Social welfare provision by violent, non-governmental, islamist organizations : the case of Hamas and Hezbollah

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Social Welfare Provision by Violent,

Non-Governmental, Islamist Organizations

the case of Hamas and Hezbollah

Master Thesis Political Science (International Relations Track) The political economy of development in the Middle East Uri Mazor

Student No. 5920949

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. F. Boussaid Second Reader: Dr. S. Rezaeiejan Words: 20.008

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Abstract: Hamas and Hezbollah, seen by most in the western world as terrorist

organizations, are important social welfare providers for the people living in their

respective areas of operation. This social welfare is a factor towards their

popularity among those populations. Social Movement Theory is used to explain

this phenomenon, as well as to explain and analyse the differences and similarities

in the development of those organizations.

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Chapter 1. Introduction

On the early morning of the 11th_{of September, 2001, the world was shocked by the images}

of two airplanes flying into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, New York City. The thousands of innocent victims of that day would become the signal for a new era of warfare in the Middle East, increasing fear of Islam-inspired terrorism in the West and it marked a new time-period in the academic field of international relations, especially for those studying terrorism, Islamism and the Middle East.

As a part of the complicated web of political actors that play a role in the Middle East, organizations that are considered terrorist organizations in most countries around the world (European Council, 2017; United States State Department, 2018) are not only that for certain groups of people in the Middle East. The Harakat al Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas) and Hezbollah (the Party of God), are mostly known for their attacks on civilians in their own and other countries. But these organizations also play a part in governing, caring for and providing services for a certain part of the population in war-torn and poor areas of various Middle Eastern countries. The study into terrorism and especially into religious-extremist violence has been growing since the 1990s and even more so after 9/11. But there is another side of these organizations that has, in my opinion, not been researched enough. Hamas, Hezbollah and most Islamist1_{organizations have}

their basis, their constituency and their legitimacy grounded in society. In some cases these ties are territorial, in other cases sectarian.

Popular support for Hamas, Hezbollah and similar organizations, I will argue, is for a significant part thanks to their social programs. They provide social welfare to impoverished areas, usually linked with sectarian, religious or geographical influences. They bring services such as health care, education and other primary necessities to a lot of people in areas under their control. In part, this is due to the failure of states to do so and/or the different priorities that the political actors in these states have. In this thesis I want to delve deeper into the aforementioned Islamist organizations, their backgrounds, history, goals and methods. The terrorism angle has been thoroughly researched by many people, while I see the social services these organizations provide to citizens in their respective countries as a gap in the literature. Although some authors have written on the subject, it has always been in combination with militancy or political organization. These social welfare programs are one of the main strategies

1_{As this is a contested and much debated over concept, I will devote a section in the theoretical framework to}

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for them to gain the support and following needed to continue their violent struggle. To understand and dissect the way in which social welfare is used by Hamas and Hezbollah to gain popularity and perhaps even legitimacy, Social Movement Theory will be used, the reasons for which will be explained below.

The main research question is therefore as follows: Can Social Movement Theory explain the development and the role of social welfare provision by Hamas and Hezbollah and the similarities as well as the differences in their development towards being an important social service provider in their respective areas? To achieve a convincing argument for this question a set of related questions will have to be answered. First of all, what are these organizations, why do they exist and what do they stand for? Secondly, what do these social programs look like and why are they so important for these organizations to exist? Thirdly, what are the similarities and differences between Hamas and Hezbollah? Finally, Islamism is a contested concept, which will have to be defined and explained in a way that makes it possible to use throughout the thesis. It also serves to explain part of the phenomenon, as social welfare provision is seen by some authors referred to in this work to be an integral part of this particular brand of Islam. To be able to make a comparison between the organizations and better explain their behavior and choices, I will add a third organization that is not based on Islamism, but on a particular ideology. The Marxist-Leninist organization of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC, will show that this phenomenon is not embedded in Islam or Islamism, but more so in these types of organizations.

In the following sections I will show how this will be done. First I will lay down the theoretical and conceptual framework, in which Social Movement Theory (SMT) and related concepts like political opportunity structures (POS) will form the bulk of the work. Also in this section I will define the most important concepts for this thesis, like Islamism, social welfare, etc. Then a historical chapter will give the reader a brief overview of important events and people involved, to be able to put this thesis into the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict and related issues in the Middle East. A review of the literature will be included in these introductory chapters. Individual chapters on Hamas, Hezbollah and the FARC will follow the introductory section, with a comparative chapter and a conclusion summing up the work that has been done.

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Chapter 2. Theoretical Framework

2.1 Social Welfare and Social Contract Theory

The main concern of this thesis is the social welfare activities of violent, non-governmental organizations. Social welfare as it is known in the Western world is based on the idea of a social contract between government and society. The earliest mention of this type of contract goes back to Enlightenment philosophers like Thomas Hobbes (1660) and John Locke (1689), who claim a relation between society and government in which society let itself be ruled by the government (or sovereign) in exchange for certain benefits. In essence, by figuratively signing this contract, the government agrees to take care of primary necessities such as food and basic health care should citizens not be able to take care of it themselves (Grynkewich, 2008:351-2). In today’s world, things have become slightly more complicated, but the essence of social welfare remains the same as it was for Hobbes and Locke. In exchange for giving up authority over certain facets of our own lives, we depend on the state to grant us financial and other support in order to live the lives we have become expecting to live. In the Western world this means an elaborate system of subsidies, health care benefits, educational subsidies and other government-financed social services. In the Middle East government-based social welfare is at a far lower level, as state-building and development are also still at a lower level than in Europe or the US. In the Islamic societies of the Middle East, Western social contract theory is mixed with principles of Islamic law (Ibid).

While in the 17th_{century the social contract was mostly directed at the protection of body and}

property, economic concerns have nowadays taken primacy, at least in Western social contracts. Although this social contract can mean different things in different settings, it is a generally Western concept. Therefore, I will use a definition from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and extrapolate from this in the analysis to use it in the context of Middle Eastern countries. This definition goes like this:

“The Western contract is an agreement between citizens and their governments and has arisen out of a long and sometimes contentious democratic process. It varies across countries in its extent, yet in general it provides for policies and programs to protect citizens from the vicissitudes of an impersonal market economy. The social safety net that is a part of this contract provides insurance against personal circumstances, such as old age, infirmity, or bad

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luck in the job market, as well as against nationwide economic downturns, when many people suffer wage and job losses.” (Birdsall and Haggard, 2000:4)

Most importantly from this definition follows that a social contract includes policies and programs to protect citizens and that there is a social safety net. As I will argue in the following chapters, it is the failure of the Middle Eastern states and governments under scrutiny here to provide protection and a social safety network, which creates one of the Political Opportunity Structures in which new organizations can flourish and position themselves next to the state in the provision of protection and social security. Seen from another side, the social contract becomes an issue when an organization such as those being studied here gains state-like power, creating a situation where citizens rely on them to provide the social services that are usually provided by a state under the concept of the social contract.

