What is Hamas, the Palestinian militant group?
The Hindu
Hamas carried out its largest attack on Israel from Gaza, killing at least 900 people and leaving the bloodiest blow to Israel in decades. In response, Israel has declared war on the outfit, killed over 500 Gazans in air strike and is preparing for a major ground offensive. The Palestine issue is back to the fore of the West Asian cauldron.
“We have decided to put an end to all of the occupation’s crimes. The time is over for them [Israel] to [continue to] act without accountability,” said Mohammad Deif, the secretive commander of al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, on October 7. His audio statement was telecast on TV after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack that caught Israel by surprise. “Thus, we announce the ‘al-Aqsa Flood’ operation, and in the first strike within 20 minutes, more than 5,000 rockets were launched,” he said. The rest is history. Hamas carried out its largest attack on Israel from Gaza, killing at least 900 people and leaving the bloodiest blow to Israel in decades. In response, Israel has declared war on the outfit, killed over 500 Gazans in air strike and is preparing for a major ground offensive. The Palestine issue is back to the fore of the West Asian cauldron.
Ever since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, there were several conflicts between Israel and the group, in which thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis were killed. But this time, given the magnitude of Israel’s losses, it is going to be different. What is unfolding now is the most serious conflict between the two sides ever since Hamas was born. It is an irony that Hamas, whose founding members were encouraged by Israel in the 1970s and 1980s against Yasser Arafat’s secular national movement, has turned out to be Israel’s biggest rival in the Palestinian territories.
The roots of Hamas go back to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, established by Egyptian Islamist Hasan al-Banna in 1928, made a presence in the British-ruled Palestine in the 1930s. In 1935, Banna sent his brother Abd al-Rahman al-Banna to Palestine to build contacts. Its focus had been on reorienting Muslim society, while the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), founded in 1964, championed the Palestinian nationalist sentiments. After Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and Gaza Strip from Egypt in 1967, the PLO, vowing to liberate the whole of Palestine, would start a guerilla war against Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood would still stay away from politics, but their leadership was increasingly critical of the PLO’s secular nationalism.
The Brotherhood’s approach was that time for “jihad” had not come yet and they should first rebuild a stronger, pious Islamic society — they called it “the upbringing of an Islamic generation”. During this time, Israel established contacts with the Brotherhood leadership in the occupied territories. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the physically challenged, half-blind cleric of the Brotherhood, established al-Mujamma’ al-Islam (The Islamic Centre) in 1973. Israel recognised the Centre first as a charity and then as an association. This allowed Yassin to raise funds, build mosques and set up educational institutions, including the Islamic University of Gaza. But the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran would change the landscape of Islamist politics across West Asia. Islamist organisations, having witnessed the political success of the Mullahs in Iran, started becoming politically more ambitious and active. The 1980s saw repeated clashes between the left-wing supporters of the PLO and the Islamists in the occupied territories.
Hamas was established after the first intifada broke out in 1987. On December 8, 1987, several Palestinians were killed in a traffic incident in Gaza, involving an Israeli driver, leading to a wave of protests. This incident led to an explosion of pent-up anger of the Palestinians, who, despite the PLO’s fighting and activism, were not seeing any end to the occupation. The occupied territories were swept by a mass uprising. The PLO called on its supporters to join the intifada. The Brotherhood also found it an opportunity to enter the struggle against the occupation. On December 14, the Brotherhood, under the leadership of Yassin, issued a leaflet, asking Palestinians to stand up to the Israeli occupation. In January, they issued another leaflet under the name Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (the Islamic Resistance Movement) — in short, Hamas, which means “zeal” in Arabic. In 1989, Hamas launched its first attack, abducting and killing two Israeli soldiers. Israel cracked down on the group, arresting Yassin and jailing him for life.
Unlike the PLO, which was modelled around the leftist guerilla national movements in the third world, Hamas had a completely different vision. The charter it issued on August 19, 1988 was studded with anti-Semitic remarks. According to the charter, Palestine is “an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day”; “there is no solution to the Palestine problem except jihad” and all peace initiatives are a “waste of time and acts of absurdity”. When the PLO moved to join peace efforts seeking a solution to the Palestinian issue, Hamas hardened its position. It opposed the Oslo agreement, which allowed the formation of the Palestinian Authority with limited powers within the occupied territories. When the PLO recognised Israel, Hamas rejected the two-state solution and vowed to liberate the whole of Palestine “from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea”. It has built an organisation with several branches — the social wing is involved in Islamic education and charity works, while Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing, is in charge of military planning and weapons acquisitions. It also has a political bureau. In October 1994, a year after the Oslo Accord was signed, Hamas carried out its first suicide attack, killing 22 in Tel Aviv.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Hamas conducted several suicide attacks, targeting Israelis. In 2000, when the second intifada broke out, Hamas was in the driving seat. Hamas supporters fought pitched street battles with Israeli troops, who used brute force to crush the protests. Israel had also taken a policy of targeted assassinations. In March 2004, Israel killed Sheikh Yassin with a helicopter-fired missile in Gaza city. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Yassin’s successor, was killed in April 2004. Khaled Meshal, another top leader survived an attempt on his life by Mossad in Jordan. Hamas continued to remain defiant, targeting Israeli troops and settlers. In 2005, faced with Hamas’s violent resistance, Israel unilaterally decided to pull out of Gaza.
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