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What Is Hamas?
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Backgrounder


WHAT IS HAMAS?

The Palestinian militant group has struggled to govern Gaza and remains
committed to violently resisting Israel. Its surprise attack against Israel in
2023 threatens a wider conflagration in the Middle East.
A parade for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s militant arm, is held in
Gaza. Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Written By
Kali Robinson
Updated
Last updated October 9, 2023 1:27 pm (EST)
Print Email
Share
Summary
 * A spin-off of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the late
   1980s, the Islamist militant group Hamas took over the Gaza Strip after
   defeating its rival political party, Fatah, in elections in 2006.
 * The United States and European Union have designated Hamas a terrorist
   organization because of its armed resistance against Israel, which has
   included suicide bombings and rocket attacks.
 * Israel has declared war on Hamas following its surprise assault on southern
   Israel in 2023, the deadliest attack on the country in decades.

More on:

Palestinian Territories

Israel

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Terrorism and Counterterrorism

Political Movements


INTRODUCTION

Hamas is an Islamist militant movement and one of the Palestinian territories’
two major political parties. It governs more than two million Palestinians in
the Gaza Strip, but the group is best known for its armed resistance to Israel.
In October 2023, Hamas launched a massive surprise attack on southern Israel,
killing hundreds of civilians and soldiers and taking dozens more as hostages.
Israel has declared war on the group in response and indicated its military is
planning for a long campaign to defeat it. 

More From Our Experts
Bruce Hoffman
Israel’s War on Hamas: What to Know
Jacob Ware
The Southern Border Poses Terrorism Risks. Homegrown Threats Still Loom Larger.
Martin S. Indyk
The Case for a New U.S.-Saudi Strategic Compact

Dozens of countries have designated Hamas a terrorist organization, though some
apply this label only to its military wing. Iran provides it with material and
financial support, and Turkey reportedly harbors some of its top leaders. Its
rival party, Fatah, which dominates the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
and rules in the West Bank, has renounced violence. The split in Palestinian
leadership and Hamas’s unwavering hostility toward Israel have diminished
prospects for stability in Gaza.

Related
Israel’s War on Hamas: What to Know
by Bruce Hoffman
What Is U.S. Policy on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
by Kali Robinson


WHAT ARE THE GROUP’S ORIGINS?

Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (“Islamic Resistance
Movement”), was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian cleric who became
an activist in local branches of the Muslim Brotherhood after dedicating his
early life to Islamic scholarship in Cairo. Beginning in the late 1960s, Yassin
preached and performed charitable work in the West Bank and Gaza, both of which
Israel occupied following the 1967 Six-Day War.

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Yassin established Hamas as the Brotherhood’s political arm in Gaza in December
1987, following the outbreak of the first intifada, a Palestinian uprising
against Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. At the
time, Hamas’s purpose was to counter Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), another
organization whose commitment to violently resisting Israel threatened to draw
Palestinians’ support away from the Brotherhood. In 1988, Hamas published its
charter, calling for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an
Islamic society in historic Palestine. In what observers called an attempt to
moderate its image, Hamas presented a new document [PDF] in 2017 that accepted
an interim Palestinian state along the “Green Line” border established before
the Six-Day War but that still refused to recognize Israel.

Hamas first employed suicide bombing in April 1993, five months before PLO
leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo
Accords. The historic pact established limited self-government for parts of the
West Bank and Gaza under a newly created entity called the Palestinian Authority
(PA). Hamas condemned the accords, as well as the PLO’s and Israel’s recognition
of each other, which Arafat and Rabin officially agreed to in letters sent days
before Oslo.

More From Our Experts
Bruce Hoffman
Israel’s War on Hamas: What to Know
Jacob Ware
The Southern Border Poses Terrorism Risks. Homegrown Threats Still Loom Larger.
Martin S. Indyk
The Case for a New U.S.-Saudi Strategic Compact

In 1997, the United States designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organization.
The movement went on to spearhead violent resistance during the second intifada,
in the early 2000s, though PIJ and Fatah’s Tanzim militia were also responsible
for violence against Israelis.


WHO ARE ITS LEADERS?

Hamas has a host of leadership bodies that perform various political, military,
and social functions. General policy is set by an overarching consultative body,
often called the politburo, which operates in exile. Local committees manage
grassroots issues in Gaza and the West Bank.




Ismail Haniyeh currently serves as political chief, having replaced longtime
leader Khaled Meshaal in 2017. Haniyeh has operated from Doha, Qatar, since
2020, reportedly because Egypt restricts his movement into and out of Gaza.
Hamas leaders established a presence in Qatar after falling out with their
previous host, Syria, when Palestinian refugees participated in the 2011
uprising that preceded the Syrian Civil War. Some senior Hamas figures
reportedly operate out of the group’s offices in Turkey.

