Hamas, Popular Support and War in the Middle East

Hamas, Popular Support and War in the Middle East PDF Author: Richard Davis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317402588
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
This book offers a new understanding of the nature of power-seeking insurgent groups by empirically examining the use of violence by Hamas in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. Though Hamas has learned to ride the tides of popular support, it remains suspended between its quest to achieve the values of its ardent supporters (reclamation of land through force) and the desire to grow popular support. This tension is reflected in how and when the group exercises violent resistance. The theoretical framework applied in this volume provides a simple construct to understand the dynamics that result in use and non-use of violence under changing environmental conditions by Hamas, but could be applied more broadly to other power-seeking insurgent groups, including ISIL. The book weaves together the dynamics between violent actions and internal and external influences on Hamas, including: expressed values of the group, Palestinian popular support measures, leaders’ personalities and innovation (weapons and tactics), Israeli influence and targeted killings, peace processes and conflicts in Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. With newly assembled datasets on Hamas’ violent acts and public statements, Israeli Targeted Killings, historical measures of popular support and extensive field interviews, the book offers a fresh perspective on insurgent group violence by demonstrating under what conditions the group exercises violence or refrains from doing so. This book will be of much interest to both policy makers and students of the Arab-Israeli conflict, political violence, Middle Eastern politics, security studies and international relations in general.

Hamas, Popular Support and War in the Middle East

Hamas, Popular Support and War in the Middle East PDF Author: Richard Davis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317402588
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book offers a new understanding of the nature of power-seeking insurgent groups by empirically examining the use of violence by Hamas in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. Though Hamas has learned to ride the tides of popular support, it remains suspended between its quest to achieve the values of its ardent supporters (reclamation of land through force) and the desire to grow popular support. This tension is reflected in how and when the group exercises violent resistance. The theoretical framework applied in this volume provides a simple construct to understand the dynamics that result in use and non-use of violence under changing environmental conditions by Hamas, but could be applied more broadly to other power-seeking insurgent groups, including ISIL. The book weaves together the dynamics between violent actions and internal and external influences on Hamas, including: expressed values of the group, Palestinian popular support measures, leaders’ personalities and innovation (weapons and tactics), Israeli influence and targeted killings, peace processes and conflicts in Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. With newly assembled datasets on Hamas’ violent acts and public statements, Israeli Targeted Killings, historical measures of popular support and extensive field interviews, the book offers a fresh perspective on insurgent group violence by demonstrating under what conditions the group exercises violence or refrains from doing so. This book will be of much interest to both policy makers and students of the Arab-Israeli conflict, political violence, Middle Eastern politics, security studies and international relations in general.

Hamas, Popular Support and War in the Middle East

Hamas, Popular Support and War in the Middle East PDF Author: Richard Davis (Political scientist)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781315682242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This book offers a new understanding of the nature of power-seeking insurgent groups by empirically examining the use of violence by Hamas in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. Though Hamas has learned to ride the tides of popular support, it remains suspended between its quest to achieve the values of its ardent supporters (reclamation of land through force) and the desire to grow popular support. This tension is reflected in how and when the group exercises violent resistance. The theoretical framework applied in this volume provides a simple construct to understand the dynamics that result in use and non-use of violence under changing environmental conditions by Hamas, but could be applied more broadly to other power-seeking insurgent groups, including ISIL. The book weaves together the dynamics between violent actions and internal and external influences on Hamas, including: expressed values of the group, Palestinian popular support measures, leaders' personalities and innovation (weapons and tactics), Israeli influence and targeted killings, peace processes and conflicts in Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. With newly assembled datasets on Hamas' violent acts and public statements, Israeli Targeted Killings, historical measures of popular support and extensive field interviews, the book offers a fresh perspective on insurgent group violence by demonstrating under what conditions the group exercises violence or refrains from doing so. This book will be of much interest to both policy makers and students of the Arab-Israeli conflict, political violence, Middle Eastern politics, security studies and international relations in general.

Hamas and Israel

Hamas and Israel PDF Author: Sherifa Zuhur
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arab-Israeli conflict
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
"This monograph considers the changing fortunes of the Palestinian movement, HAMAS, and the recent outcomes of Israeli strategies aimed against this group and Palestinian nationalism external to the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Authority. The example of HAMAS challenges much of the current wisdom on "insurgencies" and their containment. As the author, Dr. Sherifa Zuhur, demonstrates, efforts have been made to separate HAMAS from its popular support and network of social and charitable organizations. These have not been effective in destroying the organization, nor in eradicating the will to resist among a fairly large segment of the Palestinian population. It is important to consider this Islamist movement in the context of a region-wide phenomenon of similar movements with local goals, which can be persuaded to relinquish violence, or which could move in the opposite direction, becoming more violent. Certainly an orientation to HAMAS and its base must be factored into new and more practical and effective approaches to peacemaking. At the same time, HAMAS offers a fascinating instance of the dynamics of strategic reactions, and the modification of Israeli impulses towards aggressive deterrence, as well as evolution in the Islamist movements' planning and operations. As well, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict bears similarities to a long-standing civil conflict, even as it has sparked inter-Palestinian hostilities in its most recent phase. The need for informed and critical discussion of the future of Islamism in the region continues today. We offer this monograph to those who wish to consider this particular aspect of the Palestinian-Israeli-Arab conflict"--Foreword.

Hamas

Hamas PDF Author: Beverley Milton-Edwards
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745654681
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
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.

