ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter aims to investigate the Hamas media strategy between 1994 and 2006. This period witnessed the Oslo agreement, followed by the establishment of the PNA, and the outbreak of the second intifada after the failure of IsraeliPalestinian negotiations. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part covers the Hamas media strategy after the establishment of the PNA and Hamas’s establishment of the Islamic National Salvation party (alkhalas), the political ‘licensed’ party of Hamas. I argue that there was a turning point in the Hamas media strategy during this period, in terms of objectives, infrastructure, media message, and target audience. Hamas expanded its media infrastructure by establishing the first newspaper, and creating the first online webpage. In this regard, this chapter attempts to uncover the context of the establishment of the Alwatan newspaper the reasons for closing it down, and the establishment of the Alrisala newspaper as an alternative. The media message of Hamas also saw a major shift in using discourse that Hamas had not used before. I argue that Hamas’s discourse during this period was a combination of resistance/anti-Oslo discourse, which focused on the failure of the PNA to reclaim any of the Palestinian rights by negotiation, and presented the ‘resistance’ option as an alternative to this path, and the political opposition discourse, which focused on the everyday concerns of people such as the economy and poverty, child labour, education, corruption, and human rights. The target audiences of the Hamas media strategy also expanded with the establishment of the Palestinian Information Centre, which had material available in six different languages. This raises the question of the objectives of the Hamas media over this period. The second part of the chapter discusses the Hamas media in the context of the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada. This part will look at the creation of the first radio station for Hamas in Palestine. It also examines the media
message, target audience, and objectives Hamas set to deal with the second intifada context. This part will analyse documents gathered from the Alaqsa media network.
