375 Beatriz Gutiérrez López The Muqawama (Resistance): The Case of Hamas confirmed – in terms of legitimacy and in accordance with the muqawama doctrine – in December that year, when the Al-Qassam Brigades presented, via its twitter account, a new rocket model by the name “Qassam ?”, without specifying its range or firepower, but which is presumably of a longer range than previous models (see note 47). 5. FINAL REMARKS As we have seen from the previous sections, Hamas’s political and armed activities, especially in the Gaza Strip, are prompted by the theoretical guidelines of the muqawama doctrine, which began to be implemented by the movement in the 1990s when the organisation’s military action began to be afforded the same importance as its social one. The first and most obvious consequence of adopting this doctrine is that Israel has been forced to readapt its traditional counterinsurgency strategies over the past two decades in order to be able to deal with the threat that Hamas poses for Israeli national security. Despite the criticism that Hamas has received in the global Jihadist arena, its impact as a protracted and to-date ineradicable resistance force suggests that conservative Sunni Islam is quickly on the rise throughout the region, and it is quite possible that the muqawama doctrine will be imported by other groups and readapted to their territories as necessary. The risk, aside from the military one and the use of certain fighting tactics, is based on an identity and mental structure that is different from the classical elements that states such as Israel have been confronting since the 1960s in the form of guerrilla warfare and terrorism. Radicalized Arab and Muslim components have redefined combat parameters which are key in armed confrontation, such as the concept of victory, defeat, peace and resistance and, therefore, should be reconsidered in order to be able to act on them. Without wishing to be alarmist or, for that matter, to underestimate the lessons learned during more than half a century of contemporary counterinsurgency, it is vital to readapt these strategies, procedures, techniques and tactics to the new models that are emerging, of which the muqawama doctrine is merely one example. And for this re-adaptation to be effective, it is not only necessary to be familiar with the territory and culture in which the insurgency model developed (in hearts in minds), but also to assess how the identity values are conveyed in a fighting procedure that is legitimated and supported by a social base that implements it as if it were its own strategy for escaping from an injurious situation. Because, let us not forget that in armed conflict, despite the fierce radicalism of the discourse, it is normally bullets that claim lives and, for counterinsurgency purposes, it is vital to render both the weapons, and the discourse that fuels them, harmless. http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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