Annotated Bibliography on the Palestine Liberation Organization

Annotated Bibliography on the Palestine Liberation Organization

Azzam Tamimi. Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, Journal of Islamic Studies, 2010, 21 (3): 451-455.

Azzam Tamimi provides some of the heretofore 'Unwritten Chapters' of Hamas in this valuable, accessible and often engaging account. Hamas—the Arabic acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Resistance Movement—has earned a reputation for militancy and is regularly condemned in Western ruling circles for its refusal to repudiate violence and terrorism. Even so, its history reveals a capacity for pragmatic adaptation, as well as substantial evolution in its political project. The author has interviewed several leading figures in Hamas, notably including Khalid Mishal, Ibrahim Ghusha and Musa Abu Marzuq and he makes extensive use of primary materials in Arabic, as well as in English. Tamimi's richly detailed narrative covers a period of roughly twenty years, beginning with the formation of Hamas and ending following the stunning electoral defeat of Fatah in the January 2006 elections.

Hamas: Unwritten Chapters ends with Hamas competing in and winning the legislative election of 2006, and the immediate aftermath of its victory. One of the motives was to gain international credibility and another was to end the international boycott of Hamas. Political Bureau member Izzat al-Rishq, who was interviewed by Tamimi, stressed that the refusal of Hamas to participate in the 1996 elections stemmed from the appraisal that the elections, intended to buttress the Oslo Accords, would be rigged against Hamas, rather than a rejection of elections on principle. By 2006, the situation was dramatically different, particularly after the unilateral Israel withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. By then, many Palestinians shared the longstanding critique by Hamas that the Oslo Accords were unfairly stacked in Israel's favor and would not end the occupation, many aspects of which continued in Gaza, notwithstanding Israel's 2005 withdrawal. Rather than respect the result of an election that has been described by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter as the fairest that he has observed, the U.S., Israel, Egypt and the European Union chose to isolate Hamas, further impoverish Gazan civilians and to attempt to topple the democratically elected government.

Daniel Baracskay. The Palestine Liberation Organization: Terrorism and Prospects for Peace in the Holy Land, ABC-CLIO, 2011

This book on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) examines a vast and influential organization of terror which has been in existence since 1964. Much of the historical literature on the PLO was written when the organization was at the pinnacle of its existence, through the time when it was exiled from Lebanon in 1982. This book considers the underlying causes that led to the creation of the PLO as the bases for its existence, ideology, operations, and evolution. However, it also provides a contemporary account of how the PLO has shaped Palestinian and Middle Eastern politics over the course of the past two decades. Chapter 1 introduces the PLO by first identifying the significance of the Holy Land in ancient times and how it has become a battleground between competing interests seeking to occupy the ...