Hamas And Israel

The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis has heightened since 2001, even as any perceived threat to Israel from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, or even Syria, has declined. Israel, according to Chaim Herzog, Israel's sixth President, had been "born in battle" and would be "obliged to live by the sword." Yet, the Israeli government's conquest and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza brought about a very difficult challenge, although resistance on a mass basis was only taken upyears later in the First Intifadha. Israel could not tolerate Palestinian Arabs' resistance of their authority on the legal basis of denial of self-determination,2 and eventually preferred to grant some measures of self-determination while continuing to consolidate control of the Occupied Territories, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. However, a comprehensive peace, shimmering in the distance, has eluded all. Inter-Israeli and inter-Palestinian divisions deepenedas peace danced closer before retreating. Israel's stance towards the democratically elected Palestinian government headed by HAMAS in 2006, and towards Palestinian national coherence-legal, territorial, political, and economic-has been a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking. The reasons for recalcitrant Israeli and HAMAS stances illustrate both continuities and changes in the dynamics of conflict since the Oslo period (roughly 1994 to the al-Aqsa Intifadha of 2000). Now, more than ever, a long-term truce and negotiations are necessary. These could lead in stages to that mirage-like peace, and a new type of security regime. The rise in popularity and strength of the HAMAS (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, or Movement of the Islamic Resistance) Organization and its interaction with Israel is important to an understanding of Israel's "Arab" policies and its approach to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. The crisis brought about by the electoral success of HAMAS in 2006 also challenged Western powers' commitment to democratic change in the Middle East because Palestinians had supported the organization in the polls. Thus, the viability of a twostate solution rested on an Israeli acknowledgement of the Islamist movement, HAMAS, and on Fatah's ceding power to it. Shifts in Israel's stated national security objectives (and dissent over them) reveal HAMAS' placement at the nexus of Israel's domestic, Israeli-Palestinian, and regional objectives. Israel has treated certain enemies differently than others: Iran, Hizbullah, and Islamist Palestinians (whether HAMAS, supporters of Islamic Jihad, or the Islamic Movement inside Israel) all fall into a particular rubric in which Islamism-the most salient and enduring socio religious movement in the Middle East in the wake of Arab nationalism-is identified with terrorism and insurgency rather than with group politics and identity. The antipathy to religious fervor was somewhat ironic in light of Israel's own expanding "religious" (haredim) groups.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the impact of ‘strategic culture’ on Israeli military operations against Hamas between 1987 and 2014. It has often been argued that Israeli policies and military operations against Hamas have proven tactically effective, but strategically disastrous, allowing the Islamic Resistance Movement to grow from a small spin-off of the Muslim Brotherhood into a powerful military and political actor in the Palestinian arena. This book argues, contrary to this opinion, that Israel was effective in its struggle against the Islamic Resistance Movement between 1987 and 2014, as the Jewish state ultimately managed to deny the majority of Hamas' strategic aims and to preserve a position of relative strength. By relying on a synthesis of primary sources, interviews, memoirs, scholarly and professional military studies and information gathered from the media, the study delivers a careful and comprehensive analysis of the conflict. It provides an historical outline of the development of the Israeli ‘strategic culture’ and analyzes its impact on the process of military adaptation during the First Intifada, the Oslo Peace Process, the al-Aqsa Intifada and the Gaza wars. Finally, the book illuminates how the Israeli strategic culture moulded a distinctive ‘way of war’ that, though marked by successes and failures, ultimately proved effective against Hamas. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, Middle Eastern politics, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and security studies in general.

