The Islamic Resistance Movement

Ideology, Aims & Objectives

This is the 8th and final installment of the Hamas Deproscription Case document release. Azzam Tamimi (the author of the report) wrote the first book I read about Hamas—Hamas, A History From Within. I’m so glad that his was the first book I read because it wasn’t diluted with Orientalism the way the other books I’ve read have been. It gave a really clear picture of the resistance from the perspective of the Hamas founders, which is sadly lacking in the others.

REPORT ON THE IDEOLOGY, AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF HAMAS AS REFLECTED IN ITS CHARTERS AND PURSUIT OF PEACE

BY DR AZZAM TAMIMI

INTRODUCTION

On 25 January 2006, the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine (Hamas) made a sweeping win in one of the fairest democratic exercises ever allowed to take place in the Arabic-speaking world. For almost four decades, Hamas has been a major player not just in the Palestinian arena but within the entire Middle East region.

Outside Arab and Muslim circles many of those who wrote about Hamas could only see it through an Israeli lens. Most of the works written on the movement have adopted the Israeli point of view, and their authors relied heavily on security agencies’ reports including confessions extracted from Palestinian detainees under duress. One such example has been a book authored by Matthew Levitt, who when the book was published in 2006 was deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department. Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad depicts Hamas as a terrorist organization that uses “its extensive charitable and educational work to promote its foremost aim: driving Israel into the sea.” Hamas’s reputable charity activities are condemned as nothing but a device for recruiting new soldiers to its “holy war” against Israel. The movement’s sponsored mosques, schools, orphanages and sports leagues are portrayed as “integral parts of an overarching apparatus of terror.”

In contrast, Hamas sees itself as an organization of Palestinians who happen to be both Arab and Muslim and who perceive themselves as the immediate victims of an unjust world order that saw fit to create a ‘European’ Jewish state in their own country at the very centre of Arab and Muslim heartlands. Hamas founders and affiliates see the Israelis as their oppressors who dispossessed them and their fellow countrymen and who have, since then, been persecuting them generation after generation. Resisting Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and Israeli oppression of the people of the land is one of several elements that inform the thinking of the movement and instruct its activism. The womb out of which Hamas was born was essentially a social project motivated by philanthropy and dedicated to charity, and that explains the network of civic services and activities in which the movement continues to engage.

ROOTS

Hamas was born out of the Association of Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimun (the Muslim Brotherhood), best described by its affiliates as a comprehensive reform movement. The Ikhwan was originally Egyptian but has since its creation grown into a global network. The mother organization was founded by Hassan Al-Banna (1906-1949) in the Egyptian town of Al-Isma’iliyah in 1928 where he taught at a primary school not far from the headquarters of the British occupation troops’ garrison. Combining elements of spirituality acquired from his association with the Hasafiyah Sufi order with the pristine monotheistic teachings of Islam learned inside the Salafi school of Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935) – a disciple and close associate of Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) - Al-Banna’s project had a great popular appeal.

It did not take long for Al-Ikhwan movement to grow, quite rapidly, within Egypt and beyond it. Inside Egypt, it had four branches in 1929, 15 in 1932, 300 by 1938 and more than 2000 in 1948. By 1945, it had half a million active members in Egypt alone and between 1946 and 1948 it opened branches in Palestine, Sudan, Iraq and Syria.

Al-Ikhwan’s long-term goals were: first, to free the Islamic homeland from all foreign authority; and second, to establish an Islamic state within the re-united Islamic homeland. But the movement’s founder Al-Banna taught his followers that neither objective could be achieved without first attending to the more immediate needs of society. His project was, above all, an endeavour to ‘rehabilitate’ the Ummah starting with the individual, then the family, and finally ending up with society as a whole through a process of gradual reform.

These two same goals have been pursued, using the same methodology of gradual reform, by Al-Ikhwan offshoots across the Arab region including Palestine where the Palestinian Ikhwan took root immediately after the end of the Second World War. Having initially opened a few local branches in the Gaza Strip, the edifice of the movement neared completion with the official inauguration on 6 May 1946 of its Central Office in Jerusalem in the presence of local dignitaries as well as guests who arrived from Cairo to represent the mother movement in Egypt.

The creation of Israel in two thirds of Palestine in 1948 led to a de facto split of the Palestinian Ikhwan into two separate organizations one in Gaza, which came under Egyptian military rule, and the other in the West Bank, which was annexed to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The occupation of the rest of Palestine in the aftermath of the six-day war in June 1967 was a blessing in disguise for the group. From 1967 to 1977 the Ikhwan of Palestine endeavoured to unite their ranks and put their house in order. Within a few years they managed to regain some of the ground they had lost to the secular nationalist movements that gained their popularity from mounting resistance against the Israeli occupation, but that were also dealt fatal blows as a result of the loss of confidence across Palestine and the Arab region in Arab nationalism, as exemplified by Nassirism, which was held responsible for the major defeat of the Arabs and the loss of much more land to Israel in 1967.

However, as they rose in popularity and enhanced their appeal, the Ikhwan were being challenged to take a stand against the Israeli occupation, which the Palestinian populations of the West Bank and Gaza could no longer tolerate. Palestinian student communities, initially in Egypt and Kuwait but soon afterwards in the newly emerging Palestinian universities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, played a significant role in revolutionizing the thinking within the movement as a whole, prompting its leadership to take a decision in 1977 to start planning for the launch of their own resistance project that saw the light ten years later with the outburst of the Intifada.

