acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a
Palestinian
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
Sunni
Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...
-
Islamic fundamentalist
Islamic fundamentalism has been defined as a puritanical, revivalist, and reform movement of Muslims who aim to return to the founding scriptures of Islam. Islamic fundamentalists are of the view that Muslim-majority countries should return t ...
nationalist
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Th ...
organization. It has a social service wing,
Dawah
Dawah ( ar, دعوة, lit=invitation, ) is the act of inviting or calling people to embrace Islam. The plural is ''da‘wāt'' (دَعْوات) or ''da‘awāt'' (دَعَوات).
Etymology
The English term ''Dawah'' derives from the Arabic ...
, and a military wing, the
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades ( ar, كتائب الشهيد عز الدين القسام, , Battalions of martyr Izz ad-Din al-Qassam; also spelt Izzedine or Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades; often shortened to Al-Qassam Brigades, IQB
Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip (;The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p.761 "Gaza Strip /'gɑːzə/ a strip of territory under the control of the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas, on the SE Mediterranean coast including the town of Gaza.. ...
parliament
In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
of the
Palestinian National Authority
The Palestinian National Authority (PA or PNA; ar, السلطة الوطنية الفلسطينية '), commonly known as the Palestinian Authority and officially the State of Palestine,
.
Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have designated Hamas as a
terrorist organization
A number of national governments and two international organizations have created lists of organizations that they designate as terrorist. The following list of designated terrorist groups lists groups designated as terrorist by current and fo ...
. New Zealand and Paraguay have designated only its military wing as a terrorist organization. It is not considered a terrorist organization by Brazil, China, Egypt, Iran, Norway, Qatar, Russia, Syria and Turkey. In December 2018, the
United Nations General Assembly
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA or GA; french: link=no, Assemblée générale, AG) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), serving as the main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ of the UN. Curr ...
rejected a U.S. resolution condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization. Hamas leaders
Ismail Haniyeh
Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh; sometimes transliterated as Haniya, Haniyah, or Hanieh (born 29 January 1962) is a senior political leader of Hamas and formerly one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority. Hani ...
and Khaled Mashaal are based in Qatar.
Hamas was founded in 1987, soon after the First Intifada broke out, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood which in its Gaza branch had previously been nonconfrontational toward Israel and hostile to the
Palestine Liberation Organization
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; ar, منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية, ') is a Palestinian nationalism, Palestinian nationalist political and militant organization founded in 1964 with the initial purpose of establ ...
(PLO). Co-founder
Sheik Ahmed Yassin
Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin ( ar, الشيخ أحمد إسماعيل حسن ياسين; 1 January 1937 – 22 March 2004) was a Palestinian politician and imam who founded Hamas, a militant Islamist and Palestinian nationalist organi ...
said in 1987, and the Hamas Charter affirmed in 1988, that Hamas was founded to liberate Palestine, including modern-day Israel, from
Israeli occupation
Israeli-occupied territories are the lands that were captured and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967. While the term is currently applied to the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, it has also been used to refer to a ...
and to establish an
Islamic state
An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...
in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since 1994, the group has frequently stated that it would accept a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, paid reparations, allowed free elections in the territories and gave Palestinian refugees the right to return.
Israel and Hamas have engaged in several wars of varying intensity. Hamas's military wing has launched attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers, often describing them as retaliations, in particular for assassinations of the upper echelon of their leadership. Tactics have included suicide bombings and, since 2001, rocket attacks. Hamas's rocket arsenal, though mainly consisting of short-range homemade
Qassam rocket
The Qassam rocket ( ar, صاروخ القسام ''Ṣārūkh al-Qassām''; also ''Kassam'') is a simple, steel artillery rocket developed and deployed by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas. These rockets cannot be fired ...
s with a range of , also includes Grad-type rockets ( by 2009) and longer-range () that have reached major Israeli towns such as Beer Sheva and Ashdod, and some that have struck cities like
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
and
Haifa
Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...
.
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
crimes against humanity
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
both Hamas and Israel for attacks on civilians during the conflict, stating that the rationale of reprisals is never valid when civilians are targeted.
In the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, Hamas won a majority in the PNA Parliament, defeating the PLO-affiliated
Fatah
Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...
party. After the elections, the Quartet (the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States) made future foreign assistance to the PNA conditional upon the PNA's commitment to nonviolence, recognition of the state of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements. Hamas rejected those conditions, which led the Quartet to suspend its foreign assistance program and Israel to impose
economic sanctions
Economic sanctions are commercial and financial penalties applied by one or more countries against a targeted self-governing state, group, or individual. Economic sanctions are not necessarily imposed because of economic circumstances—they ma ...
on the Hamas-led administration. In March 2007, a
national unity government
A national unity government, government of national unity (GNU), or national union government is a broad coalition government consisting of all parties (or all major parties) in the legislature, usually formed during a time of war or other nat ...
headed by Prime Minister
Ismail Haniyeh
Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh; sometimes transliterated as Haniya, Haniyah, or Hanieh (born 29 January 1962) is a senior political leader of Hamas and formerly one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority. Hani ...
of Hamas was briefly formed, but this failed to restart international financial assistance. Hamas ''The New York Times'', June 18, 2010 "The pact did not succeed in restoring the flow of aid and did not last. Clashes between the two groups steadily escalated until gunmen loyal to Hamas took control of Gaza in June, ousting the remnants of Fatah."
. Council of Foreign Relations. August 27, 2009, "In the summer of 2007, Hamas tensions with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Fatah man, came to a head and Hamas routed Fatah supporters, killing many and sending others fleeing to the West Bank. The result was a de facto geographic division of Palestinian-held territory, with Hamas holding sway in Gaza and Fatah maintaining the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank town of Ramallah." Tensions over control of Palestinian security forces soon erupted in the 2007 Battle of Gaza, after which Hamas took control of Gaza, while its officials were ousted from government positions in the West Bank. Israel and Egypt then imposed an economic blockade of the Gaza Strip on the grounds that Fatah forces were no longer providing security there.
Etymology
''Hamas'' is an
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
of the
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
phrase or , meaning "Islamic Resistance Movement". This acronym, HMS, was later glossed in the
Hamas Covenant
The Hamas Covenant or Hamas Charter, formally known in English as the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, was originally issued on 18 August 1988 and outlines the founding identity, stand, and aims of Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Moveme ...
by the Arabic word () which itself means "zeal", "strength", or "bravery". In Hebrew, there is a similar-sounding word, () connoting "violence" and it has been suggested that the phonemic resemblance between the two terms may have conduced to abetting acrimonious relations between Israel and this Palestinian movement.
Aims
Hamas' declared objectives are to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation and transform the country into an
Islamic state
An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...
. Which of these two objectives is the primary goal is disputed. The movement's original charter committed it to waging an armed struggle to destroy the state of Israel.
Leadership and structure
Hamas inherited from its predecessor a tripartite structure that consisted in the provision of social services, of religious training and military operations under a Shura Council. Traditionally it had four distinct functions: (a) a charitable social welfare division (''dawah''); (b) a military division for procuring weapons and undertaking operations (''al-Mujahideen al Filastinun''); (c) a security service (''Jehaz Aman''); and (d) a media branch (''A'alam''). Hamas has both an internal leadership within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and an external leadership, split between a Gaza group directed by
Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook
Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook ( ar, موسى محمد أبو مرزوق; born 9 January 1951) is a Palestinian senior member of Hamas.
Early life and education
Marzook's parents were from Yibna, Mandatory Palestine (now Yavne, Israel). They became r ...
from his exile first in Damascus and then in Egypt, and a Kuwaiti group (''Kuwaidia'') under
Khaled Mashal
Khaled Mashal ( ar, خالد مشعل, Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: , born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of t ...
. The Kuwaiti group of Palestinian exiles began to receive extensive funding from the Gulf States after its leader Mashal broke with
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini (4 / 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), popularly known as Yasser Arafat ( , ; ar, محمد ياسر عبد الرحمن عبد الرؤوف عرفات القدوة الحسيني, Mu ...
's decision to side with
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...
in the
Invasion of Kuwait
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was an operation conducted by Iraq on 2 August 1990, whereby it invaded the neighboring State of Kuwait, consequently resulting in a seven-month-long Iraqi military occupation of the country. The invasion and Ira ...
, with Mashal insisting that Iraq withdraw. On May 6, 2017, Hamas' Shura Council chose
Ismail Haniya
Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh; sometimes transliterated as Haniya, Haniyah, or Hanieh (born 29 January 1962) is a senior political leader of Hamas and formerly one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority. Haniy ...
to become the new leader, to replace Mashal.
The exact nature of the organization is unclear, secrecy being maintained for fear of Israeli assassinations and to conceal operational activities. Formally, Hamas maintains the wings are separate and independent. Matthew Levitt maintains this is a public myth. Davis argues that they are both separate and combined for reasons of internal and external political necessity. Communication between the political and military wings of Hamas is difficult, owing to the thoroughness of Israeli intelligence surveillance and the existence of an extensive base of informants. After the assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi the occasional political direction of the militant wing diminished, with field commanders given discretional autonomy on operations.
Consultative councils
The governing body is the
Majlis al-Shura
The Majlis al-Shura (consultative council or Shura council) is the overarching political and decision making body of Hamas. It includes representatives from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Israeli prisons, and the exiled external leadership, the Po ...
. The principle behind the council is based on the
Qur'an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...
ic concept of consultation and popular assembly (), which Hamas leaders argue provides for democracy within an Islamic framework. As the organization grew more complex and Israeli pressure increased it needed a broader base for decisions, the Shura Council was renamed the 'General Consultative Council', elected from members of local council groups and this in turn elected a 15-member Politburo (''al-Maktab al-Siyasi'') that made decisions at the highest level. Representatives come from Gaza, the West Bank, leaders in exile and Israeli prisons.Benedetta Berti ''Armed Political Organizations: From Conflict to Integration,'' JHU Press, 2013 p. 88. This organ was located in
Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
Qatar
Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it sh ...
in January 2012, when Hamas sided with the civil opposition against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Social services wing
Hamas developed its social welfare programme by replicating the model established by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. For Hamas, charity and the development of one's community are both prescribed by religion and to be understood as forms of resistance. In Islamic tradition, () obliges the faithful to reach out to others by both proselytising and by charitable works, and typically the latter centre on the mosques which make use of both endowment resources and charitable donations (, one of the five pillars of Islam) to fund grassroots services like nurseries, schools, orphanages, soup kitchens, women's activities, library services and even sporting clubs within a larger context of preaching and political discussions. In the 1990s, some 85% of its budget was allocated to the provision of social services. Hamas has been called perhaps the most significant social services actor in Palestine. By 2000, Hamas or its affiliated charities ran roughly 40% of the social institutions in the West Bank and Gaza and, with other Islamic charities, by 2005, was supporting 120,000 individuals with monthly financial support in Gaza. Part of the appeal of these institutions is that they fill a vacuum in the administration by the PLO of the Palestinian territories, which had failed to cater to the demand for jobs and broad social services, and is widely viewed as corrupt. As late as 2005, the budget of Hamas, drawing on global charity contributions, was mostly tied up in covering running expenses for its social programmes, which extended from the supply of housing, food and water for the needy to more general functions like financial aid, medical assistance, educational development and religious instruction. A certain accounting flexibility allowed these funds to cover both charitable causes and military operations, permitting transfer from one to the other.
The infrastructure itself was understood, within the Palestinian context, as providing the soil from which a militant opposition to the occupation would flower. In this regard it differs from the rival
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine ( ar, حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين, ''Harakat al-Jihād al-Islāmi fi Filastīn''), known in the West simply as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is a Palestinian Islamist pa ...
which lacks any social welfare network, and relies on spectacular terrorist attacks to recruit adherents. In 2007, through funding from Iran, Hamas managed to allocate at a cost of $60 million, monthly stipends of $100 for 100,000 workers, and a similar sum for 3,000 fishermen laid idle by Israel's imposition of restrictions on fishing offshore, plus grants totalling $45 million to detainees and their families.
Matthew Levitt Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow and director of the Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University's Center for Sec ...
argues that Hamas grants to people are subject to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis of how beneficiaries will support Hamas, with those linked to terrorist activities receiving more than others. Israel holds the families of suicide bombers accountable and bulldozes their homes, whereas the families of Hamas activists who have been killed or wounded during militant operations are given an initial, one-time grant varying between $500–$5,000, together with a $100 monthly allowance. Rent assistance is also given to families whose homes have been destroyed by Israeli bombing though families unaffiliated with Hamas are said to receive less.
Until 2007, these activities extended to the West Bank, but, after a PLO crackdown, now continue exclusively in the Gaza Strip. After the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état deposed the elected Muslim Brotherhood government of
Mohamed Morsi
Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa al-AyyatThe spellings of his first and last names vary. survey of 14 news organizations plus Wikipedia in July 2012 Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades ( ar, كتائب الشهيد عز الدين القسام, , Battalions of martyr Izz ad-Din al-Qassam; also spelt Izzedine or Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades; often shortened to Al-Qassam Brigades, IQB
is Hamas's military wing. By the time of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Hamas's laboratories had devised a primitive form of rocketry, the Qassam 1, which they first launched in October 2000, carrying a warhead with a throw range of . Both propellant and the explosive were manufactured from chemical fertilizers, though TNT was also tried. Over the next five years of the conflict, a -warhead-armed version with a strike range of –, the Qassam 2, was also produced and in an incremental rise, these rocket types were fired towards Israeli settlements along the Gaza Strip: 4 in 2001, 35 in 2002, 155 in 2003, 281 in 2004, and 179 in 2005. By 2005, the Qassam 3 had been engineered with a – range and a warhead. By 2006, 942 such rockets were launched into southern Israel. During the War with Israel in 2008–2009, Hamas deployed 122-mm Grad rocketry with a – range and a warhead and a variety of guided
Kornet
The 9M133 Kornet (russian: Корнет; "Cornet", NATO reporting name AT-14 Spriggan, export designation Kornet-E) is a Russian man-portable anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) intended for use against main battle tanks. It was first introduced ...
antitank missiles. By 2012 Hamas had engineered a version of the Fajr-5 rocket, which was capable of reaching as far as
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
, as was shown after the assassination of
Ahmed Jabari
Ahmed al-JabariAlso spelled Jaabari, Ja'bari or Ja'abari. ( ar, أحمد الجعبري; 1960; also known as Abu Mohammad) was a senior leader and second-in-command of the military wing of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He was widely ...
in that year. In the 2014 war its advanced rocketry reached Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and
Haifa
Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...
.
While the number of members is known only to the Brigades leadership, Israel estimates the Brigades have a core of several hundred members who receive military style training, including training in Iran and in
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
(before the Syrian Civil War). Additionally, the brigades have an estimated 10,000–17,000 operatives, forming a backup force whenever circumstances call for reinforcements for the Brigade. Recruitment training lasts for two years. The group's ideology outlines its aim as the liberation of Palestine and the restoration of Palestinian rights under the dispensations set forth in the Qur'an, and this translates into three policy priorities:
To evoke the spirit of Jihad (Resistance) among Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims; to defend Palestinians and their land against the Zionist occupation and its manifestations; to liberate Palestinians and their land that was usurped by the Zionist occupation forces and settlers.
According to its official stipulations, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades' military operations are to be restricted to operating only inside Palestine, engaging with Israeli soldiers, and in exercising the right of self-defense against armed settlers. They are to avoid civilian targets, to respect the enemy's humanity by refraining from mutilation, defacement or excessive killing, and to avoid targeting Westerners either in the occupied zones or beyond.
Down to 2007, the Brigades are estimated to have lost some 800 operatives in conflicts with Israeli forces. The leadership has been consistently undermined by targeted assassinations. Aside from
Yahya Ayyash
Yahya Abd-al-Latif Ayyash ( ar, يحيى عياش) (6 March 1966 – 5 January 1996) was the chief bombmaker of Hamas and the leader of the West Bank battalion of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. In that capacity, he earned the nickname ''the E ...
Ismail Abu Shanab
Ismail Abu Shanab (195021 August 2003) was one of the founders of Hamas, and one of its three most senior leaders in Gaza. More specifically, he was the second highest leader of Hamas only after Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He was also the political lea ...
(August 21, 2003), Ahmed Yassin (March 22, 2004), and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi (April 17, 2004).
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades groups its fighters in 4–5 man cells, which in turn are integrated into companies and battalions. Unlike the political section, which is split between an internal and external structure, the Brigades are under a local Palestinian leadership, and disobedience with the decisions taken by the political leadership have been relatively rare.
Although the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades are an integral part of Hamas, the exact nature of the relationship is hotly debated. They appear to operate at times independently of Hamas, exercising a certain autonomy. Some cells have independent links with the external leadership, enabling them to bypass the hierarchical command chain and political leadership in Gaza. Ilana Kass and Bard O'Neill, likening Hamas's relationship with the Brigades to the political party
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Gri ...
's relationship to the military arm of the
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dedicated to irredentism through Irish republicanism, the belief tha ...
. quote a senior Hamas official as stating: "The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade is a separate armed military wing, which has its own leaders who do not take their orders from Hamas and do not tell us of their plans in advance."
Finances and funding
Hamas, like its predecessor the Muslim Brotherhood, assumed the administration of Gaza's waqf properties, endowments which extend over 10% of all real estate in the Gaza Strip, with 2,000 acres of agricultural land held in religious trusts, together with numerous shops, rentable apartments and public buildings.
In the first five years of the 1st Intifada, the Gaza economy, 50% of which depended on external sources of income, plummeted by 30–50% as Israel closed its labour market and remittances from the Palestinian expatriates in the Gulf countries dried up following the 1991–1992
Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...
. At the 1993 Philadelphia conference, Hamas leaders' statements indicated that they read
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...
