control of the PA. Spokesmen for the PA said that Sharif had been murdered by another senior member of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam, `Imad `Awadallah, brother of `Adel `Awadallah, the central commander of Hamas’s military apparatus in the West Bank, in the course of a power struggle in the organization. The incident exposed Hamas’s political leaders’ lack of control and information about the military apparatus. Thus, although Israel strongly denied any connection with the incident, Hamas declared it was responsible and vowed revenge. At the same time, Hamas rejected the PA’s version of events, claiming that it was riddled with contradictions and hinting that the PA’s security apparatus had tortured Sharif’s assistant to obtain the alleged identity of the assassin. Furthermore, Hamas spokesmen implicitly accused the PA’s security organizations of collaborating with Israel in Sharif’s assassination. Hamas then organized protest demonstrations against the PA’s continued persecution of its activists and its imprisonment of about two hundred Hamas members without trial. Hamas accused the PA of incompetence and corruption, claiming that its bureaucracy had stolen hundreds of millions of dollars. The PA took this as an attempt to question its legitimacy and authority and arrested some of Hamas’s key figures, including `Abd al-`Aziz Rantisi, as well as `Imad `Awadallah, who was suspected of murdering Sharif. ₅₃

The tension between the PA and Hamas flared up again after the murder of the `Awadallah brothers (`Imad had escaped from a Palestinian prison in Jericho) by an Israeli force on September 10 in Hebron. This double murder, viewed by the Palestinians as an Israeli success—in eliminating the senior commanders of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam and eroding Hamas’s military capability—triggered new threats of revenge by Hamas leaders. They accused the PA of collaborating with Israel in trying to destroy Hamas’s military apparatus, thereby forcing the PA itself to condemn Israel for killing the `Awadallah brothers and accusing it of attempting to provoke another wave of violence that would end the American mediation efforts to bring about another Israeli redeployment in the West Bank, in accordance with the Oslo and Hebron accords. ₅₄

In October 1998, Israeli military sources reported that several attempts by Hamas to carry out mass terrorist attacks against Israel had been averted thanks to cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security organizations. The PA’s close collaboration with Israel reflected its anticipation of a positive conclusion of American diplomatic efforts to secure a redeployment of Israeli forces in the West Bank. The reports also suggested that despite the recent debacles, Hamas still possessed an impressive military infrastructure. ₅₅ Thus, despite Hamas’s policy of avoiding a head-on collision with the PA at this critical juncture, its military activists had still intended to carry out massive terrorist operations against Israel, with the declared blessing of Sheikh Ahmad Yasin. The explanation of this seeming contradiction may lie in Hamas’s belief that it could take advantage of the murder of the `Awadallah brothers by launching a massive strike against Israel, whose consequences—in the form of Israeli retaliation—could be justified to the Palestinian public. ₅₆

The terms of the Israel-PA Wye accord, signed in Washington on October 23, 1998, for a redeployment of Israeli forces in the West Bank, brought tension between the PA and Hamas, which had been mounting since March, to the verge of crisis. Not only did the agreement make Israel’s transfer of land to the PA conditional on the latter’s unequivocal commitment to fight terrorism and all forms of incitement and to collect illegal arms, but the PA also officially agreed to the United States’ monitoring of their implementation, thus entailing the direct involvement and presence of American inspectors in Palestine. Six days after the accord was signed, a member of `Izz al-Din al-Qassam attempted a suicide bombing of a school bus carrying Jewish children in the Gaza Strip; the attack was deflected at the last minute by the bus’s military escort and ended with the death of the Palestinian driver and an Israeli soldier. The children were unharmed.

This incident, as well as the explosion of a car bomb in downtown Jerusalem a week later, in which two Palestinians from the Islamic Jihad were killed, indicated that both Islamic groups still possessed organizational and planning capability and had access to material and human resources. In fact, however, no clear information was available for Israel and the PA regarding the source of the initiative and authority for such actions, the underlying political considerations, or their timing. In any event, the Gaza bus incident constituted a clear violation of the 1995 understanding between Hamas and the PA. This situation was aggravated by another extensive roundup by the PA of senior Hamas leaders, with Sheikh Yasin himself placed under house arrest. This prompted a message by `Izz al-Din al-Qassam threatening that further PA arrests and repressive actions against Hamas might lead to a clash with the PA’s security arm, despite the instructions of the movement’s leadership. ₅₇

