Hamas Israel conflict

In an unprecedented attack that few Israelis saw coming on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah on Saturday, Hamas fired thousands of rockets and sent dozens of fighters into Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip. Even as the toll from the Hamas rocket fire and ground assault mounted, Israel declared that was "at war" with the militant outfit and launched airstrikes in Gaza, vowing to inflict an "unprecedented price." Israel launched "Operation Swords of Iron," striking a number of suspected Hamas hideouts in the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel's response to the Hamas incursion will "exact a huge price" on the militant group.

Hamas is the largest Palestinian militant Islamist group and one of the two major political parties in the region. Currently, it governs more than two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The organisation, however, is also known for its armed resistance against Israel (more on this later). Hamas as a whole, or in some cases its military wing, is designated a terrorist group by Israel, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and other countries.

The group was founded in the late 1980s, after the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip — the Jewish state had captured the two Palestinian territories after winning the 1967 Israeli-Arab War. Hamas is essentially “the internal metamorphosis” of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, which was established in Jerusalem in 1946, according to the book, ‘Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide’, by Khaled Al Hroub, professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwestern University Qatar.

“The Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood remained on the margins of Palestinian politics for decades till the 1980s and the reason for this was their strategy, which was non-confrontational… They believed they needed to Islamise the Palestinian society and it was a prerequisite for an engagement with the wider battle against Israel. In brief, they didn’t use armed struggle,” Khaled told Al Jazeera in an interview. But in 1987, when the first Palestinian intifada took place, the organisation decided to transform itself — and “established Hamas as an adjunct organisation with the specific mission of confronting the Israeli occupation,” the professor wrote in his book.

The main reason for Hamas’ creation was a deep sense of failure that had been set within the Palestinian national movement by the late 1980s. This primarily happened after the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — involved in the armed struggle against Israel from the mid-1960s to ‘liberate Palestine’ — made two massive concessions. Hamas gained prominence after it opposed the Oslo Peace Accords signed in the early 1990s between Israel and the PLO, the body representing most Palestinians. The accords aimed to bring about Palestinian self-determination, in the form of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Hamas history The well-known White House lawn handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzakh Rabin (left) and the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat (right), with US President Bill Clinton in the centre.  The Palestinian militant group, however, was against them as it believed “a two-state solution would forgo the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created,” a report by Al Jazeera said.

To break down the deal, Hamas launched suicide bombings. It carried out numerous bus bombings, killing many Israelis, and stepped up its attacks after Israel killed the group’s chief bomb maker Yahya Ayyash in December 1995. The bombings are believed to be responsible for Israel’s withdrawal from the peace process and the rise of Benjamin Netanyahu, who was a staunch opponent of the Oslo Accords, to power in 1996, according to the BBC.

The failure of the peace process wasn’t only Hamas’ fault, though. According to the Al Jazeera report, right-wing Israelis didn’t want to give any concession to the PLO and Israeli settlers resisted the deal as they “feared it would lead to their eviction from the legal settlements in the occupied territories.” Hamas’ suicide attacks once again made headlines during the second intifada between 2000 and 2005 — it began after the peace talks between Israel and Palestine completely collapsed.