Social movements have been studied by many since the 18th_{century, and there are as}

many definitions of the concept as there are authors writing about it. In many cases, they have been seen as expressing either extremism, violence or deprivation in collective form (Tarrow, 2011:9). Tarrow gives a more neutral definition: “collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities.” (Ibid). In this definition, challenges refer to the action of the social movement vis-à-vis a government or ruling elite, thus challenging the status quo. A common purpose is necessary for the creation of a social movement, as it causes people to come together around a particular goal or subject (Tarrow, 2011:11). This is closely related to “social solidarities”, which Tarrow describes as participants’ recognition of their common interests (Ibid).

As will be seen in the analysis section of this thesis, it becomes interesting for social movements like Hamas and Hezbollah when the state does not comply with the social contract out of either the inability to do so (in the south of Lebanon), or chooses not to, as in the case of occupational strategy from Israel in the OPT. When the state does not fulfill its obligations to the people, the opportunity arises for organizations to fill in these gaps and provide certain social services, in exchange for loyalty and state-like authority.

2.2 Islamism

In modern articles by news agencies, researchers and governments there are a number of terms that have become congested to mean roughly the same thing. Islamism, Islamic fundamentalism, political Islam, and other such terms are being used interchangeably and in

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the same context. For this thesis I will take Islamism as a main concept, but taking into account these other terms as having roughly the same meaning and thus fall under the conceptualization of Islamism. Sami Zubaida defined his version of the concept as “modern political movements and ideas, mostly oppositional, which seek to establish, in one sense or another, an Islamic state” (Zubaida, 1989:38). This would imply a few things. First of all, that it is a modern phenomenon. With this the literature tends to agree, as many authors see Islamism as a phenomenon that started with the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Controversial with Western governments, Egyptian leaders and more “radical fundamentalists” alike, the Brotherhood has until this day survived as an all-encompassing organization fighting for Muslims and their political goals, as well as providing services to their followers in the form of health care, Islamic education, and other social services (Zubaida, 1989:47-51; Leiken and Brooke, 2007:108-110). Except for a short spell after the 2010-2011 uprisings, they have always done their work in opposition to the government. This is true for all Islamist organizations, except one: the theocratic regime in post-revolutionary Iran.

Having a political ideology, Islamist organizations in this definition strive toward the establishment of an Islamic state in the country or countries they operate in. Islamic state is an historical term derived from the time of the great Muslim empires between the time of the Prophet Muhammed until the fall of the last of these empires, the Ottoman, during the First World War. However, in this thesis an Islamic state will be analyzed in a slightly less comprehensive way, as full sha’ria law is still acclaimed to by many organizations, but when further researched, not really strived for, as it is not fully compatible with the modern state that most Islamist organizations also strive towards, work within and cannot operate without. As Zubaida also claims, striving for an Islamic State is as connected with the historic Islamic empires as Christianity is with the European states, meaning that it played a role in government and society, but that it was always in conflict with technological, philosophical and ideological advancements or changes (Zubaida, 1996:42). Finally, the schism in Islam between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims has played a role within political Islam, whether it is as an extra dimension in the struggle for political or regional power (for example in the case of Saudi Arabia and Iran) or within a country (for example the funding Hamas receives from Iran, which is of ‘opposite’ ideology, but still funds the organization in its struggle against Israel, a common enemy). A final point regarding Islamism is its role in the social agenda that Islamist organizations such as those studied here are based on this same ideology (Harb, 2008:216). Finally, when these organizations are designated as terrorist organizations in this thesis, it will be meant that they

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are defined as such by the aforementioned governmental bodies as well as in Western media outlets.

Within this framework, the organizations under scrutiny in this thesis will be analyzed in the chapters to follow.

2.3 Social Movement Theory

The leading theoretical framework for this thesis will be drawn from Social Movement Theory (SMT). As a middle-ground approach between the larger approaches of structuralist and Rational Choice Theory, SMT takes groups as its central actor to explain social phenomena and the roles of actors within those phenomena (Robinson, 2004:113-114). Within this branch of literature social movements are the unit of analysis for collective action, as networks, relations and changing contexts cannot be separated from the choices made by individuals (Robinson, 2004:115; Gunning, 2009:160-1). In this field of study the work of McAdam, McCarthy and Zald (1996) has integrated different studies into social movements from different perspectives and in different single-case studies into a comprehensive theory. The emergence and development of social movements or revolutions are, according to McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, to be understood through three broad factors (1996:2). These factors are political opportunity structures, mobilizing structures and framing processes.

2.3.1 Political Opportunity Structures

Political opportunity can of course mean a lot of things, but in SMT it is defined as: “That social movements and revolutions are shaped by the broader set of political constraints and opportunities unique to the national context in which they are embedded” (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996:3). Most important in this definition is the referral to the uniqueness of the national context. In this research, political opportunity structures will be used as a framework of analysis to look at the development and power structures of Hamas and Hezbollah within their respective contexts. Bhasin and Hallward see these structures as exogenous resources to the group, resources that lower the costs of collective action and that can be a trigger for a social movement to become active and successful (2013:77). These ‘resources’ would for instance be an election (such as in the case of Hamas in 2006), a foreign oppressor, which was the reason for both organizations’ establishment in the 1980s, or changes in the political or electoral

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system of a country or territory that favours the organization above other groups or the government (Ibid).

Still being a relatively vague concept, political opportunity structures needs further elaboration as I will argue that Hamas, Hezbollah and other similar organizations depended on it to become an actor in their respective societies. McAdam specifies four dimensions of POS along which I will analyze the organizations’ social welfare activities in the context of their broader spectrum of activities. The first dimension is the relative openness or restrictiveness of the institutionalized political system. This “emphasizes the importance attributed to the formal legal and institutional structure of a given polity” (McAdam, 1996:27 in McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996:3). The second dimension of POS, according to McAdam, is the stability or instability of the broad set of elite alignments that typically support a polity (Ibid). Together with the third dimension, the presence or absence of elite allies (Ibid), this dimension refers to informal structures within the polity in which the social movement operates or wants to become a viable (political) actor. In Lebanon, for example, this could refer to the way in which the most important posts in the political system are being divided among confessional lines, while this is written nowhere in laws or in the constitution. In this system, the Shi’a always hold the position of the Speaker of Parliament, giving them the opportunity to set the agenda and influence the law-making process. However, this position has since 1992 been held by Nabih Berri, the leader of Hezbollah’s rival Shi’a party Amal. More on the rivalry between Hezbollah and Amal and the struggle for support of the Shi’a community will follow in the chapter on Hezbollah. The final dimension is the state’s capacity and propensity for repression. To take Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as an example, Hamas is no military match for the might of the IDF. Therefore the state power has great capacity and also the will to repress the people and local actors. This repression leads to increased popularity of Hamas and the opportunity structure to act as a resistance movement against Israeli oppression. Added to the literature by McAdam, he found that most authors in the field did not find repression significant for the level and nature of social movement activity (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996:28). However, as repression by the state can definitely create a momentum for newly to be formed organizations to gather support against state oppression, I agree with him in adding this final dimension to the operationalization of the concept of political opportunity structure. In the same volume, Sidney Tarrow adds to the definition of POS that the signals for social or political actors which either encourage or discourage them to form social movements need to be consistent, but do not necessarily have to be formal, permanent or even national (Tarrow, 1994:54 in McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996).

