The Origins of Hamas and Hezbollah

Sometimes, too much focus on current events makes us lose sight of the big picture, forgetting about the underlying reasons for the birth and growth of Hamas and Hezbollah. Zooming out in time, we can see that Hamas was actually born in 1987; very young compared to Fatah (1958), PFLP (1967), and of course the PLO (1964). While Hezbollah was born in 1985; so much younger than SSNP (1932), Phalange "aka Kataeb" (1936), PSP (1949), Marada (1968), Amal (1975), and Lebanese Forces (1977).

Although serious attempts for politicized Islamic parties were made, none really came to fruition except for the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928. The party's entire philosophy was (and still is) based on pacifist, missionary work. It was about preaching and spreading the message of Islam, with the goal of resurrecting the Islamic Empire (aka Caliphate). But right from the start, the great majority of Arabs in Greater Syria (including modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq) and Egypt have found such ideologies "cute" at best, and completely useless at worst. The Arabs in the early years of Anglo-Franco colonialism have shown a great tendency to fight. Arab Nationalists, and soon after joined by Communists, Marxists, and Socialists came together to fight for the liberation of their lands, as early as 1920 (battle of Maysaloun). The rebellion was so furious that the British resorted to what was known back then as "the Arab Kings" to quell the fire of revolution. When the Arabs revolted again in 1930s, especially between 1936 and 1939, the British once again resorted to the Arab Kings to subdue the population by offering themselves as their political leaders, telling them that they can get independence through negotiations. No need for all that fighting. They utilized pan-Arab and pan-Islamic ideology to convince them of their fantastic destiny.

The Muslim Brotherhood, of course, was also calling for a disarmed struggle for that great Islamic empire. The idea was that the Arabs and Muslims were so divided and are simply not ready to take control of their destiny yet. They had to return to the true Islamic teachings, according to these Islamists (Muslims who have politicized Islam), in order to get closer to the resurrection of the grand Caliphate, ruling all over Muslim lands from the Philippines all the way to Andalusia.

1930s

Antun Saadeh of the SSNP wrote and lectured about the dangers of this shift to Islamism. He accused the West (the British, French, and Americans in particular) of elusively supporting Islamism precisely because they knew it would never work. If religion was the most ideal way to build a nation, Saadeh said, then why didn't the Europeans adopt theocratic rule? Even in Turkey, Saadeh contended, the remainder of the Ottoman Empire, adopted the secular nationalist route to build modern Turkey, strong and independent of colonialism. But in Anglo-Franco controlled Syriana, whenever a secular-nationalist leader set up a meeting or gave a lecture, the colonial forces would attack the gathering and disperse them by force, including a round of arrests, torture, and property confiscation. However, Saadeh continues, whenever an Islamist leader set up a meeting or gave a lecture, the colonial forces let him be.

Another tactic, Saadeh observed back then, the colonials were using was journals and books published in the West. Whenever a book comes out glorifying Islam as a religion, and acknowledging its greatness, the Islamists would jump ecstatically, saying "look, even the West acknowledges the greatness of Islam, only further proof that it is the way to go!" And whenever a book comes out condemning Islam is the most dangerous ideology in existence and that it must be destroyed, once again, Islamists jump ecstatically, saying "look, even the West acknowledges how much they fear us, for they see the great potential power we possess!" Actually, Saadeh said, that was a tactic used to push the Arabs away from nationalistic aspirations and further into the world of fantasies of recreating an Arab Islamic empire that has been dead for over seven hundred years.

1940s

In the 1940s, writes Abdul-Rahman Muneef (a great Saudi author who had studied and lived in Amman, Jordan) in his famous book "Amman, a City's Biography," that the Islamists (such as the Islamic Liberation Party and the Muslim Brotherhood) have tried everything in their card deck to convince the Jordanians and Palestinians to join their pacifist movement, calling upon them to avoid "armed" resistance and focus on building themselves into a great Islamic empire first. But these calls came too late. The Jordanian intellectuals, writes Muneef, had returned from universities in Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, Beirut, and Jerusalem, with secular, leftist ideologies of all kinds, ready to fight the Zionists, Britons, and French, with the sword! Their speeches were much more eloquent, and resonated so much stronger with the populations at the time.  

