By Vamika Jain
The Islamic Resistance Movement of Palestine (Hamas) is known for a longstanding history of terrorist attacks and armed resistance against the state of Israel, and has come to represent an inherently violent expression of Palestinian nationalism within the Arab-Israeli conflict.[1] Hamas’ assertion of its nationalist goals, particularly between the First Intifada in 1987 and the Second Intifada in 2000, has brought it into irreconcilable conflict with not only Israeli nationalism but also with the Palestinian nationalism of other movements, such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization-Fatah (Fatah). This territorial conflict is situated in nationalisms employing overlapping limits and imaginings in the definitions of nations. When Benedict Anderson described the ability of post-World War II nationalist movements to employ colonial totalizing projects such as maps and monuments as the defining symbols of their nations, he did not take into account the possibility of multiple movements differently interpreting similar colonial legacies in a manner that brought one into an inherent rejection of the other.[2]
Hamas’ claim to the liberation of Palestine, in the years between 1987 and 2000, was one such example. It was premised upon an interpretation of the map of Israel-Palestine that inherently rejected the interpretations of Israel and Fatah, and was expressed in unwavering and immensely violent terms. This violent conflict over the tools of imagining a nation shaped Hamas into posing a consistent hindrance to international peace processes led by various actors such as the United States and other Arab leaders. Its active attempts at derailing such processes contributed to the perpetuation of the larger Arab-Israeli conflict, sparked renewed violence in the Middle East, and consequently impacted the interests of other Arab states, as well as the United States.
The Nationalist Conflict of Maps and Monuments
In his book, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson describes the nation as an “imagined political community…imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.”[3] Along the lines of this definition, when discussing the emergence of post-colonial nations, Anderson argues that these new nationalisms employ colonial totalizing tools, specifically maps, censuses, and monuments that were used by colonial powers to limit and classify their dominions as the basis for the imagined limits of their own new and independent nations.[4] He claims that in addition to clearly defining these boundaries, these tools also create symbols of “infinite reproducibility” that are then employed by nationalists to propagate and lend greater coherence to the identity of their own nationalist claims.[5] Hamas’ nationalist claims, within the larger umbrella of Palestinian nationalism, present a unique manifestation of this argument wherein an arena of conflicting nationalisms emerges over the varying interpretation of colonially defined maps.
Hamas was born in 1987, in the throes of the First Intifada, an armed uprising of Palestinians that was sparked in opposition to a spate of violence under Israeli control of Gaza.[6] The clearest statement of its interpretation of Palestinian nationalism can be traced to Hamas’ charter of August 1988, “The Charter of Allah: The Platform of the Islamic Resistance Movement.”[7] Under this covenant, Hamas sought “to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine,” claiming that all the land of Palestine was an Islamic waqf, or land endowed by Allah, “consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day.”[8] Critically, the boundaries of this waqf, and of Hamas’ vision of a liberated Palestine, were defined as the indivisible territory between the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, encompassing the land upon which the modern state of Israel was then situated.[9] On the basis of this claim to territory, the charter also declared the existence of Israel a “usurpation of Palestine,” asserting that the fulfillment of its goals lay in the complete obliteration of Israel and in the reversal of the deprivation of the Palestinian homeland.[10] The possibility of peaceful resolutions, concessions and compromise with Israel was explicitly rejected as a “contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.”[11] This is further demonstrated by the numerous maps circulated by Hamas in Gaza that show an undivided Palestine and a non-existent Israel, underlining that the fulfilment of Hamas’ Palestinian nationalism required a complete removal of the Israeli nation.[12] The organization even employs this undivided map in a manner described by Anderson as the “map-as-logo” avatar by incorporating it into its flag and logo, clearly asserting its integral relevance to the definition of Hamas’ Palestinian nationalism. [13]
Significantly, Hamas’ interpretation of these boundaries is premised upon the Palestine Mandate awarded by the League of Nations, in the aftermath of World War 1, to the occupying British Empire.[14] Under the Mandate, for the very first time, the British solidified a defined region bounded by and situated between “the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea…[and] the River Jordan,” the same totalization later employed by Hamas. [15] They selected the word “Palestine” as “the official name of a definite territory for the first time,” drawing upon the term’s Roman origins as a source of antiquity and embodying Anderson’s claim that colonial maps were “designed to demonstrate…the antiquity of specific, tightly bounded territorial units.”[16] As demonstrated, Hamas evidently employs the name “Palestine” and the “specific, tightly bounded territorial units” tied to it by the British Mandate, only adapting its discourse to draw antiquity from claims of an endowment by Allah, instead of the Roman Empire.[17] Therefore, the assertion of its nationalist claim and the conflict with Israel that is inherent to it is enabled by an employment of tools of colonial totalization.
