Has Hamas been misrepresented?

Three facts the world doesn’t know

1.      In 2006 Hamas won the elections in Palestine overwhelmingly in what international observers all agreed were free and fair elections. Western powers made sure they were not allowed to take power and there have been no elections since.

2.      Hamas has offered numerous truces to Israel over the years – some of them several years long – with which Israel has never engaged.

3.      In 2017, Hamas issued a Document of General Principles and Policies that refers to a two-state solution and does not implacably oppose the existence of the State of Israel.

I never hear any of these facts mentioned in our mainstream media. Hamas is routinely referred to as a terrorist organisation which initiated the current genocide by breaking out of Gaza in October 2023. And the mainstream media assumption is underpinned – inaccurately – by the idea that Hamas intends to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

Why did Hamas win the elections of almost two decades ago?

Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, assassinated by helicopter gunship, March 2004

Because it was seen as having clean hands in terms of corruption.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation, reborn as the Palestinian Authority (PA) - following the 1993 Oslo Accords – received enormous sums of money from the EU and others.

Much of the dosh went on security bodies armed with handguns (they weren’t allowed an army) and vast sums were believed to have been siphoned off by PA officials - see here and here [i].

Hamas, also a liberation movement but with a commitment to Islam, became generally popular – I can attest that many Christians voted for them. And operations were confined to historic Palestine. Hamas never advocated for a caliphate across swathes of Muslim countries. It was only interested in an end to occupation and autonomy for Palestinians.

It was Hamas which provided health care and education which the donor money received by the PA manifestly failed to do - see here. 

Abdel Aziz al Rantisi, political leader and co-founder of Hamas, assassinated by Hellfire missile in his car April 2004

The PA had become increasingly unpopular. Its security bodies were and are widely seen as doing the Israelis’ dirty work for them. They keep anyone calling for an end to occupation in line. The fragile boat must not be rocked!

I witnessed this myself. One evening I was having dinner with a farming couple in the Northern West Bank when someone from Amnesty International called from London. She talked about the situation of their son who was in an Israeli jail. A university lecturer with no links to any political party, he was being held under administrative detention[JC3] . So there was no charge and no trial (we think it was for a magazine article critical of Israel that he’d written). The Amnesty officer was commiserating that the detention order had just been renewed.

Once I was back in the UK, I heard that their son had finally been released – only to be picked up by the PA and again incarcerated with no charge and no trial.

A spot of history

Hamas began in 1987 – a whole two decades after the occupation of the Palestinian territories began following the Six Day War.

Khaled Meshal, one of the most prominent figures, considered part of Hamas's external leadership. Under his leadership, Hamas secured a surprise majority of the seats in the Palestinian legislative election of 2006. Israel almost assessinated him by poisoning, in Jordan, in 1997

Its initial 1988 charter was pretty bloodcurdling and openly antisemitic (if we forget that Arabs are Semites too). It was published in a hurry with little consultation with its widely scattered members. Many of its leaders were in Israeli jails. During its campaign the hierarchy never referred to this embarrassing document and the cleaned up version of 2017 is much more palatable. It loses the antisemitism and refers to a two-state solution.

Hamas has frequently offered a hudna – a truce – in spite of its charter but that news never made the mainstream. Some of these offers were very long. One was for 50 years and if that isn’t a de facto recognition of Israel I don’t know what is.

Look at the literature I cite in the Annex below and my comments on it. It shows that a range of academics and journalists have studied Hamas in depth and come to remarkably similar conclusions about the organisation. It suggests that Hamas is the sort of third world resistance movement with which Western powers could successfully negotiate a lasting peace agreement. However, they will not do this in the face of the opposition of their client state, Israel.

Ismail Haniyeh, assassinated in Tehran in July 2024. At the time he was head of peace negotiations for Gaza

Israel has shown time and again it is implacably opposed to any peace agreement that could result in the creation of a viable Palestinian state whether governed by Fatah, Hamas or any other Palestinian faction. The virtues that the above-mentioned academics and journalists attribute to Hamas, notably its pragmatism, and its willingness to negotiate and modify its stance, are regrettable flaws in the eyes of Netanyahu and associates. The last thing they wish is to negotiate with Hamas.

Is Hamas a terrorist organisation?

Yes, Hamas has definitely used terrorist tactics. Its hallmark suicide bombing campaign began in 1993 and was disastrous primarily in terms of lives lost but also in reputational damage.

And on that fateful day in October 2023 approaching one thousand two hundred Israelis were killed. There is still a lot of argument about who is responsible for all the deaths because of Israel’s Hannibal doctrine which requires that no soldiers be captured. But Hamas undeniably killed civilians on that day and took about 250 hostages. These are both serious breaches of International Humanitarian Law – i.e. war crimes and terrorist acts.

There are also numerous credible accusations of terrorist acts carried out by Hamas against its own Gazan people since it seized power from the PA in 2007.

Yahya Sinwar, a Palestinian militant and politician who was leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip from February 2017, and chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from August 2024. He succeeded Ismail Haniyeh in both roles. He was killed in a clash with the IDF in October 2024.

But Hamas is also a liberation movement. And it should always be remembered – though the mainstream media never seem to – that under international law the Palestinians have the right to resist occupation and use force to do so. Of course, international law does not give them the right to target civilians or to take hostages which are war crimes under International Humanitarian Law [ii].

