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Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance 2022
by Tareq Baconi (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (101)
Part of: Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures (51 books)
Hamas rules Gaza and the lives of the two million Palestinians who live there. Demonized in media and policy debates, various accusations and critical assumptions have been used to justify extreme military action against Hamas. The reality of Hamas is, of course, far more complex. Neither a democratic political party nor a terrorist group, Hamas is a multifaceted liberation organization, one rooted in the nationalist claims of the Palestinian people. Hamas Contained offers the first history of the group on its own terms. Drawing on interviews with organization leaders, as well as publications from the group, Tareq Baconi maps Hamas's thirty-year transition from fringe military resistance towards governance. He breaks new ground in questioning the conventional understanding of Hamas and shows how the movement's ideology ultimately threatens the Palestinian struggle and, inadvertently, its own legitimacy. Hamas's reliance on armed struggle as a means of liberation has failed in the face of a relentless occupation designed to fragment the Palestinian people. As Baconi argues, under Israel's approach of managing rather than resolving the conflict, Hamas's demand for Palestinian sovereignty has effectively been neutralized by its containment in Gaza. This dynamic has perpetuated a deadlock characterized by its brutality-and one that has made permissible the collective punishment of millions of Palestinian civilians.
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"Groundbreaking, rigorously researched, and strikingly fair-minded, Hamas Contained is essential reading to understand Middle East politics today. Tareq Baconi weaves a counter-narrative, upending common assumptions about the controversial Islamic organization."-Avi Shlaim, author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World "Hamas Contained is by far the best book on this vital topic. Meticulous and deeply sourced, this is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in Hamas, Palestine, Israel, or Islamist political movements anywhere in the Middle East."-Rashid Khalidi, author of Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East "Tareq Baconi has written a detailed and thoughtful book about the history of Hamas and its effect on the Palestinian national movement. Avoiding black and white simplifications, Baconi puts the story of Hamas within its proper context-the tragedy of an occupation."-Marwan Muasher, Vice President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "Judicious and impartial, this important work adds nuance to the portrait of one of the Middle East's most divisive players."-Publishers Weekly "[Hamas's] status as an important component of the Palestinian struggle against Israel is ably chronicled by Tareq Baconi in Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance... [It] is well worth reading even today because it is thorough and comprehensive in scale and scope."-Sheldon Kirshner, The Times of Israel "[Hamas Contained] probably gives the fullest background to the current situation in Gaza."-Duncan Bowie, Chartist "The book's main virtue is its chronological format. It covers Hamas's relatively brief existence - compared, say, to the much longer lifespan of the Muslim Brotherhood from which it derived - year by year, thereby giving the reader a fairly clear sense of how Hamas's perceptions and strategies have changed over time, particularly after Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005."-Steven Simon, Survival "Baconi's book remains invaluable. It is of crucial importance for anyone interested in understanding Hamas [and] the Palestinian struggle today."-Joseph Daher, Spectre
About the Author
Tareq Baconi is a former Senior Analyst for Israel/Palestine and Economics of Conflict at the International Crisis Group, based in Ramallah. He serves as the president of the board of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network and the book review editor for the Journal of Palestine Studies. His writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, New York Times, and Washington Post, among others.
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CONTENTS
Preface
1. The Rise of Islamic Palestinian Nationalism
2. Military Resistance Comes Undone
3. The Politics of Resistance
4. Strangling Hamas
5. Institutionalizing the Division
6. Regional Misfortunes
Conclusion: Containment and Pacification
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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Publisher : STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Publication date : 1 August 2022
Print length : 382 pages
==
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Pam
122 reviews22 followers
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January 30, 2019
I read this book because I know of no other that sets out to try to explain, in an objective way, the evolution of Hamas and the points of view/motivations of its key "shapers" over time. Every other resource available is presented from a biased perspective. That perspective is usually uniformly negative (from someone who lives in Gaza and isn't happy with what Hamas has achieved, or not, on a personal level, or from Israelis/others who see them only as terrorists). But sometimes it is overly romanticized--typically among activists. Baconi avoids both traps and simply tries to both provide a nuanced record of what actually happened and why, as well the thinking behind decisions, in the words of Hamas decision makers. Unfortunately, the latter is only through quotations from websites and publications. I really hoped Baconi could have supplemented this material with personal interviews that also would have added a human dimension.
HOWEVER, the final chapter of the book makes up for those lapses. Baconi brings it all together with a truly insightful analysis that gives all parties their due. And I now have a degree of appreciation and respect for what Hamas has tried to achieve and why. That's not to say I am a cheerleader, but rather I have a deeper understanding. And that's what I had hoped for.
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None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel
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December 13, 2025
Let's take the publisher's own words in praise of the book and exchange four of them. Would you treat this version as an honest serious work?
Here's the text with those substitutions made:
Nazis rule Berlin and the lives of millions of Germans who live there. Demonized in media and policy debates, various accusations and critical assumptions have been used to justify extreme military action against Nazis. The reality of the Nazis is, of course, far more complex. Neither a democratic political party nor a terrorist group, the Nazis are a multifaceted liberation organization, one rooted in the nationalist claims of the German people. "Nazis Contained" offers the first history of the group on its own terms. Drawing on interviews with genocidal organization leaders, as well as racist publications from the group, Tareq Baconi maps the Nazis' thirty-year transition from fringe military resistance towards governance. He breaks new ground in questioning the conventional understanding of Nazis and shows how the movement's ideology ultimately threatens the German struggle and, inadvertently, its own legitimacy. Nazis's reliance on armed struggle as a means of liberation has failed in the face of a relentless occupation by the Jews designed to fragment the German people. As Baconi argues, under the Jewish approach of managing rather than resolving the conflict, Nazis's demand for German sovereignty has effectively been neutralized by its containment in Berlin. This dynamic has perpetuated a deadlock characterized by its brutality―and one that has made permissible the collective punishment of millions of German civilians.
Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures series has done it again! Another hit! A truly wonderful apologist contribution to genocidal antisemitic literature. Today only, buy this book and get a copy of Mein Kampf in Arabic, the same one used in UNRWA schools for free! Courtesy of Greta's cruiselines.
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Sean
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December 25, 2023
I read this after listening to Baconi’s excellent interview on the Dig. The book is great, notable for its serious treatment of Hamas as a social and resistance movement. It’s basically a history of Palestine since the first Intifada through the lens of the Hamas experience.
From the conclusion:
Hamas neither espouses an ideology of global terror nor does it seek to create a transnational Islamic caliphate.87 It is a movement that utilizes Islamic discourse to deal with contemporary ailments and that is geographically tethered to the specific political and social environment of the occupation.
In that sense, Hamas is akin to a religious and armed anticolonial resistance movement. Understanding Hamas’s political drivers and motivations, however, would complicate Israel’s efforts to present the movement as little more than a terrorist organization committed to its destruction. Such a portrayal has been extremely useful for Israel on several levels. First, it excuses and justifies the forceful marginalization of a democratically elected government and the collective punishment inherent in besieging two million Palestinians. As the preceding chapters have shown, operations carried out by the Israeli army against Gaza are then understood as a legitimate form of self-defense, most often preemptive. For each of the three major operations of the last decade—Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, and Protective Edge—a clear pattern has emerged whereby Israeli provocations, often after Palestinian unity deals are signed, trigger opportunities for Israel to claim self- defense and launch spectacular attacks on Gaza. By preventing unity and containing Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israel has effectively cultivated a fig leaf that legitimates its policies toward the strip. Rather than positioning Gaza’s marginalization as a result of Hamas, it is perhaps more accurate to state that Hamas has become marginalized as a result of Gaza, as evident in its failure to overcome its entrenchment there.
Second, with Hamas’s dismissal as a terrorist organization, the thread linking the early days of Palestinian nationalism, from al-Qassam to the PLO and through to Hamas, gets eclipsed. Central to this continuity from fedayeen to “Islamic terrorists” are key Palestinian political demands that remain unmet and unanswered and that form the basis of the Palestinian struggle: achieving self-determination; dealing with the festering injustice of the refugee problem created by Israel’s establishment in 1948; and affirming the right to use armed struggle to resist an illegal occupation.90 In this light, Hamas is the contemporary manifestation of demands that began a century ago. Israeli efforts to continue sidelining these demands, addressing them solely from a military lens, have persisted. From antiguerilla warfare to its own War on Terror, Israel merely employs contemporary language to wage a century-old war.
Israel does not have a Hamas problem; it has a Palestine problem. (226-227)
Some of the aspects that stood out in particular with regard to Hamas were:
- Principled efforts at unity even through betrayals and extremely dire situations
- Principled stand against the Assad regime even against allies like Iran, leading to severed funding streams in the midst of catastrophe
- The experiments in grappling with the severe perils of “governance” by a resistance movement
- Unjustifiable violence against other parts of the Palestinian movement, sometimes even under the cover of Israeli bombardments like in 2014
- Short term moves toward pacification to avert humanitarian catastrophe having longer-term consequences
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Doug
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ReadNovember 8, 2023
Highly, highly recommend reading this. In addition to being extremely informative it also provides crucial, and fair minded, context, criticism, and nuance about and of a political entity that is persistently labelled as "terrorist," at a time where all efforts towards true understanding are all but thrown out the window, along with any effort to remember the distant, and recent, past in the region. Truly depressing to know this book was written in 2017 and ends by suggesting that another conflagration looms on the horizon as long as the blockade of Gaza persists and the fracturing of Palestinian nationalism continues.
