The Birth of Hamas’ Foreign Policy — a summary

This article solely serves as a summary and analysis of the original work "The Birth of Hamas’ Foreign Policy in Response to Saddam’s Attempted Annexation of Kuwait: A Thread" by Mujamma Haraket. The purpose of this piece is to provide a concise overview and facilitate understanding of the source material, which can be read in its entirety here: https://x.com/MujammaHaraket/status/1967359314051633371

Hamas developed a pragmatic foreign policy long before it became a governing actor in 2006–2007. That orientation germinated inside the Palestinian diasporic network in Kuwait and hardened during the 1990–91 Gulf crisis, when the movement acted differently from the PLO: it appointed envoys, pursued mediation, issued public communiqués, and used diplomacy to position itself regionally.

Disruption in Kuwait and the movement’s early diplomacy

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990, Hamas’s Kuwait-based leadership—including Khaled Meshal, Muhammad Nazzal, ‘Izzat al-Rishq, and Sami Khater—suffered immediate disruption. Roughly 430,000 Palestinians in Kuwait faced direct consequences. Within days Hamas named Ibrahim Ghusheh as its official representative to the Popular Islamic Delegation, giving the movement a formal channel to communicate with Arab, Islamic, and Western officials. Ghusheh joined a pan-Islamic delegation that visited Iran, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia in January 1991 to try to mediate the crisis, and he represented Hamas in regional initiatives that year, including outreach to Libya.

Public statements and mediation efforts

Hamas spoke quickly and clearly. It issued Communiqué 61 on 3 August 1990, expressing Palestinian empathy for dispossession and thanking Kuwaitis for past generosity. Subsequent communiqués (62 on 13 August, 63 on 29 August, and 64 on 26 September 1990) articulated political demands: foremost, the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and the formation of an Arabic-Islamic peacekeeping force in disputed frontier areas. Hamas met with Fatah in Yemen in August 1990—Ghusheh led the Hamas delegation while Akram Haniyyah represented Fatah—and Gaza leader ‘Abdul ‘Aziz al-Rantisi publicly insisted on condemning any occupation, whether Israeli or Iraqi. After the war, Hamas offered to mediate on Kuwaiti prisoners and on the position of Palestinians expelled or stranded by the conflict.

Principles and practical calculations behind opposition

Hamas opposed Saddam’s invasion for both principled and practical reasons. The movement rejected the invasion as a violation of state sovereignty and international law, and it feared the catastrophic human, material, and political consequences that would follow: mass casualties, property destruction, poisoned inter-Arab relations, and deeper regional divisions. Hamas leaders anticipated that the crisis would invite international retaliation from the United States, Europe, and Israel—retaliation that could weaken Iraq and reshape regional power balances in ways harmful to Palestinian interests. While Hamas condemned the Iraqi occupation, it also denounced the later U.S.-led invasion of Iraq; the movement opposed both forms of external aggression.

Diplomatic pragmatism and regional positioning

The crisis revealed Hamas’s diplomatic pragmatism. By distancing itself from the PLO/Fatah stance that sided with Saddam, Hamas won appreciation from several Arab and Islamic states—Saudi Arabia chief among them—that valued Hamas’s principled, measured response. That distancing created political space for Hamas in the Gulf after the PLO’s credibility there suffered. At the same time, Hamas did not suddenly win Western favor; its gains remained primarily regional.

Financial and political context

Financial ties shaped regional alignments and Hamas’s calculations. Kuwait had long supported Palestinian institutions, channeling funds to the PLO and, by the late 1980s, sending sizable direct aid to Palestinian institutions—estimates suggest around $100 million annually in 1989. Kuwait also allowed a 5% levy on Palestinian public-sector incomes that produced substantial revenue (some estimates place this near $50 million/year). Iraq had become a major PLO patron, reportedly providing about $48 million annually. Those patronage patterns influenced political decisions: some argue Iraq used funding as leverage to secure PLO support for Saddam’s proposals, while Kuwait’s reductions in PLO transfers pushed the PLO toward choices that alienated Gulf states. Claims that Kuwait disbursed $60 million to Hamas in 1989 circulated, but Hamas officially denied receiving state funding at that time.

Saddam’s “linkage” proposal and its fallout

Saddam’s “linkage” proposal—announced on 12 August 1990 and suggesting Iraq would withdraw only if Israel withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza—complicated the politics. The United States rejected linkage, and when the PLO signaled support for it, the PLO’s standing in the Gulf declined. Saddam deployed roughly 400 Arab Liberation Front troops in Kuwait to give the occupation a Palestinian face, a move that intensified Kuwaiti anger toward Palestinians broadly and collapsed distinctions between supporters and opponents of the occupation.

Human cost: expulsions, violence, and trauma

The human toll amplified the crisis’s political effects. During and after the occupation, more than 200,000 Palestinians fled Kuwait and roughly another 200,000 faced expulsion between March and September 1991, shrinking the Palestinian community there to about 20,000. Palestinians encountered dismissals, terror attacks, expulsions, and reports of killings, torture, and alleged mass graves; one witness estimated some 4,000 killed and 16,000 tortured, though figures vary. Approximately 5,000 Palestinians who joined the Kuwaiti resistance were captured and imprisoned by Iraqi forces. These events constituted a major trauma—often described as a “third catastrophe” after 1948 and 1967—and convinced many Hamas leaders that they had no future in Kuwait.

Faced with hostility and danger, Hamas leaders left Kuwait—often clandestinely—and relocated to Jordan. From Jordan they worked underground to administer the movement, sustain leadership, and continue supporting the Intifada, while navigating a tricky relationship with a Jordanian state that had backed Saddam. The Kuwait episode forced Hamas to perform a delicate diplomatic balancing act: uphold principle, protect its people and networks, and keep channels open to regional states and pan-Islamic movements.

Political effects and legacy

The Gulf crisis weakened pan-Arab secular nationalist forces and accelerated the rise of pan-Islamic movements across the region. Hamas’s principled condemnation of the invasion and its pragmatic engagement in mediation earned it regional political gains and improved standing among some Gulf and Islamic actors—even as it remained marginal in the West. The experience in Kuwait—the expulsions, the mediation role, the diplomatic maneuvering—shaped Hamas’s subsequent foreign policy: a pragmatic, populist, regionally engaged approach that prioritized principle, survival, and political opportunity.