This decade preceding the Intifada saw the creation of major institutions by the Ikhwan in Gaza, such as the Al-Mujammah’ Al-Islami and the Islamic University, which provided Palestinian society with essential services in social, medical and educational spheres and contributed significantly to boosting the movement’s standing and to enhancing its popularity. As Israeli oppressive policies took their toll on the Palestinians, deepening their sense of humiliation and entrapment, the late eighties saw the transformation of the Ikhwan into a resistance movement, more widely known today for its acronym HAMAS, a day after the incident on 8 December 1987 that sparked the first Intifada.

THE CHARTER

A document authored by Hamas Political Bureau in the mid-1990s begins with the following assertion: “The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is a Palestinian national liberation movement that struggles for the liberation of the Palestinian occupied lands and for the recognition of Palestinian legitimate rights.”¹ The refined political discourse of this document is a far cry from the heavy religious language in which the original Hamas Charter was coined. Representing the first attempt by the movement to produce a written document for others to learn what Hamas stood for, the Charter, known in Arabic as Al-Mithaq (the Covenant), was released to the public on 18 August 1988, less than nine months following the birth of the movement. When the Charter was written, it honestly represented the movement’s ideological and political currents at that point in time; it is a reflection of how the Ikhwan, out of whom Hamas was born, perceived the conflict in Palestine and how they saw the world then. Many would admit that insufficient thought went into the drafting and publication of the Charter. Once it had been drafted, Hamas institutions inside and outside Palestine were never adequately consulted over its content.

According to Khalid Mish’al, Hamas Political Bureau Chief, the Charter was hastily released to meet what was perceived at the time as a pressing need to introduce the movement to the public. It was never studied carefully within the movement whose leading institutions inside and outside Palestine had no opportunity to evaluate before it went public. He, therefore, does not consider it to be a true expression of the movement’s overall vision, which “has been formulated over the years by inputs from the movement’s different institutions.” As far as he is concerned, the Charter is a historical document from which one may learn how the movement conceived of things at the time of its birth but “should not be treated as if it were the fundamental ideological frame of reference from which the movement derives its stances or on the basis of which it justifies its actions.”²

Since then, ironically, the Hamas Charter has been more frequently invoked by the movement’s opponents and critics than its members, as proof of either its inflexibility or its anti-Semitism. It has hardly ever been referred to or quoted by the top leaders of Hamas or its official spokespersons.

Until about 2003, very little debate had been taking place within the movement over the Charter despite the fact that much of the criticism levelled against Hamas has involved references to the Charter. It is as if Hamas totally forgot that it had a Charter or as if its leaders were completely oblivious to critique, or attacks, directed against the movement thus far. It was then that some of them began voicing their concern that it might have taken them too long to say that “the text of the Charter does not reflect the thinking and understanding of the movement” and that this may “constitute an obstacle or a source of distortion or a misunderstanding vis-à-vis what the movement stands for.”³

It was in the aftermath of 9/11 that urgency was felt for an image-building initiative to counter the endeavours by certain academic and media quarters to lump all Islamic movements and organizations in one basket together with Al-Qaeda. A series of consultations conducted in Beirut and Damascus between the beginning of 2003 and the end of 2005 bolstered the conviction by several top Hamas political bureau officials that it was time the Charter was re-written. The consultations concluded with commissioning work on a draft for a new Charter. However, in the aftermath of the Palestinian legislative elections of 25 January 2006, the project was put on hold until further notice lest the new Charter was seen as a compromise forced by outside pressure. Eventually, 11 years after these elections, a new official charter was debuted by the movement in 2017.

Hamas leaders, today, recognize the need to express the ideas that relate to fundamental and immutable positions within the Charter in a language that appeals to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Instead of adopting an overwhelming religious discourse, later Charters tell, albeit briefly, the story of the Palestinian problem as it unfolded tracing the root of the Jewish problem in 19^th Century Europe. This constitutes a more universally accepted argument than the idea that Palestine is a waqf (endowment) “consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day.” As article eleven of the ’88 Charter itself explains, the lands conquered by the Muslims from the time of the second Caliph Omar onwards were all assigned as waqf and therefore were not distributed as booties among the conquering troops. The same designation applies equally to Iraq, Persia, Egypt, North Africa and even Spain. The reference in the Charter to this issue was in the context of condemning those who were willing to give away any part of Palestine to the Israelis as part of a peace agreement. Hence is the phrase “it is not permissible to concede it or any part of it or to give it up or any part of it; that is not the right of any single Arab state or all the Arab states together nor any king or president or all the kings and presidents together nor any single organization or all the organizations together whether Palestinian or Arab. This is so because the land of Palestine is an Islamic waqf (endowment) property consecrated to the generations of Muslims up to the Day of Resurrection; and who can presume to speak for all Muslim generations to the Day of Resurrection?” It is widely accepted today within Hamas that this matter is strictly jurisprudential and that the Charter is not the best place for addressing it.

In a memo prepared by Hamas’ political bureau at the request of Western diplomats in Amman in the 1990s entitled “This is what we struggle for”,⁴ there is no mention of Palestine as an Islamic endowment, though it is maintained that Islam is Hamas’ ideological frame of reference. In a 2000 memo, from just before the eruption of the second Intifada, Palestine as an Islamic endowment is only mentioned peripherally when discussing the role of the “Islamic circle” in Palestinian liberation, after the Palestinian and Arab circles.⁵ The latest 2017 charter makes no mention of the waqf. Instead, Hamas’ refusals to recognise Israel or legitimise any accords or deals which require surrendering the land, are framed as necessary to ensure that Palestinian rights of self-determination and return are not squandered and discarded. “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. Whatever has befallen the land of Palestine in terms of occupation, settlement building, judaisation or changes to its features or falsification of facts is illegitimate. Rights never lapse.”⁶ This development in articulation reflects how the movement has sought to fine-tune its articulation of grievances and garner as broad as coalition as possible.

