To recapitulate, Hamas was initially rather informally organized, relying heavily on its charismatic founders such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin for authority and decision-making (Mishal and Sela 2000, 153). The original leadership also granted the local branches a high degree of autonomy. This federated and stratified organizational structure was a legacy from the Gaza Brotherhood days, and was retained by Hamas as it would allow it to continue operating even if other branches were dissolved by Israel.236 However, the harsh Israeli response to the ongoing uprising came to threaten Hamas’s very survival in the early 1990s. In response, it took a number of steps to strengthen and institutionalize its organization, so that it no longer would depend on any one particular leader. For one, Hamas established its Political Bureau abroad to ensure that whatever happened to its domestic leaders, the organization would still have an operative leadership.237 Importantly, the founding of the Political Bureau was accompanied by the formalization of a hierarchical organizational structure. Second, Hamas also tried to protect its political and social work by separating its militant activities into a distinct organizational unit. Ostensibly, this armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, operates autonomously from the political leadership but in accordance with the overall strategy of Hamas.238
Israeli occupation, notably former Fatah activist and prominent Hamas leader Muhammad Hassan Abu Tir (interviewed in Ramallah, April 21, 2011) and Hamas MP Dr. Ayman Daraghme (interviewed in Ramallah, April 10, May 18, and September 27, 2011).
236 The federated dimension means that the various geographical branches were given operational and strategic leeway to adjust and prioritize goals and strategies to best fit their particular context, whereas the stratified dimension means that the lower organizational units retain a high degree of autonomy, although they remain subjugated to the higher strata (Katz and Mair 1995, 18, 21).
237 By establishing its Political Bureau abroad, Hamas’s organizational order came to resemble that of the PLO, which for most of its history was led from abroad (Cobban 1984). Other liberation movements were similarly organized, e.g., the South African ANC during the apartheid period.
238 The political leadership isolated itself from the activities of the al-Qassam Brigades, although there has been some overlap in personnel between the political and armed wing, most importantly exemplified by Salah Shehadeh, co-founder of Hamas and leader of the al-Qassam Brigades for many years (Hadi 2006, 187–88). Likewise, Fathi Hammad from Gaza has been identified as being both a political leader and an al-Qassam commander (Gunning 2008, 178). According to Hamilton et al. (2007), Hamas leaders Fadel Hamdan and Khaled Thouaib have also been involved in the resistance wing, as was Yunis al-Astal according to a list of Palestinian legislators compiled by the Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung (quoted in Gunning 2008, 179). Prior to the establishment of Hamas, however, this distinction was rather blurred. In 1984, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin established and personally supervised a military group in Gaza called the Palestinian Fighters, together with the aforementioned Shehadeh and later Hamas leader Ibrahim al-Maqadmeh. The group never gained any prominence, as Israeli security services soon arrested most of those involved
The formal structure
Because Hamas is unwilling to share its bylaws with outsiders for reasons of security, it is impossible to accurately describe its organizational structure, know exactly how its decision-making procedures work, how internal elections are conducted, or how its bylaws can be changed. Based on secondary sources and interviews with both current and former Hamas members, parliamentarians, cadres, and leaders on the occupied West Bank and in Lebanon, Figure 4 below is suggested as a schematic organogram of Hamas as of the early 1990s.
In short, the Consultative Council has been the topmost leadership in Hamas almost from the very beginning. And while accounts differ, it is assumed to have been composed of somewhere between twelve and 24 members in the early 1990s, most, if not all, residing outside of occupied Palestine. As discussed, this Consultative Council is in charge of the overall strategy and ideological development of Hamas, and appoints the ten member Political Bureau to deal with the day-to-day management of the organization. Inside the occupied territories, Hamas has three main wings. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip each has a regional headquarters, further divided into smaller administrative units, while the ever increasing numbers of imprisoned Hamas members and leaders are represented through prisoners committees (Chehab 2007, 30; Hroub 2006b, 118; Mishal and Sela 2000, 156–58).
The al-Qassam Brigades, the Consultative Council, the Political Bureau, and the three branches within the occupied territories are considered the major organizational units of Hamas.
