“While an Islamist alternative still remains unacceptable to most Palestinians,
the Islamists, notably Hamas, increasingly have become a . . . part of the
Palestinian political landscape; as such, they will need to be incorporated
into—not marginalized from—any future political arrangement. Despite its mil-
itant extremism, the Islamist movement has shown that it can be pragmatic.”
13
I
t’s over for this generation of Islamic activists.
We tried and failed, but time is on our side. We
must plant the seeds for an Islamic future in the
next generation through social change. We must
alter the mindset and mentality of people through
an Islamic value system. We must do this through
example and education. We must do it quietly and
with persistence.”
A senior official in Hamas made this comment to
me in 1999, which described without question the
thinking of many key figures in the Islamic political
leadership in Gaza and the West Bank before the start
of the current uprising. In the five years that pre-
ceded the recent unrest, the Islamists—particularly
Hamas, the largest political faction in the Palestinian
Islamic movement—were clearly undergoing a pro-
cess of deradicalization and searching for political
and social accommodation within the status quo of
Palestinian society.
1
There was a pronounced shift in
emphasis within the movement away from political-
military action to social-cultural reform; political vio-
lence was slowly but steadily being abandoned as a
form of resistance and as a strategy for defeating the
occupier. This shift, by the admission of the Islamist
leadership itself, reflected the successful weakening
by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (
PA) of the
Islamic political sector and the defeat of its military
wing. The thrust toward the social was not simply a
return to old forms of social service provision com-
monly associated with the Islamic movement, but
included entry into new areas of community and
development work that pointed to an emerging new
logic between state and society.
2
The Al Aqsa Intifada, which began in September
2000 in response to seven years of a “peace” process
that not only deepened Palestinian dispossession
and deprivation but strengthened Israel’s occupa-
tion, reversed the dramatic changes within the
Islamic movement. The militarization of the upris-
ing by Fatah, the dominant (secular) nationalist fac-
tion of the Palestine Liberation Organization (
PLO),
effectively sidelined the role of civil society—includ-
ing secular and Islamic institutions—in the struggle
to end Israeli occupation. This contributed to the
reascendance of the political-military sector as the
defining and authoritative component within the
Islamic movement. Israel’s increasingly brutal and
continued assault against Palestinian society and the
Palestinian economy and the deliberate destruction
of its civic institutions have only strengthened the
embrace of the military option by Palestinians,
including the Islamists. Despite this, the social core
of the Islamic movement remains strong and has
become an increasingly important part of the Pales-
tinian social welfare system as unemployment and
poverty have grown and the
PA’s capacity to deliver
even the most basic services has diminished.
Relatively little has been written about the main
political and social transformations in the Islamic
SARA ROY is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle
Eastern Studies, Harvard University, and the author of the forth-
coming monograph
Political Islam in Palestine: From Extrem-
ism to Civism?
This essay is part of a larger project supported by
a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Hamas and the Transformation(s)
of Political Islam in Palestine
SARA ROY
1
“Islamic movement” refers not only to that movement’s
political sector, in which Hamas predominates, but to its
social, cultural, and religious sectors that may or may not
have direct links to the political; “Islamist movement” refers
to the Islamic political sector in Palestine.
2
See Sara Roy, “The Transformation of Islamic NGOs in
Palestine,”
Middle East Report, Spring 2000, in which some
of the findings described herein were first presented.