The biggest problem in the initial Charter is its treatment of the Jews. Part of the problem here is language. Israelis are referred to by an average Palestinian as yahud, which is the Arabic equivalent for Jews. Terms such as ‘Zionist’ or ‘Israeli’ figure mostly in the writings and conversations of the secularly cultured elite. They are not current in the public lexicon and have until recently been absent from the Islamic discourse. When Arabic literature with references to the Israelis as yahud is translated into European languages it may indeed sound anti-Semitic. Moreover yahud is the term that Israelis, particularly soldiers, refer to themselves as.

In his series of ‘testimonies’ broadcast on Aljazeera Arabic satellite station between 17 April and 5 June 1999, the founder of Hamas Sheikh Ahmad Yassin refers to the Israelis interchangeably at times as Al-Isra’iliyun (the Israelis) and at times as Al-Yahud (the Jews). In the second episode of the ‘testimony’ broadcast on 24 April 1999 he said: “The Israelis usually deal with the Palestinian people individually and not collectively. Even inside the prisons, they would not agree to deal with (the prisoners) except individually. However, we forced our will on them despite them and refused to deal with them except through a leadership elected by the Palestinian (prisoners) to face the Jews and resolve the problems with them.”⁷ This is just one sample paragraph of what his style was like. Most Palestinians and Arabs unconsciously do the same thing. Leah Tsemel, an Israeli lawyer who has been defending Palestinians in Israeli courts for some 30 years, notes that her clients routinely describe soldiers or settlers as al-yahud - the Jews. They complain for instance that “al-yahud (the Jews) took my ID card,” or “al-yahud (the Jews) hit me,” or “al-yahud (the Jews) destroyed this or that.” She expresses anxiety at the fact that Israel in the minds of its Palestinian victims becomes identified with all the Jews in the world and fears that as a consequence all the Jews in the world may be seen as soldiers and settlers.

This problem is not confined to Palestine but exists across the region where Jews once lived in large numbers but had, with few exceptions, long been gone. Following the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine in 1948 Jews living in various Arab countries were encouraged, at times intimidated so as, to migrate to Israel which, having expelled close to a million Palestinians, was in dire need of beefing up its population. Additionally, Jews from Iraq, Yemen and Morocco provided a source of cheap labour and performed functions not ‘befitting’ for the Ashkenazim (Eastern European Jews) who presided over the Zionist colonial project in Palestine and treated themselves as first class citizens of the newly founded ‘Jewish’ state in contrast to Sephardic Jews who came from the Arab countries.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century Muslims, Christians and Jews coexisted peacefully throughout the Muslim world where, for many centuries, the Islamic empire, whose terrain extended over three continents, provided a milieu of tolerance under a system that guaranteed protection for what is today referred to as minorities. Islam, whose values and principles governed the public and private conduct of Muslim individuals and communities, recognized Christians and Jews as legitimate communities within the Islamic State and accorded them inalienable rights. The followers of both Christianity and Judaism participated on equal footing with the Muslims in building the Arab-Islamic civilization on whose fruits European renaissance philosophers were nourished.

In contrast, Jews repeatedly suffered persecution in the European lands. Whenever that happened, they sought refuge in the Muslim lands where they were welcomed and treated as ‘people of the book’ in accordance with the ‘Covenant of God and His Messenger.’ Such Muslim perception of the Jews remained unchanged until the Zionist movement, which was born in Europe, started recruiting Jews in the Muslim lands for a project that was seen by the Muslims as an attack on their faith and homeland. The change in the Muslim attitude toward the Jews came as a reaction to the claims of the Zionist movement, which associated itself with the Jews and Judaism. Despite the secular origins of the Zionist project and the atheism of many of its founding fathers, the Zionist discourse justified the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinians in religious terms. The Bible was invoked by Zionist pioneers, although few of them really believed in it or showed any respect for it, in a bid to bestow religious legitimacy on their project and gain the support of the world’s Jews, most of whom had initially been opposed to political Zionism.

It is for this reason that the original Hamas Charter conceives of the problem in Palestine as a religious strife between the Jews and the Muslims. The continued association of Israel with the Jews and the Jews with Israel only reinforces the conviction of many Muslims that the conflict in the Middle East between the Palestinians and the Israelis is indeed a religious one. Many Arabs and Muslims find it extremely difficult to accept that anti-Zionist Jews, who not only criticize Israel but also refuse to recognize its legitimacy, do genuinely exist.

Subsequent documents released by the movement, as well as statements for the movement’s leading figures, clarify that from the point of view of Hamas, their conflict with the Israelis is purely incidental, as a consequence only of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and nothing to do with the Jewishness. As Hamas founder and spiritual figurehead Sheikh Ahmed Yassin has said, “We ask for our right… nothing more. We don’t hate the Jews and fight them because they are Jews. They are people of religion, and we are people of religion. We love all people of religion. If my brother, who has the same religion and parents as me takes my home and expels me I will fight him… So, when a Jew takes my home and expels me, I will fight him as well. I don’t fight the USA, Britian or other countries. I’m at peace with all people. I love all people and wish them well – even the Jews.”⁸ This was reiterated in the document prepared in the late 90s upon the request of Western diplomats: “The movement’s motivation for struggle has been expressed by its founder and leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin: ‘the movement struggles against Israel because it is the aggressing, usurping and oppressing state that hoists the rifle in the face of our sons and daughters day and night.’”

