Preface and Acknowledgements

There is no middle ground with Hamas. In the decades since the Islamist organization emerged from the crucible of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, it has polarized opinion and will continue to do so.

Hamas’s credo can be defined simply as ‘Islam is the solution.’ It offers an Islamic plan to Palestinians living under an Israeli military occupation, wrapping itself in the twin banners of religion and nationalism. Hamas’s enemies define it as a terrorist organization that has killed and maimed Israelis for decades, and perpetrating by far its deadliest attack on 7 October 2023. They argue that it is little more than the proxy of a regional Middle East power – Iran – and shares with its patron an all-consuming desire to bring about the destruction of the state of Israel. Hamas’s supporters see it through another prism entirely: for them, it is an uncompromising, yet clear-sighted organization founded by a leadership which spent decades in the political wilderness telling the unpopular truth that the political orthodoxies of their time were misguided and that, in Israel, the Palestinian people faced an enemy that had to be resisted, not accommodated. Hamas argues that it alone is prepared to stand up to win statehood and independence for the Palestinians.

But it ill behoves either enemy or friend to make simplistic generalizations about an organization that, whatever its true nature, in 2006 became the first Islamist movement to ascend to power in the Middle East by democratic means and two decades later demonstrated that it had the strategic capacity to deliver a humiliating body blow to a military machine that claims to be the best in the Middle East. It is neither ISIS, al-Qaeda, nor the Taliban. It owes something to Hezbollah and much to the Muslim Brotherhood. It is Islamist, but nationalist; Sunni, yet supported by a Shi’a power; has participated in democratic elections, yet remains opaque; and populist, yet cruel. Many see Hamas as a significant obstacle to peace with Israel and wider hopes for stability in the Middle East. Others, particularly in the Global South, believe that, until it is recognized as a legitimate political force and included in the accommodation of power, there can never be peace in the region.

To study is not to support. For enemies and friends – and in both camps passions often cloud reasoned debate – Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, is a phenomenon worthy of analysis. Part political, part social, part military, it has proved adaptable and resilient in the face of opposition from regional and world superpowers. It has won parliamentary, municipal, student and professional elections, and it has emerged as a genuine threat to much longer-established Palestinian political movements.

The purpose of this book, through hundreds of interviews conducted over four decades, is to present first-hand accounts of Hamas’s founders, leaders, fighters, social activists, victims, political supporters and opponents, and in so doing to give insights into how Hamas was born, grew and thrived in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – the Palestinian Territories occupied and controlled through Israel’s all-pervasive military, settlement and civil apparatus since the 1967 Six Day War. Many of the interviews with the founders and senior leadership of Hamas can never be repeated. Such leaders are dead, mostly assassinated in Israel’s attempts, over the decades, to degrade and destroy the senior leadership of the organization. Other interviews are with leaders who rarely speak in public.

Hamas cannot be understood in isolation from other Islamist actors who preceded it. Context, no matter how controversial, does matter. There has been a history of Muslim opposition to foreign rule and occupation since the British were awarded political control of Palestine after the First World War and the Zionists sought to make their homeland there. Its roots lie in the radicalism of little-known Islamist sheikhs in the 1930s who called for ‘jihad’ to liberate Palestine long before the word entered the Western lexicon. A generation later, refugees of the first Arab–Israeli war of 1948–9 came to believe that, through a pious adherence to Islam, they could achieve political freedom and create a state ruled according to their Islamic principles. After the 1967 war, some of these early Islamists were tolerated, encouraged even, by Israel. Under the age-old principle of ‘divide and rule’, Israel saw in the fledgling Islamists an opportunity to undermine its then principal Palestinian enemy, Yasser Arafat, head of Fatah and chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Out of these antecedents the modern Hamas movement emerged in 1987 from the tumult of the First Palestinian Intifada (uprising) against Israel’s then twenty-year-old military occupation regime. Hamas claimed the Intifada in its name and embarked on a competition to wrest Palestinian hearts and minds from the PLO. It became a formidable foe, waging a murderous armed campaign of suicide bombings against Israel and, later, missile bombardment of Israeli towns.

But Hamas has won support from Palestinians, not just because of what they see as a legitimate campaign of violent resistance against Israeli military occupation, but also because Hamas is – at one and the same time – a movement with a powerful, highly motivated and well-organized social welfare network, which it used to support people during years of deprivation and enforced statelessness, earning their gratitude and trust. In this book we detail the ways in which Hamas forged these links with the Palestinian people, slowly ousting the PLO from its hitherto unchallenged position of pre-eminence.

Hamas has developed a powerful military wing and instilled in many Palestinians the belief that only through violent armed struggle and the reward of martyrdom will they achieve their political goals of freedom and independence. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Hamas suicide bombing campaigns encouraged hundreds of willing volunteers to sacrifice themselves, in a self-declared holy war, in attacks on Israeli targets. Hamas leaders defended their actions, coldly warning that, if Palestinian civilians continued to die at the hands of Israeli tank commanders, F16 pilots and snipers, then Israel’s civilians would suffer the same fate.

In January 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, demonstrating that it could marshal its supporters – including thousands of women who turned out for rallies under the green banner of the movement. It also attracted the votes of many other Palestinians who were disillusioned by corruption in the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) and lack of progress in peace talks with Israel. The Western world refused to accept Hamas’s victory at the ballot box, and Hamas refused to bow to the international community’s demands that it should recognize Israel and renounce violence. The outcome was a double deadlock – internal and external – which saw a higher death toll and even more despair among Israelis and Palestinians about any prospect of a peace settlement.

Internally, Islamist Hamas and secular Fatah consistently refused to share power. Nor was this likely, given that each had forms of dependence on patrons with conflicting agendas – Iran and the United States. Two armed forces sharing a tiny slice of land, each ambitious for total control, was a dynamic that could not be contained. In 2007 – just eighteen months after it won the election – Hamas’s armed forces routed Fatah in Gaza and seized full military control of the Gaza Strip. When the dust settled, there was a two-headed Palestinian Authority – Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank. Externally, there was also a stand-off between Hamas and Israel, with the West supporting Israel.

Israel sought to isolate Hamas with an economic and military blockade imposed on the whole population of the Gaza Strip. Hamas hit back with rockets into Israel. The nearest either side came to any form of agreement was a six-month ceasefire, which ended in December 2008. Hamas immediately began firing hundreds of rockets into Israeli towns and villages, and Israel hit back with a three-week military offensive which left more than 1,300 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis dead. Gaza was shattered, but Hamas remained in power and as defiant as ever. This cycle of attack and counter-attack between the two sides continued in 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021 and, of course, from 7 October 2023 into 2024.

Hamas can be excoriated, but it should not be underestimated. As we demonstrate throughout this book, it rose from a Muslim Brotherhood seed planted in mandate Palestine to become one of the most important Islamic and nationalist organizations in the Middle East. Its credentials mean that it is admired by Islamic and other liberation groups active not just in the Middle East but in the wider Global South and beyond.

For them, Hamas’s brand of religious nationalism echoes their own political aspirations more than the worldwide jihad of ISIS or al-Qaeda. But it also highlights the consequences for the West of refusing to acknowledge the role that such movements play in shaping and governing their societies and influencing their relationship with the regional and global order.

Militarily, Hamas has fatally exposed the weakness of a hitherto far more powerful enemy – Israel. Israel has suffered huge losses at the hands of Hamas, and this legacy of harm...