Hamas

Hamas PDF Author: Matthew Levitt
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300129017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
How does a group that operates terror cells and espouses violence become a ruling political party? How is the world to understand and respond to Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that Palestinian voters brought to power in the stunning election of January 2006? This important book provides the most fully researched assessment of Hamas ever written. Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert with extensive field experience in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, draws aside the veil of legitimacy behind which Hamas hides. He presents concrete, detailed evidence from an extensive array of international intelligence materials, including recently declassified CIA, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security reports. Levitt demolishes the notion that Hamas’ military, political, and social wings are distinct from one another and catalogues the alarming extent to which the organization’s political and social welfare leaders support terror. He exposes Hamas as a unitary organization committed to a militant Islamist ideology, urges the international community to take heed, and offers well-considered ideas for countering the significant threat Hamas poses.

When Victory Is Not an Option

When Victory Is Not an Option PDF Author: Nathan J. Brown
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801464366
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Throughout the Arab world, Islamist political movements are joining the electoral process. This change alarms some observers and excites other. In recent years, electoral opportunities have opened, and Islamist movements have seized them. But those opportunities, while real, have also been sharply circumscribed. Elections may be freer, but they are not fair. The opposition can run but it generally cannot win. Semiauthoritarian conditions prevail in much of the Arab world, even in the wake of the Arab Spring. How do Islamist movements change when they plunge into freer but unfair elections? How do their organizations (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) and structures evolve? What happens to their core ideological principles? And how might their increased involvement affect the political system? In When Victory Is Not an Option, Nathan J. Brown addresses these questions by focusing on Islamist movements in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Palestine. He shows that uncertain benefits lead to uncertain changes. Islamists do adapt their organizations and their ideologies do bend—some. But leaders almost always preserve a line of retreat in case the political opening fizzles or fails to deliver what they wish. The result is a cat-and-mouse game between dominant regimes and wily movements. There are possibilities for more significant changes, but to date they remain only possibilities.

Hamas vs. Fatah

Hamas vs. Fatah PDF Author: Jonathan Schanzer
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0230616453
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
In June 2007 civil war broke out in the Gaza Strip between two rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah. Western peace efforts in the region always focused on reconciling two opposing fronts: Israel and Palestine. Now, this careful exploration of Middle East history over the last two decades reveals that the Palestinians have long been a house divided. What began as a political rivalry between Fatah's Yasir Arafat and Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin during the first intifada of 1987 evolved into a full-blown battle on the streets of Gaza between the forces of Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, and Ismael Haniyeh, one of Yassin's early protégés. Today, the battle continues between these two diametrically opposing forces over the role of Palestinian nationalism and Islamism in the West Bank and Gaza. In this thought-provoking book, Jonathan Schanzer questions the notion of Palestinian political unity, explaining how internal rivalries and violence have ultimately stymied American efforts to promote Middle East peace, and even the Palestinian quest for a homeland.

Hamas, Jihad and Popular Legitimacy

Hamas, Jihad and Popular Legitimacy PDF Author: Tristan Dunning
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317384946
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This book investigates the many faces of Hamas and examines its ongoing evolution as a resistance organisation in the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Specifically, the work interrogates Hamas’ interpretation, reinterpretation and application of the twin concepts of muqawama (resistance) and jihad (striving in the name of God). The text frames the movement’s capacity to accrue popular legitimacy through its evolving resistance discourses, centred on the notion of jihad, and the practical applications thereof. Moving beyond the dominant security-orientated approaches to Hamas, the book investigates the malleable nature of both resistance and jihad including their social, symbolic, political and ideational applications. The diverse interpretations of these concepts allow Hamas to function as a comprehensive social movement. Where possible, this volume attempts to privilege first-order or experiential knowledge emanating from the movement itself, its political representatives, and the Palestinian population in general. Many of these accounts were collected by the author during fieldwork in the Middle East. Not only does this work present new primary data, but it also investigates a variety of contemporary empirical events related to Palestine and the Middle East. This book offers an alternative way of viewing the movement’s popular legitimacy grounded in theoretical, empirical and ethnographic terms. This book will be of much interest to students of Hamas, political violence, critical terrorism studies, Middle Eastern politics, security studies and IR in general.

Willing to Compromise

Willing to Compromise PDF Author: Khalil Shikaki
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1437912710
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
The U.S. Institute of Peace¿s (USIP) Project on Arab-Israeli Futures is a research effort designed to anticipate and assess obstacles and opportunities facing the peace process in the years ahead. Stepping back from the day-to-day ebb and flow of events on the ground, this project examines deeper, over-the-horizon trends that could foreclose future options or offer new openings for peace. The effort brings together American, Israeli, and Arab researchers. This 2006 report, analyzes survey data gathered from dozens of polls conducted over the past decade and identifies long-term trends in Palestinian public opinion and related policy implications. Table and graphs.

Democracy, War, and Peace in the Middle East

Democracy, War, and Peace in the Middle East PDF Author: David Garnham
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253209399
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
"... this volume is a highly valuable contribution to our understanding of the relation between democracy and peace in the Middle East, as well as in international politics in general.... this book will continue to be of value and interest for some time to come." --The Historian "This book is a useful collection of essays on Middle East politics and international relations presented in a reader-friendly interdisciplinary fashion." --Israel Studies Bulletin "... this is an important collection of challenging papers." --Studies in Contemporary Jewry "... one of the first books that specifically focuses on the possible links between democracy and peace in the region. It is entertaining and highly useful." --MESA Bulletin What are the prospects for continued movement toward democracy in the Arab world, and what form is democracy likely to take? What impact will democratization have on war and peace in the Middle East? Scholars explore these issues in this timely book.