The Hudna: Hamas's Concept of a Long-term Ceasefire

The landslide victory of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, in the 2006 parliamentary elections in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the movement’s military takeover of the Gaza Strip in the following year revealed that Hamas cannot be ignored as a key player in Palestinian politics. Hamas is well-known for its anti-Israeli charter from 1988 and its violent attacks against Israel. Less known is that Hamas has its own recipe for solving the conflict with Israel peacefully. The core principle of this recipe is the Islamic concept of hudna, the extended ceasefire. To learn more about Hamas’s hudna proposals, PRIO research staff interviewed Hamas leaders in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. This policy brief provides an analysis of those interviews, showing that where the Oslo process failed to achieve its intended aim – the resolution of all final-status issues – Hamas seeks to reach agreement on issues where agreement is possible and to postpone the obstacles to progress for the next generation to solve.