Furthermore, importantly, the Israeli boundaries that it sought to reject were, in themselves, also defined upon the legacy of the British Empire’s practice of totalizing and dividing in the region through maps and drawn borders. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, a commitment of “His Majesty’s Government…[to] the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” is an early premise employed to define the location of Israel in a clear overlap with the mandated territory that was named “Palestine” by the British and employed by Hamas in its nationalist claims.[18]The formal declaration of the borders that Israel defined its state within is situated in UN Resolution 181, a result of the British Empire’s handover of the Mandate to the United Nations.[19] Resolution 181 formalized the creation and “boundaries of the Arab State, the Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem,” all to be located in coexistence on the same land that had been held under the British Mandate and was later claimed by Hamas to be an undivided Palestinian and Islamic homeland.[20] Not unlike Hamas’ claims to antiquity, Israel also associated these borders with a different historic legacy, claiming that the location of the new state’s borders represented the location where the Jewish people “wrote and gave the Bible to the world,” thus situating the colonial legacy of its borders within a more antiquated legacy of Jewish history.[21] Such employment by these new nationalisms of the overlapping totalizations of the British empire is, therefore, fundamental to and representative of the emergence of an arena of conflicting nationalisms.
Finally, Hamas’ commitment to the liberation of Palestine, necessitating control of the entire region “between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River,” also situated it in a conflict with the Fatah’s stance towards Palestinian nationalism, particularly between 1987 and 2000.[22] The PLO had been the primary bearer of the Palestinian cause until the emergence of Hamas, and was controlled largely by Fatah - a faction that represented a more secular and increasingly less violent assertion of Palestinian nationalism.[23] In November 1988, Yasser Arafat, a prominent leader of the Fatah, sought to redefine the organization’s stance on the envisioned borders of Palestine through a Declaration of Independence that implicitly recognized UN Resolution 181 as a viable definition of co-existence for the nations of Palestine and Israel.[24] This represented the acceptance of a colonially rooted totalization that Hamas’ charter fundamentally opposed. Furthermore, Arafat followed this declaration by a communiqué seeking an “international peace conference to be convened on the basis of United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338,” once again accepting an approach that Hamas had opposed in the very definition of its nationalism.[25] Hamas explicitly expressed this opposition by calling these assertions “nothing more than bait with the purpose of sticking a knife in the back of the uprising’s achievements.”[26] This marked the initiation of a long history of opposition towards Fatah’s more diplomatic approaches to resolution, and opened another avenue of conflict in the arena of conflicting nationalisms and varying interpretations of maps and borders.[27]
Hamas and the Fight for a Resolution
In the years between 1987 and 2000, Hamas’ commitment to its stance in this conflict of overlapping boundaries was unwavering and immensely violent. As interpreted by Boaz Ganor, an Israeli terrorism expert in 1992, the movement rejected any possibility of “territorial compromise” or the “legality of the Zionist presence in Palestine.”[28] Its charter expressly declared compromising even a section of the undivided Palestine was “abuse directed against part of religion.”[29] Hamas expressed its rejection of Israel’s borders in immensely violent terms, calling for an armed and vengeful Jihad that would result in a Day of Judgement when “Moslems fight the Jews.”[30] Violence to the Hamas fighters was justified against the terrorizing “illegal occupation” of their land.[31] This immovability over the envisioned borders of a liberated Palestine and the commitment to armed resistance to achieve these borders positioned Hamas in the role of a consistent hindrance to any international peace processes, spearheaded by actors such as the United States and other Arab leaders.