's outline of a New World Order as embodying a tacit aim to destroy Islam, and that therefore funding should focus on enhancing the Islamic roots of Palestinian society and promoting jihad, which also means zeal for social justice, in the occupied territories. Hamas became particularly fastidious about maintaining separate resourcing for its respective branches of activity—military, political and social services. It has had a holding company in East Jerusalem (''Beit al-Mal''), a 20% stake in Al Aqsa International Bank which served as its financial arm, the Sunuqrut Global Group and al-Ajouli money-changing firm.
By 2011, Hamas's budget, calculated to be roughly US$70 million, derived even more substantially (85%) from foreign, rather than internal Palestinian, sources. Only two Israeli-Palestinian sources figure in a list seized in 2004, while the other contributors were donor bodies located in Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany, the United States, United Arab Emirates, Italy and France. Much of the money raised comes from sources that direct their assistance to what Hamas describes as its charitable work for Palestinians, but investments in support of its ideological position are also relevant, with Persian Gulf States and Saudi Arabia prominent in the latter. Matthew Levitt claims that Hamas also taps money from corporations, criminal organizations and financial networks that support terror. It is also alleged that it engages in cigarette and drug smuggling, multimedia copyright infringement and credit card fraud. The United States, Israel and the EU have shut down many charities and organs that channel money to Hamas, such as the Holy Land Foundation for Relief. Between 1992 and 2001, this group is said to have provided $6.8 million to Palestinian charities of the $57 million collected. By 2001, it was alleged to have given Hamas $13 million, and was shut down shortly afterwards.
About half of Hamas's funding came from states in the Persian Gulf down to the mid 2000s. Saudi Arabia supplied half of the Hamas budget of $50 million in the early 2000s,Marsh E. Burfeindt, 'Rapprochement with Iran', in Thomas A. Johnson (ed.) ''Power, National Security, and Transformational Global Events: Challenges Confronting America, China, and Iran'' CRC Press. 2012. pp. 185–235 98 but, under U.S. pressure, began cut its funding by cracking down on Islamic charities and private donor transfers to Hamas in 2004,Jodi Vittori ''Terrorist Financing and Resourcing,'' Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 pp. 72–74, 193 notes 50, 51. which by 2006 drastically reduced the flow of money from that area. Iran and Syria, in the aftermath of Hamas's 2006 electoral victory, stepped in to fill the shortfall. Saudi funding, negotiated with third parties like Egypt, remained supportive of Hamas as a Sunni group but chose to provide more assistance to the PNA, the electoral loser, when the EU responded to the outcome by suspending its monetary aid. During the 1980s, Iran began to provide 10% of Hamas's funding, which it increased annually until by the 1990s it supplied $30 million. It accounted for $22 million, over a quarter of Hamas's budget, by the late 2000s. According to Matthew Levitt, Iran preferred direct financing to operative groups rather than charities, requiring video proof of attacks. Much of the Iran funding is said to be channeled through
Hezbollah
Hezbollah (; ar, حزب الله ', , also transliterated Hizbullah or Hizballah, among others) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah since 1992. Hezbollah's parami ...
. After 2006, Iran's willingness to take over the burden of the shortfall created by the drying up of Saudi funding also reflected the geopolitical tensions between the two, since, though Shiite, Iran was supporting a Sunni group traditionally closely linked with the Saudi kingdom. The US imposed sanctions on Iran's Bank Saderat, alleging it had funneled hundreds of millions to Hamas. The US has expressed concerns that Hamas obtains funds through Palestinian and Lebanese sympathizers of Arab descent in the
Foz do Iguaçu
Foz do Iguaçu (''Iguazu River Mouth'') () is the Brazilian city on the border of Iguaçu Falls. The city is the 7th largest in the state of Paraná. The city's population is approximately 258,000. It is approximately 650 km (400 mi) wes ...
area of the tri-border region of Latin America, an area long associated with arms trading, drug trafficking, contraband, the manufacture of counterfeit goods, money-laundering and currency fraud. The State Department adds that confirmatory information of a Hamas operational presence there is lacking.
After 2009,
sanctions on Iran
There have been a number of sanctions against Iran imposed by a number of countries, especially the United States, and international entities. Iran was the most sanctioned country in the world until it was surpassed by Russia following its inva ...
made funding difficult, forcing Hamas to rely on religious donations by individuals in the West Bank, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Funds amounting to tens of millions of dollars raised in the Gulf states were transferred through the
Rafah Border Crossing
The Rafah Border Crossing ( ar, معبر رفح, Ma`bar Rafaḥ) or Rafah Crossing Point is the sole crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. It is located on the Gaza–Egypt border, which was recognized by the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace ...
. These were not sufficient to cover the costs of governing the Strip and running the al Qassam Brigades, and when tensions arose with Iran over support of President Assad in Syria, Iran dropped its financial assistance to the government, restricting its funding to the military wing, which meant a drop from $150 million in 2012 to $60 million the following year. A further drop occurred in 2015 when Hamas expressed its criticisms of Iran's role in the
Yemeni Civil War Yemeni Civil War may refer to several historical events which have taken place in Yemen:
*Alwaziri coup, February – March 1948
*Yemeni–Adenese clan violence, 1956–60
*North Yemen Civil War, 1962–70
*Aden Emergency, 1963–67
*South Yemen#Di ...
.
In 2017, the PA government imposed its own sanctions against Gaza, including, among other things, cutting off salaries to thousands of PA employees, as well as financial assistance to hundreds of families in the Gaza Strip. The PA initially said it would stop paying for the electricity and fuel that Israel supplies to the Gaza Strip, but after a year partially backtracked. The Israeli government has allowed millions of dollars from Qatar to be funneled on a regular basis through Israel to Hamas, to replace the millions of dollars the PA had stopped transferring to Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (; ; born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician who served as the ninth prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999 and again from 2009 to 2021. He is currently serving as Leader of the Opposition and Chairman of ...
explained that letting the money go through Israel meant that it could not be used for terrorism, saying: "Now that we are supervising, we know it's going to humanitarian causes."
History
Origins
Hamas's origins can be traced to the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. The Muslim Brotherhood arose as an attempt to have Islamic values extend beyond the mosque into the secular sphere, where it challenged the core assumptions, social, political, ideological, nationalist and economic of the existing ruling order. In 1935 it established contacts in
Mandatory Palestine
Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 ...
and in 1945 inaugurated its first branch in Jerusalem, and in Gaza in late November the following year. Following the
Nakba
Clickable map of Mandatory Palestine with the depopulated locations during the 1947–1949 Palestine war.
The Nakba ( ar, النكبة, translit=an-Nakbah, lit=the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"), also known as the Palestinian Ca ...
in 1948, which shattered Palestinian society, the Muslim Brotherhood was one of the first organizations to reestablish itself among the Palestinians.
When Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in 1967, the Muslim Brotherhood members did not take active part in the resistance, preferring to focus on social-religious reform and on restoring Islamic values. This outlook changed in the early 1980s and Islamic organizations became more involved in Palestinian politics. The driving force behind this transformation was Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian refugee from Al-Jura. Of humble origins and
quadriplegic
Tetraplegia, also known as quadriplegia, is defined as the dysfunction or loss of motor and/or sensory function in the cervical area of the spinal cord. A loss of motor function can present as either weakness or paralysis leading to partial or ...
, he persevered to become one of the Muslim Brotherhood's leaders in Gaza. His charisma and conviction brought him a loyal group of followers, who he, as a
quadriplegic
Tetraplegia, also known as quadriplegia, is defined as the dysfunction or loss of motor and/or sensory function in the cervical area of the spinal cord. A loss of motor function can present as either weakness or paralysis leading to partial or ...
, depended on for everything—from feeding him, to transporting him to and from events, and to communicate his strategy to the public.
In 1973, Yassin founded the social-religious charity '' al-Mujama al-Islamiya'' ("Islamic center") in Gaza as an offshoot to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Israeli authorities encouraged Yassin's charity to expand as they saw it as a useful counterbalance to the secular
Palestine Liberation Organization
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; ar, منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية, ') is a Palestinian nationalism, Palestinian nationalist political and militant organization founded in 1964 with the initial purpose of establ ...
. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor of Gaza at the time, recalled that they even funded his charity: "The Israeli government gave me a budget, and the military government gives to the mosques". Israel's religious affairs official in Gaza,
Avner Cohen
Avner Cohen (born 1951) is an Israeli writer, historian, and professor. He is well known for his works on Israel's nuclear history and strategic policy. He is currently a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and the D ...
, later regretfully concluded that Hamas was created by Israel. He claimed to have warned his superiors not to back the Islamists.
In 1984 Yassin was arrested after the Israelis found out that his group collected arms, but released in May 1985 as part of a
prisoner exchange
A prisoner exchange or prisoner swap is a deal between opposing sides in a conflict to release prisoners: prisoners of war, spies, hostages, etc. Sometimes, dead bodies are involved in an exchange.
Geneva Conventions
Under the Geneva Convent ...
. He continued to expand the reach of his charity in Gaza. Following his release, he set up ''al-Majd'' (an acronym for Munazamat al-Jihad wa al-Da'wa), headed by former student leader Yahya Sinwar and Rawhi Mushtaha, tasked with handling internal security and hunting local informants for the Israeli intelligence services. At about the same time, he ordered former student leader Salah Shehade to set up ''al-Mujahidun al-Filastiniun'' (Palestinian fighters), but its militants were quickly rounded up by Israeli authorities and had their arms confiscated.
The idea of Hamas began to take form on December 10, 1987, when several members of the Brotherhood convened the day after an incident in which an Israeli army truck had crashed into a car at a Gaza checkpoint killing 4 Palestinian day-workers. They met at Yassin's house and decided that they too needed to react in some manner as the protest riots sparking the First Intifada erupted. A leaflet issued on the 14 December calling for resistance is considered to mark their first public intervention, though the name Hamas itself was not used until January 1988. Yassin was not directly connected to the organization but he gave it his blessing. In a meeting with the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood in February 1988, it too gave its approval. To many Palestinians it appeared to engage more authentically with their national expectations, since it merely provided an Islamic version of what had been the PLO's original goals, armed struggle to liberate all of Palestine, rather than the territorial compromise the PLO acquiesced in—a small fragment of Mandatory Palestine.
Creating Hamas as an entity distinct from the Muslim Brotherhood was a matter of practicality; the Muslim Brotherhood refused to engage in violence against Israel, but without participating in the intifada, the Islamists tied to it feared they would lose support to their rivals the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine ( ar, حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين, ''Harakat al-Jihād al-Islāmi fi Filastīn''), known in the West simply as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is a Palestinian Islamist pa ...
and the PLO. They also hoped that by keeping its militant activities separate, Israel would not interfere with its social work.
Hamas published its charter in August 1988, wherein it defined itself as a chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood and its desire to establish "an Islamic state throughout Palestine" (for details on the charter see Hamas Charter (1988)).
Co-founder Yassin was convinced that Israel was endeavouring to destroy Islam, and concluded that loyal Muslims had a religious obligation to destroy Israel. The short-term goal of Hamas was to liberate Palestine, including modern-day Israel, from
Israeli occupation
Israeli-occupied territories are the lands that were captured and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967. While the term is currently applied to the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, it has also been used to refer to a ...
. The long-term aim sought to establish an
Islamic state
An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...
from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, remarkably similar to, and perhaps derived from, the Zionist notion of the same area under a Jewish majority.
First Intifada
Hamas's first strike against Israel came in the spring 1989 as it abducted and killed Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, two Israeli soldiers. At the time, Shehade and Sinwar served time in Israeli prisons and Hamas had set up a new group, Unit 101, headed by
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh
Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh ( ar, محمود عبد الرؤوف المبحوح; 14 February 1960 – 19 January 2010) was the chief of logistics and weapons procurement for Hamas's military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He is reme ...
, whose objective was to abduct soldiers. The discovery of Sasportas' body triggered, in the words of
Jean-Pierre Filiu
Jean-Pierre Filiu (born in Paris, 1961) is a French professor of Middle East studies at Sciences Po, Paris School of International Affairs, an orientalist and an arabist.
Life and career
Before joining Sciences Po in 2006, Jean-Pierre Filiu ...
, 'an extremely violent Israeli response': hundreds of Hamas leaders and activists, among them Yassin, who was sentenced to life in prison, were arrested, and Hamas was outlawed. This mass detention of activists, together with a further wave of arrests in 1990, effectively dismantled Hamas and, devastated, it was forced to adapt; its command system became regionalized to make its operative structure more diffuse, and to minimize the chances of being detected.
Anger following the al-Aqsa massacre in October 1990 in which Muslim worshippers had tried to prevent Orthodox Jews from placing a foundation stone for the Third Temple on the
Temple Mount
The Temple Mount ( hbo, הַר הַבַּיִת, translit=Har haBayīt, label=Hebrew, lit=Mount of the House f the Holy}), also known as al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf (Arabic: الحرم الشريف, lit. 'The Noble Sanctuary'), al-Aqsa Mosque compou ...
and Israeli police fired into the al-Aqsa mosque, killing 17, caused Hamas to intensify its campaign of abductions. Hamas declared every Israeli soldier a target and called for a "jihad against the Zionist enemy everywhere, in all fronts and every means."
Hamas reorganized its units from ''al-Majd'' and ''al-Mujahidun al-Filastiniun'' into a military wing called the ''Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades'' led by
Yahya Ayyash
Yahya Abd-al-Latif Ayyash ( ar, يحيى عياش) (6 March 1966 – 5 January 1996) was the chief bombmaker of Hamas and the leader of the West Bank battalion of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. In that capacity, he earned the nickname ''the E ...
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
Izz ad-Din Abd al-Qadar ibn Mustafa ibn Yusuf ibn Muhammad al-Qassam (1881 or 19 December 1882 – 20 November 1935) ( ar, عز الدين بن عبد القادر بن مصطفى بن يوسف بن محمد القسام / ALA-LC: ) was a Syria ...
who fought against the British and whose death in 1935 sparked the
1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine
The 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, later known as The Great Revolt (''al-Thawra al- Kubra'') or The Great Palestinian Revolt (''Thawrat Filastin al-Kubra''), was a popular nationalist uprising by Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine a ...
. Though its members sometimes referred to themselves as "Students of Ayyash", "Students of the Engineer", or "Yahya Ayyash Units". At the outset, weapons were hard to come by, and the organization began to resort to intermittent kidnappings of soldiers to secure arms and munitions.
Ayyash, an engineering graduate from Birzeit University, was a skillful bomb maker and greatly improved Hamas' striking capability, earning him the nickname ''al-Muhandis'' ("the Engineer"). He is thought to have been one of the driving forces in Hamas' use of suicide bombings, arguing that "we paid a high price when we only used slingshots and stones. We need to exert more pressure, make the cost of the occupation that much more expensive in human lives, that much more unbearable". Until his assassination by Shin Bet in 1996, almost all bombs used on suicide missions were constructed by him.
In December 1992 Israel responded to the killing of a border police officer by exiling 415 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to Southern Lebanon, at the time occupied by Israel. There Hamas established contacts with
Hezbollah
Hezbollah (; ar, حزب الله ', , also transliterated Hizbullah or Hizballah, among others) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah since 1992. Hezbollah's parami ...
, Palestinians living in refugee camps, and learnt how to construct suicide and car bombs. Israel accompanied the deportations by the imposition of a two-week curfew on the Strip, causing an income shortfall for its economy of $1,810,000 per diem. The deportees were allowed to return nine months later. The deportation provoked international condemnation and a unanimous UN Security Council resolution condemning the action. Hamas ordered two car bombs in retaliation for the deportation.
Hamas first
suicide bombing
A suicide attack is any violent attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout histor ...
took place at Mehola Junction in the West Bank in April 1993 using a car parked between two buses, carrying soldiers. Aside from the bomber, the blast killed a Palestinian who worked in a nearby settlement. The bomb design was flawed but Hamas would soon learn how to manufacture more lethal bombs.
Collaborators
In the first years of the Intifada, Hamas violence was restricted to Palestinians; collaborators with Israel and individuals it defined as "moral deviants," that is, drug dealers and prostitutes known to enjoy ties with Israeli criminal networks, or for engaging in loose behavior, such as seducing women in hairdressing salons with alcohol, behaviour Hamas considered was encouraged by Israeli agents. Hamas leaders likened their rooting out of collaborators to what the
French resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
did with Nazi collaborators in World War II. In 1992 alone they executed more than 150. Details of the methods were published in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in 1993. In Western media this was reported as typical "intercommunal strife" among Arabs.
Hamas's actions in the First Intifada expanded its popularity. In 1989 fewer than three percent of the Palestinians in Gaza supported Hamas. By October 1993 this figure had increased to 13%, a number that still paled in comparison to Fatah which enjoyed the support of 45% of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Oslo years
In February 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler in military fatigues,
massacred
A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when per ...
29 Muslims at prayer in the
Ibrahimi Mosque
, alternate_name = Tomb of the Patriarchs, Cave of Machpelah, Sanctuary of Abraham, Ibrahimi Mosque (Mosque of Abraham)
, image = Palestine Hebron Cave of the Patriarchs.jpg
, alt =
, caption = Southern view of the complex, 2009
, map ...
in
Hebron
Hebron ( ar, الخليل or ; he, חֶבְרוֹן ) is a Palestinian. city in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judaean Mountains, it lies above sea level. The second-largest city in the West Bank (after East J ...
in the
West Bank
The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
during the month of
Ramadan
, type = islam
, longtype = Religious
, image = Ramadan montage.jpg
, caption=From top, left to right: A crescent moon over Sarıçam, Turkey, marking the beginning of the Islamic month of Ramadan. Ramadan Quran reading in Bandar Torkaman, Iran. ...
