Robin Monotti

The Intifadas and the Rise of Hamas - Akil N. Awan

"In 1987, the outbreak of the First Intifada changed everything. The first grass-roots revolt by ordinary Palestinians attempting to “shake off” a twenty-year Israeli military occupation. The Intifada entailed protests, strikes, boycotts, and stone-throwing at Israeli soldiers. Hamas, an acronym for The Islamic Resistance Movement, was founded the same month, emerging directly out of Yassin’s al-Mujamma charity. Offering a religious alternative to the secular PLO, Hamas sought to assume the Intifada’s leadership. Despite Hamas’ hyperbolic rhetoric (their founding charter called for the annihilation of Israel), Yassin indicated an initial willingness to negotiate, but under the condition that Israel first “acknowledge the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and right of return to their land.” Israel snubbed the effort and continued to suppress the protests.

The First Intifada resulted in 1,200 Palestinians dead, 15,000 imprisoned, and over 130,000 injured—many resulting from an Israeli government policy of deliberately breaking the bones of protestors. During the same period, 180 Israelis were also killed. Witnessing the brutal suppression of these largely non-violent, popular uprisings would radicalize Hamas’ view of the conflict and see the group embark on its descent into violence.

The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, representing a tentative, partial peace agreement between Israel and the PLO, formally ended the First Intifada. Extremists from both sides opposed these overtures to peace. Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli leader who had signed the Accords, would himself be assassinated within two years by an Israeli right-wing extremist. On the Palestinian side, Hamas, displaying early signs of its intransigence, refused to recognize Israel or renounce violence. While the group had conducted its first terrorist suicide bombing earlier that year, Hamas leaders nevertheless expressed some ambivalence about targeting Israeli civilians. This changed with the 1994 Hebron Mosque Massacre—an act carried out by another Israeli extremist attempting to sabotage the Oslo Accords.

Baruch Goldstein, a U.S.-born settler and follower of the radical Zionist political party, Kach, had donned his Israeli military uniform and killed twenty-nine Palestinian worshippers at the Ramadan nightly prayer, wounding 125 more. Israel’s government quickly condemned the attack and banned Kach, designating it a terrorist organization. Five years later, the government would also dismantle the shrine that had been erected around Goldstein’s grave and which had been consecrated as an object of veneration and pilgrimage by Jewish extremists. In stark contrast, and as evidence of the creeping radicalization of successive Israeli governments towards the far right, Israel’s current Minister for National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, displayed a portrait of Goldstein in his living room until as late as 2020, only removing it ahead of his foray into Israeli politics. In retaliation for Goldstein’s massacre, Hamas embarked on a campaign of deadly terrorist suicide bombings, indiscriminately targeting Israeli civilians throughout the late 90s. Unsurprisingly, the group was quickly designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States in 1997, with other Western countries following shortly thereafter.

The cycle of violence and counter-violence continued unabated throughout the Second Intifada, sparked in 2000 by Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque."

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/hidden-history-hamas-207266?page=0%2C1

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The National Interest

The Hidden History of Hamas

The development of Hamas, in many ways, mirrors the broader history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

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