In addition to the immediate regional actors involved, the United States held a longstanding interest in supporting Israel and pursuing what was described in the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee as a “just and durable peace in the Middle East,” premised on the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.[32] This interest was strategic, based on a “desire to keep a balance of political forces in the Middle East,” especially in the Cold War context of a perceived alliance between the Arab States and the USSR, and also economic, based on a necessity to protect and expand U.S. oil interests in the region.[33] As evident in Harold H. Saunders’ statement to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the U.S. identified “the Palestinian dimension of the Arab-Israeli conflict [as] the heart of that conflict,” recognizing that the resolution of that violent dispute was a primary point of contention for many Arab leaders.[34]
The end of the Cold War, and the consequent increase in the U.S’ “reservoir of political capital,” enabled it to pursue renewed attempts at the formulation of an international peace conference, not unlike the kind called for by Arafat in his November 1988 communiqué.[35] The loss of Soviet patronage and the defeat of Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War also made Arab states more willing to come to the table and seek the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel and the United States.[36] This resulted in shifting political dynamics that culminated with the Madrid Conference, a meeting with American, Soviet, Israeli, Lebanese, Syrian and Jordanian-Palestinian delegations, that President Bush hoped would write “a new chapter in the history of the Middle East.”[37] The Madrid Conference resulted in the inception of the Washington talks, intended by Secretary of State James Baker to “resume direct bilateral negotiations,” including a potential settlement between Israeli and Palestinian delegations over “a proposed model of interim self-government authority.”[38] The culmination of these efforts resulted in an awkward handshake between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Washington in September 1993, and a joint Declaration of Principles (the Oslo Agreement) in which both the PLO and Israel agreed to “recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights” and committed to a “peaceful coexistence” as they pursued further peaceful resolutions, premised upon a reduction of violence from both sides.[39]
Mere months after the handshake and the Israel-PLO agreement, a Hamas “suicide bomber blew up his car beside a bus in this Northern Israeli town” and, as reported by the New York Times, “8 people were killed and 44 others wounded.”[40] This incident was one in a long series of suicide bombings, enacted by the head of Hamas’s armed Qassam Brigades, Yehya Ayyash, that represented Hamas’ escalation of lethal attacks and armed resistance in the period that followed the Oslo Agreement, and formulated a “concerted effort aimed at moving the Palestinians off the diplomatic trajectory.”[41] Hamas leader, Sheikh Yassin put this opposition in words by calling to the other nationalist movements of Palestine to “get rid of Oslo and all that is related to it because it is the reason for all the suffering we are facing right now.”[42]
Significantly, this violence incited an increasingly militaristic response by the Israelis, including ordered assassinations of multiple Hamas leaders and amped militarization of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This contributed to consistently rising distrust among the Israelis of the PLO’s promises, and also rising dissatisfaction with the PLO’s stance among Palestinians.[43] This mistrust is evident in the writings of Yoel Marcus, prominent Israeli journalist, who condemned the Oslo Principles in 2000, stating that Israel had “had it with [Arafat’s] game-playing and his arm-twisting attempts” and that the PLO had failed in taking Palestinians away from the “road to terrorism, murder and anti-Semitic incitement.”[44] Eventually, the clear dissolution of the principles of Oslo, and the mistrust wreaked in part by Hamas’ violent opposition, both between Israel and the PLO and also between the Palestinian people and Arafat’s stance, contributed significantly to straining the capacity of these parties to negotiate.[45]
This resulted in the inconclusive expiration of the Oslo Agreement in 1999 and the failure of the Camp David Accords, spearheaded by Clinton to attempt to renew Oslo’s principles in 2000.[46] Very quickly afterwards, the Second Intifada broke out against the Israeli army as an uprising that featured extensive participation by Hamas fighters.[47] This marked a renewal of open fighting in the region, rejected the possible resolution of this conflict of nationalisms that lay at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict and, in President Clinton’s words, “shattered the confidence in the peace process.” [48]
Overall, Hamas’ contribution to these developments delivered a major blow to the prospect of effective diplomatic amity between Israel and the Arab States, as future attempts, such as Saudi Arabia’s proposal to Israel in 2002, were marred by these sentiments of distrust.[49]
Conclusion: Perpetuating Violence Over Time
In the years between 1987 and 2000, the varying and overlapping employment of British colonial totalizing projects of maps and borders gave shape to an arena of conflicting nationalisms raging over the question of Israeli-Palestinian statehood. Within this arena, Hamas’ nationalist claims, employing the legacy of the British mandate, placed it in an inherent and uncompromising rejection of the national imaginings of Israel and other Palestinian nationalist movements. This rejection was expressed by the organization in unwavering and immensely violent terms, demonstrating an unwillingness to consider a compromise and therefore consistently refuting the possibility of any resolution being achieved through peaceful negotiation.