It was apparently the deep involvement of the Clinton administration in the Wye agreement that accounted for the violent attack against the PA by Iran’s supreme religious authority `Ali Khamena'i, and a call by Hizballah’s secretary-general, Hasan Nasrallah, to assassinate Arafat in order to foil the “treasonous agreement,” which came a day after the PA began arresting Hamas activists in the wake of the attempted suicide bombing in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas, which was fully aware of the Palestinians’ initial relief at Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, forged a strategy to secure its popularity among the Palestinians while arousing public resistance to the Oslo process, but without itself being accused of causing the process to fail. The idea was to demonstrate the inherent imbalance of the agreement with Israel, which would have the effect of perpetuating Israel’s hegemony over and usurpation of Palestinian land. Hamas pursued a mixed policy of controlled violence against Israel and a willingness to maintain a dialogue and coexistence with the PA, despite the political difficulties this entailed. To offset the damage to Hamas’s popularity—because its actions were perceived to cause adverse economic conditions and to delay the removal of the Israeli occupation—and to reduce the risk of a frontal clash with the PA, Hamas usually staged its violent attacks against Israel in reaction to Israeli operations against the Palestinians that called for vengeance. ₅₈

The two-track policy that Hamas adopted—controlled violence against Israel and dialogue with the PA—forced the movement to toe a fine line, which sometimes entailed contradictions that led to a temporary failure of the policy, by which Hamas avoided an irreversible collision with the PA. Hamas was able to sustain its policy not least because its spokesmen used different voices and represented different attitudes and environments that shielded the movement from repressive measures against its constant backbone: the civilian institutions. Hamas’s communal infrastructure of mosques and social, educational, and welfare associations created a fertile soil from which the movement’s military squads sprang and from which it drew moral as well as organizational sustenance. At the same time, the PA had limited options to uproot Islamic violence, not only because of the unclear chain of command in the Hamas hierarchy in PA areas, but also because it knew that the real power in Hamas resided with the Political Bureau, which was out of its reach. In this sense, as forged after 1989, Hamas’s structure proved organizationally resilient for a policy marked by flexibility and political adjustment, which turned to be indispensable to survival in unfavorable conditions.

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Endnotes

Note 1: Carl Brockelmann, History of the Islamic People (New York: Capricorn, 1960), p. 28. Back.

Note 2: Filastin al-Muslima (August 1992): 15. Back.

Note 3: `Atif `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, Hayatuhu wa-Jihaduhu [Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, his life and struggle] (Gaza: al-Jami`a al-Islamiyya, 1991), pp. 129–131, 142–144; 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), pp. 103–104. Back.

Note 4: 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. 81–82, 88; Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, pp. 292–294. Back.

Note 5: `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, pp. 140–141; Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, p. 105. Back.

Note 6: During the first three years of the Intifada, Hamas committed sixty-six violent actions against Israel: see Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, pp. 139–141; `Adwan, al-Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, p. 143. Back.

Note 7: The clash was a result of Palestinian riots triggered by a declared intention of the Israeli “Faithful of the Temple Mount” group to lay the cornerstone for the new Jewish temple in the Muslim compound and by the mass gathering of Jewish pilgrims at the Western Wall’s plaza. Back.

Note 8: Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, pp. 288–290. Back.

Note 9: Shmuel Bar: The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan (Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, 1998), pp. 46–47. Back.

Note 10: Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, pp. 150–154. Back.

Note 11: Special leaflet, November 10, 1988. Back.

Note 12: Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, pp. 244–245; Shaul Mishal and Reuben Aharoni, Speaking Stones, Communiqués from the Intifada Underground (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1994), p. 40. Back.

Note 13: Sabr is closely related to sumud (steadfastness), a term that had been used by the PLO to legitimize the normal life of Palestinian inhabitants in the occupied territories under the Israeli government—that is, by exempting them from the duty of armed struggle—by relating to it the virtue of preserving the Palestinian national land. Back.

Note 14: Shabi and Shaked, Hamas, pp. 14–19, 161, 298–299, 310. Back.

Note 15: Ibid., pp. 302–307. Back.

Note 16: The instructions were issued to a military activist in the Nablus district by a written message carried by an emissary (ibid., p. 313). Back.

Note 17: On Hizballah’s influence on Hamas in this respect, see, for example, Ha'aretz, April 21, 1994; Nida' al-Watan (Lebanon), November 15, 1996. Back.

Note 18: Ha'aretz, August 25, 1995. Back.

Note 19: Shabi and Shaked, p. 326. Back.

Note 20: See, for example, Hamas, “Tajannub al-Iqtital wa-Hudud al-Difa` `an al-Nafs” [Avoidance of mutual fighting and the boundaries of self-defense], October 1993, internal circular; and Hamas, “Barnamaj Muqtarah lil-Muwajaha al-Jamahiriyya wal-Siyasiyya fi al-Dakhil fi Muwajahat Ittifaq Ghazza wa-Ariha” [Proposed plan for popular and political resistance from within in confrontation with the Gaza-Jericho agreement], October 9, 1993, internal circular. These documents are further discussed in chap. 4. Back.