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The organizations being studied here both used opportunity structures to the fullest in order to kickstart their organization, to gather support for their cause and use this momentum to get some early victories. In the case of Hamas, the start of the first Intifada in 1987 gave them such an opportunity, as they had been operating under the flag of the Muslim Brotherhood until that point, mostly developing and maintaining a network of charities directed at social welfare activities in the Gaza Strip and to a lesser extent, the West Bank. As the traditional socio-economic and cultural elites’ power in the OPT kept diminishing, the lower middle classes were on the rise. From that group Hamas recruited membership and support, as the economic decline of the 1980s left 80 per cent of school-leavers and university graduates without a job, or in a job that was way below their education level (Gunning, 2009:34-35). This created a group of young people, who during the late 1970s’ economic boom had foreseen a life of jobs and opportunities but were disappointed by their own society’s elite as well as by continuing occupation and blockade by Israel, leading to the idea of setting up an organization that would not only resist the occupation through networks of social welfare charity organizations, but also through military means. The start of the Intifada presented the opportunity structure to do so.

Hezbollah’s origin story is similar. The unique national context in which political opportunities and constraints are embedded is first of all to be found in the Lebanese constitution. In later chapters I will dive deeper into the Lebanese political system, for now it suffices to say that this constitution and the accompanying National Pact creates the political opportunity structure, especially a constraint, on the Shi’a population, as it created institutional underrepresentation for the Shi’a. For Hezbollah, this inequality in Lebanese politics and society was one of the reasons for the foundation and radicalization of the organization. The other, more prominent political opportunity structure that has led to the foundation of the organization was the invasion of Israeli forces during the Lebanese civil war in 1982. This created a foothold in these parts of the country and mobilized people to join their resistance against Israel (Norton, 2007:32-35).

Political opportunity structures are the most important concept of SMT that will be used here to analyze the development of Hamas, Hezbollah and the FARC as organizations and as social welfare providers. The two other factors of SMT are not less important, however, in this thesis the choice has been made to focus more deeply on POS, as both other factors bring me to a different angle which would require me to write a different thesis from a political discourse analysis or communication studies perspective, which is not my intent. Mobilizing structures will be used here and there in the analysis, framing processes will be left aside completely, except for a section in this theoretical chapter.

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2.3.2 Mobilizing Structures

When the political opportunity structure is there for a group to become active and successful, mobilizing structures are the ways in which they want to organize their activities. These are the “…collective vehicles, informal as well as formal, through which people mobilize and engage in collective action” (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996:3). In other words, this is the way an organization sets up its internal organization, with different institutions, an organizational chart and hierarchies. This can be an elaborate, separated chain of command for different parts of the organization, as we will see when analyzing Hezbollah, or it can be a more isolated, cell-based organization, as was the case in the early days of Hamas. However a social movement chooses to set up its organization, mobilizing structures are necessary for the organization to become active and successful in their endeavors. Finally, the approach towards state structures and the way in which the state either facilitates, ignores or helps the organization succeed is of importance in how the mobilizing structures are set up and whether this is the right way for the organization to reach its goals (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996:4). There are three ways in which mobilizing structures can be used to analyze a social movement: First of all, it is possible to look for these structures in the likely institutional locations of mobilization (McCarthy, 1987 in McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996:143). Secondly, one can look for mobilizing structures for social movements in the role that the political system of a certain country plays in structuring the organizational profile of the movement (Ibid:143-4). Finally, McCarthy looks at the effect of the organizational structure in facilitating or constraining movement survival (Ibid).

2.3.3 Framing Process

As a third broad factor of SMT, there has to be a feeling of discontent or optimism among the population in order to mobilize itself and become involved in collective action through a social movement. This framing process can be either present in the population without any assistance, or can be induced by leaders or activists of the organization that wants to use this discontent to become active and seize the political opportunity to mobilize people behind their objectives. In the cases of Hamas and Hezbollah, both organizations used the aggressor Israel, to frame their organization as a necessary resistance movement.

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Political opportunity structures, mobilizing structures and framing processes are not independent. They need each other in order to be able to successfully establish a social movement that can impact the lives of the people they claim to be doing it for (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996:7-9).

2.4 Methodology

To analyze and answer the question posed in the introduction, I will use secondary sources to collect insights and data from academics, research institutes, think tanks and international organizations. Taking into account that the Arab-Israeli conflict, in which Lebanon, Israel and the OPT are heavily involved just as the organizations under scrutiny here, is a conflict with a risk of bias in sources, they will be carefully selected and also treated with some degree of skepticism in some cases, however useful their information or data may be.

This thesis will have a multiple case-study design, including a comparative element. A comparison will be made between Hamas and Hezbollah, but also between the Islamist organizations and a violent, non-governmental organization without an Islamist signature, the FARC. Case study research has the advantage of gaining in-depth knowledge of a certain field or subject, usually with the intention to be able to generalize this knowledge to a larger population of cases. Depending on the subject, Flyvberg argues that case-study research has often been underrated in this respect, with academics doing large-N studies critiquing the lack of generalizability of case study work (2006:221). Generalization from a case study is indeed possible, as Flyvberg claims, as long as the right case is chosen for the right reason. Selective sampling is important, as it is in most research, except for randomized experiments (Flyvberg, 2006:226). Furthermore, also quantitative research is not always generalizable, the most important thing to keep in mind when selecting a research method is that it fits with the subject at hand (Ibid). In the case of this thesis, organizations recognized internationally as terrorist organizations who provide social welfare with the (partial) intention of gaining support among citizens in their areas are a very small population of cases, where a large-N study would have to be held among the people of those countries, which is a very time-consuming and costly operation. In order to do a case study in the field of international relations it is important to choose a theory around which to build up the research, otherwise it is easy to get lost in the intricacies of the national or international issues surrounding the subject (Mahoney, 2007:130). Social Movement Theory, as described above, is the frame around which this thesis is built.

