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Oct 15, 2023 · The U.S. State Department has designated Hamas a terrorist group in 1997. The European Union and other Western countries also consider it a terrorist organization. Hamas won 2006 parliamentary elections elections and in 2007 violently seized control of the Gaza Strip from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.
- seldeeb@ap.org
- Investigative Reporter
Oct 19, 2023 · The other, promoted by Hamas, a designated terrorist group and a member of the larger Muslim Brotherhood network, called for the establishment of a Palestinian state from the River Jordan to...
- Ghaith Al-Omari
Oct 10, 2023 · The U.S. State Department has designated Hamas a terrorist group in 1997. The European Union and other Western countries also consider it a terrorist organization. World. European leaders...
Aug 6, 2022 · West Bank & Gaza Strip. Explainer: Hamas vs. Islamic Jihad, Gaza's terrorist factions. While both groups reject Israel’s right to exist, there are differences between Gaza's two...
- Jake Pemberton
- Introduction
- What Are The Group’s Origins?
- Who Are Its Leaders?
- How Is Hamas Funded?
- How Does It Govern Gaza?
- How Do Palestinians View Hamas?
- How Has Hamas Challenged Israel?
- How Is Hamas’s Attack on Israel in 2023 Different?
Hamas is an Islamist militant movement and one of the Palestinian territories’ two major political parties. It governs more than two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but the group is best known for its armed resistance to Israel. In October 2023, Hamas launched a massive surprise attack on southern Israel, killing more than 1,400 people and ...
Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (“Islamic Resistance Movement”), was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian cleric who became an activist in local branches of the Muslim Brotherhood after dedicating his early life to Islamic scholarship in Cairo. Beginning in the late 1960s, Yassin preached and performed charitable work...
Hamas has a host of leadership bodies that perform various political, military, and social functions. General policy is set by an overarching consultative body, often called the politburo, which operates in exile. Local committees manage grassroots issues in Gaza and the West Bank. Ismail Haniyeh currently serves as political chief, having replaced...
As a designated terrorist entity, Hamas is cut off from official assistance that the United States and European Union (EU) provide to the PLO in the West Bank. Historically, Palestinian expatriates and private donors in the Persian Gulf provided much of the movement’s funding. In addition, some Islamic charities in the West have channeled money to ...
Hamas has been the de facto authority in Gaza since shortly after Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005. The following year, Hamas won a majority of seats in the PA’s legislature and formed a government. It earned votes for the social services it provided and as a rejection of the incumbent Fatah, which many voters perceived as having grown co...
The political bifurcation of the West Bank and Gaza is widely unpopular: a June 2023 poll [PDF] by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) showed that one-third of Palestinians consider it the most damaging development for their people since the state of Israel’s 1948 creation. The same poll found that more than half of Palest...
Hamas has fired rockets and mortars into Israel since the group took over the Gaza Strip in the mid 2000s. Iranian security officials have said that Tehran provided some of these weapons, but that Hamas gained the ability to build its own missiles after training with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and proxies. In recent years, Isra...
Hamas’s assault on southern Israelthis year, which the group’s leaders have called “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm,” was extraordinary in its strategy, scale, and secrecy, analysts say. It began early in the morning on October 7, the Jewish Sabbath and an important Jewish holiday, with Hamas launching several thousand rockets into southern and central Isr...
Oct 13, 2023 · Kali Robinson, Council on Foreign Relations. Leave your feedback. What is Hamas? What to know about its origins, leaders and funding. World Updated on Oct 13, 2023 11:08 AM EDT — Published on Oct...
Feb 7, 2024 · February 07, 2024 2:00 PM. By Linda Gradstein. Demonstrators carry flags of the Palestinian Hamas group during an anti-Israel rally in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, Dec. 15, 2023....
