Hamas

Not to be confused with Hamaas.
For other uses, see Hamas (disambiguation).
"Islamic Resistance Movement" redirects here. For other uses, see Islamic Resistance (disambiguation).
For their military wing, often also referred to as just "Hamas" in Israeli sources, see Al-Qassam Brigades.

Islamic Resistance Movement
حركة المقاومة الإسلامية
Chairman of the Political BureauTemporary committee leadership (acting)[a][1][2]
Deputy Chairman of the Political BureauKhalil al-Hayya
Chairman of the Shura CouncilAbu Omar Hassan
Leader in the Gaza StripYahya Sinwar †
Military commanderMohammed Deif X[b]
Founder
... and others
FoundedDecember 10, 1987 (1987-12-10)
Split fromMuslim Brotherhood (disputed)
HeadquartersGaza City, Gaza Strip
Military wingIzz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades
Ideology
ReligionSunni Islam
International affiliationAxis of Resistance (informal)
Political allianceAlliance of Palestinian Forces
Colours  Green
Palestinian Legislative Council
74 / 132
Party flag
Website
hamasinfo.info
Al-Qassam Brigades
Dates of operation1987–present
HeadquartersGaza City, Gaza Strip
Size20,000–40,000[20][21]
Allies
State allies:
Non-state allies:
Opponents
State opponents:
Non-state opponents:
Battles and wars
Designated as a terrorist group by
List

The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas[i] (an Arabic acronym from Arabic: حركة المقاومة الإسلامية, romanized: Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah),[61][j] is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islamist[62] political organisation with a military wing called the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. It has governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007.[63][64]

The Hamas movement was founded by Palestinian Islamic scholar Ahmed Yassin in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. It emerged from his 1973 Mujama al-Islamiya Islamic charity affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.[65] In 2006 Palestinian legislative election, Hamas secured a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council by campaigning on promises of a corruption-free government and advocating for resistance as a means to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation.[66][67] In the Battle of Gaza (2007), Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from rival Palestinian faction Fatah,[68][69] and has since governed the territory separately from the Palestinian National Authority. After Hamas's takeover, Israel significantly intensified existing movement restrictions and imposed a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip.[70] Egypt began its blockade of Gaza in 2007. This was followed by multiple wars with Israel, including those in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, 2021, and an ongoing one since 2023, which began with the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel.

Hamas has promoted Palestinian nationalism in an Islamic context.[71] While initially seeking a state in all of former Mandatory Palestine it began acquiescing to 1967 borders in the agreements it signed with Fatah in 2005, 2006 and 2007.[72][73][74] In 2017, Hamas released a new charter[75] that supported a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders without recognizing Israel.[76][77][78] Hamas's repeated offers of a truce (for a period of 10–100 years[79]) based on the 1967 borders are seen by many as being consistent with a two-state solution,[80][81] while others state that Hamas retains the long-term objective of establishing one state in former Mandatory Palestine.[82][83] While the 1988 Hamas charter was widely described as antisemitic,[84] Hamas's 2017 charter removed the antisemitic language and said Hamas's struggle was with Zionists, not Jews.[85][86][87][88] It has been debated whether the charter has reflected an actual change in policy.[89]

In terms of foreign policy, Hamas has historically sought out relations with Egypt,[90] Iran,[90] Qatar,[91] Saudi Arabia,[92] Syria[90] and Turkey;[93] some of its relations have been impacted by the Arab Spring.[94][clarification needed] Hamas and Israel have engaged in protracted armed conflict. Key aspects of the conflict include the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, borders, water rights,[95] the permit regime, Palestinian freedom of movement,[96] and the Palestinian right of return. Hamas has attacked Israeli civilians, including using suicide bombings, as well as launching rockets at Israeli cities. A number of countries, including Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. In 2018, a motion at the United Nations to condemn Hamas was rejected.[k][98][99]


