Hamas, the Palestinian Resistance, and the Question of Strategy
A Review of Tareq Baconi’s Hamas Contained
May 1, 2024
Tareq Baconi’s book, Hamas Contained, remains one of the best on the Palestinian Islamic Movement.1Other relevant books worth mentioning on Hamas are: Leila Seurat, The Foreign Policy of Hamas Ideology, Decision Making and Political Supremacy (London: IB Tauris, 2022); Khaled Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2014); Sara Roy, Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector (Princeton: Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics, 2011); Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). His objective in it is “to advance our knowledge of Hamas by elucidating the manner in which the movement evolved over the course of its three decades in existence, from 1987 onward.” He adds that “understanding Hamas is key to ending the denial of Palestinians their rights after nearly a century of struggle for self-determination.”2Tareq Baconi, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), xii.
The book offers a chronological overview of Hamas’s political trajectory from its foundation up to 2017. Baconi argues that as a multifaceted organization engaged in political, social, and military operations, Hamas is beset with a host of internal tensions that it constantly balances.
Baconi provides a prehistory to Hamas’s emergence with a brief description of the Palestinian popular resistance. He recounts the struggle against the British support for Zionist colonialism, the Arab states’ opposition to Israel after the Nakba in 1948, and then the rise of Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The Rise of Hamas
In this context, Baconi documents the transformation of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, which had focused on the Islamization of Palestinian society and adopted a nonconfrontational policy toward Israel, into Hamas as a political formation with a strategy of armed struggle to free Palestine. After the Six Day War in 1967, Sheik Ahmad Yassin pushed for the Brotherhood’s Islamic associations and organizations to join the resistance, eventually founding Hamas in 1987 amidst the First Intifada.
It is important to add to Baconi’s history that Hamas’s rise was not just the product of internal developments in occupied Palestine. The Gulf monarchies took advantage of profits they secured from the 1970s oil boom to bankroll various Islamic fundamentalist movements including al-Mujamma Islami in the Gaza Strip.
Likewise, after its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran promoted Islamic fundamentalist organizations throughout the region. It began providing support for Hamas in the early 1990s. Baconi shows how Hamas and these other Islamic fundamentalist movements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories also benefited from defeats suffered by the PLO.
The first of these was Black September in 1970 when the Jordanian regime violently repressed Palestinian forces, driving them from the country to find refuge in Lebanon. Israel’s brutal war on Lebanon in 1982 then expelled the PLO from Beirut to Tunis, further weakening the Palestinian national movement. Outmatched by Israel’s US-backed military might, the organization’s leadership, political program, and strategy stood at an impasse.
With their project in question, Fatah led the PLO to abandon armed struggle for diplomacy in the hopes of securing an international agreement for a two-state solution with a Palestinian state established on the 1967 borders. It did so amidst the political dynamics set in motion by the defeat of the Arab regimes in 1973, all of which culminated in peace agreements first between Israel and Egypt, and others after that.
Fatah’s Betrayals Open the Door
As Baconi explains, the failure of Fatah’s diplomatic strategy to secure anything like Palestinian liberation opened the door for Hamas to position itself as the main resistance organization with a military strategy. It rose in popularity amidst the collapse of the so-called Oslo peace process and the outbreak of the Second Intifada. Hamas deployed its al-Qassam brigade to wage armed struggle against Israel, carrying out attacks not only on military but also civilian targets. These were often in response to Israeli attacks in the territories.
The failure of Fatah’s diplomatic strategy to secure anything like Palestinian liberation opened the door for Hamas to position itself as the main resistance organization with a military strategy.
But, as Baconi argues, this Balance of Terror approach came with harsh consequences for the Palestinian population.3“In return for the brutal and indiscriminate killing of the elderly, women and children, now the Zionists also suffer from being killed … Now Israeli buses have no one riding in them and Israeli shopping centers are not what they used to be,” ibid., 42. He explains that Hamas’s strategy represented “a fundamental misunderstanding on its part regarding how Israel would react to its operations.”4Ibid., 61. He argues that
in response to suicide bombing, Israel presented Palestinian resistance broadly, and Hamas specifically, as a form of international terrorism, akin to al-Qaeda, bent on its destruction … Hamas’s violence allowed Sharon to begin unilaterally reconfiguring the structure of occupation to strengthen Israel’s hold on the Palestinian territories in a manner that did not compromise the state’s security.5Ibid., 62.
