Hamas in Palestine The Complex Interplay Between Politics And Religion of The Islamic Movement in The Palestinian Cause

By Davis Truman

Hamas, from the Arabic Islamic Resistance Movement, is a militant Islamist organization that aims to represent and lead a resistance movement for the liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation. The Movement is difficult to place on the spectrum of other non-State actors, such as Hezbollah, as since 2007 it has established itself as the de facto leader of the Gaza Strip, assuming the functions of authority and government. Despite being considered a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United States and Israel, the group rejects this designation, andins diplomatic relations with major state actors such as Iran, Qatar and Turkey.

The Jewish-Palestinian conflict is a complex and long-running conflict rooted in the 19th Century. Still, it intensified during the 20th Century, when Jewish immigration to Palestine grew significantly. This conflict focuses mainly on the struggle for land control between Jews and Palestinians in that region.

Within Israeli and Palestinian societies, the conflict generates a wide variety of positions. A distinctive feature of the conflict was the level of violence perpetrated for much of its duration. There have been clashes between regular armies, paramilitary groups, terrorist cells, and independent citizens. These clashes were not strictly limited to the military camp and caused a large number of civilian casualties on both sides.

• Language: English
• Publisher: vincenzo nappi
• Release date: Oct 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223057475

Book preview

Chapter One

Jewish Immigration and Palestinian Nationalism

BETWEEN THE END OF the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, there were migratory flows of migratory flows of Jews (aliyòt), mainly from Eastern Europe and the Russian from the Russian Empire, bearers of national demands to be implemented in what, according to Jewish tradition, is the Land of the Fathers. These migratory waves, which gave birth to the historical experience of the aliyà, took place in conjunction with both the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, of which Palestine was a province from 1516 to 1918 and the rise of a colonialist strategy implemented in the Middle East by the major European powers. In the period encompassing the first and second aliya', between 1882 and 1914, the first disagreements between the indigenous Arab population and the Jewish settlers emerged in Palestine. According to Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, these disagreements could be overcome by encouraging the native Arabs to leave their lands and providing them with work in the destination countries; however, both the process of expropriation and removal had to be carried out with discretion and caution. The expulsion of the Palestinians from the Land of the Fathers was not fully endorsed by Chaim Weizmann, the future president of the State of Israel, who, although he described Palestine, following his first trip in 1907, as one of the most neglected corners of the already much neglected Turkish Empire, in a speech he gave in 1907, described Palestine as one of the most neglected corners of the already much neglected Turkish Empire. in a speech in London in September 1919 he declared: 'we cannot enter the country as conquerors, we cannot intend to drive others out, we who have been oppressed cannot oppress.' Jewish immigration, while not yet reaching a significant size in the early 20th century, aroused quite a few fears on the part of the Arab-Palestinian community, who perceived the acquisition of lands that had belonged to the native population for centuries.

Therefore, It should come as no surprise that in 1892, a group of Jerusalemite notables complained, in a letter to the Sultan, about the Turkish Government's excessive condescension to establishing settlements and acquiring land by Jewish immigrants. In 1901, the Jewish National Land Fund was established, a body authorized to acquire and manage land on behalf of the Jewish people, in keeping with the slogan of Israel Zangwill: a land without a people, for a people without land.

The significance of land acquisition was well highlighted by Menachem Avraham Ussishkin, president of the Jewish National Fund between 1919 and 1923, in Our Programme: "If an autonomous Jewish life is to be established...it is then it is indispensable that the lands of Eretz Israel should be owned by the Jewish people. To prevent the Ottoman law, in force until 1918, which prevented Jews from purchasing land, the settlers resorted to nominees, and the fields they bought were cultivated by peasants. Bought were cultivated by Arab farmers until Jewish migrants arrived. Moreover, from this period onwards, a new way of conceiving the relationship with the land was no longer based on a productive logic essentially of subsistence but rather on new criteria of cultivation and production that could be applied thanks to the influx of capital.

The law on the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel) was extensively developed by Aaron David Gordon, a leading exponent of Jewish nationalism, according to whom this right is inalienable and eternal. It had to be redeemed from the inability demonstrated by the Arabs through the work of the Jewish pioneers:

We enjoy a historical right to this country. Our land, which in times past...was the seat of a great civilization, has become poorer, more desolate, and abandoned than any other civilized country besides being almost uninhabited. This kind of confirmation of our claim on Eretz-Yisra'el indicates that this land awaits us.

In 1917, a document, Outline of Program for the Jewish Resettlement of Palestine, in which the British sovereign Government was asked to ratify the foundation of a Company for the Jewish Resettlement of Palestine, which, in addition to providing any form of moral and material assistance to the settlers, would enjoy facilities in the purchase and exploitation of the land.

In 1920, the Palestine Foundation Fund was created for immigration and the purchase and sale of territorial possessions over which sovereignty would later be exercised. Later, the authority of the State of Israel would be exercised. As early as 1919, in some Palestinian cities, including Jerusalem and Jaffa, leaflets were circulating urging the Arab population to resist the project to be implemented in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, as contemplated by the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, which represented the first official recognition of the demands of the Jewish movement by a European colonial power. Thus began the struggle led by the Palestinian national movement, which, in addition to opposing the British mandatory policy, set out to hinder the growth of Jewish immigration into Palestine.

However, from its inception, the Palestinian-Arab resistance appeared strongly weak, not least because of the lack of support from the Muslim families holding power, including Husayni, al-Khalidi, and Dagani, who were only concerned with defending their own interests and maintaining solid ties with the Christian communities in the territory, including the Christian Catholics, the Greek Orthodox, and the Armenians. Among the political groups that emerged from the 1930s was the of Independence (hizb al-Istiqlāl), whose ranks included not only professionals but also the most marginalized sections of Palestinian civil society, incited to participate in boycotts and strikes against the Mandate government and the Jewish threat. During the British Mandate (1923-1948), the Palestinian national movement, under the leadership of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hagg Amin Hussein, worked to destroy the Jewish community, recruiting young people to form troops modeled on Hitler's. Following the 1936 terrorist campaign against Jewish and British targets, the leader of the Palestinian Muslim community was forced to take refuge in Berlin, where he managed to establish close ties with the Nazis, especially with the S.S. chief, Heinrich Himmler, by facilitating the recruitment of Muslim volunteers among the Nazi forces operating in the Balkans. However, the use of guerrilla warfare was linked to the name of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a preacher of Syrian origin who led the