Israel and Hamas are at war
Follow CFR's analysis to understand the conflict and its global implications.
Dive Deeper

Day-to-day affairs in Gaza are overseen by Yahya Sinwar, who previously headed
Hamas’s military wing and served twenty-two years in an Israeli prison for
masterminding the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers. He was among
the more than one thousand Palestinian prisoners freed in 2011 in exchange for
an Israeli soldier held by Hamas. As of June 2021, Gaza’s de facto prime
minister is Issam al-Da’alis.

Marwan Issa and Mohammed Deif command Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din
al-Qassam Brigades. Israeli forces assassinated the militia’s founder, Salah
Shehadeh, in a 2002 air strike. Fifteen civilians were killed in the attack,
focusing Israeli and international scrutiny on such tactics. Israelis forces
killed Yassin, Hamas’s founder, in 2004.

Saleh al-Arouri reportedly heads Hamas’s Lebanon branch. He also took over the
group’s West Bank leadership following internal elections that concluded in
2021, while Meshaal was chosen to lead the diaspora office and Salameh Katawi
was elected to manage the affairs of imprisoned Hamas members.


HOW IS HAMAS FUNDED?

As a designated terrorist entity, Hamas is cut off from official assistance that
the United States and European Union (EU) provide to the PLO in the West Bank.
Historically, Palestinian expatriates and private donors in the Persian Gulf
provided much of the movement’s funding. In addition, some Islamic charities in
the West have channeled money to Hamas-backed social service groups, prompting
asset freezes by the U.S. Treasury.

Gaza’s economic situation was already dire before Hamas’s 2023 assault on
Israel, and the ensuing war is almost certain to exacerbate the extreme poverty
of its residents. Egypt and Israel largely closed their borders with it in
2006–07, restricting the movement of goods and people into and out of the
territory. The two countries maintain a blockade today, cutting off the
territory from most of the world and forcing more than one million Gazan
Palestinians to rely on international aid. Israel has allowed Qatar to provide
hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance through Hamas. Other foreign aid
generally reaches Gaza via the PA and UN agencies.

For years after the blockade began, Hamas collected revenue by taxing goods
moving through a sophisticated network of tunnels that circumvented the Egyptian
crossing into Gaza; this brought staples such as food, medicine, and cheap gas
for electricity production into the territory, as well as construction
materials, cash, and arms. After Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi took
power in 2013, Cairo became hostile toward Hamas, which it saw as an extension
of its chief domestic rival, the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian army shut down
most of the tunnels breaching its territory while it waged a counterterrorism
campaign against a branch of the self-proclaimed Islamic State on its side of
the border, on the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt began to allow some commercial goods
to enter Gaza through its Salah al-Din border crossing in 2018. As of 2021,
Hamas reportedly collected upward of $12 million per month from taxes on
Egyptian goods imported into Gaza.

Today, Iran is one of Hamas’s biggest benefactors, contributing funds, weapons,
and training. Though Iran and Hamas briefly fell out after backing opposing
sides in Syria’s civil war, Iran currently provides some $100 million annually
[PDF] to Hamas, PIJ, and other Palestinian groups designated as terrorist
organizations by the United States. Iran was quick to praise Hamas’s assault on
Israel in late 2023 and pledge its continuing support for the Palestinian group.

Turkey has been another stalwart backer of Hamas—and a critic of
Israel—following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rise to power in 2002. Though
Ankara insists it only supports Hamas politically, it has been accused of
funding Hamas’s terrorism, including through aid diverted from the Turkish
Cooperation and Coordination Agency.


HOW DOES IT GOVERN GAZA?

Hamas has been the de facto authority in Gaza since shortly after Israel
withdrew from the territory in 2005. The following year, Hamas won a majority of
seats in the PA’s legislature and formed a government. It earned votes for the
social services it provided and as a rejection of the incumbent Fatah, which
many voters perceived as having grown corrupt at the helm of the PLO and
delivering little to Palestinians through its negotiations with Israel. The
outcome was unacceptable to Fatah and its Western backers, and the party ousted
Hamas from power in the West Bank. In Gaza, Hamas routed Fatah’s militias in a
week of fighting, resulting in a political schism between the two Palestinian
territories. Palestinians have not voted for a legislature since 2006, nor a
president since 2008.

> “The Hamas-controlled government has no effective or independent mechanisms
> for ensuring transparency in its funding, procurements, or operations.”

Freedom House

As Hamas took over the remnants of PA institutions in the strip, it established
a judiciary and put in place authoritarian institutions. In theory, Hamas
governs in accordance with the sharia-based Palestinian Basic Law, as does the
PA; but it has generally been more restrictive than the law requires, including
by controlling how women dress and enforcing gender segregation in public during
the early years of its rule. The watchdog group Freedom House found in 2020 that
the “Hamas-controlled government has no effective or independent mechanisms for
ensuring transparency in its funding, procurements, or operations.” Hamas also
represses the Gazan media, civilian activism on social media, the political
opposition, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), leaving it without
mechanisms for accountability.


