What is Hamas and its Origin?

Hamas, also known as the “Islamic Resistance Movement or Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya“, is one of the two major political parties in the State of Palestine as well as a religious movement. Palestine is now a divided region consisting of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) controls the West Bank, while Hamas controls the Gaza Strip.

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With the intention of wresting the Palestinian homeland from Israel, Hamas rules over two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Unlike its rival party, Fatah (Palestine National Liberation Movement), which rules the West Bank, Hamas has opted for armed jihad and therefore regularly targets Israel. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist group by several countries.

Origin of Hamas

Hamas was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, an Islamic leader of some Palestinians. He worked within the framework of the Egyptian terrorist organization “Muslim Brotherhood“.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Yassin campaigned and did charity work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which were captured by Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War. Yassin founded Hamas in December 1987 as the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza.

At the time, Hamas’s target was Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Islamic organization that had split from the Muslim Brotherhood (in 1981) and was fighting Israel. In 1988, Hamas published a charter calling for the destruction of Israel and the creation of an Islamic state in historic Palestine. Since then, relations between Hamas and Israel have both softened and hardened.

Hamas first used a suicide bomb in April 1993, five months before the Oslo Accords were signed by PNA leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The landmark agreement established limited self-governance for parts of the West Bank and Gaza within the newly created PNA entity. Hamas condemned the agreement.