Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne published a history of Hamas in 2003. Twenty years later it is more relevant than ever. In this analysis he argues that Hamas’ terrorism is based on religious ideology, not on politics. When political solutions fail, and military ones succeed only partially, the question is how to persuade Palestinians not to support Hamas.

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Hamas profited from the second Intifada as it had from the first. Notwithstanding Israel’s assassination of its founder Shaykh Yassin on March 22, 2004, Hamas managed to win the Palestinian elections in 2006 and to elect a prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority of its own, Ismail Haniyeh. However, its conflict with Fatah was never healed, and continued after Arafat’s death in 2004.

After Hamas’ electoral victory, that conflict became a military one, leading to a situation where Fatah controlled the West Bank and Hamas maintained the control of Gaza. From there, it kept attacking Israel and proclaiming its refusal of the two-state solution.

Unlike Fatah and the OLP, for Hamas the only possible solution of the Palestinian question is a single Islamic state “from the river to the sea,” from River Jordan to the Mediterranean. Israel periodically retaliated, and in 2008–2009 the reaction was so strong that some called it the “Gaza War.” The real Gaza War, as we all know, came however in 2023. Whether this war will destroy Hamas, or it will manage to survive once again, is something the next months and years will clarify. The extent of Iran’s support for Hamas will be, of course, a key factor.

Hamas emerges from the study of its origins as the Palestinian component of the international network of Islamic fundamentalism. Its history is inextricably linked to that of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which it constitutes a Palestinian branch. This is not to say that Hamas does not have some important specificities, as is generally the case in the world of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose national branches are largely autonomous.

Although it indicates in its program the establishment of an Islamic state based on shari’a and the restoration of the caliphate, both signature ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood, these themes are less developed in Hamas literature than the sacred character of Palestinian land and the need to liberate it from Israeli occupation.

After a long time of preparation, which gave it a solid base in a network of hundreds of mosques, stronger in Gaza than in the West Bank, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood espoused the radical line in the years leading up to the outbreak of the first Intifada. After the Brotherhood had kept itself on the sidelines of the armed struggle for several decades working on its “Islamization from below” through mosques and schools, eventually Hamas surpassed in intransigence and radicalism the secular nationalists of the PLO, while basing this uncompromising position on religious motives.

Hamas, which also marks in a sense the “Palestinization” of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology, represents in other ways an archaeology of it. As the most careful studies of founder al-Banna’s thought and activity reveal, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic fundamentalism in general have always insisted on the principle of gradualism.

Just as the restoration of the caliphate must precede the resumption of the process of expanding the Islamic world outside its present borders, and the establishment of shari’a in individual Islamic-majority countries must precede the restoration of the caliphate, so even before the establishment of shari’a there is a need to liberate Islamic lands from foreign occupation. This issue, preliminary to the threefold purpose of Islamic fundamentalism, is no longer on the agenda in most Islamic-majority countries, long since liberated from colonial occupation. However, it still exists in Palestine.

Hamas’ success came from its ability to play simultaneously on the two registers of the Muslim Brotherhood, the neo-traditionalist and the radical. It never forgot to cultivate its strong entrenchment in a network of mosques and Muslim educational institutions, while at the same time embracing Qutb-style armed struggle and terrorism.

A widespread belief about the Palestinian issue is that to stop Hamas terrorism, it is necessary to accelerate the peace process, convince both sides to accept United Nations resolutions about the two states, and strip terrorism of its roots, which lie in the desperate situation of the Palestinian people.