Declared a terrorist menace yet elected to government in a free election, Hamas now stands as the most important Sunni Islamist group in the Middle East. How did Hamas grow to be so powerful? Who supports it? What is its future? This essential insight into Hamas answers these questions. Milton-Edwards and Farrell have between them spent decades researching and reporting from the heartlands of the Hamas movement and gained unrivalled access to the world of Islamic resistance and radical Islam in its potent Palestinian form. Drawing on their frontline experiences of recent events, their access to secret documents from the western intelligence community and interviews with leaders, militants, and commanders of Hamas' armed battalions, they reveal the full story of Hamas and the future of political Islam in the Middle East. Milton-Edwards and Farrell show Hamas to be a broad and thus more powerful regional phenomenon than previously thought, and by doing so contend that it is now time to rethink the war and the nature of Islam and its role in the Middle East. Beverley Milton-Edwards is Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queens University, Belfast. She is the author of books such as Contemporary Politics in the Middle East (2006) and The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a People's War (2009). Prize-winning journalist Stephen Farrell is Foreign Correspondent for the New York Times and was previously Middle East correspondent for The Times.

Contents: (1) Overview; (2) Evaluating the Annapolis Process: Signs of Progress or of Setbacks?; Debate Over the Urgency of Reaching a 2-State Solution; Windows of Opportunity for Consensus on the Peace Process; Going Forward from Annapolis; (3) Changes Since Oslo: Middle East Geopolitics; Demographic Concerns -- Arabs to Outnumber Jews?; Violence and Palestinian Factionalism; Impediments to Palestinian Territorial Contiguity and Movement; (4) Alternatives to a 2-State Solution: ¿1-State Solution¿; Israeli Unilateralism; ¿Jordanian¿ or ¿Regional¿ Option; ¿Status Quo¿; (5) The U.S. Approach.; The Role of Hamas; Capacity-Building for Palestinian Moderates; Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Maps.

Hamas's overwhelming electoral victory in January 2006 transformed politics in the Middle East and shocked the world. Hamas was able to seize control of the entire Gaza Strip in June 2007, despite its status as a terrorist organization in Israel, the U.S., and the E.U. Azzam Tamimi's longtime relationships and extensive interviews with Hamas's leading members allow him to create a more intimate portrait of Hamas in its own words. This book is a history of Hamas from its origins among the Muslim Brotherhood to the present.

Methodology -- Unlawful violence against political rivals in Gaza -- Legal standards -- Recommendations.

How did two national movements—which both share the same national ethos based on territorial and human elements and the same history—fail to reach an agreement that would unite their forces to realize their aspirations? Both sides recall the Nakba (catastrophe), the term for the defeat in the 1948 war and the subsequent Palestinian exodus. They also both emphasize issues such as the victimization of refugees, widows, and orphans; the sanctity of Jerusalem and Palestine; the contributions of shuhadaa (martyrs) to the national struggle still in progress; and the suffering of the prisoners in Israeli jails. Despite this joint confrontation with the same opponent—Israel—Fatah leaders (the organization whose people are the foundation of the Palestinian Authority) and Hamas have failed to find a path to reconciliation. Examining the Palestinian internal question from an original angle, The Fatah-Hamas Rift analyzes the many rounds of negotiations and seeks to explain this failure, with a focus on the decade after 2007.

The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis has heightened since 2001, even as any perceived threat to Israel from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, or even Syria, has declined. Israel, according to Chaim Herzog, Israel s sixth President, had been born in battle and would be obliged to live by the sword. 1 Yet, the Israeli government s conquest and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza brought about a very difficult challenge, although resistance on a mass basis was only taken up years later in the First Intifadha. Israel could not tolerate Palestinian Arabs resistance of their authority on the legal basis of denial of self-determination,2 and eventually preferred to grant some measures of self-determination while continuing to consolidate control of the Occupied Territories, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. However, a comprehensive peace, shimmering in the distance, has eluded all. Inter-Israeli and inter-Palestinian divisions deepened as peace danced closer before retreating. Israel s stance towards the democratically-elected Palestinian government headed by HAMAS in 2006, and towards Palestinian national coherence legal, territorial, political, and economic has been a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking. The reasons for recalcitrant Israeli and HAMAS stances illustrate both continuities and changes in the dynamics of conflict since the Oslo period (roughly 1994 to the al-Aqsa Intifadha of 2000). Now, more than ever, a long-term truce and negotiations are necessary. These could lead in stages to that mirage-like peace, and a new type of security regime.