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Even though case-study research is perfectly acceptable as a research method for the subject at hand, I am aware that an empirical field study would garner results that would tell me more about the inner workings of Hamas, Hezbollah and the FARC and their social welfare agenda. However, it is not possible to establish such a research without the necessary time, funding and contacts in the countries under scrutiny, and therefore I will rely on others that have had the opportunity to do so.

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Chapter 3. History and Context: Lebanon, Israel and the OPT

Because of the complexity of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the roles of the actors in that conflict I have made choices for the relevant pieces and have left out others on purpose. Also included in this chapter are the most important works of literature concerning the different chapters, which will be briefly addressed at the end of each section.

3.1 Israel and the OPT

One of the most important strands of thought on state-building and nation-states in the Middle East is the theory that the last century of instability and war in the region was caused by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, in which French and British negotiators drew a map of the Middle East dividing the territory amongst them after the fall of the Ottoman Empire that had encompassed much of the region for centuries (Hourani, 1991: 315-319; see figure 1). The British Empire was enlarged with the Mandate Area of Palestine, the Jordanian province between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, under the flag of the League of Nations. Through this map of the Middle East, which still roughly looks the same today, peoples were separated by borders that had never been there and countries were created because of geopolitical strategy, and not because of cultural, religious, historic or other “more sensible reasons” (Hourani, 1991:317). A year after the agreement between France and Britain about the borders in the Middle East, on the 2nd_{of November}

1917, British Foreign Minister Lord Balfour put into a letter to one of the leading figures in the Jewish community in Britain the Declaration that would bear Balfour’s name and be the cause for much contestation and war in the decades to follow. In this Balfour Declaration was written: “ His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…” (Balfour Declaration, 2-11-1917). These words by the British Foreign Minister empowered the Zionist Movement and its leaders to increase their efforts in striving

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for a Jewish State in the lands of British Palestine, while the mostly Arab population in the Mandate felt betrayed by their British overlords.

After WWII and the horrors endured by the Jews during the Holocaust, founding father and first prime minister David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel on the 14th_{of May, 1948, also known in the Arab World as the Nakba, or catastrophe. This day}

also marks the beginning of the modern Arab-Israeli conflict.

On the 10th_{of June, 1967, Israel celebrated a sweeping military victory that would define}

the country and the region, in terms of borders, distribution of power, and international diplomacy. The Six Day War of June 1967 started with a preemptive strike by the Israeli Air Force, crippling the Egyptian Air Force and practically incapacitating the Egyptian army. Induced by earlier conflicts in 1948, the Independence War, and 1956, when Israel blockaded and invaded the Egyptian Sinai desert together with France and Great Britain, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had been mobilizing his army as tensions were rising up during the entire 1960s. Joining their Arab partners in the region, Jordan and Syria were drawn into the conflict, but a swift reaction and military superiority by the Israeli forces gave them a quick victory. It also led to Israel taking the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria, all of which remain Israeli occupied territory until this day. Finally the IDF seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai peninsula from Egypt, of which only the Gaza Strip is still controlled by Israel through a blockade (Oren, 2002). History learn us that in these six days in the beginning of June 1967, a new chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict had begun. One that would be more violent, more nationalistic and more polarized than it had been before.

Following the 1967 June War was a sense of defeat and hunger for revenge in the Arab states neighbouring Israel, leading to the Yom Kippur war of 1973, which was bloody, but did not change the status quo after 1967. From the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 until 1977 Ben-Gurion’s Labour Party governed Israel with a mix of pragmatism and idealism (Peled and Shafir, 1996:399-400). However, the election victory and premiership of Menachim Begin’s Likud Party started a period of more polarization and the settlement of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by religious Jews from all around the world, claiming Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as their biblical birthright. During his premiership he also made peace with Egypt in 1979 and gave back the conquered Sinai Peninsula to Anwar Sadat, establishing the Israeli borders where they are now at the Egyptian side of the Gaza Strip and receiving a Nobel Peace Prize in the process. Begin’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to fight against strongholds of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) there, ignited a new phase in the already raging

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Lebanese Civil War (see below). The PLO was, until it fell under the control of Fatah leader Yasser Arafat in 1968, an ineffective organization set up by the Arab League in 1964 to strive for the liberation of the lands of Palestine from Israeli occupation (Schanzer, 2008:16). Under Arafat and his Fatah’s leadership, within a few short years it grew into the primary organization representing the Palestinian cause and the continuation of the struggle for the liberation of Palestine, as well as the leading organization after the Oslo Accords (Schanzer, 2008:17-18; for the Oslo Accords, see below). In the meantime, Palestinians and their leaders had been living under occupation, in exile or in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria for decades, and for the first time in 1987, the bubble would burst.

In December of that year a bus filled with Palestinian day laborers was in a car crash caused by an Israeli driver, killing most of its passengers and igniting throughout the OPT an uprising known now as the First Intifada. Nationalist (PLO) as well as Islamist (Muslim Brotherhood) factions in the OPT reorganized quickly through their social mobility, creating two separate resistance movements: the UNLU was led by Yasser Arafat and the rest of the PLO leadership in exile in Tunisia, while a group of Gaza-based Islamists separated themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood and mobilized Gazans young and old behind their cause (Milton-Edwards and Farrell, 2010: 52-53). Sheikh Yassin, Dr Abdel Aziz Rantissi, Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, Musa Abu Marzouq, Ismail Abu Shanab, Salah Shehadeh, Ibrahim Yazuri, Issa al-Nashar and Abdel Fattah al-Dukkhan seized the moment to create a more violent and more nationally oriented resistance movement out of the Gaza chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood: Hamas (Ibid). Hamas’ difficult relation with the PLO falls beyond of the scope of this thesis, although here I just want to state that during the Intifada, for the Palestinian factions it was as much a struggle against the occupation as it was against each other for power and support amongst the population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Milton-Edwards, 2010:54-58; Schanzer, 2008). During the Intifada, secret talks between high Israeli officials and the PLO leadership started in Madrid and were finalized in Oslo, creating a cease-fire and a new chapter in the already difficult relationship between the PLO and their political wing, Fatah, and Hamas and their Islamist following. Hamas’ covenant of 1988 had the liberation of the whole of Palestine stated as its first and foremost goal (The Covenant Of The Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas, 1988). The Oslo Accords were met with furious reaction from Hamas (Milton-Edwards and Farrell, 2010:56-57). The creation of the Palestinian Authority under Fatah’s control, the growing bureaucratic incompetence and corruption continue to be a source of tension between the Palestinian factions. This led eventually to the separation of the OPT into separate entities, with Fatah controlling the West Bank even after their electoral defeat in

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2006, and Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip after seizing it by force when their electoral victory in 2006 would not be recognized by Fatah, Israel and the rest of the Western world, claiming that a terrorist organization could not be the governing party of the OPT, or anywhere (Schanzer, 2008).