. An additional 19 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the ensuing riots. Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin (; he, יִצְחָק רַבִּין, ; 1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77, and from 1992 until h ...
condemned the massacre but fearing a confrontation with Hebron's violent settler community, he refused to withdraw them, and Hamas swore to avenge the deaths. In a communique it announced that if Israel didn't discriminate between "fighters and civilians" then it would be "forced ... to treat the Zionists in the same manner. Treating like with like is a universal principle."
At the end of the 40-day mourning period for Goldstein's victims, on April 6, a suicide bomber blew up his car at a crowded bus stop in
Afula
Afula ( he, עפולה Arabic: العفولة) is a city in the Northern District of Israel, often known as the "Capital of the Valley" due to its strategic location in the Jezreel Valley. As of , the city had a population of .
Afula's ancient ...
, killing eight Israelis and injuring 34. An additional five Israelis were killed and 30 injured as a Palestinian detonated himself on a bus in
Hadera
Hadera ( he, חֲדֵרָה ) is a city located in the Haifa District of Israel, in the northern Sharon region, approximately 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the major cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa. The city is located along 7 km (5&nb ...
a week later. Hamas claimed responsibility for both attacks which were the first suicide bombings in Israel. The attacks may have been timed to disrupt negotiations between Israel and PLO on the implementation of the
Oslo I Accord
The Oslo I Accord or Oslo I, officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or short Declaration of Principles (DOP), was an attempt in 1993 to set up a framework that would lead to the resolution of th ...
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
in October, killing 22 and injuring 45, was Hamas first successful attack in the city.
In late December 1995, Hamas promised the Palestinian Authority (PA) to cease military operations. But it was not to be as
Shin Bet
The Israel Security Agency (ISA; he, שֵׁירוּת הַבִּיטָּחוֹן הַכְּלָלִי; ''Sherut ha-Bitaẖon haKlali''; "the General Security Service"; ar, جهاز الأمن العام), better known by the acronym Shabak ( he, ...
assassinated Ayyash, the 29-year-old leader of the al-Qassam Brigades on January 5, 1996 using a booby-trapped cellphone given to Ayyash by his uncle who worked as an informer. Nearly 100,000 Gazans, about 11% of the total population, marched in his funeral. Hamas resumed its campaign of suicide bombings which had been dormant for a good part of 1995 to retaliate the assassination.
In September 1997, Israel's Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (; ; born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician who served as the ninth prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999 and again from 2009 to 2021. He is currently serving as Leader of the Opposition and Chairman of ...
ordered the assassination of Hamas leader
Khaled Mashal
Khaled Mashal ( ar, خالد مشعل, Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: , born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of t ...
who lived in Jordan. Two Mossad agents entered Jordan on false Canadian passports and sprayed Mashal with a nerve agent on a street in Amman. They were caught however and King Hussein threatened to put the agents on trial unless Israel provided Mashal with an antidote and released Yassin. Israel obliged and the antidote saved Mashal's life. Yassin was returned to Gaza where he was given a hero's welcome with banners calling him the "sheikh of the Intifada". Yassin's release temporarily boosted Hamas' popularity and at a press conference Yassin declared: "There will be no halt to armed operations until the end of the occupation ... we are peace-seekers. We love peace. And we call on them
he Israelis
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
to maintain peace with us and to help us in order to restore our rights by peace."
Although the suicide attacks by the al-Qassam Brigades and other groups violated the 1993 Oslo accords (which Hamas opposed), Arafat was reluctant to pursue the attackers and may have had inadequate means to do so.
Impact of the Hebron massacre
The Hebron massacre had a profound effect on Hamas' militancy. For its first seven years, it attacked only what it saw as "legitimate military targets," Israeli soldiers and military installations. But following the massacre, it felt that it no longer had to distinguish between military and civilian targets. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank, Sheikh Ahmed Haj Ali, later argued that "had there not been the 1994 Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, there would have been no suicide bombings." Al-Rantisi in an interview in 1998 stated that the suicide attacks "began after the massacre committed by the terrorist Baruch Goldstein and intensified after the assassination of Yahya Ayyash." Musa Abu Marzouk put the blame for the escalation on the Israelis: "We were against targeting civilians ... After the Hebron massacre we determined that it was time to kill Israel's civilians ... we offered to stop if Israel would, but they rejected that offer."
According to Matti Steinberg, former advisor to Shin Bet and one of Israel's leading experts on Hamas, the massacre laid to rest an internal debate within Hamas on the usefulness of indiscriminate violence: "In the Hamas writings there is an explicit prohibition against indiscriminate harm to helpless people. The massacre at the mosque released them from this taboo and introduced a dimension of measure for measure, based on citations from the Koran."
Expulsion from Jordan
In 1999 Hamas was banned in Jordan, reportedly in part at the request of the United States, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority. Jordan's King Abdullah feared the activities of Hamas and its Jordanian allies would jeopardize peace negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and accused Hamas of engaging in illegitimate activities within Jordan. In mid-September 1999, authorities arrested Hamas leaders Khaled Mashal and Ibrahim Ghosheh on their return from a visit to Iran, and charged them with being members of an illegal organization, storing weapons, conducting military exercises, and using Jordan as a training base. The Hamas leaders denied the charges. Mashal was exiled and eventually settled in Damascus in Syria in 2001. As a result of the Syrian civil war he distanced himself from Bashar al-Assad's regime in 2012 and moved to Qatar.
Popular support
While the Palestinians were used to the idea that their young was willing to die for the struggle, the idea that they would strap explosives to their bodies and blow themselves up was a new and not well-supported development. A poll taken in 1996 after the wave of suicide bombings Hamas carried out to retaliate Israel's assassination of Ayyash showed that most 70% opposed the tactic and 59% called for Arafat to take action to prevent further attacks.
In the political arena Hamas continued to trail far behind its rival Fatah; 41% trusted Arafat in 1996 but only 3% trusted Yassin.
Second Intifada
In contrast to the preceding uprising, the Al-Aqsa or Second Intifada began violently, with mass demonstrations and lethal Israeli counter-insurgency tactics. Prior to the incidents surrounding
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon (; ; ; also known by his diminutive Arik, , born Ariel Scheinermann, ; 26 February 1928 – 11 January 2014) was an Israeli general and politician who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006.
S ...
's visit to the
Temple Mount
The Temple Mount ( hbo, הַר הַבַּיִת, translit=Har haBayīt, label=Hebrew, lit=Mount of the House f the Holy}), also known as al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf (Arabic: الحرم الشريف, lit. 'The Noble Sanctuary'), al-Aqsa Mosque compou ...
, Palestinian support for violence against Israelis and for Hamas had been gauged to be 52% and 10%, respectively. By July of the following year, after almost a year of savage conflict, polling indicated that 86% of Palestinians endorsed violence against Israelis and support for Hamas had risen to 17%.
The al-Qassam Brigades were among the many militant groups that launched both military-style attacks and suicide bombings against Israeli civilian and military targets in this period. In the ensuing years almost 5000 Palestinians and over 1100 Israelis were killed. While there was a large number of Palestinian attacks against Israelis, the Palestinians' most effective form of violence were suicide attacks; in the first five years of the intifada a little more than half of all Israeli deaths were victims of suicide attacks. Hamas was responsible for about 40% of the 135 suicide attacks in the period.
Whatever the immediate circumstances triggering the uprising, a more general cause, writes U.S. political science professor Jeremy Pressman, was "popular Palestinian discontent
hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
grew during the Oslo peace process because the reality on the ground did not match the expectations created by the peace agreements". Hamas would be the beneficiary of this growing discontent in the 2006 Palestinian Authority legislative elections.
According to Tristan Dunning, Israel has never responded to repeated offers by Hamas over subsequent years for a ''quid pro quo'' moratorium on attacks against civilians'. It has engaged in several ''tadi'a'' (periods of calm), and proposed a number of ceasefires. In January 2004, Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, prior to his assassination, said that the group would end armed resistance against Israel for a 10-year ''
hudna
A ''hudna'' (from the Arabic meaning "calm" or "quiet") is a truce or armistice. It is sometimes translated as "cease-fire". In his medieval dictionary of classical Arabic, the '' Lisan al-Arab'', Ibn Manzur defined it as:
: "''hadana'': he ...
''. in exchange for a Palestinian state in the
West Bank
The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
,
Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip (;The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p.761 "Gaza Strip /'gɑːzə/ a strip of territory under the control of the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas, on the SE Mediterranean coast including the town of Gaza.. ...
, and East Jerusalem, and that restoring Palestinians' "historical rights" (relating to the 1948 Palestinian exodus) "would be left for future generations". His views were quickly echoed by senior Hamas official
Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi
Abdel Aziz Ali Abdul Majid al-Rantisi ( ar, عبد العزيز علي عبد المجيد الحفيظ الرنتيسي; 23 October 1947 – 17 April 2004), nicknamed the "Lion of Palestine" was the co-founder of Palestinian Sunni-Islamic org ...
, who added that Hamas envisaged a "phased liberation". Israel's response was to assassinate Yassin in March in a targeted Israeli air strike, and then al-Rantisi in a similar air strike in April.
Yassir Arafat
Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini (4 / 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), popularly known as Yasser Arafat ( , ; ar, محمد ياسر عبد الرحمن عبد الرؤوف عرفات القدوة الحسيني, Mu ...
. The EU figured prominently in the proposal that democratic elections be held in the territories. In the run-up to the polling day, the
US administration
The term administration, as used in the context of government, differs according to the jurisdiction under which it operates. In general terms, administration can be described as a decision making body.
United States
In American usage, the term ...
Tzipi Livni
Tziporah Malka "Tzipi" Livni ( he, ציפי (ציפורה) מלכה לבני, ; born 8 July 1958) is an Israeli politician, diplomat, and lawyer. A former member of the Knesset and leader in the center-left political camp, Livni is a former for ...
and British Prime Minister
Tony Blair
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...
all expressed reservations about allowing Hamas to compete in a democratic process. Hamas ran on a platform of clean government, a thorough overhaul of the corrupt administrative system, and the issue of rampant lawlessness. The PA, notoriously riddled with corruption, chose to run
Marwan Barghouti
Marwan Hasib Ibrahim Barghouti (also transliterated al-Barghuthi; ar, مروان حسيب ابراهيم البرغوثي; born 6 June 1959) is a Palestinian political figure convicted and imprisoned for murder by an Israeli court. He is rega ...
as its leading candidate, who was serving five life sentences in Israel. The US donated two million dollars to the PA to improve its media image. Israel also assisted the PA by allowing Barghouti to be interviewed in prison by Arab television and by permitting 100,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote.
Crucially, the election took place shortly after Israel had evacuated its settlements in Gaza. The evacuation, executed without consulting
Fatah
Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...
, gave currency to Hamas' view that resistance had compelled Israel to leave Gaza. In a statement Hamas portrayed it as a vindication of their strategy of armed resistance ("Four years of resistance surpassed 10 years of bargaining") and Muhammed Deif attributed "the Liberation of Gaza" to his comrades "love of martyrdom".
Hamas, intent on displaying its power through a
plebiscite
A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a ...
rather than by violence, announcing that it would refrain from attacks on Israel if Israel were to desist from its offensive against Palestinian towns and villages. Its election manifesto dropped the Islamic agenda, spoke of sovereignty for the
Palestinian territories
The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The I ...
, including Jerusalem (an implicit endorsement of the
two-state solution
The two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict envisions an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel, west of the Jordan River. The boundary between the two states is still subject to dispute and negotia ...
), while conceding nothing about its claims to all of Palestine. It mentioned "armed resistance" twice and affirmed in article 3.6 that it was a
right to resist
The right to resist is a nearly universally acknowledged human right, although its scope and content are controversial. The right to resist, depending on how it is defined, can take the form of civil disobedience or armed resistance against a ty ...
the "terrorism of occupation". A
Palestinian Christian
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
figured on its candidate list.
Hamas won 76 seats, excluding four won by independents supporting Hamas, and Fatah only 43. The election was judged by international observers to have been "competitive and genuinely democratic". The EU said that they had been run better than elections in some members countries of the union, and promised to maintain its financial support. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates urged the US to give Hamas a chance, and that it was inadvisable to punish Palestinians for their choice, a position also endorsed by the
Arab League
The Arab League ( ar, الجامعة العربية, ' ), formally the League of Arab States ( ar, جامعة الدول العربية, '), is a regional organization in the Arab world, which is located in Northern Africa, Western Africa, E ...
a month later. The EU's promise was short-lived; three months later, in violating of its core principles regarding free elections, it abruptly froze financial assistance to the Hamas-led government, following the example set by the US and Canada. It undertook to instead channel funds directly to people and projects, and pay salaries only to Fatah members, employed or otherwise.
Hamas assumed the administration of Gaza following its electoral victory and introduced radical changes. It inherited a chaotic situation of lawlessness, since the economic sanctions imposed by Israel, the US and the Quartet had crippled the PA's administrative resources, leading to the emergence of numerous mafia-style gangs and terror cells modeled after Al Qaeda. Writing in '' Foreign Affairs'',
Daniel Byman
Daniel L. Byman is a professor at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is a senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution where he conducts research on terrorism, Iran, and other Middle East ...
later stated:
After it took over the Gaza Strip Hamas revamped the police and security forces, cutting them 50,000 members (on paper, at least) under Fatah to smaller, efficient forces of just over 10,000, which then cracked down on crime and gangs. No longer did groups openly carry weapons or steal with impunity. People paid their taxes and electric bills, and in return authorities picked up garbage and put criminals in jail. Gaza-neglected under Egyptian and then Israeli control, and misgoverned by Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and his successors-finally has a real government.'
In early February 2006, Hamas offered Israel a ten-year truce "in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem," and recognition of Palestinian rights including the "right of return".Peace with Israel for withdrawal to '67 borders Ynetnews March 3, 2006 Mashal added that Hamas was not calling for a final end to armed operations against Israel, and it would not impede other Palestinian groups from carrying out such operations.
National Unity Government
After the election, the
Quartet on the Middle East
The Quartet on the Middle East or Middle East Quartet, sometimes called the Diplomatic Quartet or Madrid Quartet or simply the Quartet, is a foursome of nations and international and supranational entities involved in mediating the Israeli ...
(the United States, Russia, the European Union (EU), and the United Nations) stated that assistance to the Palestinian Authority would only continue if Hamas renounced violence, recognized Israel, and accepted previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements, which Hamas refused to do. The Quartet then imposed a freeze on all international aid to the Palestinian territories. In 2006 after the Gaza election, Hamas leader sent a letter addressed to George W. Bush where he among other things declared that Hamas would accept a state on the 1967 borders including a truce. However, the Bush administration did not reply.
Legislative policy and reforming the judiciary
Khaled Hroub wrote that Hamas' " ress the separation between the three powers, the legislative, executive and judicial; activate the role of the Constitutional Court; re-form the Judicial Supreme Council and choose its members by elections and on the basis of qualifications rather than partisan, personal, and social considerations .. enact the necessary laws that guarantee the neutrality of general prosecutor ..ndlaws that will stop any transgression by the executive power on the constitution."
Public freedoms and citizen rights
Hroub reported that Hamas' new documents include to " hieve equality before the law among citizens in rights and duties; bring security to all citizens and protect their properties and assure their safety against arbitrary arrest, torture, or revenge; stress the culture of dialogue .. support the press and media institutions and maintain the right of journalists to access and to publish information; maintain freedom and independence of professional syndicates and preserve the rights of their membership."
Hamas–Fatah conflict
After the formation of the Hamas-led cabinet on March 20, 2006, tensions between Fatah and Hamas militants progressively rose in the Gaza strip as Fatah commanders refused to take orders from the government while the Palestinian Authority initiated a campaign of demonstrations, assassinations and abductions against Hamas, which led to Hamas responding. Israeli intelligence warned Mahmoud Abbas that Hamas had planned to kill him at his office in Gaza. According to a Palestinian source close to Abbas, Hamas considers president Abbas to be a barrier to its complete control over the Palestinian Authority and decided to kill him. In a statement to Al Jazeera, Hamas leader Mohammed Nazzal, accused Abbas of being party to besieging and isolating the Hamas-led government.
On June 9, 2006, during an Israeli artillery operation, an explosion occurred on a busy Gaza beach, killing eight Palestinian civilians. It was assumed that Israeli shellings were responsible for the killings, but Israeli government officials denied this. Hamas formally withdrew from its 16-month
ceasefire
A ceasefire (also known as a truce or armistice), also spelled cease fire (the antonym of 'open fire'), is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions. Ceasefires may be between state act ...
on June 10, taking responsibility for the subsequent
Qassam rocket
The Qassam rocket ( ar, صاروخ القسام ''Ṣārūkh al-Qassām''; also ''Kassam'') is a simple, steel artillery rocket developed and deployed by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas. These rockets cannot be fired ...
attacks launched from Gaza into Israel.
On June 25, two Israeli soldiers were killed and another,
Gilad Shalit
Gilad Shalit ( he-a, גלעד שליט, Shalit.ogg, ''Gilˁad Šaliṭ'', born 28 August 1986) is a former MIA soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who on 25 June 2006, was captured by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid via tu ...