To quote the books conclusion:
"Israeli leader consistently present Hamas as nothing more than an irrational and bloodthirsty actor seeking Israel's destruction. This framing is part of a longer history of sidestepping the political concerns that animate Palestinian nationalism by labelling movements such as Hamas and the PLO as terrorist organizations. In Hamas' case, it's Islamic nature facilitates a greater conflation of its actions with groups such as al-Qaeda."
"Instead of deterrence, since 2007 Israel's policy toward Hamas has taken the form of what Israel's security establishment refers to as "mowing the lawn." this entails the intermittent use of military power to undercut any growth by the resistance factions in Gaza. Through three major wars and countless incursions...Israel has used military might to break the spirit of resistance in Gaza, pacify Hamas, and work toward deterrence. The result is that Israel and Hamas are now engaged in the process of maintaining an equilibrium of belligerency...Both Hamas and Israel will continue to focus on short-term survival in a longer-term battle, where political gains can be reaped from intermittent confrontations on the battlefield. This status quo allows Hamas to sustain its power and Israel to maintain its colonization of the West Bank and its stranglehold on the Gaza Stip, where besieged Palestinians continue to pay the highest price of all."
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Randall Wallace
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August 26, 2024
Question: “Why is terrorism limited to subnational groups of clandestine agents if states (like the US and Israel) are clearly the BIGGEST perpetrators of organized violence against civilians?” Or as Noam asks, why is terrorism defined as what THEY do, but never what WE do? And who has the moral high ground - the illegal occupier/aggressor? or those who resist illegal occupation/aggression? Tareq calls this “the aggression of an oppressive occupation on an unarmed population”. In response, Hamas has insisted that to end the violence, the occupation itself has to be dismantled.
Before the October 7th attack, Israel believed “Palestinians would acquiesce indefinitely to their imprisonment, that Israel could maintain – and expand – its colonial regime at no cost to Israeli society.” The real shock of October 7th (aside from the fact that Guns R Us Israel took eight hours to get its act together in a state only the size of New Jersey) was it shattered the illusion that “Israeli apartheid can persist without cost.” And that shoving Palestinians illegally into Bantustans while trapped in a total sea/land/air blockade still wouldn’t give Israel “peace & security”. In response to October 7th, Biden called Hamas “pure evil”. If Tibetans had done the same thing to their Chinese occupiers, Biden would have been encouraging them to further resist THEIR occupation. Our violent Revolutionary War started when Britian was treating us colonists MUCH better than Israel does the Palestinians.
Tareq says the Palestinians have long been merely “seeking to overturn a regime bent on their erasure.” They have no hopes of statehood or sovereignty and Hamas knew that being only administrative meant “beautifying a Bantustan within Israel’s apartheid system” – basically making one’s oppressor look good, and ensuring future oppression. Many Palestinians had come to “describe their confinement as a slow death.” In asymmetric struggles, all the occupied have to do is avoid losing – an easier task than for the occupier which has to maintain force, deterrence and aggression and the funds to pay for such nasty-assed constant oppression.
Suicide Bombing Period: Early Hamas involved suicide bombing which in response in 1996 brought in a rightwing Likud and Netanyahu government. In 1997, the US labelled Hamas a terrorist organization. Yet it was clear that Hamas was using terror to fight terror. Thomas Suarez in his book shows how Zionist terror groups like Irgun, Lehi, Stern Gang and Haganah collectively killed more civilians before 1948 than Hamas has done to date, but terrorism committed by the US and its allies doesn’t count in the US if you are a true hypocrite & moral coward. Hamas saw suicide bombings back then as a response to “mitigate the asymmetry of power”. The bombings led to no one riding Israeli buses and Israeli shopping centers were suddenly “not what they used to be.” But also at this time Israel was assassinating Hamas leaders which couldn’t possibly help quell the violence by the occupied.
Hamas Wins the Election: One of the reasons Hamas won their election was because Palestinians felt Fatah “was a corrupt party that was subservient to Israel.” That same election had a whopping 77% voter turnout, and Jimmy Carter called it a model for democracy. Hamas official Musa abu Marzouq explains, “we are a government under occupation.” Yet to Hamas, democracy was still not a substitute for resistance to occupation. Israel’s response to the Hamas election was “a form of collective punishment against civilians to penalize them for their democratic choice (Noam says the same).” You are not supposed to know that Hamas refused to implement sharia law in Gaza, such knowledge would only humanize them.
The Second Intifada: Israel’s response was akin to the US War on Terror – hey, let’s start a war we can’t possibly win! Question by Rantissi: “Why is there no talk of the crimes of Jewish terrorism? (p.49)”
The Tunnels: Think about it – the Hamas tunnels were Hamas’s way to mitigate the land/ air/sea Israeli blockade – just create a tunnel economy. “By 2008, there were more than five hundred tunnels snaking beneath the Rafah border bringing in a monthly revenue of about $36 million to Hamas.” By 2011, the tunnel trade had changed Gaza’s recovery time from 80 years down to 5. That doesn’t mean the tunnel trade was sustainable because Gaza still could not export, develop “lasting industry or a manufacturing base.” In 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi becomes Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
Israel’s Wall stole more than 10% of the West Banks land, of course was illegal, and intentionally limited Palestinian movement including cutting villages in half, and allowing Jewish only roads for “the chosen”. Countless checkpoints soon imposed “a suffocating system of closures” to restrict the Palestinian economy (see Sara Roy’s Gaza de-development book) as thousands of Palestinian homes were razed to make way for the oppressive structure.
By 2017, Gazans were getting 2-3 hours of electricity per day as opposed to 4 back in 2014. Hospitals had to rely on emergency generators, and water treatment plants were no longer functional. Life had become so unsustainable for Gazans that millions of US liberals rushed to action, and quickly did nothing to object. Give me a progressive any day. Israel since 1948, has waged more than twelve wars on Gaza; all occupations are illegal but imagine going to war more than 12 times against enclosed people w/o an army, living blockaded behind walls and razor wire with no hope – all thanks to the Zionist settler-colonial project. To add to this delightful comedy, Tareq says in Israel “the phrase ‘Go to Gaza’ is now the popular manner of saying ‘Go to hell’.”
For those who still care about international law and the Golden Rule: “under international law, the blockade amounts to collective punishment and comes at horrific cost to Gaza’s population.” The election of Hamas wasn’t a choice to elect evil, as US politicians paid by AIPAC might say, it was a vote against captured agencies like Fatah that clearly “placed the interests of Western policies in the region above the rights of its people.” Voting for Hamas was voting for “an alternative.” Hamas wrote a second charter which NO US liberal will ever read let alone tell you about, because it sounds perfectly reasonable next to the nasty Likud party charter which no US liberal will ever tell you about. In 2017, Yahya Sinwar got elected to head Gaza’s operations in the Gaza Strip.
So, what is the big difference between al Qaeda and Hamas? Well, “al Qaeda is part of a transnational network that wages a violent struggle against Western hegemony, (while) Hamas adopts armed resistance on a localized front to end an occupation that is deemed illegal by international law.” And clearly al-Qaeda rejects democratic politics while Hamas does not. Biden will never tell you Hamas is NOT trying to establish an Islamic caliphate or endorse global terror. Israel wants you see Hamas ONLY as “a terrorist organization committed to its destruction.” This allows Palestinian collective punishment and political marginalization to stay completely off the US liberal radar.
Tareq reminds us to see “Hamas is the contemporary manifestation of demands that began a century ago.” As your secret Zionist magic Decoder Ring will tell you, “Israel does not have a Hamas problem; it has a Palestinian problem.” When every Palestinian “accidently” lays dead under the bombed rubble, Israel will no longer have a Hamas problem. It will simply have a PR problem.
This was a great book, which I’m super glad I’ve now read. My only gripe was this: those of us who read a lot on Israel/Palestine know that Netanyahu himself financed Hamas for over a decade, so why ON EARTH would the author not mention in a book SPECIFICALLY about the true story of Hamas, which Western media will never tell you about? In fact, The New York Times, CNN, The Times of Israel and Haaretz ALL ran articles on Netanyahu clearly funding Hamas (fact check it yourself) and they are obviously mainstream so why did Tareq decide through intentional omission to take a stand to the RIGHT of our mainstream media outlets? I think it is extremely important, if Biden is going to call Hamas “evil” to ask, “If Hamas is so ‘evil’, then why did Netanyahu personally fund Hamas for over a decade?” Anyway, kudos to the author for writing the good stuff he did write in this book which I enjoyed. As this book amply shows, you are never going to stop resistance to ANY illegal occupation, especially when under international law, not only is your resistance legal, but so is armed resistance.
