Sara Roy's book provides a welcome addition to the existing scholarship on civil society in the Palestinian context in general, and with regard to Hamas and the Islamic movement in particular. The author begins by summarizing and assessing the conventional wisdom (as articulated by governments, the media, and some academics) that Islamic social institutions (ISIs) in general, and Palestinian ISIs in particular, are complicit in terrorist violence because they free up funding for militant activity, serve to indoctrinate participants and, through their very existence, legitimize the groups providing the services in question (p. 4). Refuting this argument is the central purpose of the book. Roy argues that rather than serving as a recruiting ground for Hamas or a source of political indoctrination, the Islamic social sector has historically been focused on social reform, civic engagement, and the strengthening of Palestinian civil society.

Chapter 2 provides a fairly straightforward but carefully researched (and in some instances unusually detailed) history of Hamas as a political, military, and social organization. Chapter 3 begins the book's theoretical work, offering a survey of Islamic thought on the question of civil society and state–society relations, ranging from the mainstream to the radicals to the moderates, including analysis of thinkers from Mohammed Abduh to Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani to Sayid Qutb. On the basis of the doctrine reflected in Hamas's reformist social project and its approach to political competition, Roy situates the movement at the moderate end of the spectrum. She then explores the specifics of the Palestinian context in Chapters 4 and 5, focusing on a discussion of Hamas's evolution during the First Intifada and the Oslo period (1993 to 2000) in Chapter 4, and on an exceptionally detailed discussion of Islamic social institutions in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 summarizes the main analytical findings of the book, while Chapter 7 discusses the changes Hamas underwent as a result of the Second Intifada, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, its election victory in 2006, and the conflict with Fatah leading to Hamas's takeover of Gaza in 2007. The book closes by detailing the destruction brought about by Operation Cast Lead in 2009.

What Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza does not do is theorize about the provision of social services by Islamist movements in a general sense. This is not a book about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or Hezbollah in Lebanon, or “Islamist civil society” writ large; it is a book about the Islamic social service sector in the West Bank and Gaza. This is not a criticism; the provision of charity by Islamist groups in general, and in countries such as Egypt and Lebanon in particular, has already been well covered by a number of authors, including Janine Clark (Islam, Charity, and Activism, 2004), Shawn Flanigan (For the Love of God: NGOs and Religious Identity in a Violent World, 2009), and others. While Roy engages with this literature, the real focus of the book is the Islamic social sector in the Palestinian context. And in fact, the depth of information on Hamas in particular and the Palestinian ISIs is one of its strengths, and is perhaps necessary as well, given the very specific constraints these institutions face.

The book makes two major contributions to our understanding of the Palestinian Islamic social sector, as well as of Hamas itself. Arguably the most significant is that it offers a nuanced counterpoint to the argument that Islamic charities and other civil society institutions are little more than recruiting grounds for Hamas fighters or tools for indoctrination of aid recipients. The strength of Roy's argument is that rather than offering a one-dimensional defense or indictment of Hamas and the Palestinian ISI sector, she demonstrates that the relationship between Hamas and these institutions is a complicated one, which has evolved over time and defies simplistic categorization. While not entirely uncritical of Hamas, the author contextualizes the growth of the Islamic social service sector and explores the ways in which it is both connected and unconnected to Hamas itself, ultimately suggesting that the link between them is “philosophical rather than organizational” (p. 164), meticulously illustrating her analysis with detailed descriptions of the institutions in question and interviews with both staff and patrons.

This brings me to the book's second major contribution, which is the wealth of information on the institutions themselves. From the detailed description of the programs for children at the House of the Book and Sunna in Khan Younis (pp. 103–4) to the discussion of the specific medical treatments available at al-Wafa Medical Rehabilitation Hospital (pp. 151–59), this information is invaluable to those with an interest in Palestinian civil society or Islamic social services. A wide range of interviews and visits to institutions (both “traditional” and “developmental,” an interesting distinction) provides an impressive portrait of the Palestinian Islamic social sector, particularly during the Oslo years.

There are a few issues that may leave readers with some questions. For instance, given the significance of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency's services for the lives of many Palestinians, how do ISIs complement or supplement the services provided by UNRWA? How do staffs from the two sets of institutions interact or coordinate with each other? Secondly, although Roy demonstrates that the Islamic social sector is not deliberately designed to attract supporters to Hamas, I do wonder whether this might not occur anyway, intentionally or not. In the 2006 Palestine Legislative Council election (addressed in Chapter 7), Hamas-aligned candidates fared far better in those seats elected through a plurality-at-large system, in which people voted directly for the candidate, than in the seats elected through closed-list proportional representation in which they voted directly for the party. (The Palestinian Authority uses a parallel voting system.) This suggests that the reputation of individual candidates, rather than Hamas's political platform, was what appealed to voters. Candidates who were in some way associated (or perceived by voters to be associated) with these organizations may have acquired a reputation for competence and honesty that garnered them votes, even if those voters never used ISI services themselves.

Roy's discussion of the Islamic movement's focus on social reform during the Oslo years also raises a number of interesting questions, contrasting as this does with the spike in Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians in the early 1990s (pp. 33–35), often read as attempt to distinguish itself from Fatah and/or to sour the Israeli public on the peace process (Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence and Coexistence, 2000, and Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell, Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement, 2010.) The disjuncture between the socially reformist project engaged in by the social service sector of the Islamic movement, on the one hand, and the confrontational approach adopted by parts of Hamas's political wing and the Al Qassem Brigades, on the other, does present a noteworthy contrast, which perhaps speaks to the complex and at times seemingly disconnected relationship between the two that Roy describes. The implications of this disconnect for our understanding of policymaking processes and mechanisms in Hamas's political wing (which Roy does touch upon briefly, but which are not the primary focus of her analysis) may provide an interesting avenue for future research.

There will no doubt be those who disagree with part or all of the arguments in Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza. However, in providing such a complex portrait of the Palestinian Islamic social service sector, Roy makes an important contribution to both the scholarly and policy-oriented debates surrounding this issue.