After September 11, 2001, the Israeli ruling class described its war against the Palestinians during the Second Intifada as its own “War on Terror.”6Ibid., 47. This had little to do with reality. In fact, both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas condemned al-Qaeda’s attack. Nevertheless, Israel portrayed Hamas’s suicide actions in Jerusalem and elsewhere in historic Palestine as a “symptom of global Islamic Terrorism.”7Ibid., 47. Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack set in motion this dynamic on a vastly expanded scale, with Israel justifying its genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza as fighting terrorism.
Rightly, Baconi rejects any comparison with jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda. He shows how Hamas is embedded in Palestinian history and society and is engaged in a national resistance against Israeli colonization and occupation, and not in an international Islamic war. Baconi shows how Hamas presented Israel’s “disengagement” from the occupied Gaza as a victory for the resistance. That enabled Hamas to gain in popularity and defeat Fatah in the legislative elections in 2006.
Baconi recounts how Hamas attempted to rule after victory in the elections. But the combination of Washington’s and Fatah’s opposition to its rule eventually led to a sharp conflict that ended with Fatah seizing control of the West Bank and Hamas taking over governmental rule in Gaza.
He examines how Hamas consolidated political, social, and military power in Gaza in the face of a total Israeli blockade, which turned the territory into the world’s largest open-air prison and imposed horrific conditions of poverty and unemployment on the population. In response, Hamas tried to break this siege by establishing a vast network of tunnels to bring goods in from Egypt.
As Baconi documents, Israel periodically launched brutal attacks on Hamas and Gaza, culminating in its full-scale war in 2008. While that ended in a negotiated ceasefire, the siege remained in place, and conditions for the population remained dire.
Hamas and the Arab Spring
The Arab Spring in 2011 threatened to break up the entire state order in the Middle East that holds Palestine in chains. Baconi documents how Hamas initially supported the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, seeing the Arab revolutions as means to advance Palestinian liberation. It believed the regional resistance would “isolate Israel and promote Hamas’s role as the leader of the Palestinian struggle.”8Ibid., 171–72. As the revolutionary wave spread, however, it began to change its perspective, especially as its state allies and sponsors came under threat.
Hamas’s support for the Syrian Revolution led to its departure from Syria and temporarily weakened relations with Iran. It suffered further isolation after the Egyptian military overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood’s government led by Mohamed Morsi. In the wake of these events, Hamas adopted a position of critical questioning of the Palestinian Authority’s attempt to secure statehood through the United Nations.
As an alternative, Hamas pursued prisoner swaps with Israel, celebrating releases as examples of its claim that armed resistance offered a better way forward. These swaps served both Israel’s and Hamas’s objectives. Tel Aviv wanted to undermine the PA’s statehood bill at the UN and deepen the division among Palestinians, while Hamas wanted to portray itself as the leader of all Palestinians, not those solely living in the Gaza Strip.
The book ends by looking at how Hamas’s containment in Gaza forced it to balance governing over a besieged territory with, at the same time, trying to be a resistance movement. In Baconi’s account, its attempt at government dampened its military resistance and forced it into accommodation.
Hamas released a new political statement, which recognized the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, omitted references to the Muslim Brotherhood, eliminated antisemitic content, and instead defined its struggle as one against Zionism. These were attempts to secure some kind of deal for statehood on the road to eventual liberation of all of Palestine, which it still officially retained as a long-term goal.
Recapitulating Fatah’s Strategic Mistakes
Baconi’s book is an invaluable source of information and should be widely read to understand the nature of Hamas. At the same time, there are critical questions that must be raised about some of its arguments. For example, he contends:
Hamas failed to understand the balance that had to be struck between government and revolution … It had mistakenly assumed that revolution could be launched from within the very systems that had been created to domesticate the national struggle … More than half a decade before dictatorships supported by proxy wars would break the Arab uprisings, Hamas’s own revolution was crushed. Hamas effectively merged revolution and state building. The movement’s approach to governance has been based on an effort to situate the notion of resistance at the heart of the polity within the Gaza Strip. Economically, socially and militarily, resistance to Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza has become central to Hamas’s governance of the enclave.9Ibid., 242.
But was Hamas really seeking a “revolution”? Was Hamas challenging the Oslo framework from within? It is not at all clear that Hamas was trying “to revolutionize” the political system or Palestinian institutions. It seemed more intent on seizing control of them and, with that, falling into the same traps Fatah found itself in—settling for compromising agreements with Israel and the US.
Hamas seemed more intent on seizing control and settling for compromising agreements with Israel and the US.
Indeed, Hamas was actively seeking recognition by the US, Western powers, and Israel as the main Palestinian negotiator after its victory in the 2006 elections. Moreover, it repeatedly voiced its acceptance of the two-state solution and working within this framework for some kind of agreement, just as Fatah had done earlier.
