Hamas: Isolated, Contained, but not Co-opted?

• Author: Salaymeh, Bilal

Decolonizing Palestine, Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial

By Somdeep Sen

Cornell University Press, 2020, 171 pages, $25.95, ISBN: 9781501752742

Hamas Contained, The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance

By Tareq Baconi

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018, 336 pages, $24.00, ISBN: 9780804797412

Gaza under Hamas, from Islamic Democracy to Islamist Governance

By Bjorn Brenner

London-New York: I.B. Tauris and Co. Ltd, 2017, 252 pages, $27.85, ISBN: 9781784537777

These three books analyze the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and thus, add to previous related literature. (1) While the three books give historical background on the emergence and roots of Hamas and contextualize its role in the broader Palestinian politics and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, their main focus is the period of post-2006 and Hamas's rule in the Gaza Strip. The books take 2006 as a turning point for Hamas, in which Hamas succeeded in achieving a decisive victory in the Palestinian legislative election, changing its engagement with politics from being in opposition to being in power. This shift in Hamas's role from being a 'resistance movement' to becoming a 'ruling authority' was advanced in 2007 when Hamas took over Gaza Strip and consolidated its power. Bjorn Brenner, in his book Gaza under Hamas, examines Hamas's patterns of governance and logic of power consolidation in the domestic domain. Tareq Baconi, in his book Hamas Contained approached the question of Hamas and its rule critically questioning whether Israel has managed to contain Hamas, and hence, driving it away from the Palestinian liberation struggle. Somdeep Sen, in Decolonizing Palestine, chooses a more theoretical endeavor to combine the anticolonial aspect of Hamas as a resistance movement with its postcolonial rule in governing Gaza Strip.

The three books offer insightful details and grounded accounts of Hamas and its historical evolution. Based on intensive archival research and fieldwork in Gaza, West Bank, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, the three books offer the reader a panoramic view of Hamas's political and social engagements. Baconi's book benefited from various well-covering archives of Hamas and its historical documents. The same level of detailed accounts could be seen as well in Brenner's book, which provides a valuable narrative of Hamas's governance in Gaza. On the other hand, Sen's book is a great example of a political anthropological manuscript where the author guides the reader throughout his fieldwork, journey to Gaza, visits to Palestinians' homes, and his conversations with Palestinian citizens on their daily life. In this sense, the self-reflection on subjectivity is clear in Sen's Decolonizing Hamas, and to some extent, in Baconi's Hamas Contained. However, Brenner was clear in distancing himself as a researcher and author throughout his Gaza under Hamas.

The analytical starting point for the three books was Hamas's ruling of Gaza. Hamas's rule was consolidated over a sequence of events. First was its decision to enter the Palestinian parliamentary election, which Brenner saw as "participating in a system they had spent decades rejecting." (2) Second, Hamas' decision to rule and form the Palestinian government in 2006. Third, its takeover of Gaza after an internal fight with Fatah in the summer of 2007, which Baconi saw as a starting point of a merger between "revolution and state-building." (3) This shift to ruling while still holding arms against Israel was seen by Sen as a moment where the anticolonial and postcolonial intersect.

According to Brenner, moving to the position of power and governance constituted a test for Hamas as it moved from the realm of theory into the reality of practice. This move encounters Hamas with new challenges in nature and scope. For instance, Hamas's military wing, the Qassam Brigades was "a military organization that was trained, physically as well as ideologically, to fight an external...