364 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 6 / 2015 • The jihad and nationalism. Related to the subject of territory, we have the connection between the armed struggle and nationalism, and the re-articulation that the two concepts are subject to in the muqawama insurgency doctrine. Armed struggle is seen as part of the jihad or war against the infidel and, in the case of Palestine, as the recovery of a part of the Ummah occupied by a kafir or infidel like Israel. The nationalist issue is therefore contingent upon the religious one and upon the muqawama doctrine as a means of integrating a secular notion and, thus, one that is contrary to the teachings of Islam, which causes artificial and secular divisions of the Ummah within the religion of Islam where the unity of the territory is beyond question. 3. THE INSURGENT ACTOR: HAMAS To understand why Hamas adopted the muqawama doctrine as a fighting strategy, we must go back to the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood of the 1970s which, based in Palestine, and mainly in the Gaza Strip, had to go into hiding in the 1940s, firstly because of the Egyptian ban and subsequently because of the Israeli occupation.20 During the 1950s and ‘60s, the Muslim Brotherhood began to be structured around a local leader, Ahmad Yassin, a refugee from Ashkelon who was paralysed in an accident during his youth. This however did not prevent him from completing his studies, becoming an expert in Islamic Jurisprudence and earning the title of sheikh for his sermons in Gazan mosques. Under Yassin’s leadership, the Muslim Brotherhood began to organise itself in the 1970s. It built a network of mosques and social facilities which included nurseries, clinics and schools. These efforts culminated in 1976 with the foundation of the Islamic Center to coordinate all these activities, which even included the foundation of the Islamic University of Gaza with Israel’s consent.21 The organisers of the movement continued to clandestinely gain followers, although it was not until the outbreak of the First Intifada in December 1987 that the need to equip the movement with military capability became a pressing one,22 both on account of the escalating tension with Israel and the emergence of rival Islamist groups, such 20 After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Gaza Strip came under the control of Egypt until it was taken over by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967. 21 Israel initially authorised the development of the Palestinian Islamist Movement in the belief that it would act as a counterweight to the international rise of the PLO, draining it of internal support. MILTON-EDWARDS, Beverly. “Islamic politics in Palestine”, London: I. B. Tauris, 1996, pp. 104-114. 22 CHEHAB, Zaki. “Inside Hamas”, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007, pp.22-23. http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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