Because of the secrecy surrounding Hamas’s organizational structure, the below figure is only suggestive and outlines what is assumed to be the formal hierarchical structure of Hamas, not necessarily the de facto structure. Furthermore, because accounts of Hamas’s organizational makeup for the period in question diverge somewhat, some organizational units depicted in the organogram might not ever have existed or only existed for a short period. In particular, the coordinating body mentioned in Mishal and Sela (2000, 162) is conspicuously absent in other consulted sources and was never mentioned by interviewed Hamas cadres. This does not necessarily mean that such a body never existed, but maybe it was set up sometime in the early 1990s and then became superfluous and was disbanded. And as discussed above, the
(Milton-Edwards and Farrell 2010, 115). See also fn. 235 above.
Figure 4: Schematic Hamas organogram, approximately 1993
(Source: Based on interviewed Hamas members and supplemented by information gleaned from the relevant literature, in particular Mishal and Sela (2000). Usra is Arabic for family, shuba means division, and shura translates into consultation.)
domestic leadership was for most intents and purposes defunct for long periods in the early 1990s due to Israeli assassination, imprisonment, and deportation policies. Also, the Consultative Council was able to operate only intermittently (Gunning 2008, 114–15), meaning that the Political Bureau was the sole remaining leadership body.
While details regarding the leadership levels in Hamas for this period are scant and uncertain, even less is known about the lower levels of the organization. Neither the exact number of levels, nor the operative capabilities or functions of the units at these lower levels are known.
Prisoner councils
al-Qassam Brigades
West Bank Council (regional shura)
Direct affiliation Clandestine link
Key:
Gaza Council (regional shura)
Consultative Council (Majlis al-Shura)
Local cells (usra)
Political Bureau
Coordinating body
Local cells (usra) Five district assemblies
(shuba) Seven districts assemblies
(shuba)
However, given the fact that Hamas inherited the Brotherhood’s organizational structure, accounts provided by former Brotherhood leader Dr. Habbash is considered illuminating.
Talking about his rise through the hierarchy on the Gaza Strip during his days in the Brotherhood, he detailed the levels of the organization as follows:
I was first in a small usra, which contains of three members and a leader, called a naqib. And then I became a member of an usra of nouqaba, a council of leaders.
First of all, you have to be a member, then a leader, a naqib, and then a al-Aquib, which means the leader of a nouqaba, the leader of the council of leaders. And after that you can become a member of the local shura council, and then you can become a member of the leadership in one of the [seven shuba] districts. Those that belong to the group who leads a region can finally be part of the leadership of the movement in the Gaza Strip region.239
If Hamas kept with the organizational structure of the Muslim Brotherhood, then, it can be assumed that there were five hierarchical levels below the topmost leadership bodies.240 But this remains speculative. For one, and notwithstanding the credibility of Dr. Habbash, he described the Brotherhood’s rather than Hamas’s organizational structure. Furthermore, the already oft-mentioned persecution of Hamas would certainly have negatively affected the operational capabilities and even the existence of these lower level organizational units. In short, too little is known about these lower levels for any claims to be made. As such, the organogram in Figure 4 only depicts a generic lowest level, included to illustrate that Hamas had some local presence.
Decision-making
While the internal workings of Hamas also are deliberately kept opaque, some details have emerged, and certain characteristics can be inferred based on Hamas’s behavior, secondary sources, and interview data. For one, and as discussed above, it is well established that Hamas from the outset granted its local branches a high degree of decisional autonomy—within the limits of the overall strategic framework. Such a decentralized organizational structure proved invaluable for Hamas’s ability to survive and continue their social, military, and political work during the difficult circumstances of the intifada. A high degree of local autonomy can lead to factionalism, however, and to counter this Hamas also adopted various decision-making 239 Dr. Mahmoud al-Habbash, minister of Religious Affairs and Waqf, interviewed in Ramallah, May 27, 2011.
240 (1) usra, (2) the councils of usra leaders, (3) the local shura councils, (4) regional leaderships, and (5) the Gaza leadership.
procedures inherited from the Brotherhood.
As in the Brotherhood, ultimate authority within Hamas rests with the Consultative Council. It remains the prerogative of this leadership body to articulate the goals of Hamas, and to make decisions regarding the movement’s overall strategy. According to Mishal and Sela, decisions in the Consultative Council were based on a majority vote (2000, 161), whereas decisions
“which fundamentally affect the movement’s direction require a two-thirds majority”
(Gunning 2008, 104). To further increase the internal legitimacy of decisions on such fundamental issues, the leadership at times also consulted its rank-and-file and even conducted internal referendums.