The Intifada officially ended with the signing of Oslo I, the first declaration of principles between Israel and the PLO in 1993. Hamas started an intense bombing campaign showing their resistance against the peace talks. Suicide bombers entered Israel and willingly took their own lives in order to kill others, usually civilians. If Israel had adapted to Fatah’s modus operandi, this new wave of terrorism was extremely difficult to act against, as it required little planning and resources (Schanzer, 2008:42). It would start a back-and-forth of violence between Hamas and Israel that, according to some, has not stopped until today. From 2000 onwards, Fatah rejoined the military resistance against Israel in what is known as the Second – Al-Aqsa – Intifada. Starting in September of 2000, this was a much more planned and conscious uprising, orchestrated by Yasser Arafat through his PA-controlled mosques, tv- and radio-stations and the ordering of a general strike while closing all schools within the OPT. For Arafat, it was mostly a negotiation tactic, even though many people on both sides died in the years to follow as a result (Schanzer, 2008:49-52).

Within the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Hamas is an actor of interest for a broad variety of scholars interested in different angles and writing from different perspectives. Hamas’ origins and actions as a political and military actor in the OPT and the Arab-Israeli conflict are researched and described by many, predominantly by the work of Jeroen Gunning (2009), Beverly Milton-Edwards (1992;1996;2005;2008;2010), Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell (2010) and Jonathan Schanzer (2008). However, all these authors either write a comprehensive history of its political and military actions and their struggle against Israel or within the OPT itself against Fatah. Social welfare and SMT in these writings are either a footnote or not mentioned at all. It is this gap in the literature that I wish to fill with this thesis, focusing on the role of social welfare as a catalyst for the establishment and success of Hamas as an actor in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian society.

3.2 Lebanon

Separated from Greater Syria after the fall of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War (see figure 1) and from the French Mandate in Syria during the Second World War, Lebanon

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became an independent country in 1943. It has a population divided by cultural, sectarian, and religious backgrounds. Today, around 54% of its population is Muslim, with 27% Shi’a and 27% Sunnis. 40.5% of the population is Christian, of which 21% are Maronites. The Druze minority are 5.6% of the population, with the rest divided in small parts among Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and others (CIA World Fact Book, 2018). However, it was the census of 1932 under the French Mandate that made a lasting impact on Lebanese society and politics, as this would be the foundation for the National Pact between the Maronite Christian Bishara al-Khoury and the Sunni Muslim Riad al-Sulh, an unwritten document that apportioned political power amongst the different sects as it does so until today (Shanahan, 2005:30-31; Traboulsi, 2007:110; Lebanese Constitution of May 23, 1926). The constitution allowed for judicial, civic and political equality of all Lebanese as citizens, but also institutionalized judicial and political inequality between religious groups (Traboulsi, 2007:110). The National Pact was designed to support the constitution on the one hand, but also to emphasize the country’s identity in the Arab World and the importance of its Muslim communities. The division of power positions was the most important and lasting provision of the pact. Also, it defined Lebanon as a “country with an Arab profile that assimilates all that is beneficial and useful in Western civilization” (Traboulsi, 2007:111). Thirdly, Lebanon was not to serve as a base or passageway for colonial powers, referring to French Mandatory power as well as the fear for Syrian expansionist tendencies (Ibid). Finally, it corrected the bias and power of the Maronite primacy in public service in favor of the Muslim communities. The combination of these two texts is problematic. As they combine a liberal constitution with a pact explicitly pointing out sectarian differences and hierarchy, much of the problems and stand-offs that Lebanon experienced in later times can be ascribed to the contradictions between these documents (Traboulsi, 2007:112).

Because of the French Mandatory power, the 1932 census was biased towards the Maronite Christians (Shanahan, 2005:31), giving them a disproportionate amount of power while especially the Shi’a population was ‘miscounted’ in the census, resulting in a position of lesser political power, especially relative to the amount of residents (Ibid). For the Shi’a, the position of Speaker of Parliament would be their most powerful, and they were appointed fewer seats in that Parliament than either the Maronites or the Sunnis, out of whose ranks would also be appointed the President and the Prime Minister, respectively.

In 1948, with the independence of Israel, many Palestinians fled from their lands into the neighboring Arab countries: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria. Of the roughly 700.000 refugees, 100.000 fled north across the border into Lebanon (UNRWA, 2018). Spread over official and unofficial refugee camps, most of which still exist or have grown into towns and cities,

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nowadays there are 449,957 registered Palestinian refugees. On a population of a little over 6 million (World Bank Data, 2018), this is almost 7.5% of a society already split into several different cultural and religious groups. For example, this is a larger percentage than the native and officially recognized Druze community. Falling outside the purview of this thesis, but nonetheless important is Lebanon’s connection with Syria. Emerging out of the same Ottoman governorate, the Lebanese and Syrian people are historically connected and Syrian influence in the country remains, as well as Lebanese influence in Syria, to be seen for example with Hezbollah’s engagement in Syria’s current civil war.

In the years between its foundation in 1943 and the start of the Civil War in 1975, Lebanon was seen by the West as its most reliable and most liberal partner in the Middle East. They had a functioning democracy, relative peace and a growing economy and private sector. The peculiarity of the sectarian democracy was not seen as an obstacle to a lasting democratic system in the context of the Middle East, where from the 1960s onwards, almost every leader was an authoritarian one. However, an economic downturn after the international oil crisis in 1973, other international developments and growing tensions between the still dominating Maronites and the by now majority of Muslims in Lebanon, 1975 would mark the beginning of a decades-long civil war and the end of peace and prosperity for Lebanon. In the years leading up to the start of the civil war in 1975, financial and industrial development grew exponentially, although very few Lebanese profited from the effects of this bubble. Foreign investors and a small number of business families took almost all profits, as social inequality figures kept growing (Traboulsi, 2007:157-158).

