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c h a p t e r f o u r The Palestinian Hamas Political Participation between internal Cohesion and dissent the reasons behind choosing to analyze the political evolution of the Palestinian Hamas partially coincide with those that led to the selection of Hezbollah as a case study. Hamas also exemplifies a highly institutionalized and sophisticated organization , and thus it can also be used as a “least likely” case study to test the cyclical model of political wing formation and development. Hamas, like Hezbollah, represents a high-profile case study of an armed organization that turned to politics. Hamas’s political wing holds a record of significant political achievements, culminating in the group’s electoral victory in the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. Because of the global relevance of the Arab-israeli conflict and its affect on Middle eastern stability and security, understanding and assessing Hamas’s political role and internal development has real-world policy implications that transcend the Palestinian political arena. Since the beginning of Hamas’s involvement in institutional politics, there has been a high degree of international attention given to understanding this new phenomenon and classifying the armed-political organization. the international community ’s view of Hamas (and specifically Western countries’ classifications) seems more cohesive than the varying perspectives adopted on Hezbollah. Countries such as the United States and israel have consistently rejected granting recognition to Hamas’s political wing, and, from the outset, have treated the organization as a terrorist entity. the US department of State first included Hamas on its list of groups engaged in terrorist activities in the 1993 publication Patterns of Global Terrorism.1 the group was later specifically labeled as a terrorist organization through a presidential executive order in 1995, and it was subsequently included in the US department of State’s 1997 list of “Foreign terrorist Organizations.” Since then, Hamas has remained on the FtO list, and the United States has not altered its posture in light of Hamas’s 2006 electoral victory.2 the european Union maintained for a while a formal division between Hamas’s  Armed Political Organizations political wing and its military apparatus, placing the military wing on its list of terrorist organizations while asserting the existence of a de facto separation between the group’s military and political activities.3 this posture changed in 2003, when, during the peak of the violence of the second intifada, the eU reversed its previous “two entities” policy and included Hamas, as a whole, on its terrorist watch list.4 the current classification has the merit of highlighting (though perhaps overestimating ) the organizational cohesion between the group’s military apparatus and its political party, which will be examined in-depth in the sections that follow, but it also fails to acknowledge the plurality of identities possessed by the Palestinian Hamas, which operates simultaneously as an armed organization, a sociopolitical movement and a political party. Background Origins and Early History the history and development of Hamas are deeply connected to the evolution of the Palestinian political arena. the organization cannot be understood without grasping the pluralistic nature of Palestinian politics. Palestinian society has historically been dominated by a variety of different sociopolitical groups and organizations, and its political life has been affected by traditional clan leaders, socioeconomic elites, formal party leaders, and opposition movements and civil society groups.5 Because of this complexity, it is important to relate the creation and development of Hamas to the broader Palestinian political context. Hamas is the acronym of islamic resistance Movement (Harakat al Muqawama al-Islamiyya) and means “courage” or “zeal.”6 Hamas was officially founded in 1987– 1988, shortly after the outbreak of the first intifada, although its roots can be traced to the late 1930s and the development of the egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.7 Founded in egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, the Sunni revivalist Muslim Brotherhood rapidly spread through the Arab world, attempting to establish a society based on islam and calling for the creation of a political system and state modeled after the values and aspirations of islam. As early as 1936, after the first Arab general strike in Palestine, the Muslim Brotherhood began actively to support local protests through the Central Committee for Aid to Palestine, headed by al-Banna.8 the group’s presence in Palestine expanded in the following years, and, by 1945, the first local branch of the Brotherhood had begun to operate in Jerusalem.9 the group further increased its...

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