Ideology and Practice: The Legal System in Gaza under Hamas

Contemporary Islam, 2009

ANNUR Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Yobe State University, 2012

This paper analyses and consider the changing fortunes of Palestinian movement, HAMAS, through the proper understanding of its evolution, methods and strategies and impact and role it is playing in the liberation of the Palestinian state. The example of HAMAS challenges demonstrates in the paper have also show how efforts have been made by internal and external forces to separate HAMAS from its popular support and network of social, charitable and political activities but to no avail. The paper equally considers this Islamist political movement in the context of local, national and international goals, which can be persuaded to achieve a political and religious goal. HAMAS offers a fascinating instance of the dynamics of political and strategic action and reactions, and the modification of its modus operandi away from aggressive deterrence, as well as its evolution in the Islamist movement planning and operations in the political arena. Therefore, this work in its descriptive approach is offered to those who wish to consider this particular aspect of the Palestinian-Israeli-Arab conflict which has attracted much attention to the world.

Contemporary Islam, 2009

Democratization, 2009

This article discusses the nature of the political transformation process that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has undergone over the past decade regarding, first, political participation in Palestinian institutions, and second, the issue of negotiations and compromise with Israel. Finally, it explores how the European and international pressure on Hamas for unconditional concessions towards Israel has affected the internal political dynamics of the movement. Based on fieldwork interviews with Hamas leaders in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, the article analyses the transition process as perceived on the part of Hamas, and concludes that Hamas was, at a certain point, receptive to external pressure for moderation as it adapted a range of ‘moderate’ positions in its quest for international recognition. However, when the chain of conciliatory steps undertaken by Hamas failed to ease the international sanctions on the Hamas government, the pressures backfired by weakening the moderate forces in the Hamas leadership and strengthening the radical forces that apparently took the lead when Hamas-affiliated forces took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007. It is argued that the entrance of Hamas into politics represented an opportunity rather than an obstacle for Palestinian democratization, although the opportunity was spoiled by the EU-backed international boycott of the Hamas government.

2018

Journal of Conflict Transformation & Security (JCTS) Vol. 1 | No. 2, 2012

The dual role played by Hamas in combining militarism and governance continues to present a challenge to the Pales nian Authority (PA) and to the peace process in the Middle East. This article looks at how the Hamas movement emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood Society in 1987, and examines the implica ons of Hamas' success during the Pales nian na onal elec ons of 2006, and its emerging strategy of resistance and governance. It assesses the impact of Hamas' violent ac ons against the PA in 2007, and how this resulted in the division of Pales nian society into two different political in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It will highlight the challenge of the transforma on of Hamas from violent resistance to civil authority and the impact of the failure of this transformation on the Palestine Israel peace process.

The electoral triumph of Hamas in the Palestinian elections of January 2006 has made it imperative for policy makers around the world to understand this group and its ideology. Is Hamas likely to soften its hostility to Israel? Is Hamas likely to receive significant support from the Muslim world? What are the odds that Hamas can be either placated or isolated? If Hamas can make a strong claim to be authentically Islamic in its ideological underpinnings, then it is more likely to receive support from portions of the Muslim world and less likely to be conciliatory vis-à-vis Israel. Unfortunately, a careful study of the ideology of Hamas and its parent, the Muslim Brotherhood, shows that that ideology is firmly rooted in traditional Islamic principles. Far from distorting or perverting classical Islamic law, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood can claim very plausibly that shari'a requires implacable and violent resistance to Israel, including terrorism, and denial of Israel's right to exist as a non-Muslim state located on Islamic territory. Efforts to placate or isolate Hamas are therefore unlikely to succeed.

This article analyses the popular support for Hamas, the most important of the Palestinian Islamist movements today and charts the movement’s historical ascendancy from a fringe Gaza-based group to a mainstream Islamist movement and mouthpiece for dispossessed Palestinians. Since 2001 Hamas’s leadership has come under increasing attack from Israel, which has killed a number of the movement’s leaders and senior members, most prominently Sheikh Yasin, the movement’s founder and spiritual leader, and his successor as Hamas leader, Abd al-Aziz Rantissi. Nonetheless, Hamas’s duality as ‘worshippers’ and ‘warmongers’ has made the organisation extraordinarily popular among dispossessed Palestinians and has created a mounting political challenge to the secular nationalism of the PLO. At present two-thirds of the Palestinians live below the ‘poverty line’ and it is likely that it is in this disenfranchised segment of the population that Hamas finds its core support. About one in every six Palestinians in the Occupied Territories benefits from support from Islamic charities. Hamas, for its part, allocates almost all its revenues to its social services, but there is no evidence that Hamas or the other Islamic charities provide assistance conditional upon political support.