, captured following an incursion by the
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades ( ar, كتائب الشهيد عز الدين القسام, , Battalions of martyr Izz ad-Din al-Qassam; also spelt Izzedine or Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades; often shortened to Al-Qassam Brigades, IQB
,
Popular Resistance Committees
The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) ( ar, لجان المقاومة الشعبية, ''Lijān al-Muqāwama al-Shaʿbiyya'') is a coalition of a number of armed Palestinian groups opposed to what they regard as the conciliatory approach of t ...
and Army of Islam. In response, the Israeli military launched
Operation Summer Rains
Operation or Operations may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
* ''Operation'' (game), a battery-operated board game that challenges dexterity
* Operation (music), a term used in musical set theory
* ''Operations'' (magazine), Multi-Ma ...
three days later, to secure the release of the kidnapped soldier,"Operation Summer Rains" ''GlobalSecurity.org'' arresting 64 Hamas officials. Among them were 8 Palestinian Authority cabinet ministers and up to 20 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, The arrests, along with other events, effectively prevented the Hamas-dominated legislature from functioning during most of its term.Shalit was held captive until 2011, when he was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Since then, Hamas has continued building a network of internal and cross-border tunnels, which are used to store and deploy weapons, shield militants, and facilitate cross-border attacks. Destroying the tunnels was a primary objective of Israeli forces in the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.
In February 2007 Saudi-sponsored negotiations led to the
Hamas & Fatah Mecca Agreement
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
to form a unity government, signed by Mahmoud Abbas on behalf of Fatah and
Khaled Mashal
Khaled Mashal ( ar, خالد مشعل, Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: , born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of t ...
on behalf of Hamas. The new government was called on to achieve Palestinian national goals as approved by the Palestine National Council, the clauses of the Basic Law and the National Reconciliation Document (the "Prisoners' Document") as well as the decisions of the Arab summit.
In March 2007, the Palestinian Legislative Council established a
national unity government
A national unity government, government of national unity (GNU), or national union government is a broad coalition government consisting of all parties (or all major parties) in the legislature, usually formed during a time of war or other nat ...
, with 83 representatives voting in favor and three against. Government ministers were sworn in by Mahmoud Abbas, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, at a ceremony held simultaneously in Gaza and Ramallah. In June that year, renewed fighting broke out between Hamas and Fatah. In a leaked comment by Major General Yadlin to the American Ambassador Richard H Jones at this point (June 12, 2007), Yadlin emphasized Hamas's electoral victory and an eventual Fatah withdrawal from Gaza would be advantageous to Israeli interests, in that the PLO's relocation to the West Bank would allow Israel to treat the Gaza Strip and Hamas as a hostile country. In the course of the June 2007 Battle of Gaza, Hamas exploited the near total collapse of Palestinian Authority forces in Gaza, to seizeThe "Gaza War" (PDF). Retrieved on August 21, 2010. control of Gaza, ousting Fatah officials. President Mahmoud Abbas then dismissed the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government. and outlawed the Hamas militia. At least 600 Palestinians died in fighting between Hamas and Fatah.
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
, a U.S.-based group, accused both sides in the conflict of torture and war crimes.
Human Rights Watch estimates several hundred Gazans were "maimed" and tortured in the aftermath of the Gaza War. 73 Gazan men accused of "collaborating" had their arms and legs broken by "unidentified perpetrators" and 18 Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel, who had escaped from Gaza's main prison compound after Israel bombed the facility, were executed by Hamas security officials in the first days of the conflict.Under Cover of War, Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (April 20, 2009). Retrieved on 2010-08-21.B'Tselem – Violations of the human rights of Palestinians by Palestinians – Severe human rights violations in inter-Palestinian clashes Btselem.org (November 12, 2007). Retrieved on 2010-08-21. Hamas security forces attacked hundreds Fatah officials who supported Israel. Human Rights Watch interviewed one such person:
In March 2012 Mahmoud Abbas stated that there were no political differences between Hamas and Fatah as they had reached agreement on a joint political platform and on a truce with Israel. Commenting on relations with Hamas, Abbas revealed in an interview with Al Jazeera that "We agreed that the period of calm would be not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank," adding that "We also agreed on a peaceful popular resistance gainst Israel the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders and that the peace talks would continue if Israel halted settlement construction and accepted our conditions." Progress has stalled, until an April 2014 agreement to form a compromise unity government, with elections to be held in late 2014. These elections did not take place and following a new agreement, the
next Palestinian general election
The next Palestinian legislative election was scheduled for 22 May 2021, according to a decree by President Mahmoud Abbas on 15 January 2021, but was indefinitely postponed on 29 April 2021.
History
Mahmoud Abbas was elected President of the P ...
is scheduled to take place by the end of March, 2021.
2008–2009 Gaza War
On June 17, 2008, Egyptian mediators announced that an informal truce had been agreed to between Hamas and Israel. Hamas agreed to cease rocket attacks on Israel, while Israel agreed to allow limited commercial shipping across its border with Gaza, barring any breakdown of the tentative peace deal; Hamas also hinted that it would discuss the release of
Gilad Shalit
Gilad Shalit ( he-a, גלעד שליט, Shalit.ogg, ''Gilˁad Šaliṭ'', born 28 August 1986) is a former MIA soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who on 25 June 2006, was captured by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid via tu ...
. Israeli sources state that Hamas also committed itself to enforce the ceasefire on the other Palestinian organizations. Even before the truce was agreed to, some on the Israeli side were not optimistic about it,
Shin Bet
The Israel Security Agency (ISA; he, שֵׁירוּת הַבִּיטָּחוֹן הַכְּלָלִי; ''Sherut ha-Bitaẖon haKlali''; "the General Security Service"; ar, جهاز الأمن العام), better known by the acronym Shabak ( he, ...
chief
Yuval Diskin
Yuval Diskin ( he, יובל דיסקין; born June 11, 1956) was the 12th Director of the Israeli Internal Security Service Shabak (frequently referred to in English as the "Shin Bet") from 2005 to 2011. He was appointed by Prime Minister Ariel ...
stating in May 2008 that a ground incursion into Gaza was unavoidable and would more effectively quell arms smuggling and pressure Hamas into relinquishing power.
While Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire, the lull was sporadically violated by other groups, sometimes in defiance of Hamas."Hamas arrests militants after rocket fire" Reuters. July 10, 2008 For example, on June 24 Islamic Jihad launched rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot; Israel called the attack a grave violation of the informal truce, and closed its border crossings with Gaza. On November 4, 2008, Israeli forces, in an attempt to stop construction of a tunnel, killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid inside the
Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip (;The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p.761 "Gaza Strip /'gɑːzə/ a strip of territory under the control of the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas, on the SE Mediterranean coast including the town of Gaza.. ...
. Hamas responded by resuming rocket attacks, a total of 190 rockets in November according to Israel's military.
With the six-month truce officially expired on December 19, Hamas launched 50 to more than 70 rockets and mortars into Israel over the next three days, though no Israelis were injured. On December 21, Hamas said it was ready to stop the attacks and renew the truce if Israel stopped its "aggression" in Gaza and opened up its border crossings.
On December 27 and 28, Israel implemented
Operation Cast Lead
Operation or Operations may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
* ''Operation'' (game), a battery-operated board game that challenges dexterity
* Operation (music), a term used in musical set theory
* ''Operations'' (magazine), Multi-Ma ...
against Hamas. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said "We warned Hamas repeatedly that rejecting the truce would push Israel to aggression against Gaza." According to Palestinian officials, over 280 people were killed and 600 were injured in the first two days of airstrikes.Civilian death toll rises after second day of air strikes ''The Guardian'' (UK), December 29, 2008 Most were Hamas police and security officers, though many civilians also died. According to Israel, militant training camps, rocket-manufacturing facilities and weapons warehouses that had been pre-identified were hit, and later they attacked rocket and mortar squads who fired around 180 rockets and mortars at Israeli communities.Israeli airstrikes in Gaza kill more than 200 NBC News, December 28, 2008 Chief of Gaza police force Tawfiq Jabber, head of the General Security Service Salah Abu Shrakh, senior religious authority and security officer Nizar Rayyan, and Interior Minister
Said Seyam
Said Seyam ( ar, سعيد صيام; 22 July 1959 – 15 January 2009), first name also spelled Saeed and Sayed and last name also spelled Siam, was the interior minister of the Palestinian government of March 2006. He joined Hamas and became ...
were among those killed during the fighting. Although Israel sent out thousands of cell-phone messages urging residents of Gaza to leave houses where weapons may be stored, in an attempt to minimise civilian casualties, some residents complained there was nowhere to go because many neighborhoods had received the same message. Israeli bombs landed close to civilian structures such as schools, and some alleged that Israel was deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians.
Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire on January 17, 2009. Hamas responded the following day by announcing a one-week ceasefire to give Israel time to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip. Israeli, Palestinian, and third-party sources disagreed on the total casualty figures from the Gaza war, and the number of Palestinian casualties who were civilians. In November 2010, a senior Hamas official acknowledged that up to 300 fighters were killed and "In addition to them, between 200 and 300 fighters from the Al-Qassam Brigades and another 150 security forces were martyred." These new numbers reconcile the total with those of the Israeli military, which originally said were 709 "terror operatives" killed.
After the Gaza War
On August 16, 2009, Hamas leader
Khaled Mashal
Khaled Mashal ( ar, خالد مشعل, Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: , born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of t ...
stated that the organization is ready to open dialogue with the Obama administration because its policies are much better than those of former U.S. president
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
: "As long as there's a new language, we welcome it, but we want to see not only a change of language, but also a change of policies on the ground. We have said that we are prepared to cooperate with the US or any other international party that would enable the Palestinians to get rid of occupation." Despite this, an August 30, 2009 speech during a visit to Jordan in which Mashal expressed support for the Palestinian right of return was interpreted by David Pollock of the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP or TWI, also known simply as The Washington Institute) is a pro-Israel American think tank based in Washington, D.C., focused on the foreign policy of the United States in the Near East.
WIN ...
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP or TWI, also known simply as The Washington Institute) is a pro-Israel American think tank based in Washington, D.C., focused on the foreign policy of the United States in the Near East.
WIN ...
''. September 1, 2009. In an interview in May 2010, Mashal said that if a Palestinian state with real sovereignty was established under the conditions he set out, on the borders of 1967 with its capital Jerusalem and with the right of return, that will be the end of the Palestinian resistance, and then the nature of any subsequent ties with Israel would be decided democratically by the Palestinians. In July 2009, Khaled Mashal, Hamas's political bureau chief, stated Hamas's willingness to cooperate with a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which included a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, provided that
Palestinian refugees
Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country over the course of the 1947–49 Palestine war (1948 Palestinian exodus) and the Six-Day War (1967 Palestinian exodu ...
be given the
right to return
The right of return is a principle in international law which guarantees everyone's right of voluntary return to, or re-entry to, their country of origin or of citizenship. The right of return is part of the broader human rights concept freedom of ...
to Israel and that East Jerusalem be recognized as the new state's capital.
In 2011, after the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, Hamas distanced itself from the Syrian regime and its members began leaving Syria. Where once there were "hundreds of exiled Palestinian officials and their relatives", that number shrunk to "a few dozen". In 2012, Hamas publicly announced its support for the
Syrian opposition
The Syrian opposition ( ar, المعارضة السورية ', ) is the political structure represented by the Syrian National Coalition and associated Syrian anti-Assad groups with certain territorial control as an alternative Syrian gover ...
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', October 2, 2012. Khaled Mashal said that Hamas had been "forced out" of Damascus because of its disagreements with the Syrian regime. In late October,
Syrian Army
" (''Guardians of the Homeland'')
, colors = * Service uniform: Khaki, Olive
* Combat uniform: Green, Black, Khaki
, anniversaries = August 1st
, equipment =
, equipment_label =
, battles = 1948 Arab–Israeli War
Six ...
soldiers shot dead two Hamas leaders in
Daraa
Daraa ( ar, دَرْعَا, Darʿā, Levantine Arabic: , also Darʿā, Dara’a, Deraa, Dera'a, Dera, Derʿā and Edrei; means "''fortress''", compare Dura-Europos) is a city in southwestern Syria, located about north of the border with Jord ...
refugee camp. On November 5, 2012, the Syrian state security forces shut down all Hamas offices in the country. In January 2013, another two Hamas members were found dead in Syria's Husseinieh camp. Activists said the two had been arrested and executed by state security forces. In 2013, it was reported that the military wing of Hamas had begun training units of the Free Syrian Army. In 2013, after "several intense weeks of indirect three-way diplomacy between representatives of Hamas, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority", no agreement was reached. Also, intra-Palestinian reconciliation talks stalled and, as a result, during Obama's visit to Israel, Hamas launched five rocket strikes on Israel. In November, Isra Almodallal was appointed the first spokeswoman of the group.
2014 Israel–Gaza conflict
On July 8, 2014 Israel launched
Operation Protective Edge
The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge ( he, מִבְצָע צוּק אֵיתָן, translit=Miv'tza Tzuk Eitan, ),
was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that h ...
to counter increased Hamas rocket fire from Gaza. The conflict ended with a permanent cease-fire after 7 weeks, and more than 2,200 dead. 64 of the dead were Israeli soldiers, 7 were civilians in Israel (from rocket attacks), and 2,101 were killed in Gaza, of which according to UN OCHA at least 1,460 were civilians. Israel says 1,000 of the dead were militants. Following the conflict, Mahmoud Abbas president of the Palestinian Authority, accused Hamas of needlessly extending the fighting in the Gaza Strip, contributing to the high death toll, of running a "shadow government" in Gaza, and of illegally executing scores of Palestinians. Hamas has complained about the slow delivery of reconstruction materials after the conflict and announced that they were diverting these materials from civilian uses to build more infiltration tunnels.
Reconciliation attempts
In 2016, Hamas began security co-ordination with Egypt to crack down on Islamic terrorist organizations in Sinai, in return for economic aid.
In May 2017, Hamas unveiled its new charter, in an attempt to moderate its image. The charter no longer calls for Israel's destruction, but still calls for liberation of Palestine and to 'confront the Zionist project'. It also confirms acceptance of the 1967 borders as the basis for establishing a Palestinian state as well as not being an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In October 2017, Fatah and Hamas signed yet another reconciliation agreement. The partial agreement addresses civil and administrative matters involving Gaza and the West Bank. Other contentious issues such as national elections, reform of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and possible demilitarization of Hamas were to be discussed in the next meeting in November 2017, due to a new step-by-step approach.
2018–2019 Gaza border protests
Between 2018 and 2019, Hamas participated in " the Great March of Return" along the Gaza border with Israel. At least 183 Palestinians were killed.
2021 Israel–Palestine crisis
In May 2021, after tensions escalated in
Sheikh Jarrah
Sheikh Jarrah ( ar, الشيخ جراح, he, שייח' ג'ראח) is a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, north of the Old City, on the road to Mount Scopus. It received its name from the 13th-century tomb of Sheikh Ja ...
and the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, Israel and Hamas clashed in Gaza once again. After eleven days of fighting, at least 243 people were killed in Gaza and 12 in Israel.
Media
Al-Aqsa TV
Al-Aqsa TV
Al-Aqsa TV ( ar, قناة الأقصى) is a television channel run by Hamas, which is based in the Gaza Strip. Its programs include news and propaganda promoting Hamas, children's shows (such as ''Tomorrow's Pioneers'', that promotes violence ...
is a television channel founded by Hamas. The station began broadcasting in the Gaza Strip on January 9, 2006,, news24.com, January 22, 2006 less than three weeks before the Palestinian legislative elections. It has shown television programs, including some children's television, which deliver anti-semitic messages. Hamas has stated that the television station is "an independent media institution that often does not express the views of the Palestinian government headed by Ismail Haniyeh or of the Hamas movement," and that Hamas does not hold anti-semitic views.Hamas Condemns the Holocaust ''The Guardian'' May 12, 2008 The programming includes ideologically tinged children's shows, news talk, and religiously inspired entertainment. According to the
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
, the station promotes terrorist activity and incites hatred of Jews and Israelis. Al-Aqsa TV is headed by Fathi Ahmad Hammad, chairman of al-Ribat Communications and Artistic Productions—a Hamas-run company that also produces Hamas's radio station, ''Voice of al-Aqsa'', and its biweekly newspaper, ''The Message''.
Children's magazine
''Al-Fateh'' ("the conqueror") is the Hamas children's magazine, published biweekly in London, and also posted in an online website. It began publication in September 2002, and its 108th issue was released in mid-September 2007. The magazine features stories, poems, riddles, and puzzles, and states it is for "the young builders of the future".
According to the
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
, al-Fateh promotes violence and anti-semitism, with praise for and encouragement to become suicide bombers, and that it "regularly includes photos of children it claims have been detained, injured or killed by Israeli police, images of children firing slingshots or throwing rocks at Israelis and children holding automatic weapons and firebombs."
Hamas Charter (1988)
The foundational document of Hamas, the Hamas Charter (''mīthāq ḥarakat''), was, according to Khaled Hroub written by a single individual and made public without going through the usual prior consultation process. It was then signed on August 18, 1988. It contains both
antisemitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
passages and characterizations of Israeli society as
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
-like in its cruelty, and irredentist claims. It declares all of Palestine a ''
waqf
A waqf ( ar, وَقْف; ), also known as hubous () or '' mortmain'' property is an inalienable charitable endowment under Islamic law. It typically involves donating a building, plot of land or other assets for Muslim religious or charitabl ...
'', an unalienable religious property consisting of land endowed to
Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
two-state solution
The two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict envisions an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel, west of the Jordan River. The boundary between the two states is still subject to dispute and negotia ...
, stating that
the conflict
''The Conflict'' is a 1916 American silent drama film directed by Ralph Ince and starring Lucille Lee Stewart, Huntley Gordon and Wilfred Lytell.Connelly p.51
Cast
* Lucille Lee Stewart as Madeleine Turner
* Jessie Miller as Jeanette Harcour ...
cannot be resolved "except through
jihad
Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ...
".