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Spooky Socialist
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August 30, 2025
Tareq Baconi provides a cogent and sober view of Hamas, dismissing stereotypes of it as a single-minded, terrorist organization committed to the wholesale destruction of Israel. The Hamas of reality, not in the minds of Zionist fearmongers, is far more complex and pragmatic: its immediate goals are a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders (in effect, a two-state solution), its armed resistance is limited to ending the occupation (rather than the transnational terrorism network adopted by al-Qaeda), it has cracked down on Salafi jihadist extremists, refused to implement Sharia Law within Gaza, and safeguarded the principle of armed resistance as a core of Palestinian nationalism. In effect, Hamas is a nationalist, anti-colonial movement that speaks in the rhetoric of Islam, believing its Islamic ideology will prevent it from drifting away from armed struggle and resistance to the occupation—unlike the previous forebearer of Palestinian struggle, the PLO.
Most of the book’s content is a fairly straightforward recounting of Hamas’s history from its own perspective. The history gets somewhat tedious with the most strongest portions of the book undoubtedly being its preface and conclusion. Baconi’s observation that Israel has effectively contained Hamas and turned it into an administrative authority similar to the PA has, of course, been decisively overturned with the events of October 7th. The paradigm of containment, like the occupation’s walls, has been breached and we are living through the history of that breach.
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Scottie
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December 30, 2023
4.5
Amazingly nuanced, fair, and objective. I learned a lot!
“Hamas is akin to a religious and armed anti colonial resistance movement. Understanding Hamas’ political drives and motivations, however, would complicate Israel’s efforts to present the movement as little more than a terrorist organization committed to its destruction. Such a portrayal has been extremely useful for Israel [because it] (1) excuses and justifies the forceful marginalization of a democratically elected government and the collective punishment inherent in besieging two million Palestinians; and (2) [eclipses the thread of] the early days of Palestinian nationalism, from al-Qassam to the PLO and through to Hamas….
Israel does not have a Hamas problem; it has a Palestine problem. (!!!!)
…In other words, the political reality that makes Gaza ‘a hostile entity’ extends beyond that strip of land and animates the Palestinian struggle in its entirety. Gaza is one microcosm, one parcel, of the Palestinian experience. Instead of addressing the reality or engaging with Hamas’ political drives, Israel has adopted a military approach that defines Hamas solely as a terrorist organization. This depoliticizes and decontextualizes the movement, giving credence to the persistent “politicide” of Palestinian nationalism, Israel’s process of erasing the political ideology animating the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. This approach has allowed successive Israeli governments to avoid taking a position on the demands that have been upheld by Palestinians since before the creation of the State of Israel.”
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Lama Hussein
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November 12, 2023
"Gaza is one microcosm, one parcel, of the Palestinian experience."
الكتاب عن نشوء وتطور حماس.
مفيد لمن يحاول فهم الكارثة التي في غزة الآن.
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Gubly
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ReadAugust 2, 2025
For anyone who wants to hear hamas’ side of the story. Which I did. I just wish the writing wasn’t so lifeless.
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Luke
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August 17, 2025
On February 25, 1994, an American Jewish settler named Baruch Goldstein walked into the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron during prayer time. Standing behind the rows of kneeling figures in front of him, Goldstein opened fire. Within minutes, twenty nine Muslim worshippers [sic] had been killed and close to one hundred injured. [...] Forty-one days after the shooting, once the time allotted for Muslim ritual mourning had been respected, a member of Hamas approached a bus stop in Afula, a city in northern Israel. Standing next to fellow passengers, the man detonated a suicide vest, killing seven Israelis. This was on April 6, 1994, a day that marked Hamas's first lethal suicide bombing in Israel.I've been biding my time for years now, waiting until the right book with enough technical chops and skin in the game came around to talk both politics and political history in a world where Islamic democracy is murder but Christian oligarchy is the land of the free and home of the brave.
Israel does not have a Hamas problem; it has a Palestine problem.You see, I'm sick and tired of bleeding hearts throwing up their trauma and not citing their sources while raking in millions, if not billions, of settler state tax money for their military industrial complex test labs.
Hamas's thinking was grounded in a revolutionary's mind-set, questioning why past policies enacted by the PLO had to persist in light of the most recent democratic election. Perhaps more importantly, leaders argued that the arguments were redundant given Israel's chronic failure to meet its own responsibility.This history goes into intensive and unflinching detail about the history of Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah, also known as Hamas, and the ways in which it has both acted and been acted against on the broader scale of anticolonial revolutionary movements, post-WWII ethnic migration and forcible displacement, and the US as the biggest bully on the 'might makes right' playground.
For Hamas, before talk of statehood and governance came talk of unity and liberation. [...] International diplomatic engagement with the former and isolation and starvation of the latter communicated quite clearly what concessions Palestinian political parties needed to abide by to gain entry into the international community. As Hamas's political overtures had been ignored during its years in office, the movement saw through its geographic "liberate" base in Gaza an opportunity to implement its own defiant government of resistance that would safeguard what it viewed as the purest principles of the Palestinian struggle.For might does make right, over and over and over again, and the headlines being mewled and puked today are the ones being spewed out in 1994, in 2000, in 2006 and 2014, to the point that I have say that the violence between Israeli occupation and Palestinian nationality will never cease until either every single last Palestinian is dead or the US turns its back on Israel.
By April 2014, it became increasingly clear that the tireless efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry would fail to produce a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. In a leaked recording of a closed-door meeting, Secretary Kerry warned that Israel risked becoming an "apartheid state" if the US-sponsored peace process failed to produce a two-state reality. (Beaumont, The Guardian, 4/28/14)We are talking about a power play where a single ethnic group that was previously systematically betrayed on every ethical and political front imaginable has been given a carte blanche to do the same to a national group for the last three quarters of a century so that a country that would gladly see the two burn can have its imperial profits and keep its hand clean at the same time.
The American approach was rooted in the belief that Palestinians had voted [in 2006] for change, seeking a less corrupt government than Fatah's, but that they still desired a negotiated peace settlement in the form of a two-state solution, unlike Hamas. In reality, Palestinians had voted Hamas in for a number of reasons, including frustration with Fatah's corruption, resentment at the failed and endless peace talks, Hamas's reliability in providing welfare services, and indeed its defiant rhetoric against the occupation.Because if you think the US gives a single fuck about combating antisemitism or litigating war crimes, I suggest you get your head out of The Book Thief/The Boy in the Striped Pajamas/Washington Post/New York Times mentality and grow up.
With Hamas's takeover, [Gaza Strip] came under absolute internal Palestinian control, as Hamas's government rejected any official engagement with the Israel state. Imposed curfews, home demolitions, and midnight raids by Israel's occupying forces, or by Palestinian security following Israeli orders, were no longer a daily occurrence as they were in the West Bank.At this point, if you're a US citizen, the complete and utter collapse of your government would do a lot more good for the rest of the world, politically as well as environmentally, than you being any sort of status quo-sanctioned hero would.
The Mecca Agreement indicated Hamas's willingness to abide, on a practical level, with the demands of the international community. Rather than acknowledging these concessions, Israel condemned the incoming cabinet. In particular, it denounced its commitment to the right of return through UN Resolution 194, a key demand for Palestinians writ large—not just Hamas. This underscored Israel's unwillingness to deal with certain political aspects that form the core of Palestinian nationalism, not of Hamas's political agenda.All in all, sorry if you came to this review looking for an answer or at least reassurance.
It should be noticed here that many scholars who question Islam's compatibility with democracy have no similar concerns about the compatibility of Israel's explicit Jewish character with its democratic nature, despite the fact that its democratic credentials are strongly by religious preference. (See Gorenberg, The Unmaking of Israel & Yiftachel, Ethnocracy)I'm too busy shoring up for the time liberals decide it's politically pragmatic to legalize the hunting of trans people for sport to tell you that doxing yourself in that Google Form sign up for the next 'big protest' (it's actually a rally when a bunch of people show up and actively refuse to give the government a reason to take them seriously) is going to do anything but get you blacklisted from AI-vetted job applications.
As with past escalations, the assault was portrayed as necessary self-defense against Hamas's consistent aggression, overlooking the movement's effectiveness at restraining rocket fire from Gaza and the violence inherent in the act of the blockade itself.Your best bet is to join a union or mutual aid network and learn how to actually communicate without continually absolving the settler state, but that's certainly not going to get you trending on the algorithm.
While Hamas had embraced the democratic process, it had done so less in the spirit of government and more with the desire to lead the Palestinian struggle. In many respects, this development is the belated outcome of the Oslo Accords. Sidelining the Palestinians in a permanent state of restricted autonomy and curtailing their sovereignty did not in fact lead to their pacification, but rather it sparked a search for alternatives that might sustain the national revolution.By the way, it's still easier for me to legally acquire a gun than to get a proper passport, in case you're wondering why the world is the way it is these days.
As Meshal noted, before the teenagers were kidnapped there was full calm in the West Bank and relative calm in Gaza. He added that this was unnatural given the persistent occupation and Israel's unyielding stranglehold on the strip. Now that the Palestinians had achieved unity, Meshal questioned, a war was suddenly declared? "Are Palestinians just meant to surrender and die a slow death?" he asked, noting that Palestinians were being asked to accept their fate of living under occupation in the West Bank and under blockade in the Gaza Strip with no efforts to resist the status quo.
