An insider's account

On December 8, 1987, three Palestinians were killed and seven injured when an Israeli driver of a military trailer ploughed into a van that was bringing Palestinian workers home after a day of labour in Israel.

The Palestinians under occupation saw this as nothing less than a deliberate act of murder. The next day, the Associated Press news agency reported from Gaza on how Israeli soldiers opened fire "on a group of bottle-throwing Arab protesters in a wave of violence triggered by a traffic accident".

This "traffic accident", Dr Azzam Tamimi contends in his book Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, sparked the first Palestinian intifada and created the circumstances that led to the formation of an organisation that has become such an important player in Palestinian and Middle Eastern politics.

Seven leaders of the Ikhwan Al Muslimun (the Muslim Brotherhood) in Palestine, including Shaikh Ahmad Yasin and Abdulaziz Al Rantissi — both assassinated by the Israelis in 2004 — took the decision on December 9, 1987, to transform their hitherto peaceful organisation into an armed resistance movement committed to ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. This organisation was to be known as Harakat Al Muqawamah Al Islamiah (Hamas) — or the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine.

Tumultuous events

Tamimi details the tumultuous events in the Occupied Territories in the two decades that followed the 1967 war (and the beginning of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza) to put the birth of Hamas into context. The Ikhwan in Palestine spent the time between 1967-77 trying to "put their house in order" and recover the ground they had lost to secular nationalist movements such as the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Fatah. These groups, with their resistance activities against Israel, had been gaining the support of the Palestinian people, both in the Occupied Territories and in the Diaspora.

Founder of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought, Tamimi is himself associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. He writes frequently for Western publications and is a regular on Arab and Western TV networks. The book is a result of hundreds of interviews the author has conducted with members of Hamas and provides an unprecedented glimpse into the inner workings of the powerful organisation.

In his effort, Tamimi is aided by his extensive knowledge of wider political Islam. While certainly written from a Hamas point of view, his account is reasonably sober — at times even critical of the group — and sets out to explain Hamas and its objectives to the English-speaking reader.

Tamimi stresses Hamas's roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and the largest Islamist organisation in the world, and also Hamas's troubled relationship with Jordan and the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood. Some of the most interesting parts of the book are those dealing with the travails of individual Hamas members in Jordan, notably Mousa Abu Marzuk and Ebrahim Ghosheh.

The author also provides detailed accounts of two incidents which, while intended to weaken the group, actually gave it a boost. The first was Israel's banishment in 1992 of hundreds of Palestinians, including about 415 Hamas members, to Lebanon. This helped focus a lot of media attention on the group and also gave the members an opportunity to associate freely.

The second incident was the so-called Misha'al Affair. Tamimi provides a gripping account of Israel's botched attempt to assassinate Hamas's Political Bureau chief Khaled Misha'al in Jordan, which was to have far reaching implications for the group. On September 25, 1997, two Canadian "tourists", who had entered Jordan the day before, attempted to kill Misha'al in Amman using a poisoned injection. They injected the poison in his ear, but could not get away with it as Misha'al's alert bodyguard managed to capture the two Mossad assassins and hand them over to the Jordanian police.

Furious over this Israeli misadventure, the late King Hussain of Jordan managed to get an antidote to the poison from the Israelis. Besides, he also secured the release of about 40 Palestinian and Jordanian prisoners — including Shaikh Yasin — languishing in Israeli jails in return for the two Mossad hit men. As the author notes, "… the courage, bravery and wisdom with which King Hussain handled the affair was acknowledged and appreciated throughout the movement [Hamas]."

Not only did this incident dent Mossad's skillfully cultivated "image" but it also gave Hamas a lot of publicity. It was, as Tamimi puts it, "a blessing in disguise" for the organisation.

In the chapter The Liberation Ideology of Hamas, Tamimi argues that the group's charter, originally drafted in 1988, about nine months after it was founded, has been cited more by its critics than by its spokesmen.

He says that today the group's leadership is increasingly "convinced" that the charter as a whole has been more hindrance than help. "The current Charter," Tamimi writes, "is written in a language that no longer appeals to well-educated Muslims."

Besides, some articles of the Hamas charter accuse Jews of being engaged in a "conspiracy". Tamimi notes: "It is anticipated that … the new Hamas Charter will be cleansed from the ludicrous claim that there is a Jewish conspiracy." He rightly argues that the conflict is with Zionism, and it should be explained in more social, political and economic terms, rather than in religious terms.

The author also delves into the social dimensions of the organisation. Despite Israel's commitment to destroying Hamas — arguably its most intractable foe — the group has survived. Though Hamas has received debilitating blows in the form of targeted killings, imprisonment and torture of numerous members, it has actually managed to grow in strength. Tamimi attributes this to the fact that the organisation is deeply rooted in the fabric of Palestinian society.

The extensive network of schools, medical clinics and charitable institutions that it runs, especially in Gaza, provide the organisation with valuable grassroots support. Members of the group are first and foremost members of the communities they live in, and have a reputation for being honest and incorruptible. As Tamimi says, "No one joins Hamas to make money".