Article 6 states that the movement's aim is to "raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned". It adds that, "when our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, jihad becomes a duty binding on all Muslims",Mark A. Tessle ''A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,'' Indiana University Press, 1994 pp. 546, 696 for which the whole of the land is non-negotiable, a position likened, without the racist sentiments present in the Hamas charter, to that in the
Likud
Likud ( he, הַלִּיכּוּד, HaLikud, The Consolidation), officially known as Likud – National Liberal Movement, is a major centre-right to right-wing political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin and Ariel Sha ...
party platform and in movements like
Gush Emunim
Gush Emunim ( he, גּוּשׁ אֱמוּנִים , ''Bloc of the Faithful'') was an Israeli ultranationalist Orthodox Jewish right-wing activist movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Gol ...
Peter Beinart
Peter Alexander Beinart (; born February 28, 1971) is an American liberal columnist, journalist, and political commentator. A former editor of ''The New Republic'', he has also written for ''Time'', ''The New York Times'', and ''The New York Revie ...
''The Crisis of Zionism,'' Melbourne University Press 2012 p. 231:'If Israel withdraws to the borders of 1967, it doesn't mean that it gives us back all the land of the Palestinians. But we do consider this as an acceptable solution to have a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967'. When Hamas won a majority in the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, Haniyeh, then president-elect, sent messages to both
George Bush
George Bush most commonly refers to:
* George H. W. Bush (1924–2018), 41st president of the United States and father of the 43rd president
* George W. Bush (born 1946), 43rd president of the United States and son of the 41st president
Georg ...
and Israel's leaders asking to be recognized and offering a long-term truce (
hudna
A ''hudna'' (from the Arabic meaning "calm" or "quiet") is a truce or armistice. It is sometimes translated as "cease-fire". In his medieval dictionary of classical Arabic, the '' Lisan al-Arab'', Ibn Manzur defined it as:
: "''hadana'': he ...
), along the 1967 border lines. No response was forthcoming.Dr. Lorenzo Kamel 'Why do Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas?,' Haaretz August 5, 2014Mousa Marzook said in 2007 that the charter could not be altered because it would look like a compromise not acceptable to the 'street' and risk fracturing the party's unity. Hamas leader
Khaled Meshaal
Khaled Mashal ( ar, خالد مشعل, Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: , born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of th ...
has stated that the Charter is "a piece of history and no longer relevant, but cannot be changed for internal reasons".
Ahmed Yousef
Ahmed Yousef (AKA Yousef Saleh, Abu Ahmed, Ahmed bin Yousef)Emerson, Steven. ''American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us''. The Free Press. New York, USA, 2002. was a senior adviser to Gaza's Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and remains close to ...
, senior adviser to
Ismail Haniyeh
Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh; sometimes transliterated as Haniya, Haniyah, or Hanieh (born 29 January 1962) is a senior political leader of Hamas and formerly one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority. Hani ...
, added in 2011 that it reflected the views of the Elders in the face of a 'relentless occupation.' The details of its religious and political language had not been examined within the framework of international law, and an internal committee review to amend it was shelved out of concern not to offer concessions to Israel, as had Fatah, on a silver platter. While Hamas representatives recognize the problem, one official notes that Arafat got very little in return for changing the PLO Charter under the Oslo Accords, and that there is agreement that little is gained from a non-violent approach.Matthew Duss 'Remember Gaza? '
Tablet Magazine
''Tablet'' is an online magazine focused on Jewish news and culture. The magazine was founded in 2009 and is supported by the Nextbook foundation. Its editor-in-chief is Alana Newhouse.
History
''Tablet'' was founded in 2009 with the support ...
May 8, 2015. Richard Davis says the dismissal by contemporary leaders of its relevance and yet the suspension of a desire to rewrite it reflects the differing constituencies Hamas must address, the domestic audience and international relations. The charter itself is considered an 'historical relic.'
In March 2006, Hamas released its official legislative program. The document clearly signaled that Hamas could refer the issue of recognizing Israel to a national referendum. Under the heading "Recognition of Israel," it stated simply (AFP, 3/11/06): "The question of recognizing Israel is not the jurisdiction of one faction, nor the government, but a decision for the Palestinian people." This was a major shift away from their 1988 charter. A few months later, via
University of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
's Jerome Segal, the group sent a letter to U.S. President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
stating they "don't mind having a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders", and asked for direct negotiations: "Segal emphasized that a state within the 1967 borders and a truce for many years could be considered Hamas's ''de facto'' recognition of Israel."
In an April 2008 meeting between Hamas leader
Khaled Mashal
Khaled Mashal ( ar, خالد مشعل, Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: , born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of t ...
and former U.S. President
Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...
, an understanding was reached in which Hamas agreed it would respect the creation of a Palestinian state in the territory seized by Israel in the 1967
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states (primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, S ...
, provided this were ratified by the Palestinian people in a referendum. Hamas later publicly offered a long-term
truce
A ceasefire (also known as a truce or armistice), also spelled cease fire (the antonym of 'open fire'), is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions. Ceasefires may be between state act ...
with Israel if Israel agreed to return to its 1967 borders and grant the "right of return" to all Palestinian refugees. In November 2008, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh re-stated that Hamas was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, and offered Israel a long-term truce "if Israel recognized the Palestinians' national rights". In 2009, in a letter to UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon
Ban Ki-moon (; ; born 13 June 1944) is a South Korean politician and diplomat who served as the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations between 2007 and 2016. Prior to his appointment as secretary-general, Ban was his country's Minister ...
, Haniyeh repeated his group's support for a two-state settlement based on 1967 borders: "We would never thwart efforts to create an independent Palestinian state with borders
rom
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* ...
June 4, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital." On December 1, 2010, Ismail Haniyeh again repeated, "We accept a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the resolution of the issue of refugees," and "Hamas will respect the results f a referendumregardless of whether it differs with its ideology and principles."
In February 2012, according to the Palestinian authority, Hamas forswore the use of violence. Evidence for this was provided by an eruption of violence from Islamic Jihad in March 2012 after an Israeli assassination of a Jihad leader, during which Hamas refrained from attacking Israel. "Israel—despite its mantra that because Hamas is sovereign in Gaza it is responsible for what goes on there—almost seems to understand," wrote Israeli journalists Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel, "and has not bombed Hamas offices or installations".
Israel has rejected some truce offers by Hamas because it contends the group uses them to prepare for more fighting rather than peace. ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' magazine columnist
Jeffrey Goldberg
Jeffrey Mark Goldberg (born September 22, 1965) is an American journalist and editor-in-chief of ''The Atlantic'' magazine. During his nine years at ''The Atlantic'' prior to becoming editor, Goldberg became known for his coverage of foreign affa ...
, along with other analysts, believes Hamas may be incapable of permanent reconciliation with Israel. Mkhaimer Abusada, a political scientist at
Al Azhar University
, image = جامعة_الأزهر_بالقاهرة.jpg
, image_size = 250
, caption = Al-Azhar University portal
, motto =
, established =
*970/972 first foundat ...
, writes that Hamas talks "of hudna emporary ceasefire not of peace or reconciliation with Israel. They believe over time they will be strong enough to liberate all historic Palestine."
Islamization efforts
In the Gaza Strip
The gender ideology outlined in the Hamas charter, the importance of women in the religious-nationalist project of liberation is asserted as no lesser than that of males. Their role was defined primarily as one of manufacturing males and caring for their upbringing and rearing, though the charter recognized they could fight for liberation without obtaining their husband's permission and in 2002 their participation in jihad was permitted. The doctrinal emphasis on childbearing and rearing as woman's primary duty is not so different from Fatah's view of women in the First Intifada and it also resembles the outlook of Jewish settlers, and over time it has been subjected to change.
In 1989, during the First Intifada, a small number of Hamas followers campaigned for the wearing of the
hijab
In modern usage, hijab ( ar, حجاب, translit=ḥijāb, ) generally refers to headcoverings worn by Muslim women. Many Muslims believe it is obligatory for every female Muslim who has reached the age of puberty to wear a head covering. While ...
, which is not a part of traditional women's attire in Palestine, for polygamy, and also insisted women stay at home and be segregated from men. In the course of this campaign, women who chose not to wear the hijab were verbally and physically harassed, with the result that the hijab was being worn 'just to avoid problems on the streets'. The harassment dropped drastically when, after 18 months UNLU condemned it, though similar campaigns reoccurred.
Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, some of its members have attempted to impose Islamic dress or the
hijab
In modern usage, hijab ( ar, حجاب, translit=ḥijāb, ) generally refers to headcoverings worn by Muslim women. Many Muslims believe it is obligatory for every female Muslim who has reached the age of puberty to wear a head covering. While ...
head covering on women.Hamas Fights Over Gaza's Islamist Identity ''The New York Times'', September 5, 2009 Also, the government's "Islamic Endowment Ministry" has deployed Virtue Committee members to warn citizens of the dangers of immodest dress, card playing, and dating.Hamas Bans Women Dancers, Scooter Riders in Gaza Push By Daniel Williams, Bloomberg, November 30, 2009 However, there are no government laws imposing dress and other moral standards, and the Hamas education ministry reversed one effort to impose Islamic dress on students. There has also been successful resistance to attempts by local Hamas officials to impose Islamic dress on women.
Hamas officials deny having any plans to impose Islamic law, one legislator stating that "What you are seeing are incidents, not policy," and that Islamic law is the desired standard "but we believe in persuasion". The Hamas education ministry reversed one effort to impose Islamic dress on students. When the BBC in 2010 interviewed five "middle-class" women in Gaza City, the subjects generally indicated Hamas attempts to enforce conservative religious standards of dress had been largely rejected by the local population, with some expressing concern that the closure of Gaza would allow the proliferation of extremist enforcement attempts by low-level Hamas officials, and others indicating they were happy to see Hamas enforcing such requirements. They also cited examples of leniency by Hamas authorities, such as allowing widowed women to keep custody of their children so long as they did not remarry, and other relaxations in the enforcement of Shariah law. One woman noted that the environment was "not as bad" as during the First Intifada, when women were subject to public criticism and stonings for failure to obey conservative Islamic standards of dress. One woman complained that women were not free to speak their minds or travel alone, and added: "Hamas want to force themselves onto the people. They want the people to submit to them, this is their cover. They destroyed the reputation of Islam, by saying we're doing this because it is religion. This is how they won the elections."
In 2013,
UNRWA
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA's mandate encompasses Palestinians displaced by the 1948 ...
canceled its annual marathon in Gaza after Hamas rulers prohibited women from participating in the race.
In the West Bank
In 2005, the human rights organization Freemuse released a report titled "Palestine: Taliban-like attempts to censor music", which said that
Palestinian musicians
The following Lists of Palestinians are lists of notable people with either a self-designation (endonym) or a foreign appellation (exonym) as "Palestinian", or who were born in the region of Palestine.
Approximately 12 million people today ide ...
feared that harsh religious laws against music and concerts will be imposed since Hamas group scored political gains in the Palestinian Authority local elections of 2005.
The attempt by Hamas to dictate a cultural code of conduct in the 1980s and early 1990s led to a violent fighting between different Palestinian sectors. Hamas members reportedly burned down stores that stocked videos they deemed indecent and destroyed books they described as "heretical".
In 2005, an outdoor music and dance performance in
Qalqiliya
Qalqilya or Qalqiliya ( ar, قلقيلية, Qalqīlyaḧ) is a Palestinian city in the West Bank which serves as the administrative center of the Qalqilya Governorate of the State of Palestine. In the 2007 census, the city had a population of 41, ...
were suddenly banned by the Hamas led municipality, for the reason that such an event would be forbidden by Islam, or "
Haram
''Haram'' (; ar, حَرَام, , ) is an Arabic term meaning 'Forbidden'. This may refer to either something sacred to which access is not allowed to the people who are not in a state of purity or who are not initiated into the sacred knowle ...
"."Battling over the public sphere: Islamic reactions to the music of today". Jonas Otterbeck. ''Contemporary Islam''. Volume 2, Number 3, 211–28,. "... the over-all argument was that the event was haram" The municipality also ordered that music no longer be played in the Qalqiliya zoo, and mufti Akrameh Sabri issued a religious edict affirming the municipality decision. In response, the Palestinian national poet
Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish ( ar, محمود درويش, Maḥmūd Darwīsh, 13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. He won numerous awards for his works. Darwish used Palestine ...
warned that "There are Taliban-type elements in our society, and this is a very dangerous sign.""Palestinians Debate Whether Future State Will be Theocracy or Democracy".
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
, July 13, 2005.Gaza Taliban? by Editorial Staff, The New Humanist, Volume 121 Issue 1, January/February 2006
The Palestinian columnist Mohammed Abd Al-Hamid, a resident of Ramallah, wrote that this religious coercion could cause the migration of artists, and said "The religious fanatics in Algeria destroyed every cultural symbol, shattered statues and rare works of art and liquidated intellectuals and artists, reporters and authors, ballet dancers and singers—are we going to imitate the Algerian and Afghani examples?"Afghanistan in Palestine by Zvi Bar'el, ''Haaretz'', July 26, 2005
Erdoğan's Turkey as a role model
Some Hamas members stated that the model of Islamic government that Hamas seeks to emulate is that of Turkey under the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The foremost members to distance Hamas from the practices of Taliban and to publicly support the Erdoğan model were
Ahmed Yousef
Ahmed Yousef (AKA Yousef Saleh, Abu Ahmed, Ahmed bin Yousef)Emerson, Steven. ''American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us''. The Free Press. New York, USA, 2002. was a senior adviser to Gaza's Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and remains close to ...
and Ghazi Hamad, advisers to Prime Minister Hanieh.Hamas Rule in Gaza: Three Years On
Yezid Sayigh
Yezid Sayigh ( ar, يزيد صايغ) (b. 1955) is a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. Previously, he was a professor of Middle East Studies at the Department of War Studies at King's College London, a member ...
, Crown Center for Middle East studies, March 2010 Yusuf, the Hamas deputy foreign minister, reflected this goal in an interview to a Turkish newspaper, stating that while foreign public opinion equates Hamas with the Taliban or al-Qaeda, the analogy is inaccurate. Yusuf described the Taliban as "opposed to everything", including education and women's rights, while Hamas wants to establish good relations between the religious and secular elements of society and strives for human rights, democracy and an open society. According to professor
Yezid Sayigh
Yezid Sayigh ( ar, يزيد صايغ) (b. 1955) is a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. Previously, he was a professor of Middle East Studies at the Department of War Studies at King's College London, a member ...
of the King's College in London, how influential this view is within Hamas is uncertain, since both Ahmad Yousef and Ghazi Hamad were dismissed from their posts as advisers to Hamas Prime Minister
Ismail Hanieh
Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh; sometimes transliterated as Haniya, Haniyah, or Hanieh (born 29 January 1962) is a senior political leader of Hamas and formerly one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority. Haniy ...
in October 2007. Both have since been appointed to other prominent positions within the Hamas government. Khaled al-Hroub of the West Bank-based and anti-Hamas Palestinian daily ''Al Ayyam'' added that despite claims by Hamas leaders that it wants to repeat the Turkish model of Islam, "what is happening on the ground in reality is a replica of the Taliban model of Islam."
Antisemitism and anti-Zionism
According to academic Esther Webman, antisemitism is not the main tenet of Hamas ideology, although antisemitic rhetoric is frequent and intense in Hamas leaflets. The leaflets generally do not differentiate between Jews and Zionists. In other Hamas publications and interviews with its leaders, attempts at this differentiation have been made.Webman, Esther. ''Anti-semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizballah and Hamas'', Project for the study of Anti-semitism, Tel Aviv University, 1994, p. 22. In 2009 representatives of the small anti-Zionist Jewish group
Neturei Karta
Neturei Karta (Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: , , ) is a religious group of Haredi Jews, formally created in Jerusalem, then in Mandatory Palestine, in 1938, splitting off from Agudas Yisrael. Neturei Karta opposes Zionism and calls for a "pea ...
met with Hamas leader
Ismail Haniyeh
Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh; sometimes transliterated as Haniya, Haniyah, or Hanieh (born 29 January 1962) is a senior political leader of Hamas and formerly one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority. Hani ...
in Gaza, who stated that he held nothing against Jews but only against the state of Israel.
Hamas has made conflicting statements about its readiness to recognize Israel. In 2006 a spokesman signaled readiness to recognize Israel within the 1967 borders. Speaking of requests for Hamas to recognize agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, senior Hamas member Khaled Suleiman said that "these agreements are a reality which we view as such, and therefore I see no problem." Also in 2006, a Hamas official ruled out recognition of Israel with reference to West and East Germany, which never recognized each other.
Hamas Charter
* Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant provides the following quotation, attributed to
Muhammad
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...
:
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree (evidently a certain kind of tree), would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.
Multiple commentators, including
Jeffrey Goldberg
Jeffrey Mark Goldberg (born September 22, 1965) is an American journalist and editor-in-chief of ''The Atlantic'' magazine. During his nine years at ''The Atlantic'' prior to becoming editor, Goldberg became known for his coverage of foreign affa ...
and
Philip Gourevitch
Philip Gourevitch (born 1961), an American author and journalist, is a longtime staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' and a former editor of ''The Paris Review''.
His most recent book is '' The Ballad of Abu Ghraib'' (2008), an account of Iraq's ...
, have identified this passage as
incitement to genocide
Incitement to genocide is a crime under international law which prohibits inciting (encouraging) the commission of genocide. An extreme form of hate speech, incitement to genocide is considered an inchoate offense and is theoretically subject t ...
.
* Article 22 states that the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
, the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...
, colonialism and both world wars were created by the Zionists or forces supportive of Zionism:
You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.
* Article 32 of the Covenant refers to an antisemitic forgery, ''
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' () or ''The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. The hoax was plagiarized from several ...
'':
Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.