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이 책의 핵심 문제의식은 “하마스는 어떻게 <저항 조직>에서 <통치 주체>로 이동했는가”, 그리고 “그 이동이 어떻게 ‘가자에 가둬두는 방식의 관리’(containment) 속에서 굳어졌는가”이다. Baconi는 하마스를 단순히 ‘정당’이나 ‘무장단체’라는 한 칸에 넣기보다, 점령과 봉쇄, 팔레스타인 내부 권력구조, 국제적 개입이 맞물린 조건 속에서 전략을 바꿔온 <다층적 해방/저항 조직>으로 그린다. Stanford University Press+1
Publisher : STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Publication date : 1 August 2022
Print length : 382 pages
==
From other countries
José Macaya
4.0 out of 5 stars Un poco largo pero muy bien documentado.
Reviewed in Spain on 16 October 2024
Verified Purchase
Me ha gustado leerlo. He aprendido. Pero la realidad de Gaza y Hamás es recurrente y repetitiva. No hay avances ni nuevas iniciativas. A veces parece que uno está leyendo lo que ya leyó. Bien escrito. Un poco largo pero muy bien documentado. La mitad del libro son notas. Sin duda amplia la visión sobre Hamás respecto de la que no da la prensa actual.
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Alexandru Girescu
5.0 out of 5 stars Good insights on Gaza & Hamas dynamics
Reviewed in the United States on 11 March 2025
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
I've found this book very useful in understanding & following the hands on story of what was unravelling in Gaza among the key actors: Hamas, PLO and Israel.
I recommend it to all interested to get the deeper view on Gaza & Hamas.
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Reem Atalla Habayeb
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 May 2018
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
An excellent and enlightening read ... and an eye opener!
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Gloria F.
5.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly, balanced, insightful
Reviewed in the United States on 24 November 2023
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
Israel's conflicts with Palestinian nationalists have been going on for so long that it's impossible to recall and synthesize what has happened without the help of a skilled historian like Baconi. Furthermore, up until Arafat's death, he was the focus of media attention, even though Hamas was already an important force by the late 1990s. Subsequent mainstream coverage of Hamas has been simplistic. Baconi isn't at all sparing in his criticism of Hamas, but he convincingly analyzes how its leadership perceives its conflicts with Abbas, Israel, and Egypt and how leaders rely on these perceptions to make decisions. More importantly, he clarifies the ways in which Hamas' actions are shaped by international, institutional, and popular forces.
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N
1.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book, awful Amazon service
Reviewed in Spain on 15 October 2024
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
The book is amazing and very insightful to understand the genocide that has been happening for years. However, I have paid for the updated version with the statements about October the 7th, and for the second time they have sent me the old version. So very, very bad Amazon service.
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Desertwriter
5.0 out of 5 stars INVALUABLE history of ORIGINS and more!
Reviewed in the United States on 11 December 2023
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
insightful and well written history of the origins of Hamas that everyone, and especially Americans who are collaborating with israeli govt to 'wipe out' Hamas ought to know and understand...the REASON for there even being a "Hamas" UNTIL AND UNLESS it is grasped there will be no ending of RESISTANCE...no matter the lies, confabulations or mythology devised to CONVINCE a gullible public, there is NEVER EVER ANY POSSIBLE justification for MASSACRE of CIVILIAN POPULATION ANYWHERE ANYTIME to allegedly "get the bad guys /i.e., kill resistance. UNTIL WE FULLY UNDERSTAND THIS IT WILL CONTINUE.. THIS must end. read the book and find out the how's and why...Author was interviewed on Christiane Amanpour PBS last month.
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Yara
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read for those seeking to understand rather than affirm ...
Reviewed in the United States on 19 May 2018
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
It is a unique book for those trying to understanding Hamas, it’s political role and influencers. The book studies Hamas as a Non state actor, its rise, ideology and mean of resistance with a focus on how internal Palestinian resistance was shifting, the turning points, geopolitical context, while focusing on the role of Israel in containing and managing the Palestinian occupation rather than resolving it. A great read for those seeking to understand rather than affirm a preset belief.
21 people found this helpful
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NLA
5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful and Essential Read on the Evolution of Hamas
Reviewed in the United States on 21 May 2018
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
An incredibly thoughtful and informative read on the complex historical evolution of Hamas. Through detailed research woven into a compelling narrative, Baconi's insights into what has formed the reality that Palestinians face today is an important backdrop to understanding whats is currently unfolding on the ground.
8 people found this helpful
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TH
5.0 out of 5 stars Critical reading
Reviewed in the United States on 18 June 2018
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
An insightful and meticulously researched analysis of Hamas. Anyone interested in Palestine/Israel and the history of Palestinian resistance should read this.
7 people found this helpful
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suefein
1.0 out of 5 stars This book is biased. It should not have the Stanford imprint.
Reviewed in the United States on 24 December 2023
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
"Hamas Contained". is a very biased book. It should not have the Stanford imprint. I know, because I have been following the Middle East since the 1960s. The Author speaks of Jewish manipulation during WW! & WWII. He never admitted that there was a Holocaust during WW II. Me, personally I think that there should be a Palestinian state. He never mentions Arik Sharon, a War Criminal, who instigated the bloodbath at 2 refugee camps in north Lebanon. He only mentioned that Rabin said: break their bones. Not that Rabin was very pro a 2 state solution. Rabin made mistakes but he was an honorable man. I don't want to finish Such a Biased book. FYI the Muslim Brotherhood was stamped out of Egypt by the current Egyptian dictator Al-Sisi. Bottom line: Hama Contained is a very biased book. I don't recommend it AT ALL.
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Pam
122 reviews22 followers
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January 30, 2019
I read this book because I know of no other that sets out to try to explain, in an objective way, the evolution of Hamas and the points of view/motivations of its key "shapers" over time. Every other resource available is presented from a biased perspective. That perspective is usually uniformly negative (from someone who lives in Gaza and isn't happy with what Hamas has achieved, or not, on a personal level, or from Israelis/others who see them only as terrorists). But sometimes it is overly romanticized--typically among activists. Baconi avoids both traps and simply tries to both provide a nuanced record of what actually happened and why, as well the thinking behind decisions, in the words of Hamas decision makers. Unfortunately, the latter is only through quotations from websites and publications. I really hoped Baconi could have supplemented this material with personal interviews that also would have added a human dimension.
HOWEVER, the final chapter of the book makes up for those lapses. Baconi brings it all together with a truly insightful analysis that gives all parties their due. And I now have a degree of appreciation and respect for what Hamas has tried to achieve and why. That's not to say I am a cheerleader, but rather I have a deeper understanding. And that's what I had hoped for.
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None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel
874 reviews176 followers
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December 13, 2025
Let's take the publisher's own words in praise of the book and exchange four of them. Would you treat this version as an honest serious work?
Here's the text with those substitutions made:
Nazis rule Berlin and the lives of millions of Germans who live there. Demonized in media and policy debates, various accusations and critical assumptions have been used to justify extreme military action against Nazis. The reality of the Nazis is, of course, far more complex. Neither a democratic political party nor a terrorist group, the Nazis are a multifaceted liberation organization, one rooted in the nationalist claims of the German people. "Nazis Contained" offers the first history of the group on its own terms. Drawing on interviews with genocidal organization leaders, as well as racist publications from the group, Tareq Baconi maps the Nazis' thirty-year transition from fringe military resistance towards governance. He breaks new ground in questioning the conventional understanding of Nazis and shows how the movement's ideology ultimately threatens the German struggle and, inadvertently, its own legitimacy. Nazis's reliance on armed struggle as a means of liberation has failed in the face of a relentless occupation by the Jews designed to fragment the German people. As Baconi argues, under the Jewish approach of managing rather than resolving the conflict, Nazis's demand for German sovereignty has effectively been neutralized by its containment in Berlin. This dynamic has perpetuated a deadlock characterized by its brutality―and one that has made permissible the collective punishment of millions of German civilians.
Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures series has done it again! Another hit! A truly wonderful apologist contribution to genocidal antisemitic literature. Today only, buy this book and get a copy of Mein Kampf in Arabic, the same one used in UNRWA schools for free! Courtesy of Greta's cruiselines.
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Sean
86 reviews26 followers
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December 25, 2023
I read this after listening to Baconi’s excellent interview on the Dig. The book is great, notable for its serious treatment of Hamas as a social and resistance movement. It’s basically a history of Palestine since the first Intifada through the lens of the Hamas experience.
From the conclusion:
Hamas neither espouses an ideology of global terror nor does it seek to create a transnational Islamic caliphate.87 It is a movement that utilizes Islamic discourse to deal with contemporary ailments and that is geographically tethered to the specific political and social environment of the occupation.