On of the major weaknesses of the Charter is that it adopts conspiracy theory. It bases its analysis of the conflict in Palestine on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a false document that purports to represent the ideas of a secret society of Jewish elders for conquering the world. What the author of the Charter wished to convey was a direct correlation between an ongoing Jewish quest for global domination and the occupation of Palestine. Following a common trend among some Muslim writers of the time, the author of the Charter invoked the Qur’an and Hadith (Prophet’s sayings) to substantiate his claim of an ongoing Jewish conspiracy against Islam and the Muslims that goes back all the way to the early days of Islam. Such selective reading, or convenient interpretation of the Scripture is not uncommon in some quarters of contemporary Muslim writings. In this particular case the Qur’anic chastisement of bad conduct and ill-manners by some of the Israelites in Biblical times or by some of the Jews during Prophet Muhammad’s time are taken out of their historic context and then universalised. It is astonishing that in spite of the fact that conspiracy theory is in essence un-Islamic it was, until the early nineties of the twentieth century, widely espoused by Muslim intellectuals across the Arab world. The permeation of such thinking has been a symptom of a sensation of civilisational decline, which in turn precipitates a deep sense of desperation and frustration.

The only positive reference to the Jews in the initial Hamas Charter is seen in Article thirty-one which states that “in the shade of Islam it is possible for the followers of the three religions Islam, Christianity and Judaism to live in peace and security.” Later charters and statements emerging from the movement and more reflective of its current complexion, have been cleansed from all the ludicrous claims of a Jewish conspiracy. They instead emphasize the racist nature of the Zionist project and explain that many Jews are opposed to it. The idea that not every Jew is a Zionist is already widely accepted by the Islamists who previously thought this was a myth invented by Palestinian secular nationalists.

The 2000 memo referred to above, is careful to make clear that the ideological opponent of Hamas as being Zionism, not Jewishness. “The Zionist project represents the convergence of Western colonial interests in the region with the interests of the Zionist movement and its ambitions in the land of Palestine.” It is very explicit, that “the conflict with the Zionists is not linked to their religious affiliation but because they occupy our land, desecrate our shrines and violate our people.” Article 16 of the 2017 Charter is yet more explicit: “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.”

The latest document published by the movement in 2017 reflects more accurately the current thinking of Hamas, and substantially different from the original document. Unlike the ’88 charter, it was carefully crafted after much consultation. By emphasising the roots of the conflict, and framing its grievances in the context of Zionist colonialism and the consequent occupation of Palestine, the charter appeals to the world’s public opinion to sympathize with the Palestinian victims rather than with their Israeli oppressors. In speaking about human rights and contraventions of international law to outline its political agenda, the new charter adopts a more universal tone in order to reach out to peoples and nations across the world. And as demonstrated above, the new charter is at pains to make clear, as Sheikh Ahmad Yassin did several times until he was assassinated by the Israelis in 2004, that Hamas does not have a problem with the Jews because of their faith or race and that it does not believe the conflict in the Middle East to be between the Muslims and the Jews or between Islam and Judaism. It stresses that Islam does recognize Judaism as a legitimate religion and accords its adherents with respect and protection. As a matter of principle, the Charter stresses a position that has been expressed repeatedly by Hamas leaders over the preceding fifteen years or so, namely that contemporary Jews and Muslims can, as did earlier Muslims and Jews for many centuries, live together in peace and harmony once the Palestinians’ legitimate rights are recognized and restored.

Consider for instance the following statement made by Hamas leader in Gaza Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi on 7 March 2004 just ten days before Israel assassinated him. His words are hardly distinguishable from the discourse of freedom fighters in Latin America, South Africa or East Asia.

Hamas’ strategy is underpinned by four principles: 1) We have a homeland that is in its entirety usurped; we cannot concede one inch of it; 2) there is an obvious imbalance of powers in favor of the Zionist enemy; 3) we do not possess the armament our enemy possesses but we possess a faith that generates a will that does not recognize defeat or retreat short of accomplishing the goals, a faith that demands sacrifice for the sake of faith and homeland; and 4) there is an Arab and Islamic Ummah that is weak, feeble and broken and therefore cannot support the people of Palestine, and there is an international community that is hostile to the hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people and that supports Zionist terrorism. Hamas’ strategy proceeds in two parallel lines: (1) resisting occupation and confronting Zionist aggression; and (2) preserving the unity of the Palestinian people and protecting the Palestinian ranks from the threat of internal fighting which would only distract everyone from resisting the occupation.

HUDNAH (TRUCE)

One of the frequent attacks on Hamas and reasons for opposing any form of dialogue with them is a deliberate distortion of their position in relation to a peace process. In particular, the British government’s position since Hamas succeeded in the 2006 elections has been that it will not engage with the movement unless and until it renounces armed struggle, recognises Israel’s ‘right to exist’, and agrees to respect all former agreements signed by the PLO with Israel.

If Hamas is to remain loyal to its founding principles it cannot afford to recognize Israel’s ‘right to exist’. Born out of the Intifadah (uprising) of 1987, Hamas declared that it had emerged “in order to liberate the whole of Palestine, all of it.” The movement came to existence partly in response to the oppressive treatment the Palestinians suffered under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and partly because Fatah, the Palestinian national liberation movement, had faltered. Like Fatah before it, most of Hamas’ members and supporters had been refugees or children of refugees whose real homes were not the appalling camps in which they were born or where they grew up. Their real homes are on the other side of the so-called "green line" where Jewish immigrants, who had come from Europe and elsewhere in the world, now colonize. Like millions of Palestinians inside Palestine and in the Diaspora the founders of Hamas felt betrayed when the leadership of Fatah, having hijacked the PLO, decided to give away their right of return to their homes.

