Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

HAMAS • 229Israeli peace talks in Madrid and feared the PLO would accept newlyelected Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s proposal for limitedPalestinian autonomy on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.Hamas began to acquire a greater following after the September1993 peace settlement and also with the subsequent attempts by Israelto marginalize the role of the PLO. Both the secularized middleclassleadership of the PLO and its leftist opponents had becomeincreasingly inactive and irrelevant to younger Palestianians, whileHamas, Islamic Jihad in Palestine, and similar groups continued topreach and wage direct warfare against Israel.In October 1992 Hamas leader Muhammad Mousa Abu Marzukwent to Iran to improve relations and get more support. In December1992 Israel exiled 400 Hamas radicals to Lebanon, where they laterclaimed to have learned their suicide tactics from Hezbollah. Suicidebombings aimed at civilians began in earnest on 6 April 1994 inthe northern town of Afula with an attack that killed nine Israelis andinjured 45 others, and another attack on 13 April 1994 in Hadera thatdestroyed a bus, killing six Israelis and injuring 28. Another suicidebombing on a bus on 19 October 1994 killed 21 and injured 48 alongDizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. On 24 November 1994, for the firsttime since the Eichmann trial, an Israeli court handed down a deathsentence, this time upon a Palestinian convicted for his role in trainingthe suicide bombers who carried out these attacks. According tothe leaflets left at these two bombings, Hamas had decided to switchfrom purely military targets to suicide bombings against civilians inreaction to the 25 February 1994 assault by Dr. Baruch Goldstein,who massacred 29 Muslim worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque locatedat the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.Apart from these suicide bombings, Hamas carried out other attacksin 1994, including a kidnapping on 9 October of an Israeli DefenseForces corporal, who was killed five days later; a machine-gun attackon pedestrians in Jerusalem’s Yoel Salomon Street on 10 October,killing two and injuring others; a drive-by shooting on 27 Novemberthat killed a rabbi, Ami Olami, who was traveling near Hebron; and asuicide bombing on 25 December wounding 14 Israeli soldiers.Hamas activities in 1995 included at least four suicide attacks killing32 Israelis and injuring around 140 others, leading to an Israelicrackdown that netted 32 Hamas members allegedly connected withthose bombings.