In that sense, Hamas is akin to a religious and armed anticolonial resistance movement. Understanding Hamas’s political drivers and motivations, however, would complicate Israel’s efforts to present the movement as little more than a terrorist organization committed to its destruction. Such a portrayal has been extremely useful for Israel on several levels. First, it excuses and justifies the forceful marginalization of a democratically elected government and the collective punishment inherent in besieging two million Palestinians. As the preceding chapters have shown, operations carried out by the Israeli army against Gaza are then understood as a legitimate form of self-defense, most often preemptive. For each of the three major operations of the last decade—Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, and Protective Edge—a clear pattern has emerged whereby Israeli provocations, often after Palestinian unity deals are signed, trigger opportunities for Israel to claim self- defense and launch spectacular attacks on Gaza. By preventing unity and containing Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israel has effectively cultivated a fig leaf that legitimates its policies toward the strip. Rather than positioning Gaza’s marginalization as a result of Hamas, it is perhaps more accurate to state that Hamas has become marginalized as a result of Gaza, as evident in its failure to overcome its entrenchment there.
Second, with Hamas’s dismissal as a terrorist organization, the thread linking the early days of Palestinian nationalism, from al-Qassam to the PLO and through to Hamas, gets eclipsed. Central to this continuity from fedayeen to “Islamic terrorists” are key Palestinian political demands that remain unmet and unanswered and that form the basis of the Palestinian struggle: achieving self-determination; dealing with the festering injustice of the refugee problem created by Israel’s establishment in 1948; and affirming the right to use armed struggle to resist an illegal occupation.90 In this light, Hamas is the contemporary manifestation of demands that began a century ago. Israeli efforts to continue sidelining these demands, addressing them solely from a military lens, have persisted. From antiguerilla warfare to its own War on Terror, Israel merely employs contemporary language to wage a century-old war.
Israel does not have a Hamas problem; it has a Palestine problem. (226-227)
Some of the aspects that stood out in particular with regard to Hamas were:
- Principled efforts at unity even through betrayals and extremely dire situations
- Principled stand against the Assad regime even against allies like Iran, leading to severed funding streams in the midst of catastrophe
- The experiments in grappling with the severe perils of “governance” by a resistance movement
- Unjustifiable violence against other parts of the Palestinian movement, sometimes even under the cover of Israeli bombardments like in 2014
- Short term moves toward pacification to avert humanitarian catastrophe having longer-term consequences
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Doug
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ReadNovember 8, 2023
Highly, highly recommend reading this. In addition to being extremely informative it also provides crucial, and fair minded, context, criticism, and nuance about and of a political entity that is persistently labelled as "terrorist," at a time where all efforts towards true understanding are all but thrown out the window, along with any effort to remember the distant, and recent, past in the region. Truly depressing to know this book was written in 2017 and ends by suggesting that another conflagration looms on the horizon as long as the blockade of Gaza persists and the fracturing of Palestinian nationalism continues.
To quote the books conclusion:
"Israeli leader consistently present Hamas as nothing more than an irrational and bloodthirsty actor seeking Israel's destruction. This framing is part of a longer history of sidestepping the political concerns that animate Palestinian nationalism by labelling movements such as Hamas and the PLO as terrorist organizations. In Hamas' case, it's Islamic nature facilitates a greater conflation of its actions with groups such as al-Qaeda."
"Instead of deterrence, since 2007 Israel's policy toward Hamas has taken the form of what Israel's security establishment refers to as "mowing the lawn." this entails the intermittent use of military power to undercut any growth by the resistance factions in Gaza. Through three major wars and countless incursions...Israel has used military might to break the spirit of resistance in Gaza, pacify Hamas, and work toward deterrence. The result is that Israel and Hamas are now engaged in the process of maintaining an equilibrium of belligerency...Both Hamas and Israel will continue to focus on short-term survival in a longer-term battle, where political gains can be reaped from intermittent confrontations on the battlefield. This status quo allows Hamas to sustain its power and Israel to maintain its colonization of the West Bank and its stranglehold on the Gaza Stip, where besieged Palestinians continue to pay the highest price of all."
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Randall Wallace
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August 26, 2024
Question: “Why is terrorism limited to subnational groups of clandestine agents if states (like the US and Israel) are clearly the BIGGEST perpetrators of organized violence against civilians?” Or as Noam asks, why is terrorism defined as what THEY do, but never what WE do? And who has the moral high ground - the illegal occupier/aggressor? or those who resist illegal occupation/aggression? Tareq calls this “the aggression of an oppressive occupation on an unarmed population”. In response, Hamas has insisted that to end the violence, the occupation itself has to be dismantled.
Before the October 7th attack, Israel believed “Palestinians would acquiesce indefinitely to their imprisonment, that Israel could maintain – and expand – its colonial regime at no cost to Israeli society.” The real shock of October 7th (aside from the fact that Guns R Us Israel took eight hours to get its act together in a state only the size of New Jersey) was it shattered the illusion that “Israeli apartheid can persist without cost.” And that shoving Palestinians illegally into Bantustans while trapped in a total sea/land/air blockade still wouldn’t give Israel “peace & security”. In response to October 7th, Biden called Hamas “pure evil”. If Tibetans had done the same thing to their Chinese occupiers, Biden would have been encouraging them to further resist THEIR occupation. Our violent Revolutionary War started when Britian was treating us colonists MUCH better than Israel does the Palestinians.
Tareq says the Palestinians have long been merely “seeking to overturn a regime bent on their erasure.” They have no hopes of statehood or sovereignty and Hamas knew that being only administrative meant “beautifying a Bantustan within Israel’s apartheid system” – basically making one’s oppressor look good, and ensuring future oppression. Many Palestinians had come to “describe their confinement as a slow death.” In asymmetric struggles, all the occupied have to do is avoid losing – an easier task than for the occupier which has to maintain force, deterrence and aggression and the funds to pay for such nasty-assed constant oppression.
Suicide Bombing Period: Early Hamas involved suicide bombing which in response in 1996 brought in a rightwing Likud and Netanyahu government. In 1997, the US labelled Hamas a terrorist organization. Yet it was clear that Hamas was using terror to fight terror. Thomas Suarez in his book shows how Zionist terror groups like Irgun, Lehi, Stern Gang and Haganah collectively killed more civilians before 1948 than Hamas has done to date, but terrorism committed by the US and its allies doesn’t count in the US if you are a true hypocrite & moral coward. Hamas saw suicide bombings back then as a response to “mitigate the asymmetry of power”. The bombings led to no one riding Israeli buses and Israeli shopping centers were suddenly “not what they used to be.” But also at this time Israel was assassinating Hamas leaders which couldn’t possibly help quell the violence by the occupied.
Hamas Wins the Election: One of the reasons Hamas won their election was because Palestinians felt Fatah “was a corrupt party that was subservient to Israel.” That same election had a whopping 77% voter turnout, and Jimmy Carter called it a model for democracy. Hamas official Musa abu Marzouq explains, “we are a government under occupation.” Yet to Hamas, democracy was still not a substitute for resistance to occupation. Israel’s response to the Hamas election was “a form of collective punishment against civilians to penalize them for their democratic choice (Noam says the same).” You are not supposed to know that Hamas refused to implement sharia law in Gaza, such knowledge would only humanize them.
The Second Intifada: Israel’s response was akin to the US War on Terror – hey, let’s start a war we can’t possibly win! Question by Rantissi: “Why is there no talk of the crimes of Jewish terrorism? (p.49)”
The Tunnels: Think about it – the Hamas tunnels were Hamas’s way to mitigate the land/ air/sea Israeli blockade – just create a tunnel economy. “By 2008, there were more than five hundred tunnels snaking beneath the Rafah border bringing in a monthly revenue of about $36 million to Hamas.” By 2011, the tunnel trade had changed Gaza’s recovery time from 80 years down to 5. That doesn’t mean the tunnel trade was sustainable because Gaza still could not export, develop “lasting industry or a manufacturing base.” In 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi becomes Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
Israel’s Wall stole more than 10% of the West Banks land, of course was illegal, and intentionally limited Palestinian movement including cutting villages in half, and allowing Jewish only roads for “the chosen”. Countless checkpoints soon imposed “a suffocating system of closures” to restrict the Palestinian economy (see Sara Roy’s Gaza de-development book) as thousands of Palestinian homes were razed to make way for the oppressive structure.
By 2017, Gazans were getting 2-3 hours of electricity per day as opposed to 4 back in 2014. Hospitals had to rely on emergency generators, and water treatment plants were no longer functional. Life had become so unsustainable for Gazans that millions of US liberals rushed to action, and quickly did nothing to object. Give me a progressive any day. Israel since 1948, has waged more than twelve wars on Gaza; all occupations are illegal but imagine going to war more than 12 times against enclosed people w/o an army, living blockaded behind walls and razor wire with no hope – all thanks to the Zionist settler-colonial project. To add to this delightful comedy, Tareq says in Israel “the phrase ‘Go to Gaza’ is now the popular manner of saying ‘Go to hell’.”
For those who still care about international law and the Golden Rule: “under international law, the blockade amounts to collective punishment and comes at horrific cost to Gaza’s population.” The election of Hamas wasn’t a choice to elect evil, as US politicians paid by AIPAC might say, it was a vote against captured agencies like Fatah that clearly “placed the interests of Western policies in the region above the rights of its people.” Voting for Hamas was voting for “an alternative.” Hamas wrote a second charter which NO US liberal will ever read let alone tell you about, because it sounds perfectly reasonable next to the nasty Likud party charter which no US liberal will ever tell you about. In 2017, Yahya Sinwar got elected to head Gaza’s operations in the Gaza Strip.
