The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence

The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence, is a controversial Israeli, analysis of Hamas. In Israel and the West, Hamas is generally identified with terrorism and jihad. This book however offers a revisionist argument. Mishal and Sela deconstruct the image of Hamas as a group of desperate terrorists who are detached from reality. Rather, they see Hamas as a movement that has displayed reasonableness and complexity, where the decision making process is based on cost-benefit considerations and the complicated, intertwined dilemma’s that have surrounded Hamas forced its leaders to adopt a policy that enabled the movement to maneuver within political reality without losing its ideological background.
When the first edition of the book was written Hamas had decided to prefer Palestinian unity instead of deciding between remaining on the sidelines as a hard-liner or participating in the political arena. Hamas got the freedom to make this decision from the Palestinian Authority (PA) who rather co-opted with their opposition instead of crushing it.
The book was reprinted however after the victory of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections. According to Mashal and Sela this victory can be explained by social and economic considerations of the Palestinian electorate rather than ideological identification with the Islamic movement’s political agenda. Even though Hamas was one of the leading military forces in the second Intifadah these military activities could be matched by other groups such as the al-Aqsa Martyrs. But none of these groups, not even the PA, could compete with Hamas’s system of social services. According to the authors Hamas was filling a governmental void, which in some respects resembles the Western notion of a civil society. This would also explain why a large number if Christian Palestinians voted for Hamas in the recent elections. Of course we cannot tell how the relation between the new Hamas led government and the Israeli government is going to develop. Especially with the recent conflict between Israel and Lebanon and the fighting between supporters of Fatah and Hamas it is hard to make a prediction. The future will show whether the new Islamic government in Palestine will succeed and if they will deviate from their original course to come to a peace agreement with Israel.
The articles on Egypt and Turkey also deal with Political Islam. It is interesting to see how Political Islam develops in the various countries all with a different political background. In Turkey, a country with a democratic tradition, though strongly controlled by the military, the Islamic AK party managed to become the biggest party in the 2002 elections. Previous Islamic parties have been successfully banned from politics, but reemerged after a period in which they reframed their message in response to their perceived opportunities and constrains. This process resulted in a moderated Islamic regime which government agenda focuses on economic and educational reforms, counter-corruption measures, and promotion of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union. According to the author what eventually emerged as the moderate-looking AK-party was the result of many years of strategic response to horizontal (e.g. judicial or military) constrains on the movement’s political behavior and democratic experimentation by the party’s leader in an attempt to gain power.
The story of Political Islam in Egypt is very different. The chapter studies the Hizb al-Wasat, a group of moderately orientated Islamists attempting to gain power by playing by the democratic rules of the game in Egypt. Despite its failure to gain legal status the party is noteworthy for its embrace of religious toleration and its rejection of a privileged interpretation of religion. The problem was however that opposition parties under authoritarian regimes such as in Egypt only have a decorative function and a narrow political bases. Their ideas hardly ever find any response from the regime. And to my opinion the result of the oppression of these moderate Islamic parties could result in radicalization.
The three readings sketch various scenarios of the development of Political Islam in the Middle East. The Turkish example shows that under the right circumstances it is possible for an Islamic party to gain power and not radicalize but to be Islamic as well as democratic and orientated towards the West. In Palestine we have to wait and see in which direction the Islamic government will develop itself but as the book by Mashal and Sela argues, history has showed that Hamas is prepared to change its program. The main question is however to what extend and will they remain as democratic and free of corruption as they promised after all they are still a radical Islamic group. In Egypt the political climate is non-democratic and this makes it almost impossible for any party, Islamic or not, to gain any power. In this country the Islamic organizations usually try to gain power on the informal level creating a network of goods and services and gained quite a lot of power in this way.