This essay argues that religion plays a crucial role in Hamas’ political behaviour. Hamas established its identity around Islam when the organisation was being created and today it places Islam in the centre of its political actions. Yet Hamas remains a political organisation at a relatively high level of development, and it uses selected religious elements depending on what it deems profitable in any given political situation.
The use of othering discourse and increasing threat levels encourages fear and mass hysteria in Western countries. Preconditioned as we are by Religiophobia, ethnophobia and Islamophobia, the exaggerated threat of Islamic terrorism specifically and religious terrorism generally cannot be negated until dominant stereotypes and representations are subjected to change.
Predictions of “water wars” have become an important and even customary part of global diplomatic discourse. In 1995, the World Bank’s vice president for environmentally sustainable development famously asserted “if the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water”. What is the truth about transboundary water and the potential for war?
The administrations of President Bush and President Obama have not provided many more details on how they assess just what these targeting practices are or how they operate. While they offer assurances that their procedures meet the necessary requirements of the laws of war in terms of distinction and proportionality, they have not offered any evidence of the actual overview process.
The external relations of the European Union with the Arab countries of the southern bank of the Mediterranean, institutionalised initially through the Barcelona process, then the ENP and today the Union for the Mediterranean, are predicated on the twin pillars of political stability and economic integration into a liberal free trade area. The approach is both a policy and a moral failure.
Hamas, ‘Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya’ (The Islamic Resistance Movement), has evolved over time from its humble beginnings as a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood, to an arguably legitimate political body, controlling much of the occupied Palestinian territories. This paper will reflect on the key factors in its development and features of the movement, and will conclude with a discussion of Hamas’ future as both an agent of armed struggle and a legitimate political body.
International Relations is currently facing a global religious revival. Tehran’s foreign policy reflects the pluralism of the regime’s political-theological discourse. Westphalian assumptions promote an ignorance of this pluralism and lead to the incorrect assumption that a theocratic Iran is incompatible with international stability.
Do states go to war due to resource competition? Or, do states seek settlements that reflect their long-term interests? Cross-tabulating data from the Issues Correlates of War dataset and Peter H. Gleick’s Event Intensity Scale shows that states seek negotiated settlements.
This thesis will argue that two pivotal moments in the Middle Easts recent history, the Six Day War of 1967 and the October War of 1973, whilst not inherently conducted or directly propagated by the Great Powers, stemmed from their irresponsible interference.
Israel’s pursuit of economic peace is, in reality, a policy of economic pacification. There is a real danger that Economic Peace can be used to frame peace-building away from political diplomacy. Neglecting the political aspects of peace building and favouring economic pacification will only lead to a resurgence of violence in the future.
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