ISLAMISM IN PALESTINE: HAMAS AND ITS OPPONENTS

Gudrun Harrer in conversation with Gudrun Krämer

ISLAMISM IN PALESTINE: HAMAS AND ITS OPPONENTS

Religion and politics are unusually closely linked in the conflict over Palestine/Israel, both on the Jewish-Israeli side and on the Arab-Palestinian side. Palestine holds a special position for many devout Muslims, who regard Jerusalem as the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina. While the PLO officially entered into a peace process with Israel in the 1990s, Hamas, which emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, continued to lay claim to the entire country. In 2007, Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip and established an authoritarian regime. On 7 October 2023, it attacked Israel, massacred civilians and deported 250 people to Gaza. However, the slogan „From the River to the Sea“ propagated by Palestinian groups today comes from the founding document of the Israeli national conservative Likud party.

In the Bruno Kreisky Forum, Gudrun Krämer analyses the Hamas regime in Gaza and examines the strategies Hamas uses to distinguish itself from nationalist and militant Islamist groups, as well as the echoes and reflections between Zionist and Islamist positions.

Gudrun Krämer, Islamic scholar, historian and author

Gudrun Harrer, Senior Editor, Der Standard; Lecturer for Modern History and Politics of the Near and Middle East at the University of Vienna and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna