Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

HAMAS • 227– H –HAMAS. Hamas, the Arabic acronym for the Harakat al Muqawamaal Islamiyya, (Islamic Resistance Movement), is a nonstate, Islamicfundamentalist revolutionary Palestinian group devoted to thecomplete eradication of the State of Israel and creation of an IslamicPalestinian state. Although Hamas is a separate organization from thePalestine Liberation Organization (PLO), when the first intifadauprising broke out in December 1987, it coordinated its action withthe other mainline Palestinian groups against the Israeli occupationof the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Unlike the PLO, which has alwaysadvocated a secular Palestinian state and which, since 1988, has indicatedits willingness to accept a Palestinian state with a much reducedterritory in coexistence with Israel, Hamas regards the entire territoryof the former Mandate of Palestine as an “inviolable Islamic trust,”rejects any recognition of the State of Israel, and rejects the idea of asecular state altogether.Hamas officially announced its existence with the publication ofthe Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement on 18 August1988, but in fact it is continuous with the Muslim Brotherhood, orIkhwan, branch that established itself in Palestine in 1946 and that remainedactive in Gaza and the West Bank after the 1948 Arab-Israeliwar. Until 1984 the Ikhwan had concentrated mainly on the educationof Arab youth in Gaza and the West Bank and its politics seldomstrayed beyond a belief in piecemeal Islamic reformism. On 17September 1984, however, a leader of the Palestinian Ikhwan in theGaza Strip, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, and four other Ikhwan memberswere convicted of stockpiling automatic weapons and plotting to kill300 prominent people. Yasin became the spiritual mentor of Hamas.In October and November 1987, the Ikhwan sometimes collaboratedand other times competed with both the PLO and the Islamic Jihadof Palestine in creating demonstrations in the occupied territories thatprecipitated the intifada uprising.The ideology of Hamas reflects not only the traditional fundamentalismof the Ikhwan but also the more radical beliefs of the EgyptianIkhwan leader, Sayyid Qutb, as well as the contemporary beliefs ofthe Egyptian Munazzamat al Jihad group that assassinated AnwarSadat. Although predominantly Sunni in its composition, Hamas alsodrew inspiration from the tactical example of the Islamic revolution