Hamas | Paola Caridi

A nuanced history, through the eyes of the people involved, of one of the most controversial political movements in the world.
Ten years after its publication in English, this updated version of Hamas provides a new chapter that reflects on the recent developments in the Palestinian struggle including Israel's most recent assault on Gaza in May 2021.
The Palestinian elections of 2006 changed modern Middle Eastern history - as well as changing the perception on the question of Palestine around the world.
How, Westerners asked, could a secular people elect a radical Islamist group, one that openly advocated for violent resistance against the Israeli government and its people, to lead them? With incredible detail, Caridi covers the entire history of Hamas from its 1948 origins in Islamic resistance groups through the critical 2006 elections and the 2011 revolutions that rocked the Arab world.
Caridi breaks with the tradition of sensationalist journalism to instead tell the story of a movement, caught between the desire to resist its oppressor and occupier and the need to provide support for a refugee people as the sole effective government of a war-torn region embargoed by Israel.
In so doing, she performs, with intelligence, dexterity, and heart, the central function of history: to look at a people's actions through that people's eyes and to reveal Palestinian understanding behind the controversy in explaining one of the key players in the central crisis of the Middle East today.