EXTREMIST GROUPS
Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, meaning the Islamic resistance movement.
It was founded in 1987, in the aftermath of the first Intifada (a series of protests by Palestinians) as an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood with the aim of combining armed struggle against Israel with social development for Palestinians. Hamas’s ideology combines fundamentalist Islam with Palestinian nationalism. It is regarded as a terrorist organisation by countries including Israel, the European Union and the USA. However, the UN General Assembly resisted listing it as a terrorist group in 2018. Many countries support Hamas, seeing them as a force resisting the oppressive Israeli state. Iran and other countries supply arms to Hamas, which are shipped into their territory through tunnels.
Hamas as been engaged in combat with Israel since its foundation. From the organisation’s inception, it challenged the claims of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) to represent Palestinians, being able to distance itself from their secular perspective, and refusing to cede any Palestinian land. It rejected the PLO’s peace agreement with Israel in 1993, and intensified a terror campaign using suicide bombers. Both Israel and the PLO responded harshly, although some Hamas members were appointed to leadership positions within the Palestinian Authority.
After the collapse of peace talks in 2000 resulted in the Aqsa intifada in which Hamas increased their use of suicide attacks. Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian National Authority parliamentary elections of 2006, defeating Fatah, a political party aligned with the PLO. This was the first time an Islamist organisation in the Arab world had gained political control through an election. After the elections, the United Nations, Russia, the European Union and the United States placed conditions on foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. The requirements included a commitment to nonviolence and the recognition of the state of Israel. Hamas rejected these terms, foreign assistance was shelved, and Israel imposed sanctions upon the Hamas-led administration. Attempts to build national unity faltered after they failed to resolve issues around foreign aid.
For many members of Hamas, the PLO was associated with corruption, irreligion and collaboration with the enemy. The two organisations became locked into competition. This came to the fore when Hamas was stymied in its elected role to govern Gaza because the bureaucratic infrastructure and security forces remained under the control of Fatah, who obstructed Hamas’ attempts to take control. Hamas might have political power in name, but Fatah controlled the security, and there was no money in the treasury. Hamas were effectively paralysed. Hamas’s Al Qassem Brigades broke the deadlock, assisted by the Executive Forces, which were convened by one of Hamas’s ministers. The conflict erupted into the Battle of Gaza in June 2007.
Hamas’s leadership came out in support of the fighting a few days after its commencement. By mid-June, Hamas had taken complete control of the Gaza strip. The bureaucracy and judiciary were restaffed with Hamas loyalists. Meanwhile, Fatah convened an emergency government in Ramallah, refusing to recognise the legitimacy of Hamas. Both governments claimed to be the legitimate rulers of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas pointed to its electoral victory; Fatah to Hamas’s violent ouster in the Battle of Gaza. This cleavage created wider social divisions, deepening rifts between individual Palestinians with opposed political allegiances across the whole territory, to the extent of delimiting marriages between families with different political alignments, and the identity of the inhabitants of Gaza.
After Hamas took control of Gaza, Israel declared Hamas an enemy and imposed power cuts, border closures and restrictions upon imports. This did nothing to discourage Hamas from attacking Israel, nor did Israel stop attacking the Gaza Strip. In June 2008, after extensive negotiations, a six month truce was agreed; however both party accused the other of violations. Once the truce had elapsed, wider hostilities ensued: Israel commenced a week of airstrikes despite calls for a ceasefire from the international community. After this, Israel conducted a ground invasion that lasted for three weeks, leaving a thousand dead and ten times as many homeless. Hostilities ultimately ending in a ceasefire.
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring of 2011, Hamas and Fatah faced pressure to cooperate. They drafted the Cairo Agreement to rebuild national unity; however, Hamas did not cease to capture and interrogate Fatah members so the agreement quickly foundered. Struggling with the withdrawal of aid from Iran, the Gaza government were then struck when Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood-linked president of Egypt was overthrown in 2013. Egypt’s new, military-led government were hostile to Hamas, and restricted border crossings between Gaza, shutting down the tunnels through which goods had previously been smuggled. By 2014, Hamas sought to work with Fatah, but the cooperation was stymied by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Hamas financial struggles worsened with the cessation of funding from the Palestinian Authority, but their solution of taxing the poverty-stricken residents of Gaza was unpopular. Qatari support and the slackening of restrictions from Israel eased their difficulty somewhat.
Tensions were inflamed after the disappearance of three Israeli teenagers in 2014 which led to a massive crackdown until the bodies of the boys were found nearly three weeks later. Palestinian militants – including Hamas – fired rockets at Israel; Israel responded with a large-scale offensive. Following an estimated death toll of over 2,000 Palestinians, Israel loosened restrictions upon imports and reducing the extent of their border security after the ceasefire.
In 2018, Gazans demonstrating at the border were met with a violent response. At a demonstration attended by around 40,000 protestors Israel soldiers opened fire when protestors advanced towards the border, killing 60 and wounding around 2,700. Street-level violence once more escalated into military action for several months until a truce was negotiated some six months later. Relations remained tense, and in May 2021, the region experienced the most significant clashes since 2014. Once again, Hamas launched rockets, and Israel mounted airstrikes. While relations with Israel remain hostile, Hamas is making moves towards working more closely with Fatah.
While Islamist in its rhetoric, Hamas does not in fact enforce sharia law in its territories, nor forswear democracy, now identified as Westernised. In fact, Hamas has frequently been guided by pragmatism as much as ideology with its dealings with Israel and Fatah. In 2017, it announced a new, more conciliatory position which distanced itself from other Islamist groups. This including distancing itself from the Muslim Brotherhood, breaking an association which dated back to Hamas’s foundation.
Due to these compromises of their vision and the increasing immiseration of the region, some young Gazans have denounced Hamas and splintered into more radical Islamist groups including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as several others that have formed in the Palestinian regions. Many of these come from within Hamas’s own ranks. Salafism’s simplistic narrative of Muslims facing global victimisation chimed with the experiences of former members of Hamas and Fatah alike. The increase of Salafism also undermined Hamas’s legitimacy as being the party with the strongest alignment to Islamist thought. Hamas has even had to create its own deradicalisation programmes to attempt to stem the danger of Salafi-inspired Islamist activism in their territory.
Hamas is, as Benedetta Berti writes: ‘simultaneously a grassroots social movement, a political party, an extra-institutional provider of governance and, of course, a militant organisation actively involved in armed conflict.’ With an ability to combine fidelity to their political and religious positions with effective governance Hamas continue to command considerable respect within the Muslim world and the population in the territories they control.
In early October 2023, Hamas escalated its conflict with Israel by launching a large-scale surprise attack, coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, saw thousands of rockets fired into Israel, and the breach of Israeli territory. Hamas militants infiltrated southern Israeli towns, killing civilians and soldiers, and taking over 200 Israeli hostages. Israel responded with a declaration of war, leading to intense airstrikes on Gaza and a complete siege on the territory, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with civilians trapped amidst the violence, limited access to food, water, and electricity, and thousands of casualties on both sides.