Hamas's Ideological Crisis
By Matthew Levitt
Despite its success as the first Muslim Brotherhood organization to control and govern territory, and in part because of that success, Hamas today is under significant stress. In the West Bank, Hamas faces a severe security crackdown that has driven the movement underground. And in Gaza, Hamas has been forced to choose between engaging in acts of violence or attempting to effectively govern the territory it took over by force of arms. The result is an acute ideological tension within Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, which has been forced to suspend the resistance for which it is named and by which it defines itself. For some, the cessation of violence, however temporary, is a sign of moderation within Hamas. For others, Hamas's actions, including continued radicalization and weapons smuggling into Gaza, better denote the movement's true intentions and trajectory. To be sure, Hamas is not a monolithic movement. But the one constant among its various currents is its self-identification as a resistance movement.
Hamas under Stress: In the West Bank the ongoing Israeli military presence together with a renewed commitment by the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas has largely denied Hamas the ability to function effectively there. With new, U.S.-trained Palestinian battalions successfully bringing law and order to West Bank cities, places like Jenin -- commonly referred to as the suicide bomber capitol of the West Bank just a few years ago -- are now calm and enjoying significant improvement in economic prosperity. Within the Ministry of Interior, a department overseeing charitable organizations is systematically removing Hamas members from the boards of charity committees and social service organizations; it is also registering each charity office and its board -- something that was not done under the administrations of either Yasser Arafat or the short-lived Hamas-Fatah unity government in 2006. Still, Israeli and Palestinian security officials concur that Hamas remains present and capable in the West Bank, operating largely underground in small cells, and would quickly rebuild itself were it not for the day-to-day security and intelligence activities of both Israeli and PA forces.
For Hamas, however, the true crisis is not in the West Bank but in Gaza. Whereas Hamas is suppressed in the West Bank, it is in the Gaza Strip -- where it is the de facto governing regime -- where Hamas is under significant ideological stress. Ironically, the crisis is of its own making, the result of the uneasy merger of Hamas, a social, political and military "resistance" movement, with an Islamist government. As a government, Hamas has failed to provide for the needs of its purported constituents and remains an international pariah under economic siege. At the same time, its credentials as a "resistance" movement lose currency by the day as Hamas continues to refrain from attacking Israel for fear of reprisal attacks in the wake of Israel's Cast Lead operation in December 2008 and January 2009.
The full article, featured in the upcoming volume of Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, is available here.