Israel and Palestine, Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades

Abstract

In the early 2000s during the Second Intifada, awful scenes in the aftermath of suicide bombings of strewn body parts being collected outside pizzerias and nightclubs in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem became synonymous with Hamas in Western news reports. However during this period the frequency of militant attacks and lethality was matched, and at times surpassed, by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Notably both groups explicitly targeted Israeli civilians and carried out high levels of ACV, unlike the IRA in Northern Ireland which was more constrained. However, in common with the IRA, their attacks were carried out in a situation of contentious politics and were in interaction with the political structures, the mobilising structures and cultural framing of the time. Analysis of the data compiled for the databases showed two distinct escalations, termed Wave One, from 1993–1997, and Wave Two, from 2000–2005. Wave One occurred while Hamas was outside of the political system during the Oslo Accord peace years, and Wave Two was the time period of the Second Intifada which saw exceptional levels of violence being carried out by both the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and the Palestinian militant groups, with utterly devastating results.