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  10. ^ a b c Dalacoura 2012, pp. 66–67.
  11. ^ Gelvin 2014, p. 226: "As with Islamic political organizations elsewhere, Hamas offers its followers an ideology that appropriates the universal message of Islam for what is, in effect, a nationalist struggle."
  12. ^ Stepanova 2008, p. 113.
  13. ^ Cheema 2008, p. 465: "Hamas considers Palestine the main front of jihad and viewed the uprising as an Islamic way of fighting the Occupation. The organisation's leaders argued that Islam gave the Palestinian people the power to confront Israel and described the Intifada as the return of the masses to Islam. Since its inception, Hamas has tried to reconcile nationalism and Islam. [...] Hamas claims to speak as a nationalist movement but with an Islamic-nationalist rather than a secular nationalist agenda."
  14. ^ Litvak 2004, pp. 156–57: "Hamas is primarily a religious movement whose nationalist worldview is shaped by its religious ideology."
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  62. ^ Lopez, Anthony; Ireland, Carol; Ireland, Jane; Lewis, Michael (2020). The Handbook of Collective Violence: Current Developments and Understanding. Taylor & Francis. p. 239. ISBN 9780429588952. The most successful radical Sunni Islamist group has been Hamas, which began as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine in the early 1980s. It used terrorist attacks against civilians - particularly suicide bombings – to help build a larger movement, going so far as to emerge as the recognized government of the Gaza Strip in the Palestine Authority.
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  65. ^ Higgins, Andrew (24 January 2009). "How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 26 September 2009. Retrieved 25 January 2023. When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank. 'When I look back at the chain of events I think we made a mistake,' says David Hacham, who worked in Gaza in the late 1980s and early '90s as an Arab-affairs expert in the Israeli military. 'But at the time nobody thought about the possible results.' Israeli officials who served in Gaza disagree on how much their own actions may have contributed to the rise of Hamas. They blame the group's recent ascent on outsiders, primarily Iran. This view is shared by the Israeli government. 'Hamas in Gaza was built by Iran as a foundation for power, and is backed through funding, through training and through the provision of advanced weapons,' Mr. Olmert said last Saturday. Hamas has denied receiving military assistance from Iran.
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  73. ^ *Baconi 2018, pp. 114–116: "["Prisoners' Document"] enshrined many issues that had already been settled, including statehood on the 1967 borders; UN Resolution 194 for the right of return; and the right to resist within the occupied territories...This agreement was in essence a key text that offered a platform for unity between Hamas and Fatah within internationally defined principles animating the Palestinian struggle." *Roy 2013, p. 210: "Khaled Meshal, as chief of Hamas's Political Bureau in Damascus, as well as Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh similarly confirmed the organization's willingness to accept the June 4, 1967, borders and a two-state solution should Israel withdraw from the occupied territories, a reality reaffirmed in the 2006 Palestinian Prisoners' Document, in which most major Palestinian factions had reached a consensus on a two-state solution, that is, a Palestinian state within 1967 borders including East Jerusalem and the refugee right of return."
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  80. ^ *Halim Rane (2009). Reconstructing Jihad Amid Competing International Norms. p. 34. Asher Susser, director of the Dayan Centre at Tel Aviv University, conveyed to me in an interview that "Hamas' 'hudna' is not significantly different from Sharon's 'long-term interim agreement." Similarly, Daniel Levy, a senior Israeli official for the Geneva Initiative (GI), informed me that certain Hamas officials find the GI acceptable, but due to the concerns about their Islamically oriented constituency and their own Islamic identity, they would "have to express the final result in terms of a "hudna," or "indefinite" ceasefire," rather than a formal peace agreement."
    • Loren D. Lybarger (2020). Palestinian Chicago. University of California Press. p. 199. Hamas too would signal a willingness to accept a long-term "hudna" (cessation of hostilities, truce) along the armistice lines of 1948 (an effective acceptance of the two-state formula).
    • Tristan Dunning (2016). Hamas, Jihad and Popular Legitimacy. Routledge. pp. 179–180.
  81. ^ Baconi 2018, p. 108: "Hamas's finance minister in Gaza stated that 'a long-term ceasefire as understood by Hamas and a two-state settlement are the same. It's just a question of vocabulary.'"
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  90. ^ a b c Seurat 2022, p. 88.
  91. ^ Baconi 2018, p. 181.
  92. ^ Samuel Ramani (1 September 2015). "Hamas's Pivot to Saudi Arabia". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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  97. ^ DW 2018.
  98. ^ Dupret, Baudouin; Lynch, Michael; Berard, Tim (2015). Law at Work: Studies in Legal Ethnomethods. Oxford University Press. p. 279. ISBN 9780190210243. [It has been alleged that] Hamas cynically abuses its own civilian population and their suffering for propaganda purposes.
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