Hamas 1.1 - Early History

“Hamas is an idea, it’s not only a military structure or an organization in Gaza.

Hamas is in the West Bank and Lebanon and Syria, Hamas leadership is in Qatar,

and everywhere. So to say that the goal is to eliminate Hamas — it is totally not

going to happen.” Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh to France24

Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and military organization. Headquartered in Gaza City, it has a presence in the West Bank, the larger of the two Palestinian territories, in which its secular rival Fatah exercises control.

Hamas is an acronym of the Arabic phrase حركة المقاومة الإسلامية or Ḥarakah al-Muqāwamah al-

ʾIslāmiyyah, meaning "Islamic Resistance Movement". This acronym, HMS, was later glossed in the 1988 Hamas Covenant by the Arabic word ḥamās (حماس) which itself means "zeal", "strength", or "bravery".

(HAMAS is used in the Torah and its meaning is “violence,” “wrong,” or “wrongdoing.”.)

Genesis 6:11

When Israel conquered Gaza in 1967, the Muslim Brotherhood members there did not take active part in the resistance, preferring to focus on social-religious reform and on restoring “Islamic values”. This outlook changed in the early 1980s, and Islamic organizations became more involved in Palestinian politics. The driving force behind this transformation was Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic.. He became one of the Muslim Brotherhood's leaders in Gaza. His charisma and conviction brought him a loyal group of followers, upon whom he depended for everything—from feeding him, transporting him to and from events, to communicating his strategy to the public. In 1973, Yassin founded the social-religious charity  Mujama al-Islamiya  Islamic center in Gaza as an offshoot to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 1984, Yassin was arrested after the Israelis found out that his group collected arms, but released in May 1985 as part of a prisoner exchange. He continued to expand the reach of his charity in Gaza. Following his release, he set up al-Majd (an acronym for Munazamat al-Jihad wa al-Da'wa, headed by former student leader Yahya Sinwar  and Rawhi Mushtaha, tasked with handling internal security and hunting local informants for the Israeli intelligence services.

The idea of Hamas began to take form on December 10, 1987, when several members of the

Brotherhood convened the day after an incident in which an Israeli army truck had crashed into a car at a Gaza checkpoint killing four Palestinian day-workers, the impetus of the First Intifada. The group met at Yassin's house to strategize on how to maximize the impact of the incident in spreading nationalist sentiments and sparking public demonstrations. A leaflet issued on the December 14 calling for resistance is considered to mark their first public intervention, though the name Hamas itself was not used until January 1988.

Hamas was formally recognized by the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood after a key meeting

in Amman in February 1988. Creating Hamas as an entity distinct from the Muslim Brotherhood was a matter of practicality; the Muslim Brotherhood refused to engage in violence against Israel, but without participating in the intifada, the Islamists tied to it feared they would lose support to their rivals the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the PLO. They also hoped that by keeping the militant activities of Hamas separate, Israel would not interfere with the Muslim Brotherhood's social work.

To many Palestinians, Hamas represented a more authentic engagement with their national

aspirations. This perception arose because Hamas offered an Islamic interpretation of the original goals of the secular PLO, focusing on armed struggle to liberate all of Palestine. This approach contrasted with the PLO's eventual acceptance of territorial compromise, which involved settling for a smaller portion of Mandatory Palestine. Hamas's formal establishment came a month after the PLO and other intifada leaders issued a fourteen-point declaration in January 1988 advocating for the coexistence of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

In August 1988, Hamas published the Hamas Charter, wherein it defined itself as a chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood and its desire to establish "an Islamic state throughout Palestine".

In the years of the First Intifada which began in 1989,Hamas violence was restricted to

Palestinians; collaborators with Israel and individuals it defined as "moral deviants" that is, drug dealers and prostitutes known to enjoy ties with Israeli criminal networks, or for engaging in loose behavior, such as seducing women in hairdressing salons with alcohol, behaviour Hamas considered was encouraged by Israeli agents.

Hamas leaders likened their rooting out of collaborators to what the French resistance did with Nazi collaborators in World War II. In 1992 alone they executed more than 150. In Western media this was reported as typical "intercommunal strife" among Arabs.

Hamas's actions in the First Intifada expanded its popularity. In 1989, fewer than 3% of the

Palestinians in Gaza, where Hamas was most popular, supported Hamas. In the days leading up to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, 16.6% of Gazans and 10% of West Bank Palestinians identified politically with Hamas—a number that still paled in comparison to Fatah which enjoyed the support of 45% of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The Oslo Accords, signed in September 1993, led to the creation of the Palestinian National

Authority (PA), which was backed by Arafat but strongly opposed by Hamas. The PA was staffed mainly by members of Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The peaceful posture adopted by Hamas's rivals created an opportunity to set itself apart as the representative of the resistance movement.

From this point forward Hamas was able to present itself as the “resistance” while the PLO was viewed as more “collaborative”. There were many occasions going forward when the PLO and Hamas would portray themselves as “brothers” and at other times as “enemies”.

Information on the above post provided from various sources including the following:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Violence

Editor’s Note: I have been advised by skilled writers and those with much more knowledge than I, to try to maintain a post that is quick and easy to read. Going forward I shall try to divide my posts into smaller topics to follow this advice.