The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence

Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela

Columbia University Press

2000

Preface

 

Hamas is a movement identified with Islamic fundamentalism and murderous suicide bombings. At the top of its agenda are liberating Palestine through a holy war against Israel, establishing an Islamic state on its soil, and reforming society in the spirit of true Islam. It is this Islamic vision, combined with its nationalist claims and militancy toward Israel, that accounts for the prevailing image of Hamas as an ideologically intransigent and politically rigid movement, ready to pursue its goals at any cost, with no limits or constraints. Islamic and national zeal, bitter opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and strategies of terror and violence against Israel have become the movement’s hallmark.

A close scrutiny of Hamas’s roots and its record since its establishment at the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising (Intifada) in December 1987, however, reveals that contrary to this description, it is essentially a social movement. As such, Hamas has directed its energies and resources primarily toward providing services to the community, especially responding to its immediate hardships and concerns. As a religious movement involved in a wide range of social activities, Hamas is deeply rooted in the Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and thus is aware of the society’s anxieties, sharing its concerns, expressing its aspirations, and tending to its needs and difficulties.

Although the common people constitute its main stronghold, Hamas has been able to transcend social fragmentation and class division to ensure its presence in all walks of Palestinian life: among university graduates and the uneducated, merchants and farmers, blue- and white-collar workers, engineers, doctors, and lawyers, young and old, women and men. In its social and political opposition to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Hamas also has won the support of some Palestinian Christians.

That Hamas is a religious movement with local roots and social awareness is reflected in its principal activities, which combine social and cultural Islamic values and are implemented through traditional institutions. The movement achieved its strong social presence by providing a wide range of social services competing with those offered by the Israeli administration (until its withdrawal from most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip) or the Palestinian Authority, which tend to be few and often corrupt, if they exist at all. Hamas runs a network of educational institutions such as kindergartens, schools, libraries, youth and sports clubs, and adult-education centers. In addition, like other Muslim Brotherhood associations in neighboring Arab countries, Hamas provides medical services and runs hospitals as well as charity and welfare organizations for the needy. Indeed, the Intifada forced Hamas to direct larger portions of its financial resources for the welfare and support of families whose members had been killed, wounded, or arrested by Israel.

Hamas is not a prisoner of its own dogmas. It does not shut itself behind absolute truths, nor does it subordinate its activities and decisions to the officially held religious doctrine. Rather, Hamas operates in a context of opportunities and constraints, being attentive to the fluctuating needs and desires of the Palestinian population and cognizant of power relations and political feasibility. Hamas is fully acquainted with and adaptable to the political world, driven by primordial sentiments, conflicting interests, and cost-benefit considerations, a world of constant bargaining and power brokering, multiple identities and fluid loyalties—in which victory is never complete and tension is never ending.

Given the hostile environment in which Hamas operates—military confrontation with Israel, political competition with the PLO, and, more recently, shaky coexistence with the Palestinian Authority—the question is not how closely Hamas adheres to its official dogma, but how and to what extent Hamas is able to justify political conduct that sometimes deviates from its declared doctrine without running the risk of discontent or internal dispute among its followers.

Overall, despite external political and military pressures and internal weaknesses and disagreements, Hamas has been able to retain its ideological coherence, political vitality, and organizational unity. Although a relatively young movement entering its second decade of existence, Hamas has become a conspicuous presence in the Israeli-Palestinian arena and maintains a strong social hold in the Palestinian community. It also enjoys increasing support from and broad legitimacy within the Arab and Muslim world. As a movement with institutions closely linked to societal needs and immediate concerns, Hamas has emerged as a political force whose social presence and communal activities cannot be ignored in the foreseeable future.

As long as negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for a permanent peace settlement are marred by rivalry and disagreement, mistrust and mutual recriminations, Hamas will be able to continue mobilizing wide popular support and to maintain its public image as a standard bearer of Palestinian national values. And as long as Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority fail to translate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations into tangible territorial achievements and economic benefits, Hamas will be able to continue playing its role as the guardian of Islam and the champion of authentic Palestinian aspirations.

Hamas itself has adopted the idea of a transitory liberation of Palestine, willing to accept a temporary truce with Israel if it agrees to return to the 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem. Still, in light of the gap between Israel and the Palestinian Authority regarding a territorial settlement, Hamas can project an image of faithfulness to core Palestinian national goals while at the same time radiating a sense of realism. Given its ability to justify controversial political conduct in religious terms, its willingness to exist with internal contradiction and protracted tension in a hostile political environment, and its experience in maneuvering in a context of conflicting relations between hierarchical organizational order and organic structures, we cannot rule out the possibility of a significant shift in Hamas’s relations with Israel to the point that what seems ideologically heretical in the present might become inevitable in the future. Although it is doubtful that Hamas will revise its ultimate goal against and its public attitude toward Israel, it may find that it can accept a workable formula of coexistence with Israel in place of armed struggle. After all, it is not unknown for individuals, political groups, and social movements to profess publicly a determination to fight the existing order while at the same time not excluding the possibility of becoming part of it. Under these circumstances, the prose of reality may overcome the poetry of dogmatic ideology.

This book seeks to portray Hamas from both discursive and practical perspectives through the prism of its worldview and to examine its conduct since its inception. It also attempts to survey the ideological trends within the movement; analyze the political considerations shaping Hamas’s strategies of action; and evaluate its options in the event of a future settlement between Israel and the nascent Palestinian Authority. Taking a comparative perspective, this study explains why Hamas should be seen as a political movement that is guided by particular social and organizational structures reflecting its leadership, needs, and system of beliefs yet that has behavioral characteristics similar to those of other mainstream Islamic movements in the Middle East.

The Palestinian Hamas discusses the main issues and dilemmas that Hamas has confronted during its existence. The introduction describes the world of contradictions in which Hamas has been caught—between theory and practice, ideology and political reality, rhetoric and decision making, and commitment to its constituency versus its religious militant doctrine. Chapter 1 retraces the roots and initial circumstances that led to the founding of Hamas and the shaping of its religious and political doctrine. Chapter 2 discusses the complex problems marking the encounter of dogmas and politics within the Hamas movement. Chapter 3 focuses on the development of the movement’s violent activities and on the structural implications and considerations deriving from their use. Chapter 4 addresses Hamas’s relations with the Palestinian mainstream power, describing the clashes and the efforts to conciliate the parties both before and after the creation of the Palestinian Authority in June 1994. Chapter 5 examines the movement’s vacillations and calculations with regard to participation in the political process and the bureaucratic apparatuses under the Palestinian Authority, including the elections to the Palestinian Council in early 1996. Finally, chapter 6 analyzes structural aspects of Hamas and prospects for changes in the movement’s modes of action and political perceptions.

We have drawn on primary sources, mostly unpublished documents such as flyers, leaflets, and Hamas’s internal position papers, as well as material from the Palestinian, Islamic, Arabic, and Israeli press.

This study was made possible by a research grant from the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research and the Faculty of Social Sciences, both at Tel Aviv University. We wish to thank Muhammad Abu Samra, who served as our research assistant, the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and especially its library staff, for their help in locating the source material in the Arabic and foreign press. We also thank Kenneth Stein for putting at our disposal a valuable collection of relevant data. Finally, good fortune provided us with the help of Ralph Mandel, who edited our initial manuscript; Yonatan Touval, who assisted us during the preparation of the final draft; and Sylvia Weinberg, who bore the burden of typing the manuscript patiently and efficiently.