Postcolonial Governance
This chapter demonstrates the manner in which Hamas's postcolonial governance persists in a colonial nonstate context. Despite the “real” Palestinian state being nonexistent, it is necessary to take the materiality of the imagined state seriously. However, in doing so, the aspiration is not to determine “how much” or “how little” Hamas acts like a state, but rather to illustrate the way in which its state-like conduct is socialized into a liberation context. Subsequently, the chapter specifies two perspectives on Hamas's government. The first perspective is that of Hamas. Drawing on interviews with Hamas officials, the chapter outlines the organization's perception of itself as an anticolonial faction that has now infused the postcolonial state with the ethos of the anticolonial struggle and, in doing so, reconceptualized its role as a government as a means of protecting the anticolonial armed resistance. The second perspective is that of the recipients of Hamas's governance, namely the Gazans. Based on interviews with Palestinians in Gaza, the chapter argues that, while the colonized are socialized into the reality of their own statelessness, their encounter with Hamas's governance also emerges as a canvas on which Palestine is displayed as a state.