As the ability of Israel and the PLO under Fatah’s leadership to reach a “grand bargain” has faltered during the last decade and one half, Hamas — a fighting nationalist Palestinian Islamic movement — has introduced a competing and arguably more successful dynamic into the Israeli-Palestinian strategic equation.
Hamas was overshadowed during the first years after the signing of the Oslo agreement and the return of the PLO to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1994, but its power has grown in tandem with the continuing failure of the PLO to chart a path to independence and the end of occupation. In contrast to the PLO's inability to establish a productive diplomatic momentum with Israel, Hamas haS compiled an impressive record of discreet understandings — not as ostentatious as the signed agreements that are the trademarks of the Oslo era, but still effective in establishing tangible rules that continue to define their growing relations.
