Palestine's Party of God
By Matthew Levitt
As the world watches the Hamas coup in Gaza unfold, it is worth considering that Hamas's emulation of the Hezbollah was not unexpected. Consider the following, from the concluding section of my book HAMAS: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad:
Analysts expected Hamas to fare well in the January 2006 elections, but no one--including Hamas--anticipated it would emerge as the dominant political party and form a ruling cabinet. Overnight, Hamas went from planning how to operate as a parliamentary opposition to President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party to being asked by Abbas to form a cabinet and appoint a prime minister. But Hamas has a course to follow as it attempts to navigate the political waters between its rigidly conservative ideology, its stated intention to continue carrying out attacks, its need to actually govern, and Western calls for divorcing politics and violence. As it calculates how to balance these apparently competing interests, Hamas will look north to Lebanon’s Hezbollah (Party of God) for a working model of a militant Islamist group that balances its political, charitable, and violent activities.
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