It is highly unlikely, therefore, that Hamas will ever recognize the legitimacy of the state of Israel or its ‘right to exist’. The movement regards Israel as nothing but a colonial enclave planted in the heart of the Muslim world in order to obstruct the revival of the Ummah (global Muslim community) and to prolong Western hegemony in the region. On the other hand, Palestine is an Islamic land that has been invaded and occupied by a foreign power; it would contravene the principles of Hamas' Islamic faith to recognize the legitimacy of the foreign occupation of any Muslim land let alone one that is home to the Muslims’ first Qiblah (place worshippers face during prayer) and third most important mosque on earth.

This position is not exclusive to Hamas. Muslim scholars, with a few exceptions, have constantly expressed their absolute opposition to recognizing the legitimacy of the creation of a "Jewish State" in Palestine. Over the past century Ulama (Muslim scholars and jurists) issued numerous fatawa (pl. of fatwa: religious edict) declaring null and void any agreement that legitimized the occupation of any part of Palestine. The first collective fatwa on this issue predates the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine. On 26 January 1935, more than two hundred Islamic scholars came to Jerusalem from around Palestine to issue a fatwa prohibiting the forfeiture of any part of Palestine to the Zionists. Similar conferences were held and fatawa issued at various junctures in the history of the Middle East conflict. During the Nassirist era (1952-1970) in Egypt, the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic institution in Cairo maintained the position of prohibiting recognizing the State of Israel or any peace-making with it. Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, one of the most authoritative scholars of contemporary times, repeatedly expressed that position affirming that it was unanimously adopted by more than three hundred Islamic scholars from around the Muslim world during a meeting of the Islamic Jurisprudential Council in Kuwait in the mid-1990s. He explained that the fatwa which prohibited recognizing Israel was based on the consideration that “Palestine is an Islamic land that cannot be forfeited voluntarily.” He added that the same fatwa was re-issued at a later Islamic Jurisprudence conference in Bahrain.

However, such a dogmatic position does not deny the right of the Jews to live in Palestine provided their existence in it is not the outcome of invasion or military occupation. Nor does it bar the Muslims, including the Hamas movement, from negotiating a cease-fire agreement with the Israeli State in order to put an end to the bloodshed and to the suffering on both sides for as long as can be agreed on.

The idea of a hudnah (truce) with Israel originated in the early nineties. It was referred to in the document prepared by the Hamas Political Bureau in the 1990s a tthe request of Western diplomats outlining its aims and objectives. The document concludes by stating that “Hamas would be willing to consider a cease-fire agreement with the Israelis upon their agreement to end their occupation of all the territories occupied in the aftermath of the six-day war in 1967. This would entail the cessation of all hostilities on the part of Hamas in exchange, on the part of Israel, for: 1. the withdrawal of Israeli occupation troops from the West Bank and Gaza Strip; 2. the evacuation of all Jewish settlements illegally erected and populated by Jewish immigrants on Palestinian lands seized by force in both the West Bank and Gaza; and 3. recognizing the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.”

A hudnah was also referred to by the Amman-based Head of Hamas Political Bureau, Musa Abu Marzuq, in a statement published by the Amman weekly Al-Sabeel, the organ of the Jordanian Islamic Movement, in February 1994. A similar first reference to it inside Palestine was made around the same period in 1994 by Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin from his prison cell. He proposed the hudnah as an interim solution to the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Both Abu Marzuq and Sheikh Yassin repeated the offer on several occasions thereafter but failed to interest the Israelis. Of late, hudnah has been routinely referred to by various Hamas spokesperson.

Hudnah is recognized in Islamic jurisprudence as a legitimate and binding contract whose objective is to cease fighting with the enemy for an agreed period of time. The truce may be short or long depending on mutual needs or interests. A truce treaty would be different from the 'Oslo peace accords' according to which the PLO recognized the State of Israel and its right to exist. The difference is that under the terms of hudnah the very issue of recognition will not come up simply because Hamas cannot, as a matter of principle, accept that the land the Israelis seized from the Palestinians has become theirs; the movement has no authority to renounce the right of the Palestinians to return to the lands and the homes from which they were forced out in 1948 or at anytime afterwards. It can however say that under the present circumstances the best it can do is regain some of the land lost and secure the release of prisoners in exchange for a cessation of hostilities. This would be somewhat similar to the IRA agreeing to negotiate an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland without recognizing British sovereignty over the territory. The Irish Catholics continue to hope or dream that one day the whole of Ireland will be united and that British rule will come to an end. Negotiating an end to violence in Northern Ireland was never conditioned upon the IRA first renouncing its dream of reuniting Ireland; had this been the case no peace would ever have prevailed.

In justifying hudnah, Hamas leaders look to the example of what happened between the Muslims and the Crusaders in the last decade of the 12^th century. The conflict between the two sides in Palestine and around it lasted for nearly two hundred years. Of particular interest to Hamas in this regard is the Ramleh treaty Salah Al-Din Al-Ayyubi (Saladin) concluded with Richard the Lionhearted on 1 September 1192 CE. The truce, which marked the end of the third Crusaders campaign, held for a period of three years and three months during which the Crusaders maintained control of the coast from Jaffa to Acre and were allowed to visit Jerusalem and had the freedom to carry out their commercial activities with the Muslims.