Statements by Hamas members and clerics
Statements to an Arab audience
In 2008,
Imam
Imam (; ar, إمام '; plural: ') is an Islamic leadership position. For Sunni Muslims, Imam is most commonly used as the title of a worship leader of a mosque. In this context, imams may lead Islamic worship services, lead prayers, ser ...
Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas said in his sermon at the '' Katib Wilayat'' mosque in Gaza that "Jews are a people who cannot be trusted. They have been traitors to all agreements. Go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing."
Another Hamas legislator and imam, Sheik Yunus al-Astal, discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that "suffering by fire is the Jews' destiny in this world and the next." He concluded "Therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews."
Following the rededication of the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem in March 2010, senior Hamas figure al-Zahar called on Palestinians everywhere to observe five minutes of silence "for Israel's disappearance and to identify with Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa mosque". He further stated that "Wherever you have been you've been sent to your destruction. You've killed and murdered your prophets and you have always dealt in loan-sharking and destruction. You've made a deal with the devil and with destruction itself—just like your synagogue."
On August 10, 2012, Ahmad Bahr, Deputy Speaker of the Hamas Parliament, stated in a sermon that aired on ''
Al-Aqsa TV
Al-Aqsa TV ( ar, قناة الأقصى) is a television channel run by Hamas, which is based in the Gaza Strip. Its programs include news and propaganda promoting Hamas, children's shows (such as ''Tomorrow's Pioneers'', that promotes violence ...
'':
If the enemy sets foot on a single square inch of Islamic land, Jihad becomes an individual duty, incumbent on every Muslim, male or female. A woman may set out n Jihadwithout her husband's permission, and a servant without his master's permission. Why? In order to annihilate those Jews. ... O Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. O Allah, destroy the Americans and their supporters. O Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one.
In an interview with
Al-Aqsa TV
Al-Aqsa TV ( ar, قناة الأقصى) is a television channel run by Hamas, which is based in the Gaza Strip. Its programs include news and propaganda promoting Hamas, children's shows (such as ''Tomorrow's Pioneers'', that promotes violence ...
on September 12, 2012, Marwan Abu Ras, a Hamas MP, who is also a member of the
International Union of Muslim Scholars
The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS; ar, الاتحاد العالمي لعلماء المسلمين; ') is an organization of Muslim Islamic theologians headed by Ahmad al-Raysuni described as the "supreme authority ...
, stated (as translated by
MEMRI
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI; officially the "Middle East Media and Research Institute") is a nonprofit press monitoring and analysis organization co-founded by former Israeli military intelligence officer Yigal Carmon an ...
):
On December 26, 2012, Senior Hamas official and Jerusalem bureau chief Ahmed Abu Haliba, called on "all Palestinian factions to resume suicide attacks ... deep inside the Zionist enemy" and said that "we must renew the resistance to occupation in any possible way, above all through armed resistance." Abu Haliba suggested the use of suicide bombings as a response to Israel's plans to build housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In an interview on Lebanese television on July 28, 2014, Hamas spokesman
Osama Hamdan
Osama Hamdan ( ar, أسامة حمدان; born 1965) is a senior representative of Hamas in Lebanon and is a member of the organization's politburo. He is a member of the Arab National Congress and of the Arab Islamic Conference of the Board of Tr ...
repeated the
blood libel
Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic canardTurvey, Brent E. ''Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis'', Academic Press, 2008, p. 3. "Blood libel: An accusation of ritual mur ...
myth:
Statements an international audience
In an interview with ''
CBS This Morning
''CBS This Morning'' (''CTM'') is an American morning television program that aired on CBS from November 30, 1987, to October 29, 1999, and again from January 9, 2012, to September 6, 2021. The program was aired from Monday through Saturday. ...
'' on July 27, 2014, Hamas leader
Khaled Meshaal
Khaled Mashal ( ar, خالد مشعل, Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: , born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of th ...
, Gazan Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh told The Associated Press that he disagrees with the anti-Semitic slogans. "We are not against the Jews because they are Jews. Our problem is with those occupying the land of Palestine," he said. "There are Jews all over the world, but Hamas does not target them." In response to a statement by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas that Hamas preferred non-violent means and had agreed to adopt "peaceful resistance," Hamas contradicted Abbas. According to Hamas spokesman Sami Abu-Zuhri, "We had agreed to give popular resistance precedence in the West Bank, but this does not come at the expense of armed resistance."
In May 2009, senior Hamas MP Sayed Abu Musameh said, "in our culture, we respect every foreigner, especially Jews and Christians, but we are against Zionists, not as nationalists but as fascists and racists." In the same interview, he also said, "I hate all kinds of weapons. I dream of seeing every weapon from the atomic bomb to small guns banned everywhere." In January 2009, Gazan Hamas Health Minister Basim Naim published a letter in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', stating that Hamas has no quarrel with Jewish people, only with the actions of Israel. In October 1994, in a response to Israel's crackdown on Hamas militants following a suicide bombing on a Tel Aviv bus, Hamas promised retaliation: "Rabin must know that Hamas loves death more than Rabin and his soldiers love life."
Statements on the Holocaust
Hamas has been explicit in its
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
...
. In reaction to the Stockholm conference on the Jewish Holocaust, held in late January 2000, Hamas issued a press release that it published on its official website, containing the following statements from a senior leader:
This conference bears a clear Zionist goal, aimed at forging history by hiding the truth about the so-called Holocaust, which is an alleged and invented story with no basis. (...) The invention of these grand illusions of an alleged crime that never occurred, ignoring the millions of dead European victims of Nazism during the war, clearly reveals the racist Zionist face, which believes in the superiority of the Jewish race over the rest of the nations. (...) By these methods, the Jews in the world flout scientific methods of research whenever that research contradicts their racist interests.
In August 2003, senior Hamas official Dr Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi wrote in the Hamas newspaper ''Al-Risala'' that the Zionists encouraged murder of Jews by the Nazis with the aim of forcing them to immigrate to Palestine.
In 2005,
Khaled Mashal
Khaled Mashal ( ar, خالد مشعل, Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: , born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of t ...
called
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ( fa, محمود احمدینژاد, Mahmūd Ahmadīnežād ), born Mahmoud Sabbaghian ( fa, محمود صباغیان, Mahmoud Sabbāghyān, 28 October 1956),
's December 14, 2005 statements on the Holocaust that Europeans had "created a myth in the name of Holocaust") as "courageous". Later in 2008, Basim Naim, the minister of health in the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government in Gaza countered holocaust denial, and said "it should be made clear that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian government in Gaza denies the Nazi Holocaust. The Holocaust was not only a crime against humanity but one of the most abhorrent crimes in modern history. We condemn it as we condemn every abuse of humanity and all forms of discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender or nationality."
In an open letter to Gaza Strip
UNRWA
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA's mandate encompasses Palestinians displaced by the 1948 ...
chief
John Ging
John Ging (born 1965), an Irish national, was appointed as Director of the Operational Division at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in New York in February 2011. He oversees the management of all OCHA field opera ...
published August 20, 2009, the movement's Popular Committees for Refugees called the Holocaust "a lie invented by the Zionists," adding that the group refused to let Gazan children study it. Hamas leader
Yunis al-Astal
Yunis Al Astal ( ar, يونس الأسطل; born 1956) is a preacher and Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council for the area of Khan Yunis.Jeroen Gunning; p179; ''Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence;'' Columbia University ...
continued by saying that having the Holocaust included in the UNRWA curriculum for Gaza students amounted to "marketing a lie and spreading it". Al-Astal continued "I do not exaggerate when I say this issue is a war crime, because of how it serves the Zionist colonizers and deals with their hypocrisy and lies."
In February 2011, Hamas voiced opposition to UNRWA's teaching of the Holocaust in Gaza. According to Hamas, "Holocaust studies in refugee camps is a contemptible plot and serves the Zionist entity with a goal of creating a reality and telling stories in order to justify acts of slaughter against the Palestinian people." In July 2012, Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, denounced a visit by Ziad al-Bandak, an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, to the Auschwitz death camp, saying it was "unjustified" and "unhelpful" and only served the "Zionist occupation" while coming "at the expense of a real Palestinian tragedy". He also called the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
an "alleged tragedy" and "exaggerated". In October 2012, Hamas said that they were opposed to teaching about the Holocaust in Gaza Strip schools run by the UN Relief and Works Agency. The Refugee Affairs Department of Hamas said that teaching the Holocaust was a "crime against the issue of the refugees that is aimed at canceling their right of return".
Violence and terrorism
Hamas has used both political activities and violence in pursuit of its goals. For example, while politically engaged in the 2006 Palestinian Territories parliamentary election campaign, Hamas stated in its election manifesto that it was prepared to use "armed resistance to end the occupation".
From 2000 to 2004, Hamas was responsible for killing nearly 400 Israelis and wounding more than 2,000 in 425 attacks, according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2001 through May 2008, Hamas launched more than 3,000 Qassam rockets and 2,500 mortar attacks into Israel.Israel At 'War to the Bitter End,' Strikes Key Hamas Sites December 29, 2008, Fox News
Attacks on civilians
Hamas has attacked Israeli civilians. Hamas's most deadly suicide bombing was an attack on a
Netanya
Netanya (also known as Natanya, he, נְתַנְיָה) is a city in the Northern Central District of Israel, and is the capital of the surrounding Sharon plain. It is north of Tel Aviv, and south of Haifa, between Poleg stream and Wingate I ...
hotel on March 27, 2002, in which 30 people were killed and 140 were wounded. The attack has also been referred to as the
Passover massacre
The Passover massacre was a suicide bombing carried out by Hamas at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel on 27 March 2002, during a Passover seder. Thirty civilians were killed in the attack and 140 were injured. It was the deadliest attack a ...
since it took place on the first night of the Jewish festival of
Passover
Passover, also called Pesach (; ), is a major Jewish holidays, Jewish holiday that celebrates the The Exodus, Biblical story of the Israelites escape from slavery in Ancient Egypt, Egypt, which occurs on the 15th day of the Hebrew calendar, He ...
at a
Seder
The Passover Seder (; he, סדר פסח , 'Passover order/arrangement'; yi, סדר ) is a ritual feast at the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. It is conducted throughout the world on the eve of the 15th day of Nisan in the Hebrew c ...
.
Hamas has defended suicide attacks as a legitimate aspect of its
asymmetric warfare
Asymmetric warfare (or asymmetric engagement) is the term given to describe a type of war between belligerents whose relative military power, strategy or tactics differ significantly. This is typically a war between a standing, professional ar ...
against Israel. In 2003, according to Stephen Atkins, Hamas resumed suicide bombings in Israel as a retaliatory measure after the failure of peace talks and an Israeli campaign targeting members of the upper echelon of the Hamas leadership. but they are considered as
crimes against humanity
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
under international law. In a 2002 report, Human Rights Watch stated that Hamas leaders "should be held accountable" for "war crimes and crimes against humanity" committed by the al-Qassam Brigades.Erased In A Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks Against Israeli Civilians V. Structures and Strategies of the Perpetrator Organizations,
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
, October 2002.
In May 2006 Israel arrested a top Hamas official,
Ibrahim Hamed
Ibrahim Hamed (إبراهيم حامد) is a Hamas military commander in the West Bank who ordered suicide bombing attacks during the Second Intifada until he was apprehended by Israeli YAMAM unit on 23 May 2006. Israeli authorities accused him o ...
, who Israeli security officials alleged was responsible for dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis. Hamed's trial on those charges has not yet concluded. In 2008, Hamas explosives engineer Shihab al-Natsheh organized a deadly suicide bombing in Dimona.
Since 2002, paramilitary soldiers of al-Qassam Brigades and other groups have used homemade Qassam rockets to hit Israeli towns in the
Negev
The Negev or Negeb (; he, הַנֶּגֶב, hanNegév; ar, ٱلنَّقَب, an-Naqab) is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southe ...
, such as
Sderot
Sderot ( he, שְׂדֵרוֹת, , lit. ''Boulevards'', ar, سديروت) is a western Negev city and former development town in the Southern District of Israel. In it had a population of .
Sderot is located less than a mile from Gaza (the ...
. Al-Qassam Brigades was estimated in 2007 to have launched 22% of the rocket and mortar attacks, which killed fifteen people between the years 2000 and 2009 (see
Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel
Since 2001, Palestinian militants have launched thousands of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip as part of the continuing Arab–Israeli conflict. The attacks, widely condemned for targeting civilians, have been descri ...
). The introduction of the ''Qassam-2'' rocket in 2008 enabled Palestinian paramilitary groups to reach, from Gaza, such Israeli cities such as
Ashkelon
Ashkelon or Ashqelon (; Hebrew: , , ; Philistine: ), also known as Ascalon (; Ancient Greek: , ; Arabic: , ), is a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, south of Tel Aviv, and north of the border wit ...
.
In 2008, Hamas leader
Khaled Mashal
Khaled Mashal ( ar, خالد مشعل, Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: , born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of t ...
, offered that Hamas would attack only military targets if the IDF would stop causing the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Following a June 19, 2008 ceasefire, the al-Qassam Brigades ended its rocket attacks and arrested Fatah militants in Gaza who had continued sporadic rocket and mortar attacks against Israel. The al-Qassam Brigades resumed the attacks after the November 4 Israeli incursion into Gaza."Qassam lands in western Negev, no injuries" ''
Ynetnews
Ynet (stylized as ynet) is one of the major Israeli news and general-content websites, and is the online outlet for the '' Yedioth Ahronot'' newspaper. However, most of Ynet's content is original work, published exclusively on the website and wri ...
'', November 20, 2008
On June 15, 2014, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of involvement in the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers (including one who held American citizenship), saying "This has severe repercussions." On July 20, 2014, nearly two weeks into
Operation Protective Edge
The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge ( he, מִבְצָע צוּק אֵיתָן, translit=Miv'tza Tzuk Eitan, ),
was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that h ...
, Netanyahu in an interview with CNN described Hamas as "genocidal terrorists."
On August 5, 2014 Israel announced that Israeli security forces arrested Hussam Kawasme, in
Shuafat
Shuafat ( ar, شعفاط '), also ''Shu'fat'' and ''Sha'fat'', is a mostly Palestinian Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, forming part of north-eastern Jerusalem. Located on the old Jerusalem–Ramallah road about three miles north of the Old ...
, in connection with the murders. During interrogation, Kawasme admitted to being the mastermind behind the attack, in addition to securing the funding from Hamas. Officials have stated that additional people arrested in connection with the murders are still being held, but no names have been released.
On August 20, Saleh al-Arouri, a Hamas leader in exile in Turkey, claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens. He delivered an address on behalf of
Khaled Mashal
Khaled Mashal ( ar, خالد مشعل, Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic: , born 28 May 1956) is a former leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas.
After the founding of Hamas in 1987, Mashal became the leader of the Kuwaiti branch of t ...
at the conference of the
International Union of Muslim Scholars
The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS; ar, الاتحاد العالمي لعلماء المسلمين; ') is an organization of Muslim Islamic theologians headed by Ahmad al-Raysuni described as the "supreme authority ...
in
Istanbul
Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...
intifada
An intifada ( ar, انتفاضة ') is a rebellion or uprising, or a resistance movement. It is a key concept in contemporary Arabic usage referring to a legitimate uprising against oppression.Ute Meinel ''Die Intifada im Ölscheichtum Bahrain: ...
in the West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as within the 1948 borders. ... Your brothers in the Al-Qassam Brigades carried out this operation to support their imprisoned brothers, who were on a hunger strike. ... The
mujahideen
''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' ( ar, مُجَاهِدِين, mujāhidīn), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' ( ar, مجاهد, mujāhid, strugglers or strivers or justice, right conduct, Godly rule, etc. doers of jihād), an Arabic term th ...
captured these settlers in order to have a swap deal." Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal accepted that members of Hamas were responsible, stating that he knew nothing of it in advance and that what the leadership knew of the details came from reading Israeli reports.'Mashal: Hamas was behind murder of three Israeli teens,'
Ynet
Ynet (stylized as ynet) is one of the major Israeli news and general-content websites, and is the online outlet for the '' Yedioth Ahronot'' newspaper. However, most of Ynet's content is original work, published exclusively on the website and wri ...
August 22, 2014. Meshaal, who has headed Hamas's exiled political wing since 2004, has denied being involved in the "details" of Hamas "military issues", but "justified the killings as a legitimate action against Israelis on "occupied" lands."
Hamas suicide attacks on Israeli civilians have largely disappeared since 2005; this has coincided with an increase in rocket attacks. One analysis suggests that the decline in suicide attacks is not motivated by any lack of supplies or volunteers to carry out such operations, by enhanced Israeli security measures such as the
West Bank barrier
The Israeli West Bank barrier, comprising the West Bank Wall and the West Bank fence, is a separation barrier built by Israel along the Green Line and inside parts of the West Bank. It is a contentious element of the Israeli–Palestinian ...
(if Israeli actions were the reason, one would expect to see an equal decline in suicide attacks by all Palestinian factions, which is not observed), or by a newfound desire for reconciliation with Israel on the part of Hamas. Rather, suicide bombings provoked targeted killings that decimated the leadership of Hamas, whereas rocket attacks have elicited weaker Israeli reprisals that have tended to harm the Palestinian population as a whole more than Hamas (such as the blockade of the Gaza Strip)—thereby paradoxically increasing Hamas's popular support.
Rocket attacks on Israel
Rocket attacks by Hamas have been condemned by human rights organizations as war crimes, both because they usually take aim at civilians and because the weapons' inaccuracy would disproportionately endanger civilians even if military targets were chosen. After Operation Pillar of Defense, Human Rights Watch stated that armed Palestinian groups fired hundreds of rockets at Israeli cities, violating international humanitarian law, and that statements by Palestinian groups that they deliberately targeted Israeli civilians demonstrated an "intent to commit war crimes". HRW's Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson said that Palestinian groups made clear that "harming civilians was their aim" and said that launching rockets at populated areas had no legal justification. International humanitarian law prohibits deliberate attacks on civilians and intentional violations can be war crimes.
