This book analyses the root causes of suicide terrorism at both the elite and rank-and- file levels of the Hamas.Using extensive fieldwork and on-the-ground interviews, the volume seeks to delve beneath the surface and understand why and how suicide operations were adopted as a sustained mechanism of engagement within the Israeli-Palestinian landscape of conflict. Challenging widespread arguments that tend to either emphasise the role of religion, particularly Islam, in propelling suicide terrorism or to trace its roots to the power struggles between Palestinian political players, this work locates the emergence and spread of this phenomenon in a complex network of interrelated factors.This multifaceted approach, combined with extensive research conducted in Israel and the Palestinian territories, enables the author to identify three core factors that fuel suicide bombing campaigns in the region. First, Palestinian suicide operations as a complex combination of instrumental and expressive violence which are adopted by rational organisations and individuals to assert power, achieve political and/or societal survival, and enable retaliation as well as competition. In other words, suicide bombings not only serve distinct political and strategic goals for both Hamas and its operatives but they also serve to convey a symbolic message to various audiences, within Israel, the Palestinian territories and around the world. Second, how suicide operations not only perform a crucial role in the formation and consolidation of Palestinian national identity but also how they are the latest manifestation of the historically entrenched norm of militant heroic martyrdom. Finally, it illustrates how political Islam is systematically employed by organisations like Hamas in order to facilitate the articulation, justification and legitimisation of suicide operations as a modern-day jihad against Israel through the means of modern interpretations and fatwas.In short, the main themes of this work counter approaches that juxtapose social and/or political motivations against religious ones in favour of studying suicide terrorism in the Palestinian territories from a combined socio-political cultural perspective which acknowledges the roles played by not only the organisation and the individual â?martyr' but also that of Palestinian society. This approach not only facilitates a much needed, multifaceted, holistic understanding of suicide bombings in this particular region but also yields policy-relevant lessons to address extreme political violence in other parts of the world. By adopting such a multi-level and multi-causal approach, this work fills a fundamental gap in contemporary terrorism literature.This book will be of much interest to students of Hamas, terrorism, Middle East politics and security studies.&nbsp (Global Books in Print).