So, what is the big difference between al Qaeda and Hamas? Well, “al Qaeda is part of a transnational network that wages a violent struggle against Western hegemony, (while) Hamas adopts armed resistance on a localized front to end an occupation that is deemed illegal by international law.” And clearly al-Qaeda rejects democratic politics while Hamas does not. Biden will never tell you Hamas is NOT trying to establish an Islamic caliphate or endorse global terror. Israel wants you see Hamas ONLY as “a terrorist organization committed to its destruction.” This allows Palestinian collective punishment and political marginalization to stay completely off the US liberal radar.
Tareq reminds us to see “Hamas is the contemporary manifestation of demands that began a century ago.” As your secret Zionist magic Decoder Ring will tell you, “Israel does not have a Hamas problem; it has a Palestinian problem.” When every Palestinian “accidently” lays dead under the bombed rubble, Israel will no longer have a Hamas problem. It will simply have a PR problem.
This was a great book, which I’m super glad I’ve now read. My only gripe was this: those of us who read a lot on Israel/Palestine know that Netanyahu himself financed Hamas for over a decade, so why ON EARTH would the author not mention in a book SPECIFICALLY about the true story of Hamas, which Western media will never tell you about? In fact, The New York Times, CNN, The Times of Israel and Haaretz ALL ran articles on Netanyahu clearly funding Hamas (fact check it yourself) and they are obviously mainstream so why did Tareq decide through intentional omission to take a stand to the RIGHT of our mainstream media outlets? I think it is extremely important, if Biden is going to call Hamas “evil” to ask, “If Hamas is so ‘evil’, then why did Netanyahu personally fund Hamas for over a decade?” Anyway, kudos to the author for writing the good stuff he did write in this book which I enjoyed. As this book amply shows, you are never going to stop resistance to ANY illegal occupation, especially when under international law, not only is your resistance legal, but so is armed resistance.
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Spooky Socialist
57 reviews181 followers
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August 30, 2025
Tareq Baconi provides a cogent and sober view of Hamas, dismissing stereotypes of it as a single-minded, terrorist organization committed to the wholesale destruction of Israel. The Hamas of reality, not in the minds of Zionist fearmongers, is far more complex and pragmatic: its immediate goals are a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders (in effect, a two-state solution), its armed resistance is limited to ending the occupation (rather than the transnational terrorism network adopted by al-Qaeda), it has cracked down on Salafi jihadist extremists, refused to implement Sharia Law within Gaza, and safeguarded the principle of armed resistance as a core of Palestinian nationalism. In effect, Hamas is a nationalist, anti-colonial movement that speaks in the rhetoric of Islam, believing its Islamic ideology will prevent it from drifting away from armed struggle and resistance to the occupation—unlike the previous forebearer of Palestinian struggle, the PLO.
Most of the book’s content is a fairly straightforward recounting of Hamas’s history from its own perspective. The history gets somewhat tedious with the most strongest portions of the book undoubtedly being its preface and conclusion. Baconi’s observation that Israel has effectively contained Hamas and turned it into an administrative authority similar to the PA has, of course, been decisively overturned with the events of October 7th. The paradigm of containment, like the occupation’s walls, has been breached and we are living through the history of that breach.
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Scottie
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December 30, 2023
4.5
Amazingly nuanced, fair, and objective. I learned a lot!
“Hamas is akin to a religious and armed anti colonial resistance movement. Understanding Hamas’ political drives and motivations, however, would complicate Israel’s efforts to present the movement as little more than a terrorist organization committed to its destruction. Such a portrayal has been extremely useful for Israel [because it] (1) excuses and justifies the forceful marginalization of a democratically elected government and the collective punishment inherent in besieging two million Palestinians; and (2) [eclipses the thread of] the early days of Palestinian nationalism, from al-Qassam to the PLO and through to Hamas….
Israel does not have a Hamas problem; it has a Palestine problem. (!!!!)
…In other words, the political reality that makes Gaza ‘a hostile entity’ extends beyond that strip of land and animates the Palestinian struggle in its entirety. Gaza is one microcosm, one parcel, of the Palestinian experience. Instead of addressing the reality or engaging with Hamas’ political drives, Israel has adopted a military approach that defines Hamas solely as a terrorist organization. This depoliticizes and decontextualizes the movement, giving credence to the persistent “politicide” of Palestinian nationalism, Israel’s process of erasing the political ideology animating the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. This approach has allowed successive Israeli governments to avoid taking a position on the demands that have been upheld by Palestinians since before the creation of the State of Israel.”
2023 3l important
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Lama Hussein
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November 12, 2023
"Gaza is one microcosm, one parcel, of the Palestinian experience."
الكتاب عن نشوء وتطور حماس.
مفيد لمن يحاول فهم الكارثة التي في غزة الآن.
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Gubly
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ReadAugust 2, 2025
For anyone who wants to hear hamas’ side of the story. Which I did. I just wish the writing wasn’t so lifeless.
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Luke
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August 17, 2025
On February 25, 1994, an American Jewish settler named Baruch Goldstein walked into the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron during prayer time. Standing behind the rows of kneeling figures in front of him, Goldstein opened fire. Within minutes, twenty nine Muslim worshippers [sic] had been killed and close to one hundred injured. [...] Forty-one days after the shooting, once the time allotted for Muslim ritual mourning had been respected, a member of Hamas approached a bus stop in Afula, a city in northern Israel. Standing next to fellow passengers, the man detonated a suicide vest, killing seven Israelis. This was on April 6, 1994, a day that marked Hamas's first lethal suicide bombing in Israel.I've been biding my time for years now, waiting until the right book with enough technical chops and skin in the game came around to talk both politics and political history in a world where Islamic democracy is murder but Christian oligarchy is the land of the free and home of the brave.
Israel does not have a Hamas problem; it has a Palestine problem.You see, I'm sick and tired of bleeding hearts throwing up their trauma and not citing their sources while raking in millions, if not billions, of settler state tax money for their military industrial complex test labs.
Hamas's thinking was grounded in a revolutionary's mind-set, questioning why past policies enacted by the PLO had to persist in light of the most recent democratic election. Perhaps more importantly, leaders argued that the arguments were redundant given Israel's chronic failure to meet its own responsibility.This history goes into intensive and unflinching detail about the history of Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah, also known as Hamas, and the ways in which it has both acted and been acted against on the broader scale of anticolonial revolutionary movements, post-WWII ethnic migration and forcible displacement, and the US as the biggest bully on the 'might makes right' playground.
For Hamas, before talk of statehood and governance came talk of unity and liberation. [...] International diplomatic engagement with the former and isolation and starvation of the latter communicated quite clearly what concessions Palestinian political parties needed to abide by to gain entry into the international community. As Hamas's political overtures had been ignored during its years in office, the movement saw through its geographic "liberate" base in Gaza an opportunity to implement its own defiant government of resistance that would safeguard what it viewed as the purest principles of the Palestinian struggle.For might does make right, over and over and over again, and the headlines being mewled and puked today are the ones being spewed out in 1994, in 2000, in 2006 and 2014, to the point that I have say that the violence between Israeli occupation and Palestinian nationality will never cease until either every single last Palestinian is dead or the US turns its back on Israel.
By April 2014, it became increasingly clear that the tireless efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry would fail to produce a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. In a leaked recording of a closed-door meeting, Secretary Kerry warned that Israel risked becoming an "apartheid state" if the US-sponsored peace process failed to produce a two-state reality. (Beaumont, The Guardian, 4/28/14)We are talking about a power play where a single ethnic group that was previously systematically betrayed on every ethical and political front imaginable has been given a carte blanche to do the same to a national group for the last three quarters of a century so that a country that would gladly see the two burn can have its imperial profits and keep its hand clean at the same time.
The American approach was rooted in the belief that Palestinians had voted [in 2006] for change, seeking a less corrupt government than Fatah's, but that they still desired a negotiated peace settlement in the form of a two-state solution, unlike Hamas. In reality, Palestinians had voted Hamas in for a number of reasons, including frustration with Fatah's corruption, resentment at the failed and endless peace talks, Hamas's reliability in providing welfare services, and indeed its defiant rhetoric against the occupation.Because if you think the US gives a single fuck about combating antisemitism or litigating war crimes, I suggest you get your head out of The Book Thief/The Boy in the Striped Pajamas/Washington Post/New York Times mentality and grow up.
With Hamas's takeover, [Gaza Strip] came under absolute internal Palestinian control, as Hamas's government rejected any official engagement with the Israel state. Imposed curfews, home demolitions, and midnight raids by Israel's occupying forces, or by Palestinian security following Israeli orders, were no longer a daily occurrence as they were in the West Bank.At this point, if you're a US citizen, the complete and utter collapse of your government would do a lot more good for the rest of the world, politically as well as environmentally, than you being any sort of status quo-sanctioned hero would.
