hamas

Hamas (Arabic: حماس Ḥamās, an acronym of حركة المقاومة الاسلامية Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah [Islamic Resistance Movement]) is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist but pragmatic, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. It won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election and became the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip following the 2007 Battle of Gaza. Israel and Hamas have since engaged in several wars of varying intensity. Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan and the United States classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. Australia, New Zealand, Paraguay and the United Kingdom classify only its military wing as a terrorist organization. It is not considered a terrorist organization by Brazil, China, Egypt, Iran, Norway, Qatar, Russia, Syria and Turkey. In December 2018, the United Nations General Assembly rejected a U.S. resolution condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization.Hamas was founded in 1987, soon after the First Intifada broke out, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood which in its Gaza branch had previously been nonconfrontational toward Israel and hostile to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Co-founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin said in 1987, and the Hamas Charter affirmed in 1988, that Hamas was founded to liberate Palestine, including modern-day Israel, from Israeli occupation and to establish an Islamic state in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since 1994, the group has frequently stated that it would accept a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders paid reparations, allowed free elections in the territories, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees.Hamas's military wing has launched attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers, often describing them as retaliatory, in particular for assassinations of the upper echelon of their leadership. Tactics have included suicide bombings and, since 2001, rocket attacks Hamas's rocket arsenal, though mainly consisting of short-range homemade Qassam rockets with a range of 16 km, also includes Grad-type rockets (21 km by 2009) and longer-range (40 km) if unreliably aimed rockets that have reached major Israeli towns such as Beer Sheva and Ashdod, and some that have struck cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa. Human Rights Watch has condemned as war crimes and crimes against humanity both Hamas and Israel for attacks on civilians during the conflict, stating that the rationale of reprisals is never valid when civilians are targeted.In the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian Parliament, defeating the PLO-affiliated Fatah party. After the elections, the Quartet (the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States) made future foreign assistance to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) conditional upon the PNA's commitment to nonviolence, recognition of the state of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements. Hamas rejected those conditions, which led the Quartet to suspend its foreign assistance program and Israel to impose economic sanctions on the Hamas-led administration. In March 2007, a national unity government headed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas was briefly formed, but this failed to restart international financial assistance. Tensions over control of Palestinian security forces soon erupted in the 2007 Battle of Gaza, after which Hamas took control of Gaza, while its officials were ousted from government positions in the West Bank. Israel and Egypt then imposed an economic blockade of the Gaza Strip on the grounds that Fatah forces were no longer providing security there.

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