The history of Palestinian influence and presence in Lebanon starts at the border between Jordan and the West Bank, in the town of Karameh, on the 21st_{of March, 1968. A}

15.000-man strong Israeli invasion to eliminate the leadership of the Palestinian Resistance Movements (PRM) residing in that town, among which Yasser Arafat, led to the destruction of Fatah’s headquarters and the subsequent flight to Lebanon of the Palestinian leadership (Fruchter-Ronen, 2008:245-6). More than two years of tensions between the Palestinians in exile and the Jordanian regime would add up to the events of ‘Black’ September in 1970. An assassination attempt on King Hussein was followed by military clashes between the Palestinian forces and the Jordanian Army, in which the Palestinians didn’t stand a chance against the better equipped and organized Jordanian forces, leading to many casualties and eventually a forced withdrawal of the Palestinian leadership first from Jordan’s cities to camps along the border with the West Bank, and within months from the country altogether. Having been forced out of yet another country, the organizations that had been united by Fatah into the Palestinian

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Liberation Organization (PLO) resurfaced in the refugee camps in the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon (Fruchter-Ronen, 2008: 250-255).

The outbreak of the civil war in 1975 had as a result that the up to that point fairly pluralistic political landscape of Lebanon collapsed and people sought their refuge and support within their own political or religious community (Shanahan, 2005:106). The Shi’a did not have such a political movement up until that point and for them, this meant the biggest change. Just before the outbreak of the civil war, in 1974, Musa as-Sadr had created a Shi’a mass protest movement trying to force the government to address the lack of social services for the Shi’a communities in the south (Shanahan, 2005:107). Just like other sectarian political parties, this movement created a militia in order to defend the interests of their particular group and named it Amal. Initially it was linked to and trained by the Palestinian Fatah party of Yasser Arafat, but failed to gain mass support from within its own community until the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1978, when the movement provided protection and security for the Shi’a communities in those areas (Shanahan, 2005:108). Amal was to become and remain a fierce rival of Hezbollah in the years and decades to follow. With Amal acting as a more nationalistic than religious movement, and with its connection to the Syrian regime of the al-Assad clan, Hezbollah would fill in as a more religious and sectarian organization, while Amal remained a more secular and leftist party (Shanahan, 2005:110). A leading role within the Shi’a resistance went to Hezbollah, especially after the suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine Barracks, which left 258 Americans killed in October 1983 (Masters and Laub, 2014).

Contrary to the early development of Hamas as a network of social welfare organizations and charities, Hezbollah started out as a Shi’a militia. As an umbrella organization for various Islamist militia cells within the Shi’a community, Hassan Nasrallah and his associates founded Hezbollah to coordinate attacks on the foreign invader, Israel, and taking Western hostages to further their cause of increasing awareness for Shi’a underdevelopment and the lack of political power (Shanahan, 2005:113; Norton, 2007:32). Inspired and supported by the Shi’a revolution in Iran three years before, it was established in 1982, although not much is known from its activities until the publication of its first official document in 1985 (Norton, 2007:32-33). In its early documents, much of Muslim and Shi’a repression in the Middle East was ascribed to “western imperialism”, with the United States as the prime example and the main enemy of Islam in general (Norton, 2007:34). Their primary goals would include to “free Lebanon from the manipulation and chicanery of the malevolent outside powers in order to achieve “the final departure of America, France and their allies from Lebanon and the termination of the influence of any imperialist power in the country”” (Norton,

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2007:38). This terminology and message is very similar to those of the Iranian Revolution, which is and was closely connected to Hezbollah. The years between the establishment and the 1989 Taif Agreement that would signal the end of the civil war show an aggressive, ideological organization targeting Israeli military posts and convoys, as well as other Western targets in Lebanon (Norton, 2007:72-73). In general, the rise in power and popularity that Hezbollah enjoyed through the 1980s and the 1990s can be seen to have three main explanations. First, people supported their fight against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, from which Israel would unilaterally withdraw as late as 2000, more than 10 years after the Taif agreement that ended the Lebanese civil war. Secondly, large groups of Shi’a felt and actually were disadvantaged within society, and Hezbollah was most effective in bringing across their message as a struggle against this disadvantage. Finally, mostly the large wings of Iran under which Hezbollah grew up as an organization helped them remain armed while other groups were disarmed under the Taif Agreement, which helped them and spiritual leader Fadlallah to open the path to becoming a more legitimate and political movement and continue their struggle against Israel and Shi’a underdevelopment through social and political means rather than military and terrorist means.

As an organization with more background in local and national politics as well as social welfare provision for a specific part of the Lebanese population, more work has been done on Hezbollah than was the case for Hamas. Augustus Norton (2007) gives a very good overview of the establishment, background and various aspects of the organization, including its political engagement in Lebanese politics and the connection to Iran. The Shi’a population in Lebanon, the support base for Hezbollah, has been researched thoroughly by Shanahan (2011). Grynkewich (2008) writes on a broad variety of subjects concerning social movements, from social welfare to politics, terrorism and resistance. Most importantly for this thesis, he lays down the link to social welfare and violence and how social welfare can be used in the battle for the hearts and minds of the population in a conflict. Cammett (2006; 2010, 2011) focusses her work more on social welfare provision by Hezbollah but does not combine that with the military goals of the organization, leaving a gap for this thesis, while Harb (2008) analyzes Hezbollah as a faith-based organization, claiming that is has abandoned its resistance element and has chosen to change the system from within. Finally Haddad (2006) and Hamzeh (1993) look at the transformation of the resistance movement of the 1980s to the political and social movement of the 1990s onwards. As this thesis combines all these elements which none of these authors does, leaving room to add to the literature already available.

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A similar, ideology-driven organization with state-like capacities was the FARC, the

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Until it was disbanded in 2017 after a peace deal with the Colombian government and Nobel Peace Prize-winning president Santos, the organization ruled the southern and eastern jungles of the country using a Marxist-Leninist system, mixed with Che Guevara-style South American guerrilla tactics from its

establishment in the 1960s (the Guardian, 27-06-2017). Saskiewicz (2005) wrote a thesis on FARC and its role in Colombian society, as well as its history and ideology. Grynkewich (2008) analyses the way in which the FARC, like other violent, non-governmental

organization such as the IRA, ETA and some other South American organizations, use their social welfare programs to gain support among the population in certain areas, attract young people to their cause and act as state-like entities in the absence of a state that is able to provide these services. Finally, Fauguet and Sánchez (2014) have made an empirical inquiry into social service provision in Colombia through the role of decentralization of the

government. This decentralization, I hypothesize, has played into the hands of the FARC in the sense that it is much easier to replace a provincial or local government’s social service provision than a centralized, national government.