Hamas’ campaign of armed resistance against the Oslo Agreement, premised upon its commitment to an undivided Palestinian nation, therefore contributed to rampant mistrust in the region. This culminated in a renewal of open conflict in the Second Intifada and a consequent failure of peace processes in this time period, thus perpetuating the larger Arab-Israeli conflict and defeating American interests in establishing peace in the Middle East.
Hamas’ nationalist stance against the numerous compromise-based solutions proffered by various international actors, and its contribution to the perpetuation of the Israel-Palestine question, situate Hamas in a conflict that represents a marked failure of post-World War II international institutions, such as the United Nations, at their commitment to providing a stage for conflict resolution and diplomatic solutions in the arena of post-war international relations.
Vamika Jain is a third year undergraduate studying International Relations at the University of Toronto.
[1] Jennifer Jefferis, Hamas: Terrorism, Governance, and Its Future in Middle East Politics, (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2016), 1.
[2] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London: Verso, 2016), 163-185.
[3] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6.
[4] Anderson, 163-164, 183.
[5] Anderson, 182.
[6] Jefferis, Hamas, 36-37.
[7] Tareq Baconi, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2018), 21.
[8] “Hamas Covenant 1988: The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, August 18, 1988, article 6, 11. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp, accessed April 9, 2020.
[9] Baconi, Hamas Contained, 23.
[10] “Hamas Covenant 1988,” The Avalon Project, article introduction, 15, 20.
[11] “Hamas Covenant 1988,” The Avalon Project, article 13.
[12] Map Circulated by Hamas, 2000, The Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/maps/palmap6.jpg, accessed April 8, 2020.; Emile Badarin, Palestinian Political Discourse: Between Exile and Occupation, (New York: Routledge, 2016): 139-141.
[13] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 175.; See “About Hamas,” Hamas.ps, https://hamas.ps/en/page/2/, accessed April 8, 2020.
[14] “The Palestine Mandate,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, July 24, 1922. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp.; Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 83-84.
[15] Bernard Lewis, "Palestine: On the History and Geography of a Name," The International History Review 2, no. 1 (1980): 7.
[16] Lewis, "Palestine: On the History and Geography of a Name,7.; Anderson, Imagined Communities, 174-175.
[17] “Hamas Covenant 1988,” The Avalon Project.; Baconi, Hamas Contained, 23.
[18] “British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour: The Balfour Declaration (November 2, 1917),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, ed. Walter Laqueur and Dan Schueftan (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 16.; Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, 67.
[19] Jefferis, Hamas, 22.
[20]United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 181(II), Future government of Palestine, A/RES/181(II) (29 November 1947), https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/7F0AF2BD897689B785256C330061D253.; “Hamas Covenant 1988,” The Avalon Project, article 12.
[21] “State of Israel: Proclamation of Independence (May 14, 1948),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, ed. Walter Laqueur and Dan Schueftan (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 81.
[22] Badarin, Palestinian Political Discourse, 7.; Jonathan Schanzer, Hamas vs. Fatah : The Struggle for Palestine. (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008): 1-12.
[23] Jonathan Schanzer, Hamas vs. Fatah, 1-12.
[24] “Palestine National Council: Declaration of Independence (November 15, 1998),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, ed. Walter Laqueur and Dan Schueftan (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 354.