1950s and 1960s and the Nasserite era

Seldom do people know that in the 1950s and 1960s, the great majority of poorest segments of Palestinians, especially in refugee camps, were actually hardcore Marxist, Communist, and Socialist. The political parties that had been formed then approached the people with a leftist, secular calling, such as Fatah, which defined itself as a nationalist and socialist party. Later, the PLO was formed to become the umbrella organization of all different Palestinian factions, to coordinate their liberation efforts and realize their goal for Palestinian independence. Soon came the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular Marxist party established by George Habash and friends. In those days, party membership never discussed religious beliefs. Muslims and Christians of all denominations joined these different factions, and religion was never brought up into the discussion.

1970s 

After the 1967 war and the Arab defeat, Israel faced its deadliest battles with the PLO guerrilla warfare across the Palestinian Jordanian border, then later inside Lebanon where more Lebanese parties joined PLO forces to kick Israeli forces real hard. This went on throughout the 1970s and the civil war in Lebanon, in a battle that seemed endless. But with the death of Abdul Nasser in Egypt, the Arab nationalist movement began to wane. A new era of Arab puppet regimes would begin to collaborate with Israel and the United States to subdue these revolutionary elements. By the end of the 1970s and entering the 1980s, Islamism began to gain traction.

Anwar Al-Sadat takes power in Egypt, and funds and trains Islamist elements to go after the Nasserite remnants to finish them off once and for all, in the name of fighting against Communism. It was ironic that he saw his end by the very Islamists he had trained and armed. In Saudi Arabia, king Faisal Al-Saud (the one who declared the infamous oil embargo in 1973 to punish the West for their support to Israel) was assassinated in 1975 by his half brother's son, who was a CIA collaborative, and replaced Khalid and Fahd who received fighter jets and other military equipment to fight against Communism. But the greatest success story for Islamism, which gave it credit all across the Arab and Muslim world, was that of the Jihadi volunteers who were sent to Afghanistan to fight directly against Communist Russia (USSR).

The Islamist Success Story: Afghanistan in 1980s

In 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) ascended to power in Afghanistan with the help of the sympathetic Afghan army that had executed the prime minister, and formed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The PDPA used Soviet-style shock in their attempt to revolutionize the society. They banned forced marriages and usury to relieve the poor, hurting land owners the most. There was resistance to these sudden changes and rebellion broke out in 1979. These fighters, later known as the Mujahideen, were immediately supported by the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia with thousands of fighters and weaponry, and millions of dollars; marketing it as the war of Muslims against the Godless, atheist, Communists. The CIA was given the green light to begin its covert involvement before the Soviets began to send weapons and helicopters to the Afghan government, and eventually enter Afghanistan at the request of the Afghan government in 1979 to help defeat the counter-revolution.

The battles went on, and the Islamist fighters began to gain great publicity. The US and its allies seemed invisible in the war, and it was the Mujahideen (Islamists) who finally defeated the Godless Communists, or so it appeared, around 1985. The Communist forces were suffering major defeats and were finally uprooted from the country by 1989.

But it was a byproduct of the marketing for Muslim Arab volunteers that Islamism spread all over the Arab world, while the leftist groups began to lose their credentials. It was during the 80s that the majority of the poor in Palestinian refugee camps switched from Communists to Islamists. Head covers spread so quickly among poor women, and more recently face covers went on the rise. The slogan "Islam is the answer" swept across all segments of society, but found deeper roots among the poor, who are always in the most dire need for "organization" to survive. And it was Islamist organization that was offered on the table, the only one allowed and not persecuted by Arab puppet governments. As for the Communists and other leftist groups, they suffered a major blow.

Hamas

It was during these times, the 1980s, that the religious fervor was growing among Arab communities, mostly adopting the pacifist ideology of Muslim Brotherhood. But in specific cases, this Islamist fervor, against the wishes of Muslim Brother central command in Cairo, took the form of armed resistance. In Palestine, it was the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).

