Controlling the State in the Political Theory of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad

Erik Skare

doi:10.3390/rel12111010

Abstract

Existing scholarship has largely focused on the violence of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) when analyzing their response to the Oslo Agreement and the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority (PA) in the 1990s. The Islamist opposition’s contribution to Palestinian political thought has largely been ignored, however, although the prospects of Palestinian self-rule confronted the two movements with fundamental questions about social organization, governance, and the permissibility of democracy. I offer an analysis of key Hamas and PIJ texts from this period to demonstrate that Hamas and PIJ fundamentally differ in their analysis of the state and the organization of just society. While Hamas outlines a state-centric approach to governance through which Islamic values are enforced from above, PIJ perceives the state to be the greatest threat to the just organization of society. This article consequently dispels the myth that the two Palestinian Islamist movements had no significant ideological differences in the 1990s.

Highlights

How did the Palestinian Islamist opposition—Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—react to the initiation of the Oslo Agreement and the establishment of the PalestinianNational Authority (PA)? Existing scholarship has largely focused on their violent reaction following the commencement of the peace process—discussing the two Palestinian Islamist movements as spoilers or semi-spoilers
He notes that an unhinged executive power will cause chaos, the state itself is an instrument capable of managing competing interests and preserving social cohesion if a balance between the centers of power is found: In order to ensure the creation of a political entity and a modern state, a commitment to an effective balance and equilibrium between the three authorities must be found, as this is one of the important general concepts, which the world has known for civilization as a basis for a normal rule, but it is the defining boundary that distinguishes the modern state from the clan and the most important guarantee of public liberties (Mansur 1999, p. 45)
The state must be weakened and deconstructed in order to be kept under control, and traditional governing responsibilities and tasks will be transferred to civil society in general and the institution of scholars in particular

Summary

Introduction

How did the Palestinian Islamist opposition—Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—react to the initiation of the Oslo Agreement and the establishment of the Palestinian. Both PIJ and Hamas reacted vehemently once they learned that there were possibilities of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel commencing negotiations One reason for their rejection of the peace process was the fact that the armed Islamic movements did not believe that the Oslo Agreement favored Palestinian independence. For PIJ, the conclusion to this discussion is the re-establishment and revival of authority for the institution of scholars as center of civil society It is unlikely al-Shiqaqi arrived at this conclusion from reading history alone, and the democratic ‘deficiencies’ of the PA must presumably have added to this feeling of state power inevitably turning authoritarian. His focus was on preventing all power from residing in one institution

Preventing the Descent into the State of Nature

The Democratic Limits of al-Shiqaqi and Mansur’s Future Societies

Conclusions