In January, Hamas - the Palestinian “Islamic Resistance Movement” that became notorious during the 1990s for its suicide attacks on Israeli civilians - won the legislative elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Since then the US and Israel - aided and abetted by the EU - have waged an unremitting campaign to punish Palestinians for their choice at the ballot box and to destroy the new government. But who are Hamas and what do they want? Is a two-state solution still possible following their election or is Hamas little more than a collection of blood-crazed “terrorists” bent on the “destruction of Israel” and the creation of an Islamic state? These are just some of the questions tackled in this extremely useful and admirably concise book.
Hroub - director of the Arab Media Project at Cambridge University and author of a previous, much-acclaimed book on the Movement - is no apologist for Hamas but sees it as “a natural outcome of un-natural, brutal occupational conditions”.
Moreover, as he explains, Hamas's current stance bears little or no resemblance to its infamous 1988 Charter (“crammed with rhetoric that is embarrassing to the Hamas of today”) and “[i]t is not inconceivable that Hamas could recognise Israel” and even conclude a peace treaty with it under the right conditions - though such steps are “inconceivable” as long as Israel refuses to recognise the basic rights of the Palestinians.
As things stand though, “Israel will do everything to avoid a negotiation” and “deliberately inflicts inhumane hardships on the Palestinians in order to radicalise them and drive the moderates from the scene” (Patrick Seale, Guardian, 3 July). It is probably no coincidence that Israel's latest military assault on the Gaza Strip followed hard on the heels of the announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas on a plan “call[ing] for a Palestinian state ruled by a coalition government alongside an Israel confined within its pre-1967 borders” (http://tinyurl.com/ezfqg).