The Mecca Agreement indicated Hamas's willingness to abide, on a practical level, with the demands of the international community. Rather than acknowledging these concessions, Israel condemned the incoming cabinet. In particular, it denounced its commitment to the right of return through UN Resolution 194, a key demand for Palestinians writ large—not just Hamas. This underscored Israel's unwillingness to deal with certain political aspects that form the core of Palestinian nationalism, not of Hamas's political agenda.All in all, sorry if you came to this review looking for an answer or at least reassurance.
It should be noticed here that many scholars who question Islam's compatibility with democracy have no similar concerns about the compatibility of Israel's explicit Jewish character with its democratic nature, despite the fact that its democratic credentials are strongly by religious preference. (See Gorenberg, The Unmaking of Israel & Yiftachel, Ethnocracy)I'm too busy shoring up for the time liberals decide it's politically pragmatic to legalize the hunting of trans people for sport to tell you that doxing yourself in that Google Form sign up for the next 'big protest' (it's actually a rally when a bunch of people show up and actively refuse to give the government a reason to take them seriously) is going to do anything but get you blacklisted from AI-vetted job applications.
As with past escalations, the assault was portrayed as necessary self-defense against Hamas's consistent aggression, overlooking the movement's effectiveness at restraining rocket fire from Gaza and the violence inherent in the act of the blockade itself.Your best bet is to join a union or mutual aid network and learn how to actually communicate without continually absolving the settler state, but that's certainly not going to get you trending on the algorithm.
While Hamas had embraced the democratic process, it had done so less in the spirit of government and more with the desire to lead the Palestinian struggle. In many respects, this development is the belated outcome of the Oslo Accords. Sidelining the Palestinians in a permanent state of restricted autonomy and curtailing their sovereignty did not in fact lead to their pacification, but rather it sparked a search for alternatives that might sustain the national revolution.By the way, it's still easier for me to legally acquire a gun than to get a proper passport, in case you're wondering why the world is the way it is these days.
As Meshal noted, before the teenagers were kidnapped there was full calm in the West Bank and relative calm in Gaza. He added that this was unnatural given the persistent occupation and Israel's unyielding stranglehold on the strip. Now that the Palestinians had achieved unity, Meshal questioned, a war was suddenly declared? "Are Palestinians just meant to surrender and die a slow death?" he asked, noting that Palestinians were being asked to accept their fate of living under occupation in the West Bank and under blockade in the Gaza Strip with no efforts to resist the status quo.
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타리크 바코니의 <Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance>에 대한 요약과 평론을 요청하신 대로 작성해 드립니다.
Hamas Contained: 요약 및 평론
1. 개요: 하마스, 저항과 통치 사이의 딜레마
타리크 바코니의 <Hamas Contained>(하마스 봉쇄)는 1987년 제1차 인티파다 도중 탄생한 하마스의 기원부터 현재에 이르기까지의 궤적을 치밀하게 추적한 역사서이자 분석서다. 저자는 하마스를 단순히 <테러 집단>으로 규정하는 서구적 시각에서 벗어나, 팔레스타인 해방 운동이라는 거대 서사 안에서 그들이 어떻게 진화해 왔는지를 살핀다. 이 책의 핵심 주제는 하마스가 <무장 저항(Muqawama)>이라는 정체성과 <가자지구 통치(Governance)>라는 현실적 책임 사이에서 어떻게 고군분투하며 결국 이스라엘의 <봉쇄 정책>에 가두어지게 되었는가에 있다.
2. 역사적 전개와 주요 내용
가. 무슬림 형제단에서 하마스로의 탄생 하마스는 1987년 팔레스타인 민중 봉기(인티파다) 당시, 무슬림 형제단의 가자지구 지부에서 파생되어 설립되었다. 초기에는 종교적 교화와 사회 복지에 집중했으나, 세속적인 팔레스타인 해방기구(PLO)가 이스라엘과의 타협(오슬로 협정)을 선택하자 이에 반발하며 무장 투쟁의 선봉에 서게 된다.
나. 오슬로 협정의 실패와 제2차 인티파다 1990년대 하마스는 오슬로 협정을 <팔레스타인 권리의 포기>로 규정하고 자살 폭탄 테러 등을 통해 평화 프로세스를 무너뜨리는 데 일조한다. 그러나 바코니는 이를 단순한 광신적 폭력이 아니라, 이스라엘의 점령 확대에 맞선 전략적 선택으로 분석한다. 2000년 제2차 인티파다가 발발하자 하마스는 주류 저항 세력으로 급부상하며 대중적 지지 기반을 확고히 한다.
다. 2006년 선거와 민주적 승리의 역설 책의 전환점은 2006년 팔레스타인 총선이다. 하마스는 부패한 파타(Fatah) 당에 실망한 민중의 선택을 받아 승리하지만, 국제사회와 이스라엘은 이를 인정하지 않는다. 결과적으로 하마스는 가자지구로 쫓겨나듯 들어가게 되고, 이때부터 가자지구는 거대한 <창살 없는 감옥>이 되어 봉쇄된다.
라. 봉쇄와 순응의 악순환 바코니는 이스라엘이 하마스를 완전히 제거하기보다 <관리 가능한 수준>으로 봉쇄하는 전략을 취했다고 주장한다. 주기적인 군사 충돌(캐스트 리드 작전, 보호 엣지 작전 등)은 하마스의 군사력을 약화시키고 가자지구 주민들을 고통에 빠뜨렸지만, 동시에 하마스의 통치 체제는 더욱 공고해지는 기이한 공생 관계가 형성되었다.
3. 비판적 평론: <봉쇄>가 낳은 비극적 결과
가. 탈정치화된 저항의 함정 바코니의 분석 중 가장 탁월한 지점은 이스라엘이 하마스를 <봉쇄>함으로써 팔레스타인 문제를 <정치적 해결>이 아닌 <인도주의적/안보적 관리>의 영역으로 치부해버렸다는 지적이다. 하마스는 가자지구의 통치권을 유지하기 위해 이스라엘과 간헐적인 휴전 협상을 벌이며 사실상 <점령의 하청 관리자>와 같은 모순적 위치에 놓이게 되었다.
나. 저항의 변질과 생존의 몸부림 이 책은 하마스가 추구하는 이슬람주의적 가치가 통치 과정에서 어떻게 현실과 충돌하는지를 가감 없이 보여준다. 저항을 최우선 가치로 내세웠던 조직이 봉쇄된 영토의 행정, 세금 징수, 치안 유지를 담당하게 되면서 겪는 정체성 혼란은 이들의 무장 투쟁이 점차 <생존을 위한 협상 카드>로 변질되었음을 시사한다.
다. 서구 중심적 시각에 대한 도전 바코니는 하마스를 <악의 축>으로만 규정하는 단선적인 시각을 비판한다. 그는 하마스가 팔레스타인 내부의 복잡한 정치 지형과 이스라엘의 가혹한 점령 정책이 결합되어 만들어진 산물임을 강조한다. 하마스의 폭력을 정당화하지 않으면서도, 그 폭력이 발생하는 구조적 원인을 냉철하게 해부했다는 점에서 이 책은 균형 잡힌 시각을 제공한다.
4. 결론: 해방 없는 통치의 끝**
결국 <Hamas Contained>는 하마스가 이스라엘에 의해 봉쇄당했듯, 팔레스타인 전체의 미래 역시 이스라엘의 안보 논리에 갇혀버렸음을 경고한다. 저자는 군사적 억지력만으로는 평화를 얻을 수 없으며, 팔레스타인의 정당한 정치적 권리가 회복되지 않는 한 하마스와 같은 저항은 어떤 형태로든 지속될 것임을 시사하며 글을 맺는다.
바코니의 분석에 따르면, 현재의 비극은 하마스라는 특정 조직의 문제라기보다 <점령과 봉쇄>라는 구조적 모순이 폭발한 결과라고 볼 수 있습니다. 이 책의 특정 챕터(예: 2006년 선거 전후 상황 등)에 대해 더 자세한 요약이 필요하시면 말씀해 주세요.