Reference is often made, as well, to the first hudnah ever in the history of Islam. Known as Al-Hudaybiyah, which was the name of the location on the outskirts of Mecca where it was concluded, the agreement saw the suspension of hostilities between the Muslim community under the Prophet's leadership and the tribe of Quraysh inside Mecca. The duration of the hudnah agreed to by both sides was ten years. However, it came to an end less than two years later when Quraysh breached it with the unlawful killing of some members of the tribe of Khuza'ah that was allied to the Muslim side.

Once hudnah is concluded it is considered sacred and fulfilling its obligations becomes a religious duty; so long as the other side observes it the Muslim side cannot breach it for doing so is considered a grave sin. As in the case of other international treaties, a hudnah is renewable upon the expiry of its term by mutual agreement.

The overall long-term hudnah proposed by Hamas stipulates as a first condition an Israeli withdrawal to the borders of 4 June 1967, which means a return of all the land occupied by the Israelis as a result of the six-day war including East Jerusalem. Such measure would entail the removal of all Jewish settlers from those areas. In addition, Israel would have to release all Palestinians held in its prisons and detention camps. It is highly unlikely that Hamas would settle for anything less in exchange for a long term truce that may last for a quarter of a century or longer.

Offers of 10-year hudnas largely based on the above have repeatedly been made by Hamas in 1995, 1997, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2014 and 2015. In 2006, Ismail Haniyeh, shortly after being elected as Prime Minister, even sent messages both to US President George W. Bush and to Israel's leaders, offering a long-term truce amounting to a fifty-year armistice with Israel, if a Palestinian state was created along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Hamas is silent about what happens when a long-term hudnah signed with the Israelis expires. While its leaders have left open the length of the hudnah term, considering this to be a subject for negotiation with the Israelis once they accepted the principle, they generally suggest that the future should be left for future generations.

It is usually assumed that a long term hudnah will likely last for a quarter of a century or more. That is seen as too long a time for someone to predict what may happen afterwards. There will always be the possibility that the hudnah will come to an end prematurely because of a breach. If that happens it is highly unlikely that the breach will come from the Hamas side for the simply reason that it is religiously binding upon the Islamic side to honour the agreement to the end unless violated by the other side. Should the hudnah last till the prescribed date, one scenario is that those in charge then will simply negotiation a renewal.

Another scenario that is prevalent within the thinking of some intellectual Hamas quarters is that so much will change in the world that Israel as a Zionist entity may not want, or may not have the ability, to continue to be in existence. As a matter of principle Muslims, Christians and Jews can live together in the region as they lived together for many centuries before. What Islamists usually have in mind is an Islamic state, a Caliphate, which is envisaged to encompass much of the Middle East in an undoing of the fragmentation the region was forced to undergo due to 19^th century colonialism and then in accordance with the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. The entities created in the process became separate 'territorial states' in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman order in the second decade of the 20th century. While Israel as an exclusive state for the Jews in Palestine is something an Islamic movement such as Hamas can never recognize as legitimate, the Jews can easily be accommodated as legitimate citizens of a multi-faith, multi-racial state governed by Islam. The post-Israel scenario, which has become a subject for debate within the movement, is one that envisages a Palestine, or a united Middle East, with a Jewish population but no political Zionism. This is a vision inspired by the South African reconciliation model that brought Apartheid to an end but kept all communities living together. Zionism is usually equated to Apartheid and its removal is seen as the way forward if Muslims, Christians and Jews were ever to coexist in peace in the region. It would be impossible for such a scenario to translate into a reality without a long-term hudnah that for the lifetime of an entire generation provides communities and peoples in the region the opportunity to restore some normalcy into their lives.

Those who are skeptical about the hudnah may argue that it means nothing but a prelude to finishing Israel altogether. But without hudnah too the Palestinians will still dream of the day on which Palestine, their country, is free and their right of return to their homes is restored. Without a hudnah there is no guarantee that they will cease to pursue that end using whatever means that are at their disposal. The advantage of the hudnah is that it brings to an end the bloodshed and the suffering because of the commitment to do so for a given period of time. In the meantime, let each side dream of what they wish the future to look like while keeping the door open for all sorts of options. Under normal circumstances, the best option is the least costly option.

TAHDI’AH (Ceasefire)

A tahdi’ah differs from a hudnah and can be understood as a temporary ceasefire during a state of hostilities rather than a long term truce. Between 2000 and 2024, Hamas and Israel have experienced numerous cycles of conflict, ceasefires, and military actions. There have been many instances where Hamas offered ceasefires, followed by Israeli military responses, including targeted assassinations. Notable examples follow.

In September 1997, days before Israel attempted to assassinate Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal in the Jordanian capital, Amman, the movement had offered Israel a 10-year truce. Following his release from detention and return to Gaza in October 1997, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin offered to suspend Hamas martyrdom operations if the Israelis were ready to “stop their attacks on [Palestinian] civilians, end land confiscation and house demolitions, and release the prisoners and detainees.” This is not quite the same as the long term truce which he said his movement was ready to engage in provided that Israel withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza and dismantled its Jewish settlements.

The offer of truce was reiterated in October 1999 by Hamas armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, who said it was ready to stop attacks on Israeli civilians “provided Israel stops its settlement activities and land confiscation and provided Israeli troops and Jewish settlers stop attacking Palestinian civilians.”

The first tahdi'ah, however, was in 2002; it was brokered by EU emissary Alistair Crooke. The tahdi’ah was shattered several weeks later when the Israelis assassinated Hamas leader Salah Shihadah on 22 July 2002.

On 29 June 2003 Hamas and Islamic Jihad declared a unilateral truce. The decision to observe this tahdi'ah was announced by Hamas leader Abd Al-Aziz Al-Ranitisi who explained that it was a gesture to give a chance to newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas sort things out with the Israelis. The tahdi'ah came to an end seven weeks later after Israel assassinated Hamas leader Isma’il Abu Shanab on 21 August 2003. A known pragmatist, Abu Shanab had been instrumental in agreeing the ceasefire.

