versial and pervasive force among Palestinians in
the late 20th century.
The Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood had a
history of opposition to the secular palestine
liberation organization (PLO) in the years pre-
ceding the intifada of 1987. Active in the Occu-
pied Territories as well as egypt and Jordan, the
Muslim Brotherhood encouraged a rejection of
secularity among Palestinians, in opposition to
the nonreligious nationalism of the PLO. In the
early 1980s, spiritual leaders in the brotherhood,
such as Shaykh Ahmad Yassin (d. 2004), created
a financial and military infrastructure that could
challenge the PLO for leadership of the Palestin-
ians. This framework became the basis of Hamas,
an organization that was initially supported by the
Israeli government, which hoped to undermine
the PLO.
In 1987, however, Hamas unleashed itself
onto the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, becoming one of the most important
forces of leadership in the intifada. Indeed, Hamas
claimed that it had initiated the intifada, although
that is still a point of debate among histori-
ans. Hamas developed a political and theological
understanding of the occupation that appealed to
many Palestinians while at the same time organiz-
ing charitable, educational, medical, and housing
outreach programs to Palestinians living in the
dire conditions of refugee camps and under Israeli
occupation. Unlike the PLO, which viewed the
Palestinian condition in secular nationalist terms,
Hamas expressed itself in Islamic terms. Theolo-
gians such as Yassin argued that the occupation of
Palestine was an affront to all Muslims and that
the presence of the Zionist Israeli state needed
to come to an end for religious as well as politi-
cal reasons. Hamas proposed the destruction of
israel and the institution of a Muslim government
in palestine that ruled according to the sharia.
This was a message that inspired many Muslim
Palestinians but also alienated moderate Muslims
as well as Christian and secular Palestinians and
those who preferred the leadership of the PLO.
As the PLO entered into negotiations with
Israel during the era of the peace initiatives of
the 1990s, Hamas continued to gain in popular-
ity among Palestinians who felt less connected to
the PLO as it grew closer to Israel. The Palestin-
ian Authority assured Israel that it would restrict
the activities of Hamas’s militant factions, but the
emergence of a new intifada in 2000 demonstrated
that Hamas was still very popular among many
living under Israeli occupation. At the beginning
of the 21st century, Hamas continued to be one
of the most active, militant participants in the
intifada against Israeli occupation and, in the eyes
of many, too important a player to be excluded
from negotiations. Like their counterparts in the
ultra–right wing Israeli camp, Hamas became a
powerful social and political force, largely exist-
ing outside the channels of public diplomacy,
yet striking at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict. An indication of the movement’s grow-
ing influence among Palestinians is that it won
a majority of seats in the Palestinian legislative
election of January 2006, a development that
complicated relations with the PLO and ended
any chance for reaching a negotiated peace agree-
ment with Israel.
See also arab-israeli conFlicts; islamism; poli-
tics and islam; terrorism.
Nancy L. StockdaleFurther reading: Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamental-
ism in the West Bank and Gaza (Bloomington: Indi-
ana University Press, 1994); William L. Cleveland,
A History of the Modern Middle East (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 2000); Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in
the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).Hanafi Legal School
The Hanafi Legal School (madhhab) is one of
the four Sunni traditions of Islamic law, and
it is considered to be the most widespread. It
was named after Abu Hanifa (d. 767), an IraqiK 286 Hanafi Legal School