The consultative and democratic nature of these procedures has been repeatedly emphasized both in the literature and among interviewed Hamas members (see e.g., Caridi 2010, 222;
Gunning 2008, 101).241 In short, Hamas early on implemented mechanisms to consult widely among its rank-and-file when deliberating on important decisions. Such an inclusive process helped ensure internal legitimacy for the final decision, even among those that were initially opposed. Although such a consensual model has its benefits, it is also slow-moving and rather cumbersome. And as Hamas operated in a volatile and unpredictable political environment, it could not always rely on these decision-making procedures (Gunning 2008, 113).
The establishment of the Political Bureau was the foremost organizational response to this challenge, as this executive leadership body was given a rather encompassing and open mandate to run the day-to-day operations of Hamas. And as detailed above, in periods of extreme hardship and political repression in the occupied territories, Hamas largely relied on the Political Bureau for both funding and decision-making. However, there are intrinsic contradictions within a movement seeking to combine a hierarchical with a federated, horizontal organizational structure, and to formalize a vertical chain of command in an informal and stratified organization.
So, while Hamas leaders both outside and inside the occupied territories continuously stressed the unity and coherence of the organization, tensions between the various factions have intensified at various points in time, either because of challenges stemming from changes or shocks in the political environment or internal challenges. In particular, with regard to principally important and overarching issues, such tensions have been well documented
241 The democratic nature of Hamas and its decision-making procedures were recurring themes among almost all interviewed cadres.
(Gunning 2008, 40–41; Mishal and Sela 2000, 163–66). However, there were few examples of Hamas suffering from such intensified tensions between its various factions during the period in question. Because of this, detailed analysis of this issue is left for later chapters.
It is, nevertheless, pertinent to note that the three main sources identified as leading to factionalism in Hamas were all in place by the early 1990s: For one, and as already discussed, factionalism is an expected by-product of organizational stratification, i.e., that the lower, local levels of the organization were given a high degree of autonomy.242 Second, Hamas became increasingly heterogeneous throughout the first intifada, both because the persecution of the old guard forced a generational change in the leadership, and because its political vision attracted new recruits, many of whom did not go through the extensive indoctrination process of the Brotherhood (Gunning 2008, 40; Robinson 1997, 170). Third and final, Hamas’s federated structure at the topmost levels also led to factionalism. In particular, the internal power struggles have emerged because the various leadership branches operated under widely different conditions: the Gaza wing was continuously targeted by Israel, the West Bank wing and the prisoners’ committees were fragmented, while the external leadership operated under comparatively easy conditions, largely out of reach from Israeli persecution (ICG 2004, 11;
Mishal and Sela 2000, 161).243
In summary, the years of the first intifada saw Hamas expand and make attempts to formalize and professionalize its organizational order. Despite its best efforts, the challenging environment of the first intifada, marked as it was by violence, volatility, dramatic changes, and relentless persecution by Israel, proved to effectively preclude Hamas’s attempts to successfully build and develop its organization. Although it survived the intifada and to some extent retained the capacity to continue operating as a religiously motivated liberation movement, Hamas emerged from the intifada as a weakened organization, almost completely dependent on its exiled leadership.
242 As discussed above, it made sense for the Hamas leadership to provide the lower levels with decisional autonomy for reasons of security. However, the autonomy of the lower levels was also a consequence of the way in which Hamas spread throughout the occupied territories. For, notwithstanding the fact that Hamas was founded in the Gaza Strip, the expansion of the organization throughout the occupied territories relied on the pre-existing network of Brotherhood institutions, meaning that it was partly created through territorial penetration and partly through territorial diffusion. This, in turn, is hypothesized to mean that the local leaders in Hamas had more authority and de facto power over their subordinates than would have been the case if Hamas spread through territorial penetration. Consequently, they are expected to be harder to whip into line by the central leadership (Panebianco 1988, 51–53).
243 An important exception was the failed assassination attempt in 1997 on the leader of the Political Bureau of Hamas in Amman, Khaled Meshaal (McGeough 2010). This issue will be covered in more detail in later chapters.