A Profile on Hamas

The Gaza Strip, a 140 square mile strip of land alongside the Mediterranean Sea and the border of Israel, may be small but is highly congested in terms of population. The majority of this strip of land is home to close to 2 million — almost all Muslim- people and is governed by an Islamic group called Hamas or the acronym for al-Harakat al-Muqawwama al-Islamiyah — or the Islamic Resistance Movement. The organization describes itself as a “movement that works with the rest of the Palestinian people and with all national and Islamic factions and bodies and people of conscience all over the world on resisting the Israeli occupation as well as liberating the Palestinian land and establishing a sovereign Palestinian State.” (Hamas.ps)

Hamas was founded as the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood organization following the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising against Israeli occupation) in the year 1987. That year, founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin stated that Hamas was founded to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation and to establish an Islamic state in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. In fact, the official charter of the Hamas organization rejects a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and considers Israel a foreign cancer on sacred soil. To Hamas, Israeli Zionists are the real terrorists. The charter also states that the Hamas 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. In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails and schisms and wars will break out.” (Hamas Charter, Article 6) Hamas at it’s origins is a religiously radical organization with two main principles: to promote the social welfare of the Palestinian people and to fight Israel. However, it is interesting to note that Hamas explicitly claimed that if Palestine were a sovereign nation, they would allow all religions to coexist peacefully within the borders. (NPR)

Until recently, Hamas has held dear to those two purposes alone. Hamas quickly became recognized as a Foreign Terrorist Group by Israel in 1987, the United States in 1996, the European Union in 2001, and by several other western nations. The organization acquired its status as a terrorist group because of its history of offensive attacks — which included tactics such as suicide bombings and surprise missile attacks on it’s sworn enemy. Also playing a factor was Hamas’ refusal to cease and condemn these violent attacks and resistance measures. In fact, the introduction to the Hamas Charter describes its commitment to the destruction of Israel by saying: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” (Hamas Charter)

The Hamas affiliated military wing has launched attacks on Israel, against both civilian and military targets. Attacks on civilian targets have included rocket attacks and, from 1993 to 2006, suicide bombings. Attacks on military targets have included small-arms fire and rocket and mortar attacks. Initially, Hamas only aimed to target military personnel — the first of such attacks being a 1993 bomb blast in an Israeli city that killed 8 Israeli soldiers. However, in 1994 following a massacre of 30 Palestinians in a mass shooting at a mosque, the military wing began to attack Israeli civilian targets in retaliation. That same year, Hamas organized and carried out it’s first suicide bombing, killing 5 Israeli civilians and causing the Israeli government to crack down on the organization. (NPR)

In 2005, the core philosophy of Hamas changed dramatically. It was in that year that Hamas began to participate in Palestinian politics. And in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian Parliament, defeating previous party, Fatah — which controlled the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Following the elections, the United States, Russia, United Nations, and European Union provided assistance to the Palestinian authority on the future government’s commitment to nonviolence, recognition of the state of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements — policies that were completely opposite to those of Hamas. Hamas resisted these changes, leading the same countries to suspend their foreign assistance programs and Israel imposing economic sanctions against the Hamas administration in the Gaza strip. (Washington Institute)

Tensions over control of Palestinian security forces soon erupted into the 2007 Battle of Gaza, after which Hamas retained control of Gaza while its officials were ousted from government positions in the West Bank. Israel and Egypt then imposed an economic blockade on Gaza, on the grounds that Fatah forces were no longer providing security there, and instead Hamas was in total control of the strip. (CNN)

In June 2008, as part of a ceasefire proposed by the Egyptian government, Hamas ceased rocket attacks on Israel. After a four-month calm, the conflict escalated when Israel carried out a military action with the stated aim of preventing an abduction planned by Hamas, using a tunnel that had been dug under the border security fence, and killed seven Hamas operatives. In retaliation, Hamas attacked Israel with a barrage of rockets. In late December 2008, Israel attacked Gaza, withdrawing its forces from the territory in mid-January 2009. After the Gaza War, Hamas continued to govern the Gaza Strip and Israel maintained its economic blockade. (Washington Institute)

In 2011, Hamas and Fatah announced a reconciliation agreement that provided for “creation of a joint caretaker Palestinian government”. According to Israeli news reports quoting Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, as a condition of joining the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas agreed to discontinue the “armed struggle” against Israel and accept Palestinian statehood within the 1967 borders, alongside Israel. However, in 2014 the deputy chairman of Hamas’ political bureau, said that “Hamas will not recognize Israel”, adding “this is a red line that cannot be crossed”. (Washington Institute)

I would consider Hamas a political organization that wants to free its people. However, it would be ignorant to deny the fact that it is inherently extreme and religious in nature. Proof of such can be seen in the original Hamas Charter, where it constantly states that they are fighting in the name of god and that Israel must be obliterated. Hamas states that it wants to take back the holy land from the Zionists because it is considered one of the most sacred places in Islam as well as the fact that it was their previous homeland. They use tactics such as unprovoked missile strikes and suicide bombings to spread terror and attempt to further their cause. Therefore, Hamas would fit into the 4th Wave of organizations on David Rappaport’s paradigm: a religiously motivated terrorist group. (Rappaport)

The Israel-Palestine conflict is very complicated, but more than anything it is heartbreaking. Hamas is as much of an Israeli marketing strategy as it is a threat to the state. For the Israeli military, “Hama” is the name for justifying its use of force against the Palestinian people and selling it to the Israeli public and the rest of the world. People are quick to support the use of force to establish or maintain security, particularly when framed as a preemptive measure against ‘terrorist’ elements. After 9/11 the world began to adopt a mindset of “The War on Terror”, and the politics of fear entered reigned supreme. This shifted Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands from a Human Rights and International Law problem, one in which the government is legally responsible for the health and well being of the population, to one of suppressing a population with a legal system that was constructed to demolish homes, imprison Palestinians indefinitely, issue curfews across cities, close access points to communities, restrict freedom of movement, and construct walls of Jewish exclusivity built on annexed Palestinian land all under the notion that they are fighting terrorism.

The decades old Palestinian struggle for sovereignty and self-determination has been transformed from a nation of 2 million refugees trying to unshackle themselves from the chains of military occupation, to a story of Israel entrenched in a fight for western values. Whenever Hamas launches an attack on their sworn enemies, the more powerful Israel turns their weapons on the miniscule and densely populated Gaza Strip and retaliates at a much larger scale, and Hamas in-turn retaliates with more violence. And the cycle just continues. Hamas will keep firing rockets at Israeli territory as long as Israel has the Gaza Strip’s hands tied behind their backs, and this will not change easily.

Hamas has quickly transformed into Israel’s Al-Qaida, and it all makes sense. What everyone has forgotten however, is that Hamas, unlike Al-Qaida, was democratically elected in 2006 as an alternative to corruption that was blatant in Palestinian politics, and Hamas is an internationally recognized political group. Although it does not justify the violent acts of terror committed upon innocents by the organization, Hamas was organized to free the Palestinian people and will continue to use terror tactics until that goal is accomplished. And that is the ugly truth about the Israel-Palestine conflict.