عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Features

What is Hamas? The Group that Rules the Gaza Strip Has Fought Several Rounds of War with Israel

Armed fighters stand guard during an exhibition of military arms, organized by the fighters of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, at a military site in the center of Gaza City, 30 June 2023. (EPA)
Armed fighters stand guard during an exhibition of military arms, organized by the fighters of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, at a military site in the center of Gaza City, 30 June 2023. (EPA)
TT
20
TT

What is Hamas? The Group that Rules the Gaza Strip Has Fought Several Rounds of War with Israel

Armed fighters stand guard during an exhibition of military arms, organized by the fighters of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, at a military site in the center of Gaza City, 30 June 2023. (EPA)
Armed fighters stand guard during an exhibition of military arms, organized by the fighters of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, at a military site in the center of Gaza City, 30 June 2023. (EPA)

Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, launched an attack inside Israel over the weekend, killing hundreds and taking others hostage. Its unprecedented breach of the border sent fighters inside border communities and military installations, shocked Israel and its allies, and raised questions about the group’s capabilities and strategy.
WHAT IS HAMAS? The group was founded in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian refugee living in Gaza, during the first intifada, or uprising, which was marked by widespread protests against Israel’s occupation.
Hamas is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, and a recognition of the group’s roots and early ties to one of the Sunni world’s most prominent groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in the 1920s.
The group has vowed to annihilate Israel and has been responsible for many suicide bombings and other deadly attacks on civilians and Israeli soldiers.
The US 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. The Palestinian Authority, dominated by rival Fatah movement, administers semi-autonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Israel responded to the Hamas takeover with a blockade on Gaza, restricting movement of people and goods in and out of the territory in a step it says is needed to keep the group from developing weapons. The blockade has ravaged Gaza's economy, and Palestinians accuse Israel of collective punishment.
Hamas received backing from Arab countries. Recently, it's moved closer to Iran and its allies.
WHO ARE HAMAS' LEADERS? Hamas founder and spiritual leader Yassin — a paralyzed man who used a wheelchair — spent years in Israeli prisons and oversaw the establishment of Hamas' military wing, which carried out its first suicide attack in 1993.
Israeli forces have targeted Hamas leaders throughout the years, killing Yassin in 2004.
Khaled Mashaal, an exiled Hamas member who survived an earlier Israeli assassination attempt, became the group’s leader soon after.
Yehia Sinwar, in Gaza, and Ismail Haniyeh, who lives in exile, are Hamas' current leaders. They realigned the group’s leadership with Iran and its allies, including Lebanon's Hezbollah. Since then, many of the group’s leaders relocated to Beirut.
WHAT DOES HAMAS WANT? Hamas has always espoused violence as a means to liberate occupied Palestinian territories and has called for the annihilation of Israel.
Hamas has carried out suicide bombings and over the years fired tens of thousands of increasingly powerful rockets from Gaza into Israel. It also established a network of tunnels running from Gaza to Egypt to smuggle in weapons, as well as attack tunnels burrowing into Israel.
In recent years, Hamas had appeared to be more focused on running Gaza than attacking Israel.
WHY NOW? In recent years, Israel has made peace deals with Arab countries without having to make concessions in its conflict with the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Israel's new far-right government was working to cement Israeli settlements in the West Bank despite Palestinian opposition.
Hamas leaders say an Israeli crackdown on militants in the West Bank, continued construction of settlements — which the international community considers to be illegal — thousands of prisoners in Israeli jails, and its ongoing blockade of Gaza pushed it to attack.
Its leaders say hundreds of its 40,000 fighters took part in the assault. Israel says the group has about 30,000 fighters and an arsenal of rockets, including some with a range of about 250 kilometers (155 miles), and unmanned drones.

Most Viewed

 
Features

The US and Iran Have Had Bitter Relations for Decades. After the Bombs, a New Chapter Begins

Iran's and US' flags are seen printed on paper in this illustration taken January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran's and US' flags are seen printed on paper in this illustration taken January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
TT
20
TT

The US and Iran Have Had Bitter Relations for Decades. After the Bombs, a New Chapter Begins

Iran's and US' flags are seen printed on paper in this illustration taken January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran's and US' flags are seen printed on paper in this illustration taken January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Now comes a new chapter in US-Iran relations, whether for the better or the even worse.

For nearly a half century, the world has witnessed an enmity for the ages — the threats, the plotting, the poisonous rhetoric between the “Great Satan” of Iranian lore and the “Axis of Evil” troublemaker of the Middle East, in America's eyes, The Associated Press reported.

Now we have a US president saying, of all things, “God bless Iran.”

This change of tone, however fleeting, came after the intense US bombing of Iranian nuclear-development sites this week, Iran's retaliatory yet restrained attack on a US military base in Qatar and the tentative ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump in the Israel-Iran war.

The US attack on three targets inflicted serious damage but did not destroy them, a US intelligence report found, contradicting Trump's assertion that the attack “obliterated” Iran's nuclear program.

Here are some questions and answers about the long history of bad blood between the two countries:

Why did Trump offer blessings all around? In the first blush of a ceasefire agreement, even before Israel and Iran appeared to be fully on board, Trump exulted in the achievement. “God bless Israel,” he posted on social media. “God bless Iran.” He wished blessings on the Middle East, America and the world, too.