Israel alleged that the assassination was in retaliation for the bombing of a Jerusalem bus that left twenty-one Israelis dead and more than a hundred wounded. In fact, the Israelis never recognized or appreciated the unilateral truce declared by the Islamic factions in Palestine. They pursued their strategy of eliminating whoever they considered a potential threat to their security. Throughout the month of July 2003 several Palestinians were assassinated in Nablus and Hebron. The attack in Jerusalem on 19 August 2003 was carried out by Ra’id Misk, a native of Hebron, who retaliated for the assassination of some of his friends in the town by Israeli army special units in the aftermath of the declaration of the truce. It transpired later that Hamas members in Hebron were ordered to observe the truce despite the Israeli provocations. However, they could not remain indifferent while their colleagues were being hunted down one after the other. The Israeli campaign of targeted assassinations in the Hebron area started before Hamas declared its unilateral truce and included the murder of a local Hamas leader, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Qawasimi, on 22 June 2003.

Israel’s refusal to reciprocate led many Palestinians to lose confidence in the usefulness of declaring a unilateral truce. The sense of frustration was augmented when the European Union decided in August 2003 to proscribe Hamas and place it on the terrorism list. Encouraged by the EU decision, Israel made its first attempt to assassinate Sheikh Ahmad Yassin on 6 September 2003. An Israeli fighter jet dropped a 500lb bomb on a residential building in Gaza City where Sheikh Yassin was visiting in the company of a number of Hamas figures including Isma’il Haniyah who in 2006 became Prime Minister. Fifteen Palestinians were wounded and Sheikh Yassin escaped with scratches.

The Israelis also attempted to assassinate Dr. Mahmud Al-Zahar. The air strike on his family home levelled it to the ground. Dr Al-Zahar escaped with injuries but lost his elder son in the attack that left his wife permanently paralyzed and his daughter seriously wounded. At a rally held in November that year, Sheikh Yassin announced that the movement found it futile to observe a cease-fire unilaterally: He said: “We declared a truce in the past, but it failed because Israel did not want peace or security for the Palestinian people.” Addressing the same rally, Hamas leader Al-Zahar urged the Palestinians to resume armed resistance.

On 22 March 2004, Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Sheikh Yassin’s successor and Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi again proposed a 10-year truce, only for Israel to also assassinate him one month later on 17 April 2004.

Most recently, Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh on 31 July 2024 during a time when he was involved in negotiating a US-brokered deal that would begin with an exchange of Israeli and Palestinian prisoners before advancing into a permanent cease-fire and eventual reconstruction efforts.

CONCLUSION

The above incidents reflect a general trend of periodic compromises and attempts at garnering peace being offered by Hamas. Yet those efforts are often, strategically, squandered by Israeli authorities. In December 2008, the IOF launched Operation Cast Lead in which some 1,400 Palestinians were killed. Much of the pretext for the offensive is provided by Hamas’ official positions getting closer to the global consensus as relates to the question of Palestine. Between 1997 and 2008, 12 UNGA votes on a “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine” were accepted by most of the global community with the consistent exception of Israel and the US. Those agreements affirmed amongst other things the illegality of Israeli settlements in Palestinian occupied territory since 1967 including East Jerusalem and the need for the Israelis to withdraw from those territories, the recognition of a Palestinian right to self-determination and an independent state, and a just resolution to the issue of Palestinian refugees. A 2002 Arab League summit in Beirut unanimously forwarded a peace initiative which echoed that UN consensus, and all 57 members of the OIC adopted it.

At the same time, Hamas leader Khalid Mish’al, months before Cast Lead, said that “most Palestinian forces including Hamas accept a state on ’67 borders.” Even on the long-fought over condition of accepting previous agreements, Mish’al had told US President Jimmy Carter that “Hamas agreed to accept any peace agreement negotiated between the leaders of the PLO and Israel, provided it is subsequently approved by Palestinians in a referendum or by a democratically elected government.” The period then just following the 2006 elections, saw Hamas participate in the democratic process within Occupied Palestine, go above and beyond in attempts to maintain ceasefires (even unilaterally), whilst also nearing the global consensus by making compromises on key stress-points between them and the Israelis. For lack of a better term, the political realism employed by the Palestinian leadership during these years posed a problem for the Israeli authorities who saw Hamas slowly emerging a potentially viable partners within a Palestinian peace process. As the advent of Obama administration loomed, the logic almost spelled itself out – to provoke Hamas into resuming attacks and reattach to the movement its bogeyman status diplomatically.

A similar chain of events unfolded in 1981, not with Hamas but with the PLO: Palestinian leadership was nearing a consensus on a two-state solution, and the Arab league approved a peace plan unveiled by Saudi Arabia which acknowledged similar terms. As a result, a year of Israeli provocations ensued, the most devastating of which was an attack which killed 200 civilians including 60 occupants of a Palestinian children’s hospital. The PLO retaliation, which caused a single Israeli casualty, provided the backdrop onto which Operation ‘Peace in Galilee’ was launched, incapacitating the entity threatening most to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

The trajectory from the ’88 charter until the 2017 charter, and through various attempts at ceasefire agreements demonstrates a genuine and concerted attempt by Hamas and Palestinian leadership to bring about a cessation of hostilities. Those compromises though have often been met, with assassinations and provocations designed to indefinitely leave unresolved the Palestinian question.