Note 21: Filastin al-Muslima (June 1994). Back.

Note 22: By the end of September 1993, 73 percent of the Palestinians in the occupied territories supported the Oslo accord and the peace process. See Beverly Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996), p. 163. Back.

Note 23: Hamas, “Tajannub al-Iqtital wa-Hudud al-Difa` `an al-Nafs,” October 1993; Mahmud al-Zahar to al-Nahar (East Jerusalem), October 25, 1995; Hamas, al-Tahlil al-Siyasi [Political analysis], no. 35, May 7, 1994 (internal periodical), 6. See also chap. 4. Back.

Note 24: On such an agreement in the Hebron area, see the preceding note; joint leaflet, April 22, 1994; al-Quds (East Jerusalem), March 16, 1993, and June 10, 1994. Back.

Note 25: Quoted from an internal document reproduced in al-Wasat, December 1995, p. 18. Hamas, “Barnamaj Muqtarah lil-Muwajaha al-Jamahiriyya wal-Siyasiyya fi al-Dakhil fi Muwajahat Ittifaq Ghazza-Ariha,” October 9, 1993. Back.

Note 26: Hamas, al-Risala (internal periodical), October 13, 1993; al-Tahlil al-Siyasi [Political analysis] (internal periodical), no. 31, June 25, 1994. Back.

Note 27: Y. M. Ibrahim, “Palestinian Religious Militants: Why Their Ranks Are Growing,” The New York Times, November 8, 1994; Y. Melman, “War and Peace Process,” The Washington Post, January 29, 1995. Back.

Note 28: Sawt al-Haqq wal-Hurriyya ('Umm al-Fahm, Israel), May 13, 1994; al-Muharrir (Jordan), December 4, 1994. Back.

Note 29: According to a survey by the Center for Palestinian Studies and Research in Nablus, conducted in early February 1995, 46 percent of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip supported continued violence against Israeli targets, and 81 percent were opposed to negotiations with Israel if the policy of settlement continued (Ha'aretz, February 12, 1995). Back.

Note 30: PA Ministry of Information, “al-`Alaqat Bayn al-Sulta al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya wa-`Anasir al-Mu`arada” [Relations between the Palestinian National Authority and elements of the opposition], April 12, 1995. Back.

Note 31: al-Hayat al-Jadida (Ramallah), October 11, 1995. Back.

Note 32: al-Quds (East Jerusalem), December 22, 1995; al-Nahar (East Jerusalem), December 23, 1995. Back.

Note 33: al-Quds (East Jerusalem), December 24, 1995; al-Wasat, January 1, 1996, p. 30; al-Bilad, January 2, 1996. The violation of this understanding by Hamas activists who carried out the two suicide bombings in Jerusalem in August and September 1997 from area B (under joint administration of Israel and the PA) explains the harsh measures taken against Hamas. In addition to arrests, the PA for the first time closed down sixteen Hamas charitable and educational institutions (Ha'aretz, September 28, 1997). Back.

Note 34: al-Quds (East Jerusalem), October 12, 1995. Back.

Note 35: al-Watan al-`Arabi (Lebanon), November 4, 1994, p. 27; al-Wasat, September 28, 1995, pp. 23–24; Kol Ha-`ir (Jerusalem), March 8, 1996, pp. 68–71. Back.

Note 36: Muhammad Subhi al-Suwairky, “al-Haraka al-Islamiyya wa-Tahaddiyat al-Mustaqbal” [The Islamic Movement and the future challenges], al-Watan, March 30, 1995; Mahmud al-Zahar to al-Quds (East Jerusalem), October 10, 1994; Ahmad Bahr and Musa Abu Marzuq to al-Quds (East Jerusalem) April 20, 1994; Ha'aretz, January 8, 1996; Ha'aretz, October 8, 9, 1997; Kol Ha-`Ir (Jerusalem), March 8, 29, 1996; The New Yorker, August 19, 1996, p. 26. Back.

Note 37: Ha'aretz, October 9, 1997. Back.

Note 38: Khalid al-Kharub, “Harakat Hamas Bayn al-Sulta al-Filastiniyya wa-Isra'il: Min Muthallath al-Qiwa Ila al-Mitraqa wal-Sandan” [Hamas movement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel: From the triangle of forces to the hammer and anvil], Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, no. 18 (1994): 28–29. Back.

Note 39: al-Wasat, March 4, 1996, p. 21; Ha'aretz, January 8, 1996. Back.

Note 40: Hillel Cohen, “ha-Heskem `Im Hamas,” Kol Ha`ir (Jerusalem), April 19, 1996, including a photocopy of the draft agreement, dated February 1, 1996. Back.

Note 41: al-Hayat al-Jadida, October 11, 1995. Back.

