Using a wealth of primary sources, this book traces the history of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), one of the most important yet least understood Palestinian armed factions from its origins in the early 1980s to today, exploring its continued presence despite its more powerful sister movement Hamas.

This volume profiles Hamas (Harakat al-Mugawama al-Islamiya), main radical Islamic terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, smaller in size but equally committed to eliminating Israel through political violence. The aim of this book is not to glorify terrorist movements. Rather it is designed to provide an easily accessible reference for academics, policy makers, reporters, and other interested individuals on two of the most notorious Palestinian terrorist groups. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

How does a group that operates terror cells and espouses violence become a ruling political party? How is the world to understand and respond to Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that Palestinian voters brought to power in the stunning election of January 2006? This important book provides the most fully researched assessment of Hamas ever written. Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert with extensive field experience in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, draws aside the veil of legitimacy behind which Hamas hides. He presents concrete, detailed evidence from an extensive array of international intelligence materials, including recently declassified CIA, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security reports. Levitt demolishes the notion that Hamas’ military, political, and social wings are distinct from one another and catalogues the alarming extent to which the organization’s political and social welfare leaders support terror. He exposes Hamas as a unitary organization committed to a militant Islamist ideology, urges the international community to take heed, and offers well-considered ideas for countering the significant threat Hamas poses.

As southern Lebanon becomes the latest battleground for Islamist warriors, Everyday Jihad plunges us into the sprawling, heavily populated Palestinian refugee camp at Ain al-Helweh, which in the early 1990s became a site for militant Sunni Islamists. A place of refuge for Arabs hunted down in their countries of origin and a recruitment ground for young disenfranchised Palestinians, the camp--where sheikhs began actively recruiting for jihad--situated itself in the global geography of radical Islam. With pioneering fieldwork, Bernard Rougier documents how Sunni fundamentalists, combining a literal interpretation of sacred texts with a militant interpretation of jihad, took root in this Palestinian milieu. By staying very close to the religious actors, their discourse, perceptions, and means of persuasion, Rougier helps us to understand how radical religious allegiances overcome traditional nationalist sentiment and how jihadist networks grab hold in communities marked by unemployment, poverty, and despair. With the emergence of Hezbollah, the Shiite political party and guerrilla army, at the forefront of Lebanese and regional politics, relations with the Palestinians will be decisive. The Palestinian camps of Lebanon, whose disarmament is called for by the international community, constitute a contentious arena for a multitude of players: Syria and Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Authority, and Bin Laden and the late Zarqawi. Witnessing everyday jihad in their midst offers readers a rare glimpse into a microcosm of the religious, sectarian, and secular struggles for the political identity of the Middle East today.

Moshe Gil's history of Palestine from the Muslim conquest to the Crusades was the first comprehensive survey of its kind. Based on an impressive array of sources, the author examines the lives of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities of Palestine against a background of the political and military events of the period.

As the Palestinian Liberation Organization engages in negotiations with Israel toward an interim period of limited Palestinian self-rule, this timely book provides an insider's view of how the growing hold of Islamic fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza challenges the peace process. Working from interviews with leaders of the movement and from primary documents, Ziad Abu-Amr traces the origin and evolution of the fundamentalist organizations Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas) and Islamic Jihad and analyzes their ideologies, their political programs, their sources of support, and their impact on Palestinian society. With a solid grasp of the dynamics of these movements, Abu-Amr charts the struggle between the fundamentalists and the PLO to define the identity of Palestinian society, its direction, and its leadership.

This study traces the rise of the Islamic Jihad, its ideological platform, and its relations with other political forces both within and outside the Palestinian arena. The study provides a basis for a wider discussion of how Palestinian Islamists deal with the challenge of peace created by the Oslo Accords, particularly the shift of the PLO from a liberation movement to a sovereign entity with coercive power.