When it became clear that all hostilities had not immediately ceased after all, he took to swearing instead.

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing,” he said on camera.

In that moment, Trump was especially critical of Israel, the steadfast US ally, for seeming less attached to the pause in fighting than the country that has been shouting “Death to America” for generations and is accused of trying to assassinate him.

Why did US-Iran relations sour in the first place? In two words, Operation Ajax.

That was the 1953 coup orchestrated by the CIA, with British support, that overthrew Iran's democratically elected government and handed power to the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Western powers had feared the rise of Soviet influence and the nationalization of Iran's oil industry.

The shah was a strategic US ally who repaired official relations with Washington. But grievances simmered among Iranians over his autocratic rule and his bowing to America's interests.

All of that boiled over in 1979 when the shah fled the country and the theocratic revolutionaries took control, imposing their own hard line.

How did the Iranian revolution deepen tensions? Profoundly.

On Nov. 4, 1979, with anti-American sentiment at a fever pitch, Iranian students took 66 American diplomats and citizens hostage and held more than 50 of them in captivity for 444 days.

It was a humiliating spectacle for the United States and President Jimmy Carter, who ordered a secret rescue mission months into the Iran hostage crisis. In Operation Eagle Claw, eight Navy helicopters and six Air Force transport planes were sent to rendezvous in the Iranian desert. A sand storm aborted the mission and eight service members died when a helicopter crashed into a C-120 refueling plane.

Diplomatic ties were severed in 1980 and remain broken.

Iran released the hostages minutes after Ronald Reagan's presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981. That was just long enough to ensure that Carter, bogged in the crisis for over a year, would not see them freed in his term.

Was this week's US attack the first against Iran? No. But the last big one was at sea.

On April 18, 1988, the US Navy sank two Iranian ships, damaged another and destroyed two surveillance platforms in its largest surface engagement since World War II. Operation Praying Mantis was in retaliation against the mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf four days earlier. Ten sailors were injured and the explosion left a gaping hole in the hull.

Did the US take sides in the Iran-Iraq war? Not officially, but essentially.

The US provided economic aid, intelligence sharing and military-adjacent technology to Iraq, concerned that an Iranian victory would spread instability through the region and strain oil supplies. Iran and Iraq emerged from the 1980-1988 war with no clear victor and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, while US-Iraq relations fractured spectacularly in the years after.

What was the Iran-Contra affair? An example of US-Iran cooperation of sorts — an illegal, and secret, one until it wasn't.

Not long after the US designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984 — a status that remains — it emerged that America was illicitly selling arms to Iran. One purpose was to win the release of hostages in Lebanon under the control of Iran-backed Hezbollah. The other was to raise secret money for the Contra rebels in Nicaragua in defiance of a US ban on supporting them.

President Ronald Reagan fumbled his way through the scandal but emerged unscathed — legally if not reputationally.

How many nations does the US designate as state sponsors of terrorism? Only four: Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Syria.

The designation makes those countries the target of broad sanctions. Syria's designation is being reviewed in light of the fall of Bashar Assad’s government.

Where did the term ‘Axis of Evil’ come from? From President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address. He spoke five months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the year before he launched the invasion of Iraq on the wrong premise that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

He singled out Iran, North Korea and Saddam's Iraq and said: “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”

In response, Iran and some of its anti-American proxies and allies in the region took to calling their informal coalition an Axis of Resistance at times.

What about those proxies and allies? Some, like Hezbollah and Hamas, are degraded due to Israel's fierce and sustained assault on them. In Syria, Assad fled to safety in Moscow after losing power to opposition factions once tied to al-Qaida but now cautiously welcomed by Trump.

In Yemen, Houthi militants who have attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea and pledged common cause with Palestinians have been bombed by the US and Britain. In Iraq, armed Shia factions controlled or supported by Iran still operate and attract periodic attacks from the United States.

What about Iran's nuclear program? In 2015, President Barack Obama and other powers struck a deal with Iran to limit its nuclear development in return for the easing of sanctions. Iran agreed to get rid of an enriched uranium stockpile, dismantle most centrifuges and give international inspectors more access to see what it was doing.

Trump assailed the deal in his 2016 campaign and scrapped it two years later as president, imposing a "maximum pressure" campaign of sanctions. He argued the deal only delayed the development of nuclear weapons and did nothing to restrain Iran's aggression in the region. Iran's nuclear program resumed over time and, according to inspectors, accelerated in recent months.

Trump's exit from the nuclear deal brought a warning from Hassan Rouhani, then Iran's president, in 2018: “America must understand well that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace. And war with Iran is the mother of all wars.”

How did Trump respond to Iran's provocations? In January 2020, Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran's top commander, when he was in Iraq.

Then Iran came after him, according to President Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland. Days after Trump won last year's election, the Justice Department filed charges against an Iranian man believed to still be in his country and two alleged associates in New York.

“The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump," Garland said.

Now, Trump is seeking peace at the table after ordering bombs dropped on Iran, and offering blessings.

It is potentially the mother of all turnarounds.