According to Human Rights Watch, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups have launched thousands of rockets into Israel since 2001, killing 15 civilians, wounding many more, and posing an ongoing threat to the nearly 800,000 Israeli civilians who live and work in the weapons' range. Hamas officials have said that the rockets were aimed only at military targets, saying that civilian casualties were the "accidental result" of the weapons' poor quality. According to Human Rights Watch, statements by Hamas leaders suggest that the purpose of the rocket attacks was indeed to strike civilians and civilian objects. From January 2009, following
Operation Cast Lead
Operation or Operations may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
* ''Operation'' (game), a battery-operated board game that challenges dexterity
* Operation (music), a term used in musical set theory
* ''Operations'' (magazine), Multi-Ma ...
, Hamas largely stopped launching rocket attacks on Israel and has on at least two occasions arrested members of other groups who have launched rockets, "showing that it has the ability to impose the law when it wants". In February 2010, Hamas issued a statement regretting any harm that may have befallen Israeli civilians as a result of Palestinian rocket attacks during the Gaza war. It maintained that its rocket attacks had been aimed at Israeli military targets but lacked accuracy and hence sometimes hit civilian areas. Israel responded that Hamas had boasted repeatedly of targeting and murdering civilians in the media.
According to one report, commenting on the 2014 conflict, "nearly all the 2,500–3,000 rockets and mortars Hamas has fired at Israel since the start of the war seem to have been aimed at towns", including an attack on "a kibbutz collective farm close to the Gaza border", in which an Israeli child was killed. Former Israeli Lt. Col. Jonathan D. Halevi stated that "Hamas has expressed pride in aiming long-range rockets at strategic targets in Israel including the nuclear reactor in Dimona, the chemical plants in Haifa, and Ben-Gurion Airport", which "could have caused thousands" of Israeli casualties "if successful".
In July 2008
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
, then the Democratic presidential candidate, said: "If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing." On December 28, 2008, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement: "the United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel." On March 2, 2009, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
condemned the attacks.
Attempts to derail 2010 peace talks
In 2010, Hamas, who have been actively sidelined from the peace talks by Israel, spearheaded a coordinated effort by 13
Palestinian
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
militant groups, in attempt to derail the stalled Direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in 2010, peace talks between Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority. According to the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Major Gen. Eitan Dangot, Israel seeks to work with Salam Fayyad, to help revive the Palestinian economy, and hopes to ease restrictions on the Gaza Strip further, "while somehow preventing the Islamic militants who rule it from getting credit for any progress". According to Dangot, Hamas must not be seen as ruling successfully or be allowed to "get credit for a policy that would improve the lives of people". The campaign consists of attacks against Israelis in which, according to a Hamas declaration in early September, "all options are open"."Hamas targets Israeli-Palestinian talks by killing four Israelis; Hamas took responsibility for the fatal shooting of four Israeli settlers outside Hebron today, on the eve of Israeli-Palestinian talks in Washington," Joshua Mitnick, August 31, 2010, ''Christian Science Monitor''. The participating groups also include
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine ( ar, حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين, ''Harakat al-Jihād al-Islāmi fi Filastīn''), known in the West simply as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is a Palestinian Islamist pa ...
, the
Popular Resistance Committees
The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) ( ar, لجان المقاومة الشعبية, ''Lijān al-Muqāwama al-Shaʿbiyya'') is a coalition of a number of armed Palestinian groups opposed to what they regard as the conciliatory approach of t ...
and an unnamed splinter group of
Fatah
Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...
.
As part of the campaign, on August 31, 2010, 4 Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman, August 2010 West Bank shooting, were killed by Hamas militants while driving on Highway 60 (Israel–Palestine), Route 60 near the settlement Kiryat Arba, in the West bank. According to witnesses, militants opened fire on the moving vehicle, but then "approached the car" and shot the occupants in their seats at "close range". The attack was described by Israeli sources as one of the "worst" terrorist acts in years. A senior Hamas official said that Israeli settlers in the West Bank are legitimate targets since "they are an army in every sense of the word".
Themes of martyrdom
According to a translation by Palestinian Media Watch, in 2008, Fathi Hamad, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, stated on
Al-Aqsa TV
Al-Aqsa TV ( ar, قناة الأقصى) is a television channel run by Hamas, which is based in the Gaza Strip. Its programs include news and propaganda promoting Hamas, children's shows (such as ''Tomorrow's Pioneers'', that promotes violence ...
, "For the Palestinian people death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly (Palestinians) created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine, as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: 'We desire death as you desire life.'"
In 2010, Hamas speaker Ahmad Bahr praised the virtues of martyrdom and Jihad, and said that 2.5 million black-eyed virgins were waiting in the Garden of Eden, which could be entered only by prophets, by the righteous, and by martyrs. He continued by saying that nobody on Earth "will be able to confront the resistance, or to confront the mujahideen, those who worship Allah and seek martyrdom".
Guerrilla warfare
Hamas has made great use of guerrilla warfare, guerrilla tactics in the Gaza Strip and to a lesser degree the West Bank. It has successfully adapted these techniques over the years since its inception. According to a 2006 report by rival Fatah party, Hamas had smuggled between several hundred and 1,300 tons of advanced rockets, along with other weaponry, into Gaza.
Hamas has used Improvised explosive device, IEDs and anti-tank rockets against the Israel Defense Forces, IDF in Gaza. The latter include standard RPG-7 warheads and home-made rockets such as the Al-Bana, Al-Batar and Al-Yasin (RPG), Yasin. The IDF has a difficult, if not impossible time trying to find hidden weapons caches in Palestinian areas—this is due to the high local support base Hamas enjoys.
Extrajudicial killings of rivals
In addition to killing Israeli civilians and armed forces, Hamas has also murdered suspected Palestinian Israel collaborators and Fatah rivals. Hundreds of Palestinians were executed by both Hamas and Fatah during the First Intifada. In the wake of the 2006 Israeli conflict with Gaza, Hamas was accused of systematically rounding up, torturing and summarily executing Fatah supporters suspected of supplying information to Israel. Human Rights Watch estimates several hundred Gazans were "maimed" and tortured in the aftermath of the conflict. Seventy-three Gazan men accused of "collaborating" had their arms and legs broken by "unidentified perpetrators" and 18 Palestinians accused of helping Israel were executed by Hamas security officials in the first days of the conflict. In November 2012, Hamas's Izzedine al-Qassam brigade publicly executed six Gaza residents accused of collaborating with Israel. According to the witnesses, six alleged informers were shot dead one by one in Gaza City, while the corpse of the sixth victim was tied by a cable to the back of a motorcycle and dragged through the streets. In 2013, Human Rights Watch issued a statement condemning Hamas for not investigating and giving a proper trial to the 6 men. Their statement was released the day before Hamas issued a deadline for "collaborators" to turn themselves in, or they will be pursued "without mercy". In August 2014, during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, at least 22 accused collaborators were executed by Hamas shortly after three of its commanders were assassinated by Israeli forces. An Israeli source denied that any of the commanders had been targeted on the basis of human intelligence.
Frequent killings of unarmed people have also occurred during Hamas-Fatah clashes. NGOs have cited a number of summary executions as particular examples of violations of the rules of warfare, including the case of Muhammad Swairki, 28, a cook for Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard, who was thrown to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City. Hamas security forces reportedly shoot and torture Palestinians who opposed Hamas rule in Gaza. In one case, a Palestinian had criticized Hamas in a conversation on the street with some friends. Later that day, more than a dozen armed men with black masks and red kaffiyeh took the man from his home, and brought him to a solitary area where they shot him three times in the lower legs and ankles. The man told Human Rights Watch that he was not politically active.
On August 14, 2009, Hamas fighters stormed the Mosque of cleric Abdel-Latif Moussa. The cleric was protected by at least 100 fighters from Jund Ansar Allah ("Army of the Helpers of God"), an Islamist group with links to Al-Qaeda. The resulting battle left at least 13 people dead, including Moussa and 6 Hamas fighters, and 120 people injured. According to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, during 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Hamas killed more than 120 Palestinian youths for defying house arrest imposed on them by Hamas, in addition to 30–40 Palestinians killed by Hamas in extrajudicial executions after accusing them of being collaborators with Israel. Referring to the killing of suspected collaborators, a Shin Bet official stated that "not even one" of those executed by Hamas provided any intelligence to Israel, while the Shin Bet officially "confirmed that those executed during Operation Protective Edge had all been held in prison in Gaza in the course of the hostilities".
2011–2013 Sinai insurgency
Hamas has been accused of providing weapons, training and fighters for Sinai-based insurgent attacks, although Hamas strongly denies the allegations, calling them a smear campaign aiming to harm relations with Egypt. According to the Egyptian Army, since the ouster of Egypt's Muslim-Brotherhood president
The United States designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation in 1995, as did Canada in November 2002,''The World Almanac of Islamism: 2014,'' American Foreign Policy Council/Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, p. 15. and the United Kingdom in November 2021. The European Union designated Hamas's military wing in 2001 and, under US pressure, designated Hamas in 2003. Hamas challenged this decision, which was upheld by the European Court of Justice in July 2017. Japan and New Zealand, have designated the military wing of Hamas as a terrorist organization. The organization is banned in Jordan.
Hamas is not regarded as a terrorist organization by Iran,Alethia H. Cook, 'The Subtle Impact of Iran on the Flotilla Incident,' in Thomas E. Copeland (ed.) ''Drawing a Line in the Sea: The Gaza Flotilla Incident and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,'' Lexington Books, 2011 pp. 35–44 [36]. Russia, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, China, Egypt, Syria, and Brazil.Samuel Feldberg,'Israel and Brazil:An Emerging Power and its Quest for Influence in the Middle East,' in Colin Shindler (ed.) ''The World Powers:Diplomatic Alliances and International Relations Beyond the Middle East,'' I.B. Tauris 2014 pp. 187–99
According to Tobias Buck, Hamas is "listed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and the EU, but few dare to treat it that way now" and in the Arab and Muslim world it has lost its pariah status and its emissaries are welcomed in capitals of Islamic countries. While Hamas is considered a terrorist group by several governments and some academics, others regard Hamas as a complex organization, with terrorism as only one component.
Criticism
United States
The FBI and United States Department of Justice also stated, in 2004, that Hamas threatened the United States through covert cells on U.S. soil. Researcher Steven Emerson in 2006 alleged that the group had "an extensive infrastructure in the U.S. mostly revolving around the activities of fundraising, recruiting and training members, directing operations against Israel, organizing political support and operating through human-rights front groups". Emerson added that while the group had never acted outside of Israel or the Palestinian Territories, it does have the capacity to carry out attacks in the U.S. "if it decided to enlarge the scope of its operations". FBI director Robert Mueller in 2005 testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that, the FBI's assessment at that time was that there was "a limited threat of a coordinated terrorist attack in the US from Palestinian terrorist organizations" such as Hamas. He added that Hamas had "maintained a longstanding policy of focusing their attacks on Israeli targets in Israel and the Palestinian territories", and that the FBI believed that the main interest of Hamas in the U.S. remained "the raising of funds to support their regional goals". Mueller also stated, "of all the Palestinian groups, Hamas has the largest presence in the US, with a robust infrastructure, primarily focused on fundraising, propaganda for the Palestinian cause, and proselytizing." Although it would be a major strategic shift for Hamas, its United States network is theoretically capable of facilitating acts of terrorism in the U.S.
On May 2, 2011, Hamas leader and Prime Minister
Ismail Haniyeh
Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh; sometimes transliterated as Haniya, Haniyah, or Hanieh (born 29 January 1962) is a senior political leader of Hamas and formerly one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority. Hani ...
condemned the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by the United States. Haniyeh praised Bin Laden, the founder of the jihadist organization al-Qaeda, as a "martyr" and an "Arab holy warrior". The United States government condemned his remarks as "outrageous". Hamas has reportedly maintained operational and financial ties with al Qaeda.
Human shields
After Operation Pillar of Defense,
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
stated that Palestinian groups had endangered civilians by "repeatedly fired rockets from densely populated areas, near homes, businesses, and a hotel" and noted that under international law, parties to a conflict may not place military targets in or near densely populated areas. One rocket was launched close to the Shawa and Housari Building, where various Palestinian and international media have offices; another was fired from the yard of a house near the Deira Hotel. ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' journalist Steven Erlanger reported that "Hamas rocket and weapons caches, including rocket launchers, have been discovered in and under mosques, schools and civilian homes." Another report published by Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center revealed that Hamas used close to 100 mosques to store weapons and as launch-pads to shoot rockets. The report contains testimony from variety Palestinian sources, including a Hamas militant Sabhi Majad Atar, who said he was taught how to shoot rockets from inside a mosque. Hamas has also been criticized by Israeli officials for blending into or hiding among the Palestinian civilian population during the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict. The Israeli government published what it said was video evidence of human shield tactics by Hamas. Israel said that Hamas frequently used mosques and school yards as hideouts and places to store weapons, and that Hamas militants stored weapons in their homes, making it difficult to ensure that civilians close to legitimate military targets are not hurt during Israeli military operations. Israeli officials also accused the Hamas leadership of hiding under Shifa Hospital during the conflict, using the patients inside to deter an Israeli attack.
The Israeli government filed a report entitled "Gaza Operations Investigation: Second Update" to the United Nations accusing Hamas of exploiting its Israel Defense Forces#Code of Conduct against militants and Palestinian civilians, rules of engagement by shooting rockets and launching attacks within protected civilian areas. Israel says 12,000 rockets and mortars were fired at it between 2000 and 2008—nearly 3,000 in 2008 alone. In one case, an errant Israeli mortar strike killed dozens of people near a UN school. Hamas said that the mortar killed 42 people and left dozens wounded. Israel said that Hamas militants had launched a rocket from a yard adjacent to the school and one mortar of three rounds hit the school, due to a GPS error. According to the Israeli military probe, the remaining two rounds hit the yard used to launch rockets into Israel, killing two members of Hamas's military wing who fired the rockets. Human Rights Watch called Hamas to "publicly renounce" the rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and hold those responsible to account. Human Rights Watch program director Iain Levine said the attacks by Hamas were "unlawful and unjustifiable, and amount to war crimes", and accused Hamas of putting Palestinians at risk by launching attacks from built-up areas. A Hamas spokesman replied that the report was "biased" and denied that Hamas uses human shields.
Human Rights Watch investigated 19 incidents involving 53 civilian deaths in Gaza that Israel said were the result of Hamas fighting in densely populated areas and did not find evidence for existence of Palestinian fighters in the areas at the time of the Israeli attack. In other cases where no civilians had died, the report concluded that Hamas may have deliberately fired rockets from areas close to civilians. HRW also investigated 11 deaths that Israel said were civilians being used as human shields by Hamas. HRW found no evidence that the civilians were used as human shields, nor had they been shot in crossfire. The Israeli 'human shields' charge against Hamas was called "full of holes" by The National (Abu Dhabi), ''The National'' (UAE), which stated that only Israel accused Hamas of using human shields during the conflict, though Hamas "may be guilty" of "locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas" and for "deliberately firing indiscriminate weapons into civilian populated areas".
On July 8, 2014, Hamas's spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri encouraged the "policy of people confronting the Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes", saying it has proven itself. According to the Israel Defense Forces blog, soldiers recounted "Suddenly, a small boy appeared, and the terrorist grabbed him and escaped with him"; "I saw with my own eyes someone using another person, a woman, as a shield. ... And I can see very clearly that the woman doesn't want to be there and he's pulling her with him"; and "We even found explosives in nurseries. The whole neighborhood was practically a terrorist base."
Israel has accused Hamas of using children as human shields. The Israeli government released video footage in which it claims two militants are shown grabbing a young boy's arm from behind holding him to walk in front of them toward a group of people waiting near a wall. The IDF argues the militants were placing the boy between themselves and an Israeli sniper. The second scene shows an individual, described as a terrorist, grabbing a school boy off of a floor, where he is hiding behind a column from IDF fire, and using him as a human shield to walk to a different location. Hamas and the Terrorist Threat from the Gaza Strip The Main Findings of the Goldstone ReportVersus the Factual Findings, Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. After 15 alleged militants sought refuge in a mosque from Israeli forces, the BBC reported that Hamas radio instructed local women to go the mosque to protect the militants. Israeli forces later opened fire and killed two women.
In November 2006, the Israeli Air Force warned Muhammad Weil Baroud, commander of the
Popular Resistance Committees
The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) ( ar, لجان المقاومة الشعبية, ''Lijān al-Muqāwama al-Shaʿbiyya'') is a coalition of a number of armed Palestinian groups opposed to what they regard as the conciliatory approach of t ...
who are accused of launching rockets into Israeli territory, to evacuate his home in a Jabalya refugee camp apartment block in advance of a planned Israeli air strike. Baroud responded by calling for volunteers to protect the apartment block and nearby buildings and, according to ''The Jerusalem Post'', hundreds of local residents, mostly women and children, responded. Israel suspended the air strike. Israel termed the action an example of Hamas using human shields. In response to the incident, Hamas proclaimed: 'We won. From now on we will form human chains around every house threatened with demolition.'" In a November 22 press release, Human Rights Watch condemned Hamas, stating: "There is no excuse for calling civilians to the scene of a planned attack. Whether or not the home is a legitimate military target, knowingly asking civilians to stand in harm's way is unlawful." Following criticism, Human rights Watch issued a statement saying that their initial assessment of the situation was in error. They stated that, on the basis of available evidence, the home demolition was in fact an administrative act, viewed in the context of Israel's longstanding policy of punitive House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, home demolitions, not a military act and thus would not fall within the purview of the law regulating hostilities during armed conflict, which had been the basis for their initial criticism of Hamas.