The main obstacle in Hamas’s strategy was Israel, the US, and other Western powers, which systematically rejected all its overtures. Faced with such rejectionism, Hamas did partially learn from the PLO’s mistakes, refusing to make concessions to Israel without gaining concrete steps to recognize Palestinian national rights.
But faced with a total blockade and suspension of aid, Hamas was driven toward accommodation with other imperial and regional powers, a well worn and failed strategy previously pursued by Fatah. It sought support from Russia and Arab states, particularly the Gulf monarchies.
This effort was in vain, as Russia could not fill the political and economic void of Western powers, while Gulf monarchies did not want to enter in conflict with Western powers. Hamas, therefore, strengthened its relationship with Iran and Syria in order to break its isolation.
While Fatah’s repression and collaboration with the Israeli occupation should be criticized and denounced, Hamas’s political behavior and decisions should be as well. It does not pose any revolutionary alternative perspective or strategy. In many ways, Hamas adopted problematic policies similar to those of the PA in the West Bank. It exhibited the same patterns of clientelism in its appointment to its governmental and security staff, favoritism toward its allied capitalist networks, and authoritarian rule. Moreover, as Baconi does note, Hamas regulated armed resistance and even restrained it in order to secure deals with Israel to loosen its blockade.
Certainly, its October 7 attack was an attempt to reaffirm the Palestinian struggle for liberation against Israel’s occupation and siege, on the one hand, and against Washington’s project of normalizing relations between Israel and the Arab states, on the other. But there are many questions to be posed about Hamas’s armed strategy. Will Hamas be able to continue this strategy in the face of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza? Will it continue to use this strategy to advance liberation of all Palestine? Or will it use its armed strategy as a means to secure accommodation with Israel and the US? Hamas’s recent restatement of its commitment to a two-state solution implies its willingness for such a compromise within the existing state structure of the region.
Opportunist, not Revolutionary
Such possibilities raise questions about Baconi’s contention that “Hamas had aligned itself with both the spirit of the revolution and rising Islamic democratization in the Middle East.”10Ibid., 199. In reality, Hamas has adopted an opportunist approach rather than a revolutionary strategy of aligning its struggle with that of the region’s popular classes.
Hamas’s leaders initially sought to cultivate alliances with the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt and Tunisia as well as a rapprochement with Gulf monarchies, especially Qatar and Turkey. This is why Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of Hamas’s government in Gaza at the time, praised Bahrain’s “reforms” while the regime, with the backing of its Gulf allies, smashed the country’s democratic uprising. Moreover, some Hamas leaders viewed the uprising as a “sectarian” coup d’état by the Shi’ites supported by Iran.
Similarly, in 2018, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal praised Turkey’s invasion and occupation of Afrin in Syria during a visit to Ankara. The occupation of Afrin by Turkish armed forces and its reactionary Syrian proxies drove out two hundred thousand mostly Kurdish people and repressed those who remained.
Hamas, like Fatah before it, has sought collaboration with various authoritarian states and actors.
The defeats of the Muslim Brotherhoods in Egypt and Tunisia and the inability of Qatar and Turkey to substitute for Iranian support eventually pushed Hamas to reestablish its relations with Tehran. Under pressure from Iran, Hamas even restored its ties with the Syrian regime in 2022.
Thus, rather than solidarizing with revolt from below as part of a regional strategy of social transformation, Hamas, like Fatah before it, has sought collaboration with various authoritarian states and actors. That is not in accordance with a revolutionary perspective of seeking to advance the interests of the popular classes in Palestine and in the region.
Even with these critical questions and comments, Baconi’s book remains invaluable. It is of crucial importance for anyone interested in understanding Hamas, the Palestinian struggle today, and its strategic challenges in its fight for liberation from the river to the sea. ×
Notes & References
- Other relevant books worth mentioning on Hamas are: Leila Seurat, The Foreign Policy of Hamas Ideology, Decision Making and Political Supremacy (London: IB Tauris, 2022); Khaled Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2014); Sara Roy, Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector (Princeton: Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics, 2011); Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
- Tareq Baconi, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), xii.
- “In return for the brutal and indiscriminate killing of the elderly, women and children, now the Zionists also suffer from being killed … Now Israeli buses have no one riding in them and Israeli shopping centers are not what they used to be,” ibid., 42.
- Ibid., 61.
- Ibid., 62.
- Ibid., 47.
- Ibid., 47.
- Ibid., 171–72.
- Ibid., 242.
- Ibid., 199.