The Political Ideology of Hamas: A Grassroots Perspective (Library of Modern Middle East Studies) - Michael Irving Jensen

Hamas is best-known to outsiders as a military organisation. Its political wing has received less attention, and it is often assumed that the schools, hospitals and universities it runs are merely instruments for the dissemination of a jihadist ideology. Following its surprise victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections, it is more important than ever to understand its politics. How serious is its commitment to democracy? Did people vote for Hamas in spite of or because of its Islamic agenda? Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Gaza, Michael Irving Jensen addresses these questions, and offers the first multidimensional portrait of this complex organisation. Based on interviews with the leadership, the rank-and-file, and ordinary Palestinians, Jensen shows how Hamas’s officially stated goals relate to the social and political realities of the West Bank and Gaza. In doing so he lays the groundwork for a more accurate way of understanding the organisation, and the direction in which its war with Israel is travelling.

The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence - Shaul Mishal / Avraham Sela

"This work makes a significant and long overdue contribution to scholarship on Hamas and Islamist groups.... Mishal and Sela have made here an excellent contribution to the field with a thoughtful, analytical, and well-documented case study which goes far in revealing a realist, 'de-demonized' Hamas." -- Middle East Journal

Hamas: A Beginner's Guide - Khaled Hroub

The United States views Hamas as a terrorist organization. Yet, to the great surprise of many, Hamas swept to victory in the 2006 Palestinian Authority elections. Hames is now a democratically elected political party. This is the first beginner's guide to this controversial political organization. Explaining the reasons for Hamas's success, this book provides the key facts that are so often missing from conventional news reports. It's a one-stop guide that gives a clear overview of Hamas's history, key beliefs, and its political agenda. Written by a leading Al-Jazeera journalist and Cambridge academic, this unique book provides a refreshing perspective that gets to the heart of the reasons behind Hamas's victory. It provides a critical overview of Hamas's attitudes toward Israel, including religious beliefs and suicide bombings, its attitude toward the P.L.O., and its program of grassroots social work within Palestine. The reality of Hamas's victory means that the West will now have to engage with it more seriously if there is to be peace in the Middle East. This book provides the first essential step toward a better understanding of the challenges and surprises that the future may hold.

The Hunt For The Engineer: The Inside Story of How Isral's Counterterrorist Forces Tracked and Killed the Hamas Master Bomber - Samuel M. Katz

One of the bloodiest and most feared terrorists in the history of the Middle East, Yehiya Ayyash ("the Engineer") got his start in electronic engineering, innocuously monkeying about with family radios and TV sets. Indeed, Ayyash's original goal was to be an honest engineer, but when Israeli bureaucracy denied his routine application to study in Jordan, he joined Hamas and dedicated himself to a life of terror that lasted from 1994 to 1996 and resulted in 150 Israelis dead and 500 wounded. Katz's gripping book tells the story of Ayyash's early failures and his later, horrible successes, which included the Division Street and Dizengoff Street bombings. Katz, an expert on terrorism and counterterrorism, has written several other books about Middle East commandos, and much of the book is concerned with the history of various Israeli security forces, especially Shin Beit, and their attempts to catch the elusive bomber. It is unclear just who his sources are--they are identified broadly as "spies, soldiers, statesmen, and super-cops"--but the book, which details the histories of Islamic resistance groups as well, does not seem unfair. The concluding chapters, in which Katz pieces together the assassinations, within two months of each other, of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Ayyash (slain by an Israeli-engineered exploding cell phone), are particularly effective. The book's chilling epilogue, in which a new leader takes over Israel and new Palestinian bomb masters continue the killing, make it clear that the Middle East's troubles did not end with Ayyash's final phone call.

Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices - Mosab Hassan Yousef

Since he was a small boy, Mosab Hassan Yousef has had an inside view of the deadly terrorist group Hamas. The oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas and its most popular leader, young Mosab assisted his father for years in his political activities while being groomed to assume his legacy, politics, status . . . and power. But everything changed when Mosab turned away from terror and violence, and embraced instead the teachings of another famous Middle East leader. In Son of Hamas, Mosab Yousef—now called “Joseph”—reveals new information about the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization and unveils the truth about his own role, his agonizing separation from family and homeland, the dangerous decision to make his newfound faith public, and his belief that the Christian mandate to “love your enemies” is the only way to peace in the Middle East.

Hamas: Political Thought and Practice - Khalid Hroub

This book, unique in its thorough documentation and use of primary sources, traces the rise of Hamas and the development of its political ideology with respect to the Palestinian national struggle.

Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad - Matthew Levitt

How does a group that operates terror cells and espouses violence become a ruling political party? How is the world to understand and respond to Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that Palestinian voters brought to power in the stunning election of January 2006 This important book provides the most fully researched assessment of Hamas ever written. Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert with extensive field experience in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, draws aside the veil of legitimacy behind which Hamas hides. He presents concrete, detailed evidence from an extensive array of international intelligence materials, including recently declassified CIA, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security reports. BRLevitt demolishes the notion that Hamas' military, political, and social wings are distinct from one another and catalogues the alarming extent to which the organization's political and social welfare leaders support terror. He exposes Hamas as a unitary organization committed to a militant Islamist ideology, urges the international community to take heed, and offers well-considered ideas for countering the significant threat Hamas poses.

Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement - Zaki Chehab

The radical Islamist movement Hamas shocked the world when it won a landslide election victory in January 2006 in the Palestinian occupied territories. One of the few journalists not to be surprised by this outcome was Zaki Chehab who has developed an international reputation as a fearless reporter and was one of the first to interview members the Iraqi resistance in May 2003. Fluent in Arabic, he is a Palestinian refugee who grew up in UN refugee camps and has unique access to and understanding of Hamas. Like Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon, Chehab shows how Hamas built a formidable social base in Palestine through its welfare programs. He also explains why, in the face of the endless complexities, disappointments and delays brought about by the signing of the Oslo Peace Accord, Hamas's strategy of armed struggle and terrorism offers the Palestinian people a seductive, simple and deadly alternative.

Hamas: A History from Within - Azzam Tamimi

Hamas won an overwhelming electoral victory in January 2006, overturning many assumptions regionally and globally. Branded as terrorist by Israel and the West, it is the largest Palestinian militant Islamist organization, formed at the beginning of the first intifada. Its short-term objective is to drive Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza, which it hopes to realize through attacks on Israeli troops and settlers in the Occupied Territories and-more controversially-on civilians. It also has the long-term aim of establishing an Islamic state throughout historic Palestine. In the post-Oslo world, Hamas gained power and influence as Israel steadily destroyed the power structure of the avowedly secular Yassir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority.

A grass-roots organization that commands wide respect among Palestinians for its incorruptibility, Hamas is divided into two main sections: one is responsible for establishing schools, hospitals and religious institutions; the other for military action and terror attacks carried out by its armed underground wing the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

This book charts the origins of Hamas among the Muslim Brotherhood, details the influence of its exiled leadership in Syria and elsewhere, and sets out its internal structure and political objectives.

Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle For Palestine - Jonathan Schanzer

In June 2007 civil war broke out in the Gaza Strip between two rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah. Western peace efforts in the region always focused on reconciling two opposing fronts: Israel and Palestine. Now, this careful exploration of Middle East history over the last two decades reveals that the Palestinians have long been a house divided. What began as a political rivalry between Fatah’s Yasir Arafat and Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin during the first intifada of 1987 evolved into a full-blown battle on the streets of Gaza between the forces of Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, and Ismael Haniyeh, one of Yassin’s early protégés. Today, the battle continues between these two diametrically opposing forces over the role of Palestinian nationalism and Islamism in the West Bank and Gaza. In this thought-provoking book, Jonathan Schanzer questions the notion of Palestinian political unity, explaining how internal rivalries and violence have ultimately stymied American efforts to promote Middle East peace, and even the Palestinian quest for a homeland.

Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence - Jeroen Gunning

A key player in the politics of the Middle East, Hamas is renowned for its contradictory positions. The group uses terror tactics against Israel's civilians and military, yet runs on a law and order ticket in Palestinian elections; it pursues an Islamic state, yet holds internal elections; it campaigns for shari'ah law, yet its leaders are predominantly secular professionals; and it calls for the destruction of Israel, yet has reluctantly agreed to honor previously established peace agreements. In IHamas in Politics, Jeroen Gunning launches a probing study of the movement's success in the political arena, showing that religion, violence, and democracy are not necessarily incompatible. Many of Hamas's apparent contradictions flow from the relationship between the organization's ideology, local constituency, and the nature of politics in Israel and Palestine. Gunning conducts interviews with members of Hamas as well as the group's critics and draws on a decade of close observation of the organization. He illuminates Hamas's understanding of its ideology and explores the tension between its dual commitment to "God" and "the people." Examining the group's political practice and what it says about the group's attitude towards democracy, religion, and violence, Gunning provides a unique window into Hamas's internal structure, revealing its process of choosing leaders and determining policy.

Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas - Paul McGeough

A leading international correspondent reconstructs the pivotal moment in the rise of Hamas—a page-turning narrative reminiscent of The Day of the Jackal. "[It was] all very James Bond. One country needs the antidote held by another, to treat an illness it doesn't understand. The clock's ticking...so the king calls the White House."—Robert Malley, former senior Clinton administration adviserp Little public notice was taken of a 1997 attempt on the life of the Hamas leader Khalid Mishal by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency—even though the audacious hit took place in broad daylight in the streets of Amman, and even though the bungled poisoning immediately set into motion a flurry of international diplomacy, culminating in the direct intervention of then-U.S. President Bill Clinton. A series of tense, high-level negotiations saved Mishal's life, as the Israelis reluctantly handed over the antidote. But Hamas was saved as well. With his new lease on life, Khalid Mishal became—and remains—the architect of the Hamas organization's phenomenal ascendancy in the intervening decade. Mishal orchestrated the deadly bombings on targets in Israel and, from his bunker in exile in the Syrian capital of Damascus, continues to pull in donations and support from the Islamic world while directing Hamas's vital social welfare programs. In a headlong narrative—with high-speed car chases, negotiated prisoner exchanges, and an international scandal that threatened to destabilize the entire region—acclaimed reporter Paul McGeough uses unprecedented, extensive interviews with Khalid Mishal himself and the key players in Amman, Jerusalem, and Washington to tell the definitive, inside story of the rise of Hamas.

Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas - Andrea Nusse

The ideology of Islamic fundamentalists is of central importance in the modern world, but it is often distorted or misunderstood by the international media. This detailed study provides an insightful analysis of the Palestinian Hamas movement's world-view, and shows how the theoretical framework developed by thinkers like Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and al-Mawdudi is applied to a specific political, social and economic context. Nusse explains the fundamentalist position on recent events, such as the Gulf War, the Madrid peace negotiations and the Hebron massacre, and helps to dissipate myths surrounding modern fundamentalist movements and their overwhelming success as opposition forces in the Islamic world.
Using first-hand source material exclusively in Arabic which has never before been systematically explored - particularly the magazine Filastin al-Muslima - a rare case- study of fundamentalist thought is compiled. Combining socioeconomic analysis with the history of ideas, the author.