Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XLI, No. 3 (Spring 2012), pp. 54–70, ISSN: 0377-919X; electronic ISSN: 1533-8614.
© 2012 by the Institute for Palestine Studies. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s
Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: jps.2012.XLI.3.54.
THE ORIGINS OF HAMAS:
MILITANT LEGACY OR ISRAELI TOOL?
JEAN-PIERRE FILIU
Since its creation in 1987, Hamas has been at the forefront of armed
resistance in the occupied Palestinian territories. While the move-
ment itself claims an unbroken militancy in Palestine dating back
to 1935, others credit post-1967 maneuvers of Israeli Intelligence
for its establishment. This article, in assessing these opposing nar-
ratives and offering its own interpretation, delves into the historical
foundations of Hamas starting with the establishment in 1946 of the
Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (the mother organization)
and ending with its emergence as a distinct entity at the outbreak of
the rst intifada. Particular emphasis is given to the Brotherhood’s
pre-1987 record of militancy in the Strip, and on the complicated
and intertwining relationship between the Brotherhood and Fatah.
HAMAS,
1
FOUNDED IN the Gaza Strip in December 1987, has been the sub-
ject of numerous studies, articles, and analyses,
2
particularly since its
victory in the Palestinian legislative elections of January 2006 and its
takeover of Gaza in June 2007. Yet despite this, little academic atten-
tion has been paid to the historical foundations of the movement, which
grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Gaza branch established in 1946.
Meanwhile, two contradictory interpretations of the movement’s origins
are in wide circulation.
The rst portrays Hamas as heir to a militant lineage, rigorously inde-
pendent of all Arab regimes, including Egypt, and harking back to ‘Izz
al-Din al-Qassam,
3
a Syrian cleric killed in 1935 while ghting the British
in Palestine. This “ofcial history” of the movement, reproduced in the
Hamas literature coming out of Gaza,
4
denies any break in continuity
over the last seventy years, as if the Muslim Brotherhood had always
been at the vanguard and epicenter of the national struggle. This narra-
tive evidently aims at discrediting other Palestinian factions, chief among
them Fatah, identied with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.
JEAN-PIERRE FILIU is professor of Middle East studies at the Paris School of
International Affairs (PSIA, Sciences Po). His most recent books include Histoire de
Gaza (Paris: Fayard, 2012), The Arab Revolution: Ten Lessons from the Democratic
Uprising (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), and Apocalypse in Islam
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). A version of this article was pub-
lished in French under the title “Les fondements historiques du Hamas à Gaza
1946-1987,” in Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 115 (July–September 2012).
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