Wikipedia (en)
Hamas (UK: hə-MASS, US: hə-MAHSS; Arabic: حماس, romanized: Ḥamās, IPA: [ħaˈmaːs]), an acronym of its official name, the Islamic Resistance Movement (حركة المقاومة الإسلامية Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah), is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and military organization governing the Gaza Strip of the Palestinian territories, which are occupied by Israel under international law. Headquartered in Gaza City, it has a presence in the West Bank, the larger of the two Palestinian territories, in which its secular rival Fatah exercises control.
Hamas was founded by Palestinian imam and activist Ahmed Yassin in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. It emerged out of his 1973 Mujama al-Islamiya Islamic charity affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election by campaigning on Palestinian armed resistance against the Israeli occupation, thus securing a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council. The following year, in 2007, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip from rival Palestinian faction Fatah, which it has governed since separately from the Palestinian National Authority. This was followed by an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip with Egyptian support, and multiple wars with Israel, including in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, and 2021. The ongoing 2023 war began after Hamas launched an attack on Israel, targeting Israeli military bases and civilian communities, massacring civilians and soldiers, and taking hostages back to Gaza. The attack has been described as the biggest military setback for Israel since the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, which Israel has responded to in an ongoing ground invasion of Gaza. Before the war, Israel secretly furthered the growth of Hamas, seeing it as a mechanism of preventing an independent Palestine.While initially seeking a state in all of Mandatory Palestine, Hamas began acquiescing to 1967 borders in the agreements it signed with Fatah in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In 2017, Hamas released a new charter that supported a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders without recognizing Israel. Hamas's repeated offers of a truce (for a period of 10–100 years) based on the 1967 borders are seen by many as being consistent with a two-state solution, while others state that Hamas retains the long-term objective of establishing one state in former Mandatory Palestine. While the 1988 Hamas charter was widely described as antisemitic, Hamas's 2017 charter removed the antisemitic language and said Hamas's struggle was with Zionists, not Jews. Hamas promotes Palestinian nationalism in an Islamic context.Hamas is widely popular in Palestinian society due to its anti-Israeli stance. The organization has carried out attacks against Israeli civilians, including suicide bombings and indiscriminate rocket attacks. These actions have led human rights groups to accuse it of war crimes, and Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, Paraguay, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union to designate Hamas as a terrorist organization. In 2018, a motion at the United Nations to condemn Hamas was rejected.
