The history behind Hamas’ role in Gaza

“That woman, the survivor, is Gaza,” writes Baconi. Like her, Gaza has refused to submit to Israeli occupation while other Palestinian and Arab states have succumbed, and “remains the only proud bit of Palestine that refuses to yield.”

While internationally, Hamas is considered a terrorist group, for some, it is a resistance movement.

The origins

Hamas was born from the Muslim Brotherhood, a Islamist organisation that took root in Egypt during the 1920s. Initially focused on pan-Arab nationalism, under Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic cleric from Cairo, the Hamas movement performed charitable work in the West Bank and Gaza following Israel’s occupation of the territories after the 1967 war.

At the time, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat, was emerging as a political contender in the occupied territories. To counterbalance their influence, the Israeli government funded Yassin and promoted his rise. According to Loren Lybarger, a professor of Religious Studies at Ohio University, in the mid-1980s, Hamas emerged as an alternative to the PLO, a movement centred on the predominance of Islamic law, and focused solely on the liberation of Palestine.

In 1987, Yassin established Hamas as the Brotherhood’s political arm in Gaza, coinciding with the outbreak of the first Intifada or Palestinian uprising. A year later, Hamas published a 36-point charter calling for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel. That charter was subsequently amended in 2017, when references to killing Jews was removed. While Hamas had largely been a socio-political organisation prior to the first Intifada, the uprising was a turning point. Lybarger says it “forced the hand” of Hamas leadership, who believed that they would lose legitimacy amongst younger generations if the group did not get involved. 

Hamas Founder Ahmed Yassin (Wikimedia Commons)

In 1989, Hamas carried out its first attack against Israel. Yassin was arrested and his followers were deported to Lebanon. If supporting Yassin was Israel’s first mistake, this was its second. Hamas members trained under Hezbollah, an Iranian backed terrorist organisation, in Lebanon, and when they were recalled to Israel amidst mounting international pressure, they returned with knowledge of advanced warfare techniques.

In February 1994, a US-born Israeli physician named Baruch Goldstein gunned down 29 Muslims at a mosque in Hebron. For the PLO, it conveyed a need for peace. For Hamas, it was a call to arms. Less than two months later, it would launch its first suicide bombing on Israeli soil a tactic that would become synonymous with the group for decades to come.

As a political entity, Hamas gained traction when the PLO engaged in peace talks with Israel. Concessions made by the PLO were deemed contradictory to the Palestinian cause, particularly during the Oslo Accords when it agreed to cede 78 per cent of the contested territory to Israel.

In 1997, the United States designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation. The group was responsible for over 60 per cent of the violent acts committed during the second Intifada from 2000 to 2005. During elections held later that year, Hamas won a decisive victory, forming a government in Gaza. What happened next, is a source of considerable controversy.

The PLO, and in particular, Fatah, the largest faction in the PLO, attempted to curb Hamas’ influence in Gaza. Lybarger refers to their actions as being deeply undemocratic, while Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an international peace negotiator, and associate fellow at Chatham House, describes Hamas’ response as a coup. Regardless of semantics, Fatah was driven out of Gaza, Israeli troops withdrew, and Hamas became the sole representative of the people. Faced with Israeli and Egyptian blockades that prevented movement in and out of Gaza, the people were dependent on Hamas for basic necessities, giving the group significant leverage. There have been no elections since 2006.

Hamas’ leadership

Hamas’ leadership structure is three-fold. There is the Shura Council, a consultative group made up of elected Hamas members from Gaza, the West Bank, the diaspora and Israeli prisoners. The Shura Council elects the Politburo, which is responsible for decision making and has historically operated in exile. Finally, there is the military wing or Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades (EQB) which carries out offensive manoeuvres.

Israel has consistently assassinated top Hamas officials, leaving the higher echelons of leadership in a constant state of flux. Israeli forces killed Yassin in 2004 and political chief Ismail Haniyeh in July 2024.

Until this year, when Yahya Sinwar was named the next Hamas’ political chief, the office was run outside the country. However, many speculate that the actual decision making happens on the ground. Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas leader based in Doha, told the New Yorker in 2023 that Hamas’ October 7 massacre came as a surprise to him, stating, “we were surprised by the date but not by the actions.”  While Marzouk was aware of the possibility of an attack, the details were hidden from everyone but Sinwar and EQB commander Mohammed Deif. According to an interview in the Foreign Policy Magazine by former Israeli National Security advisor Eran Lehrman, “with all due respect to the fat cats in Qatar, these are the guys who are calling the shots.”

