El-Fatah
Israel – Explainer: What is Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza?
Administrator of Gaza’s health service and movement committed to the murder of Israelis – Hamas is many things
The massacre of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens – the vast majority of them civilians – has focused global attention on the question of what Hamas is and what it represents.
An acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas was founded as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987 on three pillars: religion, charity and the fight against Israel – although arguably its earliest enemy was Fatah, Yasser Arafat’s rival Palestinian faction.
One of its key founders was the group’s spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a wheelchair-bound cleric with a reedy voice, whose lack of physical presence belied an uncompromising view.
As the movement’s founding charter made clear, Hamas was dedicated from the start to extinguishing the existence of the state of Israel. It saw armed violence as part of that struggle, modelling its early armed wing on the fedayeen, Palestinian armed groups that emerged in the 1950s after the establishment of the state of Israel.
That armed wing would come to be known as the Izz ad-Din al Qassam brigades [al-Qassam brigades] who from their very beginning embraced the use of terror tactics against Israel, carrying out their first suicide bombing in 1993 in conjunction with Islamic Jihad.
But the movement attracts substantial popular support, and also incorporates teachers, surgeons, urban planners and police in its civil administration of Gaza.
The reality is Hamas is many things. While it runs Gaza’s health service, it is also a sinister organisation committed to the mass murder of Israelis. It administers the education service while its police have broken the bones of children caught wearing scarfs signalling family affiliation with the rival Fatah movement.
It runs the courts while, during the 2014 Gaza war, its forces abducted, tortured and murdered Palestinians accused of “collaborating” with Israel and others. It is unavoidably part of the fabric of the life in Gaza.
The armed wing
For most people Hamas is represented by its armed wing, responsible for the brutal massacre at the weekend.
TANIKO Madagascar 