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Chapter 4. Hamas

On the 30th_{of March, 2018, violent protests broke out along the border between the Gaza Strip}

and Israel as 17,000 protesters, according to the Israeli military, started a planned six-week protest against the enduring occupation of the Strip by Israel (the Guardian, 31-03-2018). At least 16 people were killed, many were injured. The Hamas government of the Gaza Strip, that has been in power since 2007, backed the protests, referring to the Nakba of 1948, the blockade of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military and the announced move of the American Embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, which they see as the capital of Palestine (Ibid). As incidents between Hamas and the IDF continue on a daily basis, popular support for Hamas is untouched. It is a very recent example of a phenomenon that has been going on since the birth of the State of Israel, and especially since the birth of Hamas out of the Gaza chapter of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1987. In this part of my thesis I set to argue that the unequivocal popular support for Hamas is not so much related to their resistance against oppression through the blockade of the Gaza Strip, but that it is based on a vast network of social service institutions relied on by many in Gaza and the West Bank.

4.1 History and Context

Hamas separated from the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987, at the start of the first Intifada, as a dynamic and adaptable armed organization joining actively in the struggle against the Israeli occupation (Berti and Gutiérrez, 2016:1061). During his fieldwork in Gaza City in 1998, Jeroen Gunning developed a comprehensive perspective from which to analyze Hamas in its different facets, mainly political, social and military (Gunning, 2009). He sees Hamas as an organization with many contradictions, stating that it: “pursues an Islamic State, yet holds internal elections and champions democracy” (Gunning, 2009:1). Also it “campaigns for shar’iah law, yet its leaders are predominantly secular professionals rather than religious scholars” (Ibid). And finally Hamas “calls for the destruction of Israel, yet has shown (limited) readiness to consider honouring previous peace agreements” (Ibid). These three contradictions form the foundation of his valuable work on the establishment, development and intricacies of Hamas as a social, political and military organization. Although their methods were initially amateurish but reasonably effective, its members soon became more sophisticated in weaponry, methods of operation and choosing targets. From stabbings and small ambushes at checkpoints they soon enough ‘upgraded’ to suicide bombings, better organized attacks at checkpoints and border

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patrols and eventually even to firing rockets and missiles into Israeli territory, at one point as far as the beaches of Tel-Aviv (Ibid). Jihad, or holy war, is a central theme in the founding documents of Hamas. Most Islamist organizations see this as an all-encompassing goal, but Hamas’ jihad is very focused on the liberation of the lands of Palestine and the holy city of Jerusalem (Milton-Edwards, 1992:50-51; Roy, 2011:79-80). According to Nüsse, “the goal of the Islamist organization is to liberate Palestine from occupation by the “Zionist enemy” and re-establish an Islamic State” (Nüsse, 1998:47). An important factor in this goal is the liberation of Jerusalem and especially the Al-Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount, which is considered the third holiest place in all of Islam and was the place where Muslims initially directed their prayers at, before they were directed towards Mecca. This also remains a point of contestation between Islamist and Nationalist factions in the OPT, as the recognition of the Jewish State, as stated in the Oslo Accords and signed by the PLO/Fatah, is seen as kufr, or unbelief (Ibid).

Sheikh Yassin, founding father and long-time leader of Hamas until his assassination on the 22nd_{of March 2004, was a young cleric in the streets of Gaza city in the 1960s, where}

he saw a poor, disillusioned people without any form of hope for the future. Working from within the framework of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, starting in 1973 he began to create a network of schools, mosques and health clinics for ‘his’ people in Gaza, as he saw them (Gunning, 2009:30). Focusing his efforts on otherwise neglected areas, Al-Mujamma’ al-Islami’s (Islamic Centre) activities were mostly in refugee camps and poor urban areas in the Gaza Strip (Ibid;Milton-Edwards and Farrell, 2010:37). The poor and lower middle classes, the groups profiting the most from his and his associates’ efforts would later prove to be the backbone of Hamas, in military and other capacities. The Mujamma was set up by Yassin and his associates as a voluntary institution linking religion to education and sports for children, and welfare assistance and health care for Gaza’s poor (Roy, 2011:72). The linkage between religion and these social welfare activities established a more prominent role for mosques and religion in general in the Gaza Strip, paving the way for a religion-inspired resistance movement like Hamas to develop and become an important actor in society and politics. The foundation in religion also provided the Mujamma with new and improved financial assistance through the Israeli authorities, who were happy not to be necessitated to provide these kinds of services anymore in the Strip, as well as from Gulf donors and the increasing support of zakat committees that guaranteed a more steady flow of funding (Roy, 2011:73-74).

The years between 1973 and 1987, the birthyear of Hamas, were spent by Yassin and his followers building and reinforcing the existing networks, whilst competing with nationalist factions and with Fatah, the political wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) of

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Yasser Arafat. However, their spatial separation from the West Bank and independence from the Egyptian mother-organization left the Gazan Muslim Brothers well-equipped and used to operating on their own and within the specific landscape of the Palestinian society. Also, with the heavily guarded borders into Israel and also into Egypt, they became better and better at smuggling and covert operations, creating an institutional capacity to be used later on when the organization militarized during the first Intifada (Gunning, 2009:31; Milton-Edwards, 1996:84-90). But the origins of the organization and the aims of its founding fathers were not military, but aimed at helping the suffering people of occupied Gaza. This is not to claim the innocence of the leading elite of Hamas or paint them as a group of well-doers. They seized the opportunity for mobilizing the population of Gaza and the West Bank into an armed resistance with many casualties using their networks of social welfare and it is even rumored that people were pressured to join the fighting ranks by leveraging these services. Mishal (2003) agrees that in its official documents, Hamas is purely focused on the religious goals of the destruction of Israel and establishing an Islamic state in the lands of Palestine, as they call it. However, in his network analysis Mishal establishes that practice and doctrine do not come together in this case, as Hamas is a much more dynamic and pragmatic organization than can be drawn from its official documents and publishing.

Where the traditional elites in Palestinian society had proven unable to cope with the growing middle class and the change from a dominantly agricultural society into an urban, working-class society, Hamas’ founders were part of this change throughout the 1970s and 1980s. A youth bulge (in 1987, half the population in the Gaza Strip was under 14 years old (Adlakha, Kinsella and Khawaja, 1995)) combined with a drop in job opportunities for graduated university students caused for a growth in political activism among youngsters. This same combination is one of the most prominent reasons the Muslim Brotherhood turned from a predominantly political and social organization directed at a Pan-Arabic Middle East society, into the Hamas that is known today as a militarized resistance movement. For Sheikh Yassin, violent resistance against the Israeli occupation was never a main objective. His work was initially directed at the poor, those living in refugee camps and poorer urban areas in the Gaza Strip (Milton-Edwards and Farrell, 2010:31). The network of Islamic charities operating under the flag of the Mujamma provided health care, education and spiritual guidance to the people forgotten by the established elite in the 1970s. But there is also another side to this welfare-provider; his goal to Islamize Gazan society throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as well as his founding of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, individual terror cells that have attacked Israeli and Palestinian nationalist forces from 1990 until today. These Qassam Brigades are now

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known as the military wing of Hamas, although set up as individual cells sponsored by foreign sources through Yassin’s extensive network in the Arab World (Milton-Edwards and Farrell, 2010:116-117).