When the UN-sponsored United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, Goldstone Commission Report on the Gaza War was commissioned in 2009, it stated that it "found no evidence that Palestinian combatants mingled with the civilian population with the intention of shielding themselves from attack" though they deemed credible reports that Palestinian militants were "not always dressed in a way that distinguished them from civilians". Hamas MP Fathi Hamed stated that "For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel...the elderly excel at this...and so do the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children." Following the release of the Goldstone Report, the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan Col. Richard Kemp was invited to testify at the UN Human Rights Council 12th Special Session that during Operation Cast Lead Israel encountered an "enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population".
Children as combatants
In the early intifada period, children in Gaza and the West Bank were instilled by Hamas with Islamic and military values. Evidence from 2001 shows that kindergarten children attended ceremonies where they wore emblematic uniforms and bore mock rifles. Some were dressed up as suicide bombers, whose readiness to die for the cause was held up as a model to be imitated. The preschoolers would swear an oath 'to pursue jihad, resistance and intifada.' At summer camps, alongside qur'anic studies and familiarization with computers, courses were given that included military training.
Although Hamas admits to sponsoring summer schools to train teenagers in handling weapons they condemn attacks by children. Following the deaths of three teenagers during a 2002 attack on Netzarim (settlement), Netzarim in central Gaza, Hamas banned attacks by children and "called on the teachers and religious leaders to spread the message of restraint among young boys". Hamas's use of child labor to build tunnels with which to attack Israel has also been criticized, with at least 160 children killed in the tunnels as of 2012.
Political freedoms
Human rights groups and Gazans have accused the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip of restricting freedom of the press and forcefully suppressing dissent. Both foreign and Palestinian journalists report harassment and other measures taken against them. In September 2007 the Gaza Interior Ministry disbanded the Gaza Strip branch of the pro-Fatah Union of Palestinian Journalists, a move criticized by Reporters without borders. In November of that year the Hamas government arrested a British journalist and for a time canceled all press cards in Gaza. On February 8, 2008, Hamas banned distribution of the pro-Fatah Al-Ayyam (Ramallah), Al-Ayyam newspaper, and closed its offices in the Gaza Strip because it ran a caricature that mocked legislators loyal to Hamas. The Gaza Strip Interior Ministry later issued an arrest warrant for the editor.
More widely, in late August 2007 the group was accused in ''The Daily Telegraph, The Telegraph'', a conservative British newspaper, of torturing, detaining, and firing on unarmed protesters who had objected to policies of the Hamas government. Also in late August, Palestinian health officials reported that the Hamas government had been shutting down Gaza clinics in retaliation for doctor strikes. The Hamas government confirmed the "punitive measure against doctors" because, in its view, they had incited other doctors to suspend services and go out on strike. In September 2007 the Hamas government banned public prayers after Fatah supporters began holding worship sessions that quickly escalated into raucous protests against Hamas rule. Government security forces beat several gathering supporters and journalists. In October 2008, the Hamas government announced it would release all political prisoners in custody in Gaza. Several hours after the announcement, 17 Fatah members were released.
On August 2, 2012, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) accused Hamas of harassing elected officials belonging to the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate (PJS) in Gaza. The IFJ said that journalists' leaders in Gaza have faced a campaign of intimidation, as well as threats designed to force them to stop their union work. Some of these journalists are now facing charges of illegal activities and a travel ban, due to their refusal "to give in to pressure". The IFJ said that these accusations are "malicious" and "should be dropped immediately". The IFJ explained that the campaign against PJS members began in March 2012, after their election, and included a raid organized by Hamas supporters who took over the PJS offices in Gaza with the help of the security forces, and subsequently evicted the staff and elected officials. Other harassment includes the targeting of individuals who were bullied into stopping union work. The IFJ backed the PJS and called on Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to intervene to stop "his officials' unwarranted interference in journalists' affairs". In November 2012, two Gazan journalists were prevented from leaving Gaza by Hamas. There were scheduled to participate in a conference in Cairo, Egypt. After being questioned by security forces, their passports were confiscated. In 2016 Reporters Without Borders condemned Hamas for censorship and for torturing journalists. Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said "As living conditions in the Gaza Strip are disastrous, Hamas wants to silence critics and does not hesitate to torture a journalist in order to control media coverage in its territory."
Human rights abuses
In June 2011, the Independent Commission for Human Rights based in Ramallah published a report whose findings included that the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were subjected in 2010 to an "almost systematic campaign" of human rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as well as by Israeli authorities, with the security forces belonging to the PA and Hamas being responsible for torture, arrests and arbitrary detentions.
In 2012, the Human Rights Watch presented a 43-page long list of human rights violations committed by Hamas. Among actions attributed to Hamas, the HRW report mentions beatings with metal clubs and rubber hoses, hanging of alleged collaborationists with Israel, and torture of 102 individuals. According to the report, Hamas also tortured civil society activists and peaceful protesters. Reflecting on the captivity of
Gilad Shalit
Gilad Shalit ( he-a, גלעד שליט, Shalit.ogg, ''Gilˁad Šaliṭ'', born 28 August 1986) is a former MIA soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who on 25 June 2006, was captured by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid via tu ...
, the HRW report described it as "cruel and inhuman". The report also slams Hamas for harassment of people based on so-called morality offenses and for media censorship. In a public statement Joe Stork, the deputy Middle East director of HRW claimed, "after five years of Hamas rule in Gaza, its criminal justice system reeks of injustice, routinely violates detainees' rights and grants impunity to abusive security services." Hamas responded by denying charges and describing them as "politically motivated".
On May 26, 2015, Amnesty International released a report saying that Hamas carried out extrajudicial killings, abductions and arrests of Palestinians and used the Al-Shifa Hospital to detain, interrogate and torture suspects during the Israel–Gaza conflict in 2014. It details the executions of at least 23 Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel and torture of dozens of others, many victims of torture were members of the rival Palestinian movement, Fatah.
In 2019, Osama Qawassmeh, a
Fatah
Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...
spokesman in the West Bank, accused Hamas of "kidnapping and brutally torturing Fatah members in a way that no Palestinian can imagine." Qawassmeh accused Hamas of kidnapping and torturing 100 Fatah members in Gaza. The torture allegedly included the practice called "shabah"—the painful binding of the hands and feet to a chair. Also in 2019, Fatah activist from Gaza Raed Abu al-Hassin was beaten and had his two legs broken by Hamas security officers. Al-Hassin was taken into custody by Hamas after he participated in a pro-Abbas demonstration in the Gaza Strip.
International support
Hamas has always maintained leadership abroad. The movement is deliberately fragmented to ensure that Israel cannot kill its top political and military leaders. Hamas used to be strongly allied with both Iran and Syria. Iran gave Hamas an estimated $13–15 million in 2011 as well as access to long-range missiles. Hamas's political bureau was once located in the Syrian capital of Damascus before the start of the Syrian civil war. Relations between Hamas, Iran, and Syria began to turn cold when Hamas refused to back the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Instead, Hamas backed the Sunni rebels fighting against Assad. As a result, Iran cut funding to Hamas, and Iranian ally Hezbollah ordered Hamas members out of Lebanon. Hamas was then forced out of Syria. Since then, Hamas has tried to mend fences with Iran and Hezbollah. Hamas contacted Jordan and Sudan to see if either would open up its borders to its political bureau, but both countries refused, although they welcomed many Hamas members leaving Syria. In 2012, Hamas headquarters subsequently moved to Doha, Qatar.
From 2012 to 2013, under the leadership of Muslim Brotherhood President
Mohamed Morsi
Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa al-AyyatThe spellings of his first and last names vary. survey of 14 news organizations plus Wikipedia in July 2012
Qatar and Turkey
According to Middle East experts, now Hamas has two firm allies: Qatar and Turkey. Both give Hamas public and financial assistance estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Qatar has transferred more than $1.8 billion to Hamas. Shashank Joshi, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, says that "Qatar also hosts Hamas's political bureau which includes Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal." Meshaal also visits Turkey frequently to meet with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdogan has dedicated himself to breaking Hamas out of its political and economic seclusion. On U.S. television, Erdogan said in 2012 that "I don't see Hamas as a terror organization. Hamas is a political party."
Qatar has been called Hamas' most important financial backer and foreign ally. In 2007, Qatar was, with Turkey, the only country to back Hamas after the group ousted the Palestinian Authority from the Gaza Strip. The relationship between Hamas and Qatar strengthened in 2008 and 2009 when Khaled Meshaal was invited to attend the Doha Summit where he was seated next to the then Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who pledged $250 million to repair the damage caused by Israel in the Israeli war on Gaza. These events caused Qatar to become the main player in the "Palestinian issue". Qatar called Gaza's blockade unjust and immoral, which prompted the Hamas government in Gaza, including former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, to thank Qatar for their "unconditional" support. Qatar then began regularly handing out political, material, humanitarian and charitable support for Hamas.
In 2012, Qatar's former Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, became the first head of state to visit Gaza under Hamas rule. He pledged to raise $400 million for reconstruction. Some have argued that the money Qatar gives to reconstruct Palestine is an excuse to pour even more money into Hamas. Qatar's reason for funding Hamas, which is shared by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is alleged that Islamist groups are growing and will eventually play a role in the region; thus it is important for Qatar (and Turkey) to maintain ties. During the Arab Spring, for example, Qatar backed the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian Islamist group whose offshoot is Hamas. Other sources say that advocating for Hamas is politically beneficial to Turkey and Qatar because the Palestinian cause draws popular support amongst their citizens at home.
Some began to label Qatar a terrorist haven in part because it is harboring Hamas leader Meshaal. They also harbor Husam Badran, former leader of Hamas's military wing in the northern West Bank. Husam Badran, current media spokesman for Hamas, was the instigator of several of the deadliest suicide bombings of the Second Intifada, second intifada, including the Dolphinarium discotheque massacre, Dolphinarium discotheque bombing in Tel Aviv, which killed 21 people. Turkey has also been criticized for housing terrorists including Saleh al-Arouri, the senior Hamas official, known for his ability to mastermind attacks from abroad. Al-Arouri is alleged to have orchestrated the June 2014 abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers and to have started the 50-day war between Israel and Palestine, and now lives in Turkey.
Speaking in reference to Qatar's support for Hamas, during a 2015 visit to Palestine, Qatari official Mohammad al-Emadi, said Qatar is using the money not to help Hamas but rather the Palestinian people as a whole. He acknowledges however that giving to the Palestinian people means using Hamas as the local contact. Emadi said, "You have to support them. You don't like them, don't like them. But they control the country, you know." Some argue that Hamas's relations with Qatar are putting Hamas in an awkward position because Qatar has become part of the regional Arab problem. However, Hamas claims that having contacts with various Arab countries establishes positive relations which will encourage Arab countries to do their duty toward the Palestinians and support their cause by influencing public opinion in the Arab world. In March 2015, Hamas has announced its support of the Saudi Arabian-led Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, military intervention in Yemen against the Shia Islam, Shia Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
In May 2018, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tweeted to the Prime Minister of Israel
Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (; ; born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician who served as the ninth prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999 and again from 2009 to 2021. He is currently serving as Leader of the Opposition and Chairman of ...
that Hamas is not a terrorist organization but a resistance movement that defends the Palestinian homeland against an occupying power. During that period there were conflicts between Israeli troops and Palestinian protestors in the Gaza Strip, due to the decision of the United States to move Embassy of the United States, Israel, their embassy to Jerusalem. In addition, in 2018 the Israel Security Agency accused SADAT International Defense Consultancy (a private Turkish Private military company with connections to the Turkish government) of transferring funds to Hamas.
China
After the Hamas victory in 2006, China did not label it a "terrorist organization" and welcomed Hamas' foreign minister, Mahmoud al-Zahar, to Beijing for the Sino-Arab relations#Sino-Arab Cooperation Forum, China-Arab Cooperation Forum ignoring protests by both the United States and Israel but receiving praise from Mahmoud Abbas. China has harshly criticised Israel for its economic blockade of Gaza since 2007 when Hamas assumed control of the territory. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao stated, "We believe that the Palestinian government is legally elected by the people there and it should be respected". In April 2011, a spokesman from China's foreign ministry embraced the Hamas-Fatah agreement to form an interim government.
In 2014, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (politician), Wang Yi called on Israel to lift its blockade and advised both Israel and Hamas to cease fighting. He reaffirmed support from China to the Palestinian people's right to establish an independent state. He told a joint press conference, "China will grant $1.5 million in emergency humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza."
In June 2018, China voted in support of a United Nations Security Council resolution vetoed by the US that criticized Israel of excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate force by the Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians in Gaza during the 2018 Gaza border protests. Later the same day, China Abstention, abstained from voting on a US drafted resolution that blamed Hamas for the escalated violence.
Public opinion about Hamas
Prior to 2006, Hamas was well regarded by Palestinians for its efficiency and perceived lack of corruption compared to Fatah. Public opinions of Hamas have deteriorated after it took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Prior to the takeover, 62% of Palestinians had held a favorable view of the group, while a third had negative views. According to a 2014 Pew Research just prior to the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, only about a third had positive opinions and more than half viewed Hamas negatively. Furthermore, 68% of Israeli Arabs viewed Hamas negatively.Concerns about Islamic Extremism on the Rise in Middle East Pew Research
Hamas popularity surged after the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, war in 2014 with polls reporting that 81 percent of Palestinians felt that Hamas had "won" that war.
In Lebanon, 65% see Hamas negatively. In Jordan and Egypt, roughly 60% see Hamas negatively, and in Turkey, 80% have a negative opinion of Hamas. In Tunisia, 42% have a negative opinion of Hamas, while 56% of Bangladeshis and 44% of Indonesians have a negative opinion of Hamas.
Legal action against Hamas
In the United States
The charitable trust Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was accused in December 2001 of funding Hamas. The U.S. Justice Department filed 200 charges against the foundation. The case first ended in a Mistrials, mistrial, in which jurors acquitted on some counts and were deadlocked on charges ranging from tax violations to providing material support for terrorists. In a retrial, on November 24, 2008, the five leaders of the Foundation were convicted on 108 counts.
Several U.S. organizations were either shut down or held liable for financing Hamas in early 2001, groups that have origins from the mid-1990s, among them the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and Kind Hearts. The U.S. Treasury Department specially designated the HLF in 2001 for terror ties because from 1995 to 2001 the HLF transferred "approximately $12.4 million outside of the United States with the intent to contribute funds, goods, and services to Hamas." According to the Treasury Department, Khaled Meshal identified one of HLF's officers, Mohammed El-Mezain as "the Hamas leader for the U.S." In 2003, IAP was found liable for financially supporting Hamas, and in 2006, Kind Hearts had their assets frozen for supporting Hamas.
In 2004, a federal court in the United States found Hamas liable in a civil lawsuit for the 1996 Murder of Yaron and Efrat Ungar, murders of Yaron and Efrat Ungar near Bet Shemesh, Israel. Hamas was ordered to pay the families of the Ungars $116 million. The Palestinian Authority settled the lawsuit in 2011. The settlement terms were not disclosed. On August 20, 2004, three Palestinians, one a naturalized American citizen, were charged with a "lengthy racketeering conspiracy to provide money for terrorist acts in Israel". The indicted included
Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook
Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook ( ar, موسى محمد أبو مرزوق; born 9 January 1951) is a Palestinian senior member of Hamas.
Early life and education
Marzook's parents were from Yibna, Mandatory Palestine (now Yavne, Israel). They became r ...
, who had left the US in 1997. On February 1, 2007, two men were acquitted of contravening United States law by supporting Hamas. Both men argued that they helped move money for Palestinian causes aimed at helping the Palestinian people and not to promote terrorism.
In January 2009, a Federal prosecutor accused the Council on American-Islamic Relations of having links to a charity designated as a support network for Hamas. The Justice Department identified CAIR as an "un-indicted co-conspirator" in the Holy Land Foundation case. Later, a federal appeals court removed that label for all parties and instead, named them "joint venturers". CAIR was never charged with any crime, and it complained that the designation had tarnished its reputation.
In Germany
A German federal court ruled in 2004 that Hamas was a unified organisation whose humanitarian aid work could not be separated from its "terrorist and political activities". In July 2010, Germany also outlawed Frankfurt-based International Humanitarian Aid Organization (IHH e.V.), saying it had used donations to support Hamas-affiliated relief projects in Gaza. While presenting their activities to donors as humanitarian assistance, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said, IHH e.V. had "exploited trusting donors' willingness to help by using money that was given for a good purpose for supporting what is, in the final analysis, a terrorist organization". A spokesperson for the Islamic Human Rights Commission described the decision as "a victory for those who seek to stigmatise all Islamic activism as supporting terrorism".Press Release: Germany – Banning of IHH stigmatises all Islamic humanitarian activism July 14, 2010
See also
* 25th anniversary of Hamas
* Hamastan
* Human rights in the Palestinian National Authority
* List of political parties in the Palestinian National Authority
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/world/middleeast/24gaza.html Hamas Shifts From Rockets to Public Relations] ''The New York Times'', July 23, 2009
22 years on the start of Hamas Al-Qassam Brigades' Information Office
Fatah and Hamas Human Rights Violations in the Palestinian Occupied Territories in 2007 by Elizabeth Freed of Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group
* Larbi Sadiki, Sadiki, Larbi Tests and contests: Hamas without Syria * Sherifa Zuhur Hamas and Israel: Conflicting Strategies of Group-Based Politics (PDF file) December 2008
''Ynet News''. December 24, 2006. Accessed July 20, 2014.
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