Palestinian Political Parties (Abhishek Mitra)

Deif and Sinwar were both born in Khan Younis refugee camp in Southern Gaza and are designated as global terrorists by the United States. Described as the ‘cat with nine lives,’ Deif has become a cult hero for escaping more than seven assassination attempts. Despite being one of the most influential Hamas leaders, only three photos exist of Deif, of which, only one from 30 years ago, shows his face.

Sinwar too has a reputation that precedes him. According to Bar-Yaacov, he is the most extreme Hamas chief by far. Journalist and author of Hamas, Paola Caridi says that since Sinwar was released from jail in 2011 as part of a prisoner swap with Israel (one Israeli prisoner for 1,026 Palestinians), the group has veered sharply to the right. “When Sinwar arrived, the transformation was immediate,” Caridi told indianexpress.com.

Lybarger points out that there are several other influential groups within the movement that have been more politically pragmatic and open to the possibility of peace with Israel, but that the Sinwar faction has always favoured armed struggle. That being said, according to King’s College Political Scientist Jerome Gunning, Hamas employs a somewhat democratic process of electing its leadership. In Hamas in Politics, he writes that while the group’s ability to perpetuate violence increases their legitimacy, only a “handful” of its leaders and officials come from militant or clerical backgrounds. The vast majority, he notes, “gained political capital through their involvement in the community or in professions such as engineering.”

Although not a part of its leadership team, Hamas also depends on key allies such as Iran, its proxy groups, Qatar and Turkey. Both Qatar and Turkey bolster Hamas’ weak standing on the international stage by harbouring senior leadership and providing funding. Meanwhile, Hamas is one component of Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’, an informal network of anti-Israel partners that includes Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, and various militias in Iraq and Syria. While it is unclear how much coordination there is among them, they have all launched attacks on Israel in the ongoing war, including Iran’s first ever attack in April 2024. 

According to Ali Alfoneh, a political scientist at the Arab Gulf States Institute of Washington, “In Iran’s defence doctrine, Hezbollah is a deterrent against Israeli bombardment of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.” Should Israel target Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, Iran will have no choice but to intervene. As of now though, it operates through its proxies, providing “arms, money, intelligence and logistical support to any group willing to fight Iran’s wars.” 

Its appeal 

Palestinian opinions of Hamas are mixed. Before October 7, the group had been unpopular in the Gaza Strip and West Bank but after the attack, polling by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research suggests that support for Hamas rose four percentage points in Gaza and nearly quadrupled in the West Bank.

Hamas’ domestic support is contingent on three factors – its social policies, Israeli occupation, and the weaknesses of the PLO. In Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza, Harvard University researcher Sara Roy writes, “The strength of Hamas increasingly lay in the work of Islamic social institutions whose services directly and indirectly, reached tens if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, helping them to survive.” In the book Hamas, Northwestern University Professor and Hamas analyst, Khaled Hroub writes that while the topic is rarely explored, the social services provided by Hamas is “one of the most important sources of influence” that the group has on the public.

Secondly, as Caridi argues, you cannot consider the social dynamics of Hamas without factoring in Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Hroub states that Hamas was radicalised by the Israeli colonial project in Palestine and that the people will “support whichever movement holds the banner of resistance against that occupation and promises to defend the Palestinian right of freedom and self-determination.”

Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, millions of Palestinians have been displaced. Those who remain, live under brutal military occupation, blockaded in Gaza, and confined to ghettos in the West Bank.  As Baconi writes, after the blockade of Gaza in 2007, for Palestinians, the terms “Jew, Israeli and F-16 (fighter planes) had become synonymous.” Hamas flourished because of these grievances but even if it hadn’t been Hamas, it would have been something else. 

Despite owning 94 per cent of the land before the UN Partition Plan of 1947, Palestinians now administer roughly 12 per cent of it

The appeal of Hamas is also linked to the failures of Fatah and the PLO. From 1960 to the late 1980s, the PLO embraced armed struggle as the principal strategy to liberate Palestine. However, during the peace talks of the 1990s, the group changed its tactics, choosing to work with Israel rather than against it. The resulting Oslo Accords was seen as a betrayal of the cause, with the late scholar Edward Said describing it as “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles.”

