Current affairsThe author of this book is described as "a counter-terrorism expert with extensive field experience in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza".
We are also told that he has "served as an FBI analyst providing tactical and strategic analysis in support of counter-terrorism operations". In November 2005 he was appointed deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the US Department of the Treasury.
It's good to know where people are coming from. If you are seeking an on-the-one-hand-on-the-other assessment, Dr Levitt is not the man to provide it.
This is very much the prosecution case against Hamas, now the dominant political force among the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
And there are rich pickings for prosecution counsel. Hamas is deeply committed to terrorist tactics, especially the inhuman, inexcusable and indefensible practice of suicide bombings. The fact that the organisation has been elected to political office in the Palestinian territories does not make its activities any more acceptable although it does raise questions about the moral standards of the people who voted for Hamas.
But we are long past the stage where either side in the conflict is prepared to listen to lectures on morality. Dr Levitt points out that suicide bombings have been described by Hamas leaders as the Palestinians' F-16, and who could excuse the carnage and death wreaked on innocent and virtually defenceless civilians by Israeli firepower, including this deadly aircraft supplied by their American friends? As for Hamas, in addition to its horrific terrorist activities, the organisation is also responsible for a very substantial social welfare programme which ministers to the needs of Palestinians. This was meant to be a task for the Israelis and Yasser Arafat's organisation but Dr Levitt points out that both of them "consistently failed" to carry it out. He further outlines how corruption and misappropriation of funds by PLO elements created an opening for the Islamic fundamentalists to make political advances.
The author goes to great lengths to demonstrate how the Hamas social welfare programme, funded by supporters in the Muslim community abroad, is used as a means of building-up political support as well as providing a cloak for terrorist activities. This is hardly a stunning insight but he does provide chapter and verse from the files of various security and intelligence agencies - US, Israeli and Canadian as well as documents seized by the Israelis from the PLO.
The problem with this type of material is that you are never quite sure how much to believe and which parts should be set aside. Security and intelligence personnel can be just as fallible and biased as anyone else, as we discovered in the Northern Ireland conflict with the cases of the Guildford Four, Birmingham Six and Maguire Seven.
This is not to say that Dr Levitt's book can be dismissed out of hand or that it should be taken less than seriously as an indictment of the sinister and alarming aspects of the Hamas agenda. But his scatter-gun approach means that a very wide range of people and institutions get hit and none of them gets a chance to speak in their own defence. Names of persons allegedly involved in terrorism clutter the pages of this book and one hopes their publication under such a respectable imprint is not used as an additional excuse by the Israelis to assassinate such people.
Such assassinations have been a primary feature of the Israeli response to Hamas. Within a few weeks in early 2004, the movement's leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his deputy Dr Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi were both killed. Apart from the damage to Israel's own image caused by such activities, these extra- judicial killings failed to stop the march of Hamas and probably contributed to its stunning success in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections this year.
Indeed the killing of the almost blind, wheelchair-bound Sheikh Yassin made the world a more dangerous place for everybody because, as Dr Levitt points out in a chapter called "Will Hamas target the West?" the Sheikh was "one of the most vocal opponents to targeting western interests".
There are few concessions to readability in this rather repetitious compilation of intelligence and security data but, if treated with caution, it could be useful background material for policymakers and analysts seeking to predict future developments in a highly volatile situation. In the author's own phrase, Hamas personnel are "notoriously honest" which is one of the main reasons they have superseded the PLO. Seeking to kill the snake by cutting its head off clearly hasn't worked. In the absence of a just and fair political settlement, the political influence of Hamas will continue to grow. As events in Lebanon have shown, unless the international community takes a more constructive interest in the region and seeks to restrain the conduct of all parties, this conflict will get completely out of hand, with possible dire consequences for us all.
Deaglán de Bréadún is the Foreign Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times
Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad By Matthew Levitt Yale University Press in co-operation with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 324pp. £14.99