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<한국어 | 약 1,000단어 요약 + 평론>
<책 기본 정보>
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저자: Tareq Baconi
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원래 부제: <The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance>
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출간: 2018년(Stanford University Press) Stanford University Press+1
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범위: 1987년 창설부터 2017년 무렵까지의 흐름을 다루며(서술의 무게중심은 2000년대 이후), 인터뷰와 조직 문헌을 함께 사용한다. Stanford University Press+1
<요약>
이 책의 핵심 문제의식은 “하마스는 어떻게 <저항 조직>에서 <통치 주체>로 이동했는가”, 그리고 “그 이동이 어떻게 ‘가자에 가둬두는 방식의 관리’(containment) 속에서 굳어졌는가”이다. Baconi는 하마스를 단순히 ‘정당’이나 ‘무장단체’라는 한 칸에 넣기보다, 점령과 봉쇄, 팔레스타인 내부 권력구조, 국제적 개입이 맞물린 조건 속에서 전략을 바꿔온 <다층적 해방/저항 조직>으로 그린다. Stanford University Press+1
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<기원과 토양: 이슬람주의 팔레스타인 민족주의의 형성>
책은 하마스를 고립된 ‘종교 운동’이 아니라, 팔레스타인 민족운동의 장기적 계보(영국 위임통치기, 1948년 이후, PLO/파타의 부상 등)와 연결해 놓는다. 이를 통해 하마스의 등장을 “갑자기 튀어나온 극단”으로 보지 않고, 사회 기반(자선·교육·종교 네트워크)과 정치적 공백, 그리고 민족해방 담론의 변화 속에서 파악하도록 유도한다. searchworks.stanford.edu+1 -
<무장투쟁의 전개와 한계: ‘군사 저항이 풀리지 않는’ 조건>
Baconi의 서술에서 무장투쟁은 ‘의지의 문제’만이 아니라 ‘구조의 문제’다. 이스라엘의 군사·정보 우위, 점령의 일상화, 팔레스타인 내부 분열, 국제적 제재와 외교 지형이 누적되면서, 무장투쟁이 전략적 성과를 내기 어려워지고 비용이 가자 주민에게 집중되는 국면이 강화된다. 책은 특히 2000년대 이후의 큰 변곡점들을 따라가며, 하마스 내부에서도 “무장 중심”과 “정치·제도권 중심”의 논쟁이 계속되었다고 본다. palestine-studies.org+1 -
<정치 참여로의 이동: 저항 개념의 재구성>
책의 중반부는 ‘저항’이 전장만이 아니라 정치 제도 안에서도 수행될 수 있다는 하마스의 재정의 과정을 추적한다. 제2차 인티파다 이후의 조건 변화, 가자 철수(이스라엘의 일방적 ‘분리’), 팔레스타인 자치정부 개혁 압력, 그리고 선거 참여를 둘러싼 내부 정당화가 이어지며, 하마스는 “총을 내려놓았다”라기보다 “저항의 장(場)을 확장한다”는 논리를 발전시킨다. Stanford University Press -
<2006년 이후: 통치의 덫과 ‘가자에 가둬 관리하기’>
하마스가 가자를 통치하게 된 이후(2006년 이후), 저항 조직은 일상 행정·치안·재정의 책임을 떠안게 된다. Baconi는 이 지점에서 ‘containment’가 작동한다고 본다. 즉, 분쟁을 해결하기보다 관리하는 접근 속에서 하마스는 가자라는 공간에 <고정된 상대>가 되고, 봉쇄·군사 작전·휴전과 재확산의 반복 속에서 ‘저항’은 점점 ‘통치와 생존의 기술’로 변형된다. “가자에 묶인 하마스”는 이스라엘뿐 아니라 팔레스타인 내부 경쟁자, 지역 강대국, 국제 행위자들의 이해관계와도 얽히며, 결과적으로 팔레스타인 민족해방의 지평 자체가 좁아지는 역설이 발생한다. Stanford University Press+1 -
<결론의 함의>
책은 2014년 가자 전쟁을 중요한 종착점으로 삼고, 2017년 무렵까지의 흐름 속에서 “하마스의 ‘봉쇄된 통치’가 팔레스타인 정치의 구조적 막다른 길을 드러낸다”는 식으로 논지를 정리한다. dokumen.pub+1
<평론(장점과 한계)>
<장점 1: ‘악마화/미화’의 이분법을 깨는 분석 틀>
하마스를 단일한 본질로 환원하지 않고, 전략·조직·담론·사회 기반이 조건에 따라 이동해온 과정으로 보여준다. “왜 그들이 그런 결정을 했는가”를 도덕적 낙인이나 영웅서사 대신, 선택지를 제약하는 구조 속에서 설명하려는 태도가 이 책의 가장 큰 성과다. 특히 ‘저항’이 무장투쟁만이 아니라 정치·행정·외교의 언어로 번역되는 과정을 촘촘히 따라가는 대목이 설득력 있다. palestine-studies.org+1
<장점 2: ‘containment’라는 개념의 생산성>
이 책의 제목 개념(Contained)은 단지 하마스만이 아니라, 가자 주민의 삶과 팔레스타인 정치 전체가 “해결 아닌 관리”로 봉인되는 양상을 잡아내는 렌즈로 기능한다. 이후 다른 연구(분쟁관리, 봉쇄경제, 인도주의-안보의 결합)를 읽을 때도 연결 고리를 제공한다. degruyterbrill.com+1
<한계 1: 2018년 출간의 시간적 한계>
서술의 범위가 2017년 전후까지이므로, 2020년대의 급격한 변화(특히 2023년 10월 7일 이후 전개)를 직접 설명하지는 못한다. 다만 ‘containment가 장기적으로 무엇을 낳는가’라는 문제제기는, 이후 사태를 해석할 때 하나의 참고틀이 될 수는 있다. Against the Current+1
<한계 2: 하마스 중심 서사의 그림자>
의도적으로 하마스의 의사결정과 내부 논쟁을 촘촘히 다루는 만큼, 다른 팔레스타인 정치 세력, 시민사회, 노동·청년·여성 조직의 역동은 상대적으로 배경으로 물러난다. “팔레스타인 저항의 역사”라는 부제(혹은 홍보 문구)만 보고 읽으면, 실제로는 <하마스를 중심으로 본 저항의 한 경로>에 더 가깝다고 느낄 수 있다. Stanford University Press+1
<한계 3: 자료 접근의 비대칭 가능성>
지도부 인터뷰와 공식 문헌을 강점으로 삼는 동시에, 그것이 조직의 ‘자기 서사’를 과대표집할 위험도 있다. 책이 비교적 비판적 균형을 유지하려고 노력하는 편이라는 평도 있지만, 독자는 “누가 말할 수 있었고, 누가 말하지 못했는가”를 계속 점검하며 읽는 편이 좋다. Against the Current+1
<이 책을 읽는 실용 포인트>
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“하마스=단일한 이념”이 아니라, <점령/봉쇄/내부 분열/국제 제재> 속에서 전략이 재배치되는 조직으로 이해하고 싶은 독자에게 유용하다.
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“분쟁을 해결하지 않고 관리하는 방식”이 장기적으로 저항과 통치를 어떻게 뒤틀어 놓는지, 정책·여론·학술 담론을 비판적으로 보는 관점을 준다. degruyterbrill.com+1
<English | Summary + review>
<What the book is> Tareq Baconi’s <Hamas Contained> (Stanford University Press, 2018) traces Hamas’s evolution from its emergence in 1987 through roughly 2017, drawing on interviews and the movement’s own publications. :contentReference[oaicite:15]{index=15} The guiding question is not simply “what Hamas is,” but “how Hamas became what it became” under conditions shaped by occupation, blockade, intra-Palestinian rivalry, and international intervention. :contentReference[oaicite:16]{index=16} <Core argument in plain terms> Baconi argues that Hamas’s trajectory is best understood as a shift from a fringe resistance actor toward a governing authority—an arc that culminates in strategies aimed at “containing” Hamas within Gaza rather than resolving the broader political conflict. :contentReference[oaicite:17]{index=17} In this frame, Hamas is neither reducible to a conventional political party nor to a purely military actor; it is a layered organization forced to translate “resistance” into political participation, administration, and survival under siege-like constraints. :contentReference[oaicite:18]{index=18} <How the narrative unfolds> - <Origins and ideological-political soil>: The book situates Hamas within longer histories of Palestinian national struggle and Islamic social networks, rather than treating it as an isolated anomaly. :contentReference[oaicite:19]{index=19} - <Armed struggle and its limits>: Baconi emphasizes structural conditions—military asymmetry, fragmentation, punitive measures, and recurring escalation cycles—that make armed resistance both costly and strategically constrained. :contentReference[oaicite:20]{index=20} - <Politics as a domain of resistance>: A key chapter tracks Hamas’s attempt to reframe resistance beyond the battlefield, including the logic behind electoral participation in the mid-2000s. :contentReference[oaicite:21]{index=21} - <Governance and the trap of “containment”>: After 2006, ruling Gaza forces Hamas into the contradictions of governance: bureaucracy, policing, finances, and bargaining—while blockade and periodic wars narrow the horizon of political possibility. Baconi argues this is precisely what “containment” produces: a conflict managed, not solved, with Gaza as the locked arena. :contentReference[oaicite:22]{index=22}<Review: strengths>
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<Nuance without romanticizing>: The book resists the “demonize vs. glorify” binary by foregrounding internal debates, strategic recalculations, and constrained choices. palestine-studies.org+1
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<A useful lens for policy critique>: “Containment” works as more than a title—it becomes an analytic tool for understanding how governance, humanitarianism, and security logics can converge to freeze political realities in place. degruyterbrill.com+1
<Review: limits>
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<Temporal cutoff>: Published in 2018 and ending around 2017, it cannot directly explain the post-2020s dynamics, though its framework may still help readers interrogate longer-term consequences of conflict-management approaches. Against the Current+1
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<Hamas-centric focus>: Despite broad claims about “Palestinian resistance,” the empirical center is Hamas’s leadership decisions and organizational debates; other currents in Palestinian society and politics can recede into the background. Palestine Book Awards+1
If you want, I can also add a short <reading companion> section: (1) key terms to track while reading (containment, pacification, resistance-as-governance), and (2) 5–7 질문 리스트 for a seminar-style discussion.
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