Hamas developing—reactive progress

previously unchecked power of the presidency was curbed. In addition, the new electoral law democratized Palestinian politics. Such institutional change, it has been hypothesized, “can lower barriers to entry for the rebels, thereby lowering the costs of participation for them”

(Shugart 1992, 125). And as will be covered in following sections, both the discussed institutional changes of the PA, and the various environmental developments and events covered above did indeed have consequences for the development and behavior of Hamas.

proved right in its predictions that the Oslo Accords were flawed and doomed to fail. And third, following first the ratification of the interim Basic Law of the PA and then the demise of Arafat, the Palestinian political system finally began to institutionalize. Crucially, the institutionalization process of the PA included the introduction of proper power-sharing mechanisms, which hitherto had been conspicuously absent from this state-like construct.

This, in turn, was important for the integration of Hamas into the political system, as it was one decisive factor inspiring the movement to contest the 2006 elections for the legislative council of the PA (the PLC).

In brief, the period saw Hamas develop from the somewhat conflicted liberation movement of the late 1990s, caught between contradictory or at least ambiguous strategic aims, to a much more confident and mature political movement capable and willing to take part in institutionalized politics. In sum, Hamas took important steps in its transmutation from movement toward party in the years of the second intifada. The following sections will first outline how Hamas responded ideologically to these developments, before tracing and analyzing its organizational development in the same period.

6.2.1 The eventual adoption of a pragmatic ideology

As discussed in the previous chapter, certain elements of Hamas’s domestic leadership had tried throughout the latter part of the 1990s to moderate the movement’s message to make it conform more closely with the political realities on the ground. One crucial aspect of this moderating effort was the suggestion that Hamas could agree to an interim solution with Israel based on the 1967 borders. But as was concluded, these moderates in the Hamas leadership did not have enough organizational clout to succeed in their effort. Powerful factions and persons within Hamas were still set on keeping with the maximalist and subversive ideology as spelled out in the 1988 Charter.

Only months before the outbreak of the second intifada, the Political Bureau of Hamas published a memo detailing the movement’s history and goals. An authoritative document, it is a good indicator of the ideological and strategic thinking within Hamas at the time. And in it, Hamas reiterates that “military action … constitutes the strategic means for the liberation of Palestine,” and that its goal is “the total liberation of Palestine from the sea to the river”

(Tamimi 2007, 278–79). In short, Hamas officially preferred violence to other strategies, and remained convinced that such a strategy was the best way to eventually achieve total

liberation.³⁵⁹

The unsuccessful attempt to moderate Hamas’s positions on key issues is taken as an indication that Hamas had not completed its transmutation from movement to party by the beginning of the second intifada. In essence, the power of the hard-liners meant that Hamas remained a movement in that it still represented an exclusive segment of Palestinians committed to the pursuit of its originally stated, absolutist, and subversive goals. As theorized, to qualify as a political party Hamas would have to adopt a more centrist message and articulate and take a position on most if not all policy issues which mobilize voters in occupied Palestine (de Zeeuw 2008b, 15).

On the face of it, the political opportunity structures during the second intifada seemed to favor the hard-liners in Hamas; violent resistance was again the preferred strategy of most Palestinian liberation movements, and the somewhat accommodating line characteristic of the Oslo years had all but been replaced by absolutist positions by the involved parties. Despite such developments, the years of the second intifada saw Hamas adopt a more centrist political message, in essence replacing the radical position from its years as a militant movement with the pragmatism of a political party.³⁶⁰

Theoretically, then, the ideological moderation Hamas underwent in this period was somewhat paradoxical. Most theories purporting to explain the moderation of radical parties rests on various iterations of the inclusion-moderation thesis. Briefly and somewhat crudely put, this thesis states that the inclusion of radical parties into the political system eventually will lead to their moderation because the operational logic of being within the system is qualitatively different from staying outside the system. Also according to this thesis, repression will most often lead to further radicalization (Schwedler 2011).³⁶¹

Under certain conditions, however, the repression of radicals can also lead to moderation (Turam 2007).³⁶² At the most basic level, if the repression is of such a severity that it threatens the survival of the organization, it can lead to ideological moderation. Furthermore, if the 359 Importantly, the leader of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Khaled Meshaal, was a steady and strong proponent of violence and suicide bombings as the preferred strategy of Hamas—even when such operations went out of vogue among Palestinians (McGeough 2010, 404).

360 See, in particular, the section The (re)articulation of ends pp. 204ff. for details.

361 See, for example, Scwedler (2007a, 2007b, 2011), Przeworski and Sprague (1986), Wickham (2004), Brocker and Künkler (2013), and Tezcur (2010) for various analyses and reviews of this inclusion-moderation thesis.

362 In her analysis of the moderation of Islamist parties in Turkey, Turam argues that it was state repression that forced the various incarnations of the Islamists to incrementally moderate (2007).