Hamas: A beginner’s guide, Khaled Hroub, Pluto Press 2006, £11.99, 170pp
Khaled Hroub was born in a refugee camp in Bethlehem and is currently director of the Arab Media Project at Cambridge University. His Hamas: a beginner’s guide is a clear, concise and informative book which charts the metamorphosis of Hamas from its foundation in 1987, through the first Intifada 1987-1993, to its present role as the backbone of the Al Aqsa Intifada and its victory in the PLC elections in January 2006. Presented in an accessible question-and-answer format, the book deals with the movement’s ideology, its social, political and resistance strategy, its organisational structure, and its relationship with the Palestinian people and the international community.
For those fed on a diet of imperialist propaganda which parrots the official Tel Aviv and Washington line that Hamas is a terrorist organisation indistinguishable from Al Qaida, the book explodes many commonly held misconceptions. It is clear from Hroub’s analysis that Hamas is a very different organisation today from that associated with its 1988 charter which contains anti-Jewish racism. The author says that this document, often cited in the media, bears little relation to the organisation which now forms the government of Palestine. So how has Hamas changed?
During the first Intifada Hamas refused to participate in the popular committees, the beginnings of mass popular power, which emerged in the early stages of the uprising against Zionist occupation. It actively opposed the Palestinian left’s call for civil disobedience to undermine the Zionist administration in the West Bank. Hamas was accused of refusing to join the national liberation struggle and the PLO and of playing a sectarian and divisive role. There was evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organisation of Hamas, received funds from the Zionist State. In their book Intifada: Israel’s Third Front, Zeev Schiff and and Ehud Yaari comment: ‘The civil administration has contributed considerably to the development of the Muslim groups… many Israeli staff officers believed that the rise of fundamentalism… could be exploited to weaken the PLO.’ According to Haim Baram, writing in the Middle East International in January 1983, ‘The Israelis pumped millions of dollars into the Muslim coffers as part of their grand design to circumvent the PLO at any conceivable price’. Under the pressure of the Palestinian masses, Hamas was forced to reject its past and embrace the cause of Palestinian nationalism. After 1993, it became the leadership of Palestinian opposition to the Oslo peace agreement; its members were jailed, tortured and even murdered by the fledgling Palestinian Authority for their stance.
Hroub looks at the tension within Hamas between the political tasks it faces as part of the Palestinian national liberation struggle and its religious ideology and social agenda. He points out that although Hamas is an Islamist movement, many of its supporters are atheists or Christians and indeed Hamas stood Christian candidates in the 2006 elections, one of whom is now the Minister of Tourism. His explanation is that in the eyes of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas represents the principles of the national liberation struggle against occupation. ‘Palestinians support whichever movement holds the banner of resistance against that occupation and promises to defend the Palestinian rights of freedom and self-determination. At this juncture of history, they see in Hamas the defender of those rights.’ The idea of establishing an Islamic state in Palestine featured in early Hamas literature, but is rarely mentioned nowadays; instead its propaganda is dominated by more immediate political demands. Hamas has often declared that it has no intention of imposing Islamic religious practices on Palestinian society.
Hroub also deals with Hamas’s conservative outlook on the role of women in society. He shows that women are very active in Hamas in political mobilisation during election time but points out that women disappear at leadership levels. ‘Compared to the broader Palestinian national movement, where many female figures have left a political impact at the public and leadership level, Hamas women are almost invisible to the outside world.’ When Hamas formed the Palestinian government it appointed only one woman to the cabinet as the minister of women’s affairs which Hroub argues perpetuates traditional conservative attitudes.
Hroub states that Hamas was both surprised and totally unprepared when it won the 2006 elections by a landslide. The movement was suddenly faced with the task of governing Palestine and making the transition from resistance movement to a governing party. He looks at the grass-roots social work of Hamas through its network of Islamic charities in the West Bank and Gaza which provide health, education and welfare. In November 2003 there were 120,000 Palestinians receiving monthly financial assistance and 30,000 more getting annual allowances. This sustained devotion to the needs of the poor and a lack of corruption helps to explain the success of the movement and its mass base. Hroub reminds us that many of Hamas’s political leaders come from poor backgrounds and still live in modest homes in refugee camps among their popular base and that many others have been assassinated by the Israeli government.
However Hamas’s commitment to the oppressed, according to Hroub, does not move beyond charitable handouts and welfare to building a movement that represents the independent interests of the working class in Palestine: ‘In practice Hamas membership includes merchants, business people and the rich as well as the middle class and poor. Outside Palestine, rich Muslim business people in the Gulf Countries and other Muslim places represent the majority of funding’. In this context, Hroub says that Hamas puts forth no particular economic ideology, although he says that it ‘subscribes to the widespread belief within the circles of Islamist movements that Islam encourages free enterprise and enshrines the right to hold individual property’(p69).
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the current political struggle in Palestine.
Barnaby Mitchel
FRFI 196 April / May 2007
