Hamas << hah MAHS >> is a radical Palestinian organization and political party. It believes that all of historic Palestine—Israel, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and the Gaza Strip—rightfully belongs to the Palestinian people. Hamas does not accept Israel and wants to create an Islamic state in Palestine. Hamas opposes the Oslo accords, the agreements signed in the 1990’s that sought to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Hamas has carried out terrorist acts against Israeli civilians. The group also distributes food, operates schools and clinics, and provides other services to Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Hamas is an Arabic term that means enthusiasm or zeal. The name also is derived from the initials of the Arabic phrase that means Islamic Resistance Movement.
Hamas was founded in 1987 at the start of a Palestinian intifada (uprising) against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian areas. Hamas grew out of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious and political movement founded in Egypt in 1928. Hamas organized a military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, to carry out attacks against Israeli targets. Attacks have included the launching of homemade missiles into Israel, ambushes of Israeli troops, and suicide bombings. In 2004, Israel assassinated Hamas’s founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, and one of its top leaders, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi.
Hamas originally opposed the Palestinian Authority (PA), the governing body created under the Oslo accords. However, in 2006, Hamas ran as a political party in PA elections and won control of the government. The United States, the European Union, and other countries boycotted the Hamas government, leading to financial and humanitarian hardship in the Palestinian territories. Hamas has also had strained relations with the PA president, Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party, and with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Tension between Fatah and Hamas has at times led to violence among Palestinians.
In June 2007, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip by force. Violence between Palestinians and Israeli forces in Gaza—most notably in 2008, 2009, and 2012—killed hundreds of people, most of them Palestinian. In July 2014, Israeli soldiers entered Gaza after a sharp increase in cross-border violence. Over the next several weeks, more than 2,000 Palestinians and dozens of Israelis were killed. Violence again flared up in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2015, resulting in the deaths of dozens of people, most of them Palestinian. In 2018, Israeli security forces killed more than 120 Palestinians during large protests along the Gaza border.
Some of the worst violence in the region since 2014 broke out between Israel and Palestinians in May 2021. Violence erupted as the result of Israeli police actions in East Jerusalem. Hamas responded by launching air strikes into Israel, and Israel fired air strikes into Gaza in return. More than 260 people—the majority of them Palestinians—were killed, and hundreds more were injured. Hundreds of buildings in Gaza were destroyed, and tens of thousands of Palestinians were displaced. On May 20, Hamas and Israel agreed to a cease-fire.
In October 2023, Hamas launched a large-scale surprise attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip. The group not only launched rockets into Israel, but also broke through a barrier around Gaza and invaded Israel by land, killing about 1,200 people in Israel and taking more than 200 others to Gaza as hostages. In response, Israel launched counterattacks against the invading Hamas militants and against targets in Gaza. Thousands of people died in the conflict and thousands more were wounded, including many civilians on both sides.