According to Chomsky and Achkar, among many other prominent observers, Israel had set up the incubator for Islamism to grow inside Palestinian territories. Israel saw in Islamism the best cure to leftist radical ideologies among Palestinians such as Fatah, DFLP, PFLP, and others. The idea was that an Islamic movement would be at odds with leftist groups, and civil war would ensue to weaken and hopefully destroy the leftist (Marxist, Communist, Socialist) elements in Palestine, the same way Islamism succeeded in Afghanistan with Israeli support. And finally, it was the 1987 Intifada that sparked the birth of Hamas. While Israeli forces actively persecuted PLO organizers inside Gaza and the West Bank, they backed off Hamas and gave it room to grow, to become the new anti-PLO force in the land.

Arafat, as presiding chairman of the PLO, saw these developments as a direct strike against his demagogic rule, and sought his return to the Occupied territories by any means necessary, including signing agreements with Israel acknowledging their rights over 1948 Palestinian lands to become "Israel proper." In return, Israel would allow Arafat and his gangsters to come back to the occupied territories to establish their autonomous government.

Israel's predictions for Hamas got out of hand. In 1992, Hamas established its militant branch called Izz-eddine Al-Qassam Brigades and turned its guns at Israel. This hastened the Israeli plans for the return of Hamas's rival, thus signing the 1993 Oslo Accords by which Arafat would rule over Palestinian-majority areas. His first task was to put down all resistance movements, of which Hamas was the primary target given that all other groups were semi-annihilated.

Hezbollah

In Lebanon, with the Israeli invasion of Beirut coming to an end, the Israelis demanded as part of the truce that PLO fighters be disarmed, along with their allies (i.e. the Lebanese Left). However, Hezbollah had no problem with leaving two Lebanese groups armed to the teeth: the Phalange and Amal. Although the Phalange and Amal were originally founded as secular political parties, they transformed (thanks to the civil war) to become two of the most religiously fanatic groups in the whole country. The Phalange went right-wing Christian nationalists, and Amal (which was founded by Christian cleric Gregoire Haddad and Shiite cleric Musa Al-Sadr) turned into a right-wing Shiite group. Israel left these two groups armed in the hopes that a religious civil war would break between Christians and Muslims, over the rule of Lebanon.

But that did not happen. Instead, a major faction of Amal broke out, led by Husayn Al-Musawi, creating a new splinter party in 1982 called Islamic Amal, which was one of the major groups in the cocktail that had given birth to Hezbollah.

The original Amal became a staunch enemy of the PLO, and several battles broke out between Amal and Palestinian fighters (the ones who remained after the end of Israeli invasion). It was Hezbullah and Walid Jumblat's "Progressive Socialist Party (PSP)" that had come to the aid of the Palestinian refugee camps and fought against Amal, eventually forcing them to back off and end their seige of the camps (mainly in Sabra, Shatlia, and Burj Al-Baraajneh).

Hezbollah, to the misfortune of Israel, adopted militant Islamism, inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran, and dedicated its entire existence to the expulsion of Israeli forces from all Lebanese territories. Against all odds, Hezbollah succeeded in defeating and humiliating Israel in 2000, and again in 2006 on a larger scale. Everyone is expecting a new confrontation which everyone agrees will be so much deadlier than any previous war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Conclusion

Hezbollah and Hamas are no Afghan Mujahideen. They were raised on nationalist upbringing, and ended up intertwining their nationalistic aspirations with their religious convictions. Nevertheless, geopolitical conditions reveal differences between the two groups who found their common ground not on Islamism, but on their identical desire to defeat Israel. This is why you will find that their network of alliances extend into the secular arena as well: In Lebanon, Hezbollah is allied with Michel Aun's Christian-based "Free Patriotic Movement" and the secular Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), and more recently renewing their alliance with PSP. In Palestine, Hamas is allied with the Marxist PFLP (third largest group) and secular leftist DFLP, along with Islamic Jihad (another late 80s Muslim Brotherhood byproduct).

Nasrallah (Hezbollah's current secretary general) once said: "Our choice [to fight] is not national choice. It is not an Arabic choice or a Lebanese choice, and certainly not a partisan choice. It is not an Islamic choice or a Shiite choice. It is the choice of every human being who wants to be free."