Note 42: News from Within (Jerusalem) (November 1997): 18. Back.

Note 43: al-Hayat al-Jadida; al-Quds, and al-Nahar (East Jerusalem), January 7, 1996; Ha'aretz, January 8, 1996. Back.

Note 44: Ronen Bergman, “Lama Ein Piggu`im?” [Why there are no (terrorist) strikes], Ha'aretz weekly suppl., June 5, 1998, pp. 32, 34; Ha'aretz, February 25, 1996. Following the capture and interrogation of Hasan Salama by Israel’s internal security service (Shabak), it emerged that a claim made by Israel’s director of military intelligence that the bombings were instigated by Iran in order to bring about the downfall of the Labor Party in the 1996 Israeli general elections was problematic. The suicide terrorist attacks were most probably a direct reaction to the assassination of `Ayyash and had no far-reaching political goal (interview with an Israeli official involved in Salama’s interrogation). Indeed, even as a speculation, this argument was peculiar, given the fact that the elections had just been advanced to late May 1996, so that an attempt to unseat Prime Minister Peres would more logically be made as close as possible to election day, not two or three months earlier. Back.

Note 45: It was revealed that the suicide bombing carried out in Tel Aviv in early March 1996 had been planned and launched from the Gaza Strip with the support of an Israeli Arab citizen. Back.

Note 46: Early religious opinions (fatawa), justifying the suicide bombings as a manifestation of self-sacrifice in the course of legitimate jihad were published in al-Sabil (Jordan), March 12, 1996, and al-Safir (Lebanon), March 26, 1996. Conversely, Sheikh Muhammad al-Sayyid al-Tantawi, the rector of al-Azhar University, defined the suicide attacks and the killing of innocent and unarmed civilians as “evil,” differentiating them from fighting a terrorist enemy (al-Safir, April 1, 1996). Back.

Note 47: Nawaf Ha'il al-Takruri, al-`Amaliyyat al-Istishhadiyya fi al-Mizan al-Fiqhi [The suicide operations in the balance of jurisprudence] (Damascus: Maktabat al-Asad, 1997). On the background of this book and its editor, a member of the Palestinian Islamic movement and one of the deportees to Lebanon in December 1992, see pp. 9–10, 12. The book includes a review and reproductions of the Islamic scholarly opinions (fatawa) published in the Arab press immediately after the bombings (pp. 83–101), including that of Tantawi (see above, note 46). Back.

Note 48: Ibid., p. 14. Back.

Note 49: In April 1977, the Palestinians’ support of the peace process dropped to 60 percent, compared with 79 percent in late 1996, according to Rami Khouri’s article in the Jordan Times, reproduced in Ha'aretz, May 1, 1997. Back.

Note 50: Ha'aretz, August 20, 22 and September 28, 1998. Back.

Note 51: `Amos Har'el, “Kashe Legayyes Mit'abdim” [Difficult to mobilize suiciders], Ha'aretz, February 6, 1998; Danny Rubinstein, “be-Hamas `Asakim Karagil” [Business as usual in Hamas], Ha'aretz, January 21, 1998. On the ambiguity regarding military decision making in Hamas, see Ze'ev Schiff, “Madua` Ein Terror?” [Why is there no terror?], Ha'aretz, July 1, 1998; Ronen Bergman, “James Bond Lo Haya Sham” [James Bond was not there], Ha'aretz, September 25, 1998. Ha'aretz, July 24, 1998, p. 4. Back.

Note 52: Ha'aretz, July 24, 1998, p. 4. Back.

Note 53: Hamas leaflet, April 17, 1998; Ha'aretz, March 23 and April 14, 15, 20–21, 1998. Back.

Note 54: al-Quds, al-Hayat al-Jadida, September 12, 1998; Ha'aretz, September 25, 1998; Yasin in al-Quds, October 2, 1998. Back.

Note 55: In early October, a member of Hams was killed in Ramallah while preparing a car bomb; two Hamas members were arrested at the Erez checkpoint while trying to smuggle a large quantity of explosives from Gaza into Israel, and a laboratory and hundreds of kilograms of explosives were found in Hebron (al-Quds, October 2, 1998; Ha'aretz, October 1–2, 4, 9, 1998). Back.

Note 56: Ha'aretz, November 1–2, 1998. Back.

Note 57: Ibid. Back.

Note 58: Bassam Jarrar to al-Quds, February 5, 1994; Jamil Hamami’s statement in al-Nahar (East Jerusalem), February 9, 1994; Hamas, “Siyasat al-Tawjih fil Marhala al-Qadima (Ba`d Ittifaqiyyat Ghazza-Ariha)” [The indoctrination policy in the next phase (following the Gaza-Jericho agreement)], internal circular, October 28, 1993. Back.