Martin Kear

I completed my PhD titled 'Is This the Way to Palestine? Hamas and the Contested Road to Statehood' in 2016. The thesis critically examined the scope, limits and causation of the shifts in Hamas’s political behaviour between 2005 and 2015. The thesis argued that Hamas employed a dual resistance strategy (DRS) consisting of political and armed resistance to achieve, maintain and defend its status as a legitimate political actor in Palestinian politics. One of the key findings of the thesis was that use of the DRS by Hamas challenged the theoretical assertion of the Inclusion-Moderation framework that the use of violence was antithetical to politically moderate behaviour. Additionally, the thesis revealed that the Palestinian public had assumed the role traditionally undertaken by state institutions in shaping and limiting shifts in the political behaviour of Hamas in the post-2006 election period. Martin’s research interests include the political participation of Islamist movements, particularly Hamas, and the function of violence in the narrative of Islamist movements.