Hamas: Unwritten Chapters

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 fifteen years ago at the beginning of the first intifada. Its short-term objective is to drive Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza, an aim it hopes to realize through attacks on Israeli troops and settlers in the Occupied Territories and - more controversially - civilians. It also has the long-term aim of establishing an Islamic state on all of historic Palestine. In the post-Oslo world, Hamas gained power and influence as Israel steadily destroyed the power structure of the avowedly secular Yasser 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 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. This new edition includes an additional chapter covering events since the book's original publication in November 2006.

About the Author :
Azzam Tamimi is founder of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London and author of Rachid Ghannouchi: A Democrat Within Islamism (Oxford University Press, 2001).

Review :
This is an important book, and I encourage both Israelis and diaspora Jews to read it. An excellent history, deeply researched, the story is dramatic, and Tamimi tells it well... gives access to fascinating detail. In this trenchant history spanning from the first days of the 1987 intifada to the sweeping democratic victory of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Palestinian elections of January 2006, London-based scholar Tamimi argues that seeing Hamas as merely another face of Al Qaeda obscures more than it elucidates. A successor to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas comes out of a transnational Islamic reform movement that grew among Palestinians in the 1970s, largely in reaction to Arab nationalism's failure to champion the Palestinian cause. Increasingly, against a string of failed peace processes and the corruption and concessions of the PLO-led secular leadership, Hamas's popular support has rested heavily on its stance as a militant resistance movement wedded to the Palestinian dream of regaining pre-1948 Palestine, and as provider of essential social services. Tamimi draws extensively on the words of insiders in carefully charting and contextualizing the development of Hamas's highly resilient organization, shifting outlook and embrace of various tactics, including the offer of a truce with Israel and, most controversially, suicide bombing. It will be a key resource in English for any serious assessment of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Provides facts on Hamas' struggle in Palestine from real sources in the organisation. Tamimi's book is the most authoritative account yet published of the origins, rise and impact of Hamas.