During the 1970s and 1980s, a dramatic political shift permanently altered the geopolitical topography of the Middle East and the broader Muslim world. Islamism gained momentum as secular nationalism declined. It was a collapse accelerated by the defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

At the time, Western powers viewed Islamism, a right-wing ideology opposed to socialism and secular nationalism, as a useful counterweight to Soviet-backed nationalist regimes in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and, later, Libya. One of the most consequential applications of this strategy unfolded in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Anti-Israel Palestinian resistance was largely dominated by secular and left-leaning groups operating primarily within the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine and neighbouring nationalist Arab states.

The French scholar Jean-Pierre Filiu wrote that, in order to neutralise Palestinian resistance groups, Israel quietly nurtured the growth of local Islamist movements, specifically the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. This was a deliberate strategy, designed to fragment and undermine the primary face of Palestinian nationalism: Yasser Arafat’s left-leaning and secular Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

For Israeli strategists, the PLO’s anti-colonial rhetoric posed a serious political threat. To curb the PLO’s influence, Israeli military intelligence began to cultivate a counterweight in the shape of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. A charismatic Palestinian cleric, Yassin had begun building a social and religious network under the Muslim Brotherhood umbrella in Gaza, culminating in the founding of al-Mujama al-Islami in 1973.

The PLO viewed Yassin’s followers as “quietist fundamentalists” preoccupied with social welfare and moral purification. The PLO did not exhibit concern even when Israeli authorities permitted al-Mujama to operate unhindered. In 1979, the Israeli military administration formally........

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