4.2 Opportunity and Mobilizing Structures

The political opportunity structures of diminishing traditional elites, rekindling violence between Israel and various Palestinian factions and socio-economic factors are what made Hamas known as a predominantly violent organization. The first of these political opportunity structures is the fact that the traditional elites that had ruled the territories since 1948 were becoming old men, and were getting caught up by a youth bulge and an enormous group of educated youngsters coming out of university without any chance of getting a job at their level of education (Gunning, 2009:36-37). The youth leaders of the Brotherhood had more radical ideas and were more militant than the conservative, cautious leadership of the organization under Yassin, whose social program took precedence over armed resistance. Hamas’ separation from the Brotherhood was a result of this growing rift between the older and younger leaders, the latter of which were ‘allowed’ to create a military wing, as long as it did not bear the name and reputation of the Brotherhood (Gunning, 2009:38; Robinson, 1997:144-50). As Hamas and its ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, individual cells of young fighters, gained a reputation and started to outshine the Brotherhood within the world of Islamism, the traditional elites and their predominantly social agenda moved more to the background, even though the institutions that provided for those people in refugee camps and poor urban areas remained mostly intact (Gunning, 2009:38-40). In this process, the opportunity structure for Hamas to move to the foreground and gain more support widened, paving the way throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s for the position they have today as the undisputed ruling party in the Gaza Strip.

The second POS for Hamas to become a power player in the Gaza Strip and within the world of Islamism is the first Intifada. Starting at the end of 1987, the violence between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip grew more intense once again. Angry about the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by Israel after the 1967 war 20 years earlier and their deteriorating living conditions under occupation, young Palestinians went to the streets and got into fights with Israeli military patrols. However, the might of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was overwhelming against the stones and kitchen-knives of the protesters. In the words of Yassin: “We defend ourselves with nothing but stones while Israel rains bullets and missiles on us…and still the West calls our resistance unjustified violence” (Sheikh Ahmad

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Yassin, author interview by Milton-Edwards and Farrell, Gaza City, 11-07-2002). Eventually, the cells of youngsters separated themselves from the Brotherhood, creating the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas (Milton-Edwards and Farrell, 2010:63). Also, for Palestinians who wanted to join an organization fighting for an independent Palestine, Hamas was becoming one of the few options. The PLO was declining as its leaders and most of their cadres were exiled to several neighbouring countries, and resided in Tunis after the 1982 war between Israel and Lebanon until the conclusion of the Madrid and Oslo negotiations in 1993-1994.

As a third and final POS, the establishment and growth of Hamas is to be seen in the light of various political and socio-economic reasons. Originally a rural area, the Gaza Strip profited from the economic boom of the 1970s with increasing food prices and export incomes (UNCTAD, 1994:Chapter II). However, being an occupied territory had the consequence of dependence on Israel to allow economic growth and export. As the agricultural economy was slowly replaced by a wage labour economy, the slowing of economic growth caused by a recession during the first half of the 1980s and Israel’s policy of de-development of the OPT in order to protect its own economy, caused many young Palestinians to be educated and unemployed (Gunning, 2009:34). They entered university in the 1970s’ boom, only to find themselves looking for a job in the 1980s’ bust. Israel limited agricultural exports into its own country but also exports to Jordan, Lebanon and other Arab countries in the region, creating a fall in exports of almost 50 % from the period of 1971-1981 to the period of 1981-1988 (UNCTAD, 1994: Chapter II). Through these limitations, an economic and food crisis emerged throughout the OPT but was especially felt in the Gazan economy, which was in the middle of turning away its economy from agriculture, while not being able to create enough jobs for those young Palestinians graduating from universities. These political opportunity structures paved the way for Hamas to quickly gain support, new members and eventually become the ruling elite in the Gaza Strip.

Although established as a social welfare and eventually a military organization, during the 1990s Hamas’ political engagement started growing. The rules for elections for numerous representative and executive bodies in the OPT prevented them from getting a lot of seats or power in various institutions, but it was clear that the people in the OPT were susceptible for Hamas’ message (Knudsen, 2005:1382). The years between the establishment of Hamas in 1987 and 2006, the year they won an overwhelming victory in the elections for the Palestinian Authority’s legislative body, have seen numerous internal debates over the direction the organization should take. Different factions have different perspectives on how to develop the

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organization, with some focussed on expanding the network of charitable, humanitarian organizations, others on fighting the occupation with military means. While growing as an organization and with the increase of support among the population, Hamas also became a political actor, with a separate but affiliated political party participating first in some local elections leading up to their participation in the general election of 2006. The emergence of this political wing and the subsequent take-over of political power in the Gaza Strip in 2007 has added a third layer to the already conflicting sides of the organization, between institutionalized charity and humanitarian activities and military struggle (Gunning, 2009:52-53). The military takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas in 2007 was legitimized by them as the result of the electoral victory in the 2006 elections and the subsequent disillusionment of Fatah remaining in power with the support of the Israelis and their western allies. Hamas then used the existing PA infrastructure in Gaza to seize control and start ruling immediately, as they thought was their right. Social Movement Theory can explain the conditions that were necessary for the establishment and growth of the Gaza Chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood into a multi-faceted organization with political, military and social goals. In the next section, we shall see what is left of Yassin’s original network and with what he aimed at accomplishing: helping his fellow Gazans build a better life for themselves, as he claimed himself.

4.3 Analysis

What then, is left from the Mujamma network that Yassin and his associates built in the years leading up to the establishment of Hamas and the beginning of its armed resistance? In other words, are education, health care, spiritual guidance and other social service provision still an important facet of the organization? It is estimated that Hamas has a budget range of $40 to $70 million (Knudsen, 2005:1382; ICG 2003:7-13). Around 85% of this budget comes from mostly religious benefactors in the wealthy Gulf countries, while the rest is accumulated locally through endowments and alms as part of the religious duty of Muslims (Knudsen, 2005:1382). According to the researchers of the International Crisis Group, almost this entire budget is spent on the strengthening and maintenance of Hamas’ extensive social welfare network (ICG, 2003:13). The same report does issue some warnings about Hamas’ social infrastructure, mainly that the financing claimed to be spent on social programs flows over towards the military wing and that Hamas’ affiliated charities and social welfare organizations are being used to indoctrinate youngsters into joining the organization (Roy, 2011:3; ICG 2003). Their main issue with the affiliation between Hamas’ social welfare infrastructure and the Qassam Brigades is

Social welfare provision by violent, non-governmental, islamist organizations : the case of Hamas and Hezbollah