And then there is propaganda and exaggeration. Israel would have you believe that the heads of 40 babies were cut off on October 7 and that Hamas operatives raped scores of women as instructed to do. And Israel has long claimed that UNWRA, the refugee organisation, is a hotbed of terrorism. It was claimed that several UNWRA staff members were involved in the October 7 events. Immediately many countries cut off their vital funding and increased Palestinian suffering exponentially. Israel has failed to produce a shred of evidence for any of these accusations and the more extreme claims have been thoroughly debunked.

Remember the old saying: one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter?

I’m old enough to remember the well-known terrorists Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus, Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. They all became leaders of their respective countries in time. Even IRA commander Martin McGuinness got to shake hands with HM The Queen if memory serves.

And apologists for Israel – always so keen to stress Hamas’s terrorist credentials – seem to forget that Israel was born of a bloody terrorist insurgency during the 1940s.

Two of its prime ministers headed up terror gangs in the first half of the last century. Yitzhak Shamir led the Stern Gang and Menachem Begin led Irgun, which blew up the British Mandate’s Jerusalem HQ, the King David Hotel. Begin even won the Nobel Peace Prize when he signed a peace treaty with Egypt.

Should we take Hamas off the terrorist organisation list?

It might be a good idea.

Currently the West is looking favourably on Syria’s Hay’at Tahrir Al Sham (HTS). The group has its roots in Al Qaeda, was linked to the so-called Islamic State (Daesh), and is guilty of many human rights violations such as disappearances, executions and torture. It has risen to the top since the Assad regime fell and many Western governments are considering quashing its terrorist status.

This may or may not be a great idea – the jury is out. But the point is that all Hamas’ numerous gestures towards a peaceful solution have been rejected out of hand.

One advocate for justice in the Middle East said:

The West ought to be engaging with Muslim groups acting on local grievances before reaching out to groups like HTS that come from a worldwide Jihadist/head-chopping background.

This is not to condemn the West for reaching out to HTS, but to recognise that Hamas should have come higher on the list - a violent resistance group which – like the IRA – might be induced to engage in a meaningful peace process.

Sharen Green, 10 March 2025

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Annex: what can we learn from research on Hamas 

I suggest reading the following books and articles:

1.      Illusions of Containment, by Tom Stevenson. 6 Feb 2025. London Review of Books (LRB), Vol 47, No. 2

2.      Understanding Hamas and why that matters, 2024, edited by Helen Cobban & Rami G. Khouri. Contributors include Paola Carida, Jeroen Gunning, Khaled Hroub, Mouin Rabbani and Azzam Tamimi.

3.      Hamas: a Beginner’s Guide by Khaled Hroub, 2nd Edition, 2010, Pluto Press.

4.      Hamas, an erroneous silencing, part one and part two, 2024, by Bernard Spiegal. Spiegal describes as futile and irresponsible HMG's proscription of Hamas, because it is a ban on knowing and understanding the perspective of an organisation which, whether we like it or not, has significant support among Palestinians.

There is considerable consensus among researchers over the following points:

• Israeli academics Mishal and Sela (discussed here) and the Italian journalist Paola Cardi (see here, p20), find that it has exhibited considerable political pragmatism. Mishal and Sela found that it responded to political realities through bargaining and power brokering. Cardi describes it as engaging in negotiations and wanting to be part of the political panorama. In the same vein, Jeroen Gunning (see here, p71) says it has a long record of negotiating and coming to compromises and ceasefires, and seeking to govern in unity with other Palestinian factions. Likewise, Mouin Rabbani (see here, p99) finds that Hamas sees advantage in working together with others of differing political and ideological persuasions towards the same goal.

• Dr Khaled Hroub (see here, p41) finds pragmatism extending to the religious sphere, with nationalism growing within Hamas at the expense of the religious tendency over the past two to three decades. Gunning (see here, pp86-96) notes that Hamas encourages the education of women, that it has made a distinction between religious and elected authority and that political reasoning on the whole wins out over religious reasoning. While Hamas is clearly Islamic, the reality belies extreme Israeli and Western portrayals, above all comparisons to ISIS.

• Gunning (see here, p73) finds that the external Hamas leadership residing abroad has on the whole been more willing than the Gaza-based leadership to accept a state on 1967 borders and come to compromises. However, as we can see in the case of Khaled Meshal (1997) and Ismael Haniyeh (2024), Israel has targeted these elements for assassination.

• That on more than one occasion, the actions of Israel, Fatah and/or the international community have caused hardliners to gain prominence within Hamas. Tareq Baconi (see here) observes that after publishing its new charter of 2017, Hamas appealed to Netanyahu for a new phase and to try peaceful civic resistance with the Great March of Return - the failure of these tactics may well have resulted in Hamas's violent break-out on October 7th 2023 (Operation al-Aqsa Flood). Gunning (see here, p81) concurs, and also notes the overwhelmingly hostile response to events in 2006, notably Hamas’s de facto recognition of Israel and its winning of the Palestinian election, completely changed the incentive for Hamas to participate in elections, and made it much more paranoid and autocratic.  Israel, Fatah and the international community would not even recognize its government in Gaza and tried to stage a coup against Hamas.

As I say in the main text above, these observations suggest that Hamas is the sort of third world movement with which Western powers could successfully negotiate a lasting peace agreement.

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[i]  Yasser Arafat might be exempted from this accusation – he lived frugally was living like a guerrilla leader holed up in Ramallah when I visited him five months before he died. 

[ii] vide The Fourth Geneva Convention which protects civilians in times of war.