In terms of governance as well, the PLO leaves much to be desired. Its 88-year-old chief, Mahmoud Abbas, has no clear succession plan. He and his senior ministers have been accused of mismanagement, corruption and ineffectiveness. In the words of CFR Middle East expert, Steven A. Cook, the PLO in its current form has become “basically irrelevant” and polling by PCPSR from June 2023 suggests that more than half of Palestinians favour dissolving the organisation altogether.

Given these complex factors, one can understand the appeal of Hamas as a mechanism of Palestinian liberation. However, while the group professes its dedication to that cause, it is unclear how far they are willing to go in pursuit of it.

The political objectives of Hamas

In a 2023 article for Foreign Policy Magazine, Baconi argues that Hamas’ Oct 7 attack was born from necessity. Since the containment of Gaza in 2007, the group has been stuck in a “violent equilibrium” with Israel. In this context he writes, “The recent shift to all-out violence is also in keeping with the movement’s understanding of the role of armed resistance as a negotiating tactic.” 

Hroub further states that in the past, Hamas’ attacks against Israeli civilians have been linked to specific atrocities against Palestinian civilians. The group’s justification, he writes, has “many grounds,” including the need to retaliate, Israel’s failure to negotiate in good faith, and the desire for fear and suffering to be felt on both sides.

Baconi and Hroub state that the October attack was a strategic political manoeuvre that succeeded in disrupting the status quo. As Lybarger points out, the current conflict has forced Saudi Arabia to put peace talks with Israel on the backburner. Had any agreement been successful he says, “it would have spelled the death knell for Palestinian statehood.” Caridi, while acknowledging that Hamas today is vastly different from the Hamas of 2006, also concedes that the attack shattered Israeli notions of untouchability and brough the plight of Gazans to the forefront of international consciousness.

Hamas is “neither inherently anti-democratic, nor anti-modern nor wholly anti-Western,” Gunning writes, and its authority is derived from having a popular mandate. Against Israeli occupation, the group had few options at their disposal. “The choice,” Baconi writes for Foreign Affairs, “was between dying a slow death—as many in Gaza say—and fundamentally disrupting the entire equation.” 

Glen Robinson, author of Global Jihad adds that Hamas was never given the opportunity to govern Gaza as Israel effectively controlled entry and exit into the strip. “October 7 was a result of an ideological change within Hamas once Sinwar and other leaders realised that Israel’s blockade and current Hamas police had failed to advance Palestinian rights,” he tells indianexpress.com.

However, others claim that Hamas’ strategies are not only in violation of international law, but also detrimental to the people of Gaza.

Sinwar, in particular, is considered a hardliner. Decades ago, he was interviewed in jail by Israeli journalist Ehud Yaari. According to Yaari, for Sinwar “Gaza can be destroyed, half destroyed; you don’t measure it. As long as Hamas — bleeding, even humiliated — stands on its feet, it’s a victory.”

Bar-Yaacov points out that Hamas has built 500 kilometres of tunnels to transport weaponry and hide senior leaders like Sinwar and Daif. Yet it has not built a single bomb shelter for the civilian population. Children’s rooms, hospitals, and schools have been used as military headquarters and the civilians of Gaza as “human shields.” Lybarger also alludes to the tactical failures of October 7, stating that Hamas had a tacit agreement in place with Israel. As long as the group remained measured, the Israelis would allow aid into Gaza and permit Hamas to govern. “The Israelis would be happy to let this continue in perpetuity,” he says, so one must wonder why Hamas chose to launch an attack that has resulted in the “complete decimation and annihilation of Gaza.”

In the long term, the attack could also affect the formation of a Palestinian state. “Hamas is saying this is just the beginning,” Bar Yaacov argues, which “makes Israelis wonder whether they can be trusted with statehood.” Conversely, according to Robinson, increased Israeli attacks will also deter Palestinians from embracing peace talks, stating “imagine how many suicide bombers will emerge out of the carnage in Gaza in the years ahead.” 

One can debate whether Hamas’ willingness to sacrifice the people of Gaza for the Palestinian cause is justified in the context of national resistance. According to Bar Yaacov, were Gaza to hold free elections, the people would probably vote Hamas out. However, Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian journalist born in Gaza, says, “Hamas’s objectives are the same as all Palestinian’s, the question isn’t whether Hamas should govern, but whether anyone can govern under siege, bombs, and a constant state of war.”