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This article looks at Hamas's war against Israel through the lens of the poetry written by leading members of Hamas during the period 1987–1996 (from the founding of the organization through the early stages of the implementation of the Oslo Accords). Poetry is one of the means employed by Hamas to convey its political, social, and religious messages and ideology, which links its Islamic outlook with Palestinian nationalism. During the years covered by the article, dozens of the organization's senior members expressed themselves in this genre. The article looks at ten poets who were affiliated with Hamas leadership circles and were intensively engaged in writing poetry in those years. It describes the background to this activity, extracts the main messages and motifs presented in their verse, and examines the goals served by this lyrical composition in the organization's war against Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks why mediation efforts between Fatah and Hamas have failed. The analysis of in-depth interviews with Palestinian stakeholders, guided by relevant theoretical frameworks, indicates that: first, Israel and its allies act as systemic contextual barriers to ending the Palestinian split. Second, serious obstacles to reconciliation exist because the split has lasted for nearly 16 years. Third, mediator characteristics did not affect the outcomes. Fourth, increased polarization in the region following the Arab Spring has adversely affected reconciliation. This research points to the futility of mediation efforts in the current circumstances and the need to challenge existing systemic barriers to reconciliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trauma of the October 7 massacre for Israelis and the catastrophe that Gazans have experienced in the subsequent war mark a new stage in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. While October 7 and indeed the Israeli response are exceptional, we cannot overcome their consequences without addressing the root of the conflict. Calls for an immediate ceasefire are understandable but fall into the trap of seeing the solution as being a military decision. This echoes to the attitude of the current Israeli government which poses the response to October 7 as a military one. A new international political initiative is required to change the atmosphere by setting the goal of resolving the conflict on the basis of self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians. That needs to inform the approach we adopt to ending the current conflict by replacing Hamas and Israel in Gaza with an international security mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text explores the different narrative frameworks that have emerged in Israeli society and Jewish history to understand the conflict between Israel and Hamas. One narrative compares the conflict to the Yom Kippur War and suggests that negotiation and resolution are possible. Another narrative frames the conflict as a continuation of historical anti-Jewish violence and emphasizes the role of antisemitism. These narratives shape the understanding of the conflict and reinforce existing ideas about Jewish history and Israeli society. Alternative narratives that focus on the experiences of Palestinian civilians are often marginalized, and these narratives are used to define who belongs and who is excluded. [Extracted from the article]

In what is likely to amount to nothing more than a pyrrhic victory, Hamas' October 2023 infiltration into Israel and subsequent assault will be greeted as a heroic act of resistance in some sectors of Palestinian society. It will invoke dread and anger in others. Employing a genealogical approach, this paper explores the effects of sectarian infighting over ideology, tactics, and aims as a means to garner greater in-group support. In doing so, the paper demonstrates that it is not so much Israel that is the object of the Palestinian struggle, but rather the struggle between the Palestinian factions themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militants led by Hamas launched a complex coordinated attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, triggering an Israeli ground invasion combined with an aerial bombing campaign. The Hamas fighters killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, while the death toll from Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip exceeded 31,600 in mid-March 2024. The Hamas attack not only shocked the whole world but also caught most people by surprise. Probably only a few could have imagined that the Palestinian organisation that controls the Gaza Strip could carry out such an attack on Israel. Following 7 October, several questions arose. Why Israeli intelligence could not predict the attack, and why did security and defence forces not react in time? The Israeli Government promised a full investigation once the Gaza ground offensive launched in response to the attack was over. But even without knowing more details of the events, we might still be able to provide a preliminary assessment of the surrounding Israeli intelligence failures based on the reports and accounts made public in the international media. Three months after the attack, the publicly available information showed that the Israel Defense Forces were unprepared and there was no battle plan in place in case Hamas militants broke out of the Gaza Strip with large forces. Clarifying what happened will be crucial not only to learn from the mistakes, but also because other actors or adversaries can learn from Hamas and copy its tactics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article explores the perception and acceptance of dual citizenship in Israel. It acknowledges recent traumatic events but argues that views on multiple national memberships have not changed. Dual citizenship, once seen as deviant, is now regularized and socially accepted. The article highlights the increase in the number of Israelis holding dual citizenship, with estimates suggesting around 10% of the population are dual citizens. It emphasizes that dual citizens were not accused of split loyalties or privilege during the recent hostage situation involving Hamas, and their status was not seen as a betrayal. The article concludes that the recent events have not significantly altered the foundational assumptions of Israeli society. [Extracted from the article]

Using contemporary theories on Status Quo and Revisionist actors, the study provides an alternative explanation to the Israeli−Hamas conflict. Israel is a status quo actor that enjoys high values in terms of economic and military power. It has low value in terms of brokerage in international institutions. Hamas is a radical revisionist actor that follows other radical revisionist Islamic actors. However, it fails on both axes to change its equation with Israel. This situation encourages a split within Hamas, between radical revisionists and positionalist revisionists who emphasize compromises with Israel to improve the economy in Gaza and local military capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the moderation literature opposition movements are driven to alter their political behaviour via either inclusive or exclusive political forces. Despite each analytical pathway producing cogent analyses, the lack of any consensus complicates our ability to understand the drivers of the moderation process holistically. However, this research questions the efficacy of any dichotomy. Using the Islamist movement Hamas as its case study, I argue that concentrating solely on examining the structural causal mechanisms of moderation exhibited by inclusion and exclusion does not capture the full ambit of the moderation process. To provide a more nuanced account of the causal drivers of moderation, I argue for the need to examine a movement's ideological agency within the moderation process. By doing so, the article demonstrates that what is driving Hamas's moderation post-2004 is not only a combination of inclusive and exclusive political forces, but its evolving ideological reconceptualisation of resistance. Hamas's dual-status means that its resistance legitimacy, gained from confronting Israel's occupation militarily, is also used as a political buffer to justify making substantive ideological compromises. A key finding of this research is that while inclusion allowed Hamas to be more ideologically circumspect, exclusion forced Hamas to take more ideological risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion-moderation hypothesis posits that including anti-system movements in political processes can moderate their political behaviour. While the literature concentrates primarily on analysing their ability to form alliances, bargain, compromise, and share power, little attention has been paid to how these movements adapt to changes in their political environment once they have entered institutional politics, and how they justify any shifts in their political behaviour to their constituencies in response. Combining key elements of the inclusion-moderation hypothesis with the Islamic principle of wasatiyyah (moderation), this article aims to address this lacuna. Using the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas as a case study, this article analyses how Hamas adapted to the vicissitudes of its political environment after its 2006 election victory. Faced with a rapidly deteriorating political environment, the article demonstrates how Hamas responded by implementing a strategy that amplified its resistance credentials to provide it with a political bulwark. This allowed Hamas to modulate its positions on the two-state solution and its recognition of Israel. The article reveals how Hamas's bulwark strategy meant it could exhibit ideological flexibility, incrementalism, and compromise, while simultaneously placing caveats on these compromises to provide it with political room to manoeuvre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is not a particularly novel academic endeavour to explore Hamas’ armed resistance. Nevertheless, this essay contributes to the conversation by deliberating on the organization's military faction through the stories my informants told of their experiences and memories of resistance. With these stories in mind, I argue Hamas’ resistance is revered among Palestinians because of its ability to unmake and make for the Palestinian struggle. Hamas’ armed struggle, while incapable of defeating Israel, minimally unmakes by rendering its victims fearful and by challenging the viability of maintaining the occupation. In doing so it exacts far greater human and material costs from Palestinians than it does from Israelis. Nonetheless, I argue resistance makes by allowing each act of resistance to be named as a Palestinian act of resistance and its tragic repercussions as an occasion of Palestinian suffering. In this way, while an occupation is perceived by Palestinians as an effort to efface their legacy of existence from their historic homeland, violence permits the colonized to arrest this process of unnaming by ensuring that Palestine and its inhabitants’ Palestinianness are recognizable both to their adherents and their adversaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]