[25] “Palestine National Council: Political Resolution (November 15, 1988),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, ed. Walter Laqueur and Dan Schueftan (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 348.
[26] “Leaflet of the Islamic Resistance movement (Hamas), November 10, 1988, reprinted in Shaul Mishal and Reuben Aharoni, Speaking Stones: Communiqués from the Intifada Underground (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994): 271-273.
[27] Schanzer, Hamas vs. Fatah, 2.
[28] Boaz Ganor, "Hamas-The Islamic Resistance Movement in the Territories," Survey of Arab Affairs 27, (Feb 2, 1992): 3.
[29] “Hamas Covenant 1988,” The Avalon Project, article 13.
[30] Shaul Mishal and Reuben Aharoni, Speaking Stones, 121.;“Hamas Covenant 1988,” The Avalon Project, article 7.
[31] Baconi, Hamas Contained, xx.
[32] Irene Gendzier, "U.S. POLICY IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE, 1948: THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY," Middle East Policy 18, no. 1 (Spring, 2011): 42-53.; “Harold H. Saunders: U.S. Foreign Policy and Peace in the Middle East (November 12, 1975),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, ed. Walter Laqueur and Dan Schueftan (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 203.
[33] Gendzier, “U.S. POLICY IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE,” 51-52.; Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2018), 268.
[34] “Harold H. Saunders: U.S. Foreign Policy and Peace in the Middle East (November 12, 1975),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, 203.’ Anziska, Preventing Palestine, 11.
[35] Anziska, Preventing Palestine, 268.; [35] “Palestine National Council: Political Resolution (November 15, 1988),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, 348.
[36]Anziska, Preventing Palestine, 271.
[37] “MIDDLE EAST PEACE CONFERENCE-LIST OF PARTICIPANTS-30-Oct-91,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Peace/MFADocuments/Pages/MIDDLE%20EAST%20%20PEACE%20CONFERENCE%20-%20LIST%20OF%20PARTICIPAN.aspx.; “REMARKS BY MR GEORGE BUSH- PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES-30-Oct-91,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Peace/MFADocuments/Pages/REMARKS%20BY%20MR%20GEORGE%20BUSH-%20PRESIDENT%20OF%20THE%20UNITED.aspx.
[38] “Baker to all parties,” November 22, 1991, Palestinian Studies, https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/uploads/images/Baker%20letter%2022%20Nov_%201991.pdf.
[39] Baconi, Hamas Contained, 29.; “Israel and PLO: Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements [“Oslo Agreement”] (September 13, 1993),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, ed. Walter Laqueur and Dan Schueftan (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 375.
[40] Clyde Haberman, “ARAB CAR BOMBER KILLS 8 IN ISRAEL; 44 ARE WOUNDED,” New York Times, April 7, 1994, https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/07/world/arab-car-bomber-kills-8-in-israel-44-are-wounded.html.
[41] Tareq Baconi, “The Demise of Oslo and Hamas’s Political Engagement,” Conflict, Security and Development 15, no. 5 (October 2015): 507.; Richard Davis, Hamas, Popular Support and War in the Middle East: Insurgency in the Holy Land, (New York: Routledge, 2016), 89-90.
[42] Davis, Hamas, Popular Support and War, 98.
[43] Davis, Hamas, Popular Support and War, 97.; Jefferis, Hamas, 45.
[44] “Yoel Marcus: “If They Want It, They’ll Take It” (December 26, 2000),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, ed. Walter Laqueur and Dan Schueftan (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 486.
[45] Davis, Hamas, Popular Support and War, 100.; Baconi, Hamas Contained, 36.
[46] Baconi, Hamas Contained, 35-36.
[47] Baconi, Hamas Contained, 36.
[48] “U.S President Bill Clinton: Summarizing His Experience with the Peace Process (January 7, 2001),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, ed. Walter Laqueur and Dan Schueftan (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 495.
[49] Gregory S. Mahler, The Arab Israeli Conflict: An Introduction and Documentary Reader, (London: Routledge, 2018), 44.
[50] “Harold H. Saunders: U.S. Foreign Policy and Peace in the Middle East (November 12, 1975),” in The Israel-Arab Reader, 203.
