Hamas

According to the authors, Hamas’s credo can be defined simply as “Islam is the solution”. It offers an Islamic solution to the conflict with Israel, wrapping itself in the twin banners of religion and nationalism. Hamas’s enemies define it as a terrorist organization that has killed and maimed Israelis. They argue that it is little more than the proxy of a regional Middle East power – Iran – and shares with its patron an all-consuming desire to bring about the destruction of Israel. Hamas’s supporters see it through another, entirely different prism. For them it is an uncompromising yet clear-sighted organization founded by a leadership which spent decades in the political wilderness telling the unpopular truth that the political orthodoxies of their time were misguided, and that in Israel the Palestinian people faced an enemy that had to be resisted, not accommodated.