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1. This is what we struggle for: Memo prepared by Hamas Political Bureau in the late 1990s upon the request of Western diplomats in the Jordanian capital Amman↩︎

2. Khalid Mish’al, interview with the author, Damascus, 14 August 2003↩︎

3. Ibid↩︎

4. Referred to above, in paragraph 14↩︎

5. Memo prepared by Hamas Political Bureau in 2000 just before the eruption of the Second Intifada↩︎

6. Article 19 of 2018 Charter↩︎

7. شاهد على العصر | أحمد ياسين (2) أثر نكسة 1967 على الفلسطينيين في غزة [“Witness to the Era | Ahmed Yassin (2) The Impact of the 1967 Setback on the Palestinians in Gaza”], YouTube, uploaded by AlJazeera Arabic, May 21, 2009,

1. ↩︎

2. Nizar Rayaan, B. (2017) فلسطين.. ووهم أسلمة الصراع! [“Palestine and the illusion of Islamising the conflict”], Aljazeera.net, December 18↩︎

I. EXPERT OBLIGATIONS

71. I confirm that I have made clear which facts and matters referred to in this report are within my own knowledge and which are not. Those that are within my own knowledge I confirm to be true. The opinions I have expressed represent my true and complete professional opinions on the matters to which they refer.

72. I understand that proceedings for contempt of court may be brought by anyone who makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth.

73. I confirm that I have not received any remuneration for preparing this report.

Dr Azzam Tamimi

London

UK

29 December 2024

INSTRUCTIONS

1. I have been instructed by Riverway Law to provide a report on matters within my expertise in support of the application to the British Home Secretary to deproscribe Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (‘Hamas’).

2. The purpose of this report is to examine the evolution of the ideology, aims and objectives of Hamas as documented in its various charters and statements of principles, as well as its overtures towards peace in recent decades. The report will assess the allegations made against the movement that it is antisemitic and refuses to recognise Israel’s ‘right to exist’ and respect previous agreements signed by the PLO with Israel.

B. QUALIFICATIONS

3. My mother fled from her home in Be'er-Assabea during the Nakba in 1948 and moved to Al-Khalil in the West Bank where she married my father. I was born in Al-Khalil in 1955. We later moved to Kuwait in 1962.

4. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Combined Sciences from the University of Sunderland in 1979. I obtained a Ph.D. in Political Theory from the University of Westminster in 1998.

5. From 1980-1985, I worked as a media monitor and news analyst at the U.S. government's Foreign Broadcast Information Service. I directed the Parliamentary Office of the Islamic Movement in Jordan from 1990-1991.

6. I served as a senior lecturer at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education in Leicester from 2000 to 2004. During this period, I contributed to the development of curricula focused on Islamic studies and political thought. I was a visiting professor at Kyoto University and Nagoya University in Japan between 2004 and 2007, where I lectured on topics related to Islamic movements and Middle Eastern politics.

7. I am the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Alhiwar TV Channel, a London-based Arabic-language satellite television channel that focuses on political, social, and cultural issues pertinent to the Arab world.

8. I am the founder and director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought (IIPT) which has been instrumental in promoting scholarly research on Islamic political ideas and movements. The institute serves as a hub for academics and researchers interested in the intersection of Islam and politics.

9. I am the author of a number of books on Islam and politics, including a book on Hamas that offers a comprehensive analysis of the movement’s role within Palestinian society drawing on personal interviews with many of the founding members and leadership.

Books

• Hamas: Unwritten Chapters (2007)

• Rachid Ghannouchi: A Democrat within Islamism (2001)

• Islam and Secularism in the Middle East (2000): Co-edited with John L. Esposito.

• Power-Sharing Islam? (1993)

Selected Articles

• Yahya Sinwar died fighting Israel. His death will not defeat Hamas, Middle East Eye, 18 October 2024

• Ismail Haniyeh: Hamas will survive leader's death as it has many times before, Middle East Eye, 31 July 2024

• War on Gaza: Netanyahu's onslaught on Rafah is further proof of his desperation, Middle East Eye,14 February 2024

• Israel-Palestine war: Could a long-term truce be in the offing?, Middle East Eye, 29 November 2023

• Why a visionary Palestinian leadership is urgently needed, Middle East Eye, 8 February 2022

• Saudi Arabia: Crackdown on Hamas marks another costly misstep, Middle East Eye, 10 August 2021

• Israel-Palestine: Apartheid cannot be defeated without armed resistance, Middle East Eye, 26 May 2021

• Israel-Palestine: A new generation says 'enough is enough', Middle East Eye, 20 May 2021

• Palestine elections: What’s the point of this futile exercise?, Middle East Eye, 4 May 2021

• Israel annexation plan: A catastrophe begotten by a larger catastrophe, Middle East Eye, 1 July 2020

• Hamas has only the hudna to offer to lift the siege, Middle East Eye, 30 August 2018

• Palestinian reconciliation: Why is it likely to succeed now?, Middle East Eye, 5 October 2017

• Hamas’ political document: What to expect, Al Jazeera, 1 May 2017

• A Hamas remake?, Middle East Eye, 24 April 2017

• Israel's war on Gaza is backed by Arab regimes, Middle East Eye, 12 February 2015

• Israel was wrong to think it could destroy Hamas, Middle East Eye, 12 February 2015

• Why peace with Israel was bad for Jordan, Al Jazeera, 26 October 2014

• The slaughter in Gaza will not defeat Hamas, Guardian, 13 July 2014

• The quest for democracy in the Arab world is an Islamic cause, Al Jazeera, 7 Februry 2014

• Our freedom is now closer, Guardian, 2 May 2011