HOW DO PALESTINIANS VIEW HAMAS?

The political bifurcation of the West Bank and Gaza is widely unpopular: a June
2023 poll [PDF] by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR)
showed that one-third of Palestinians consider it the most damaging development
for their people since the state of Israel’s 1948 creation. The same poll found
that more than half of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would vote for
Hamas’s Haniyeh over PA President Mahmoud Abbas in a presidential election,
while just one-third of Palestinians would choose Abbas. Additionally, Abbas has
indefinitely postponed national elections scheduled for 2021, citing Israel’s
alleged refusal to let Palestinians in East Jerusalem vote, though observers
suspect that Abbas aims to prevent a likely Hamas victory.


HOW HAS HAMAS CHALLENGED ISRAEL?

Hamas has fired rockets and mortars into Israel since the group took over the
Gaza Strip in the mid 2000s. Iranian security officials have said that Tehran
provided some of these weapons, but that Hamas gained the ability to build its
own missiles after training with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
and proxies. In recent years, Israel estimated that Hamas and other Palestinian
militant groups in Gaza had about thirty thousand rockets and mortars in their
arsenal. Hamas militants have flown balloons carrying incendiary devices toward
Israel, which have sometimes caused fires. The group has also carried out
incursions into Israeli territory, killing and kidnapping soldiers and
civilians.

Prior to the 2023 conflict, Hamas and Israel had their deadliest fighting in
years in 2021, when Hamas fired rockets into Israel following weeks of tensions
between Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem. Some analysts say that Hamas
wanted to bolster its reputation as the defender of the Palestinian cause after
the PA postponed the 2021 elections. During the eleven-day conflict, Hamas and
PIJ fired more than four thousand rockets from Gaza, killing ten Israeli
civilians and injuring more than three hundred others. Hamas reportedly
coordinated with the IRGC and Lebanon’s Hezbollah during the fighting, and used
so-called suicide drones along with its usual arsenal of less precise missiles.
The United States and Egypt brokered a cease-fire to the conflict.


HOW IS HAMAS’S ATTACK ON ISRAEL IN 2023 DIFFERENT?

Hamas’s assault on southern Israel this year, which the group’s leaders have
called “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm,” was extraordinary in its strategy, scale, and
secrecy, analysts say. It began early in the morning on October 7, the Jewish
Sabbath and an important Jewish holiday, with Hamas launching several thousand
rockets into southern and central Israel, hitting cities as far north as Tel
Aviv. Hamas militants also breached the heavily fortified Gaza border and
infiltrated many southern Israeli towns and villages, killing hundreds of
Israeli troops and civilians, and wounding and kidnapping scores more. 

Hamas’s military leader, Mohammed Deif, said the group undertook its assault
because of Israel’s long-running blockade of Gaza, its occupation of Palestinian
lands, and its alleged crimes against Muslims, including the desecration of
Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. 

It is the deadliest attack on Israeli soil in decades and has inflicted a deep
psychological trauma on the Israeli people, with some analysts drawing
comparisons to the surprise Pearl Harbor and September 11, 2001, attacks on the
United States. Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly had no
indications that Hamas was planning an assault of this nature. “It is completely
unprecedented that a terrorist organization would have the capacity or the
wherewithal to mount coordinated, simultaneous assaults from the air, sea, and
land,” writes CFR Senior Fellow Bruce Hoffman.

Israel has declared war on Hamas and countered with intensifying air strikes on
targets in Gaza and ground operations to push the group’s militants out of the
country. The government has ordered the evacuation of all civilians from Israeli
communities bordering Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned of a
“long and difficult war” against Hamas, and Israel’s military response is
expected to be extraordinary, if not unprecedented. 

Some observers are questioning if Israel will attempt a full-scale invasion and
reoccupation of the Palestinian territory, a campaign that could incur heavy
casualties on both sides. “Israel had mounted numerous military operations
against Hamas since its takeover in 2007, two years after Israel pulled out of
Gaza. But these were mostly from the air. And even when Israeli troops were
deployed, they never stayed for long,” writes CFR Senior Fellow Max Boot for the
Washington Post. 

An Israeli invasion of Gaza could also provoke a significant attack against
Israel by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, risking a wider
conflagration in the region, analysts say. “Iran is, of course, a patron of
Hezbollah [as well as Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups] and there is
an ever-present danger of a two-front conflict, which would devastate parts of
Israel and much of Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based. There is a risk of
escalation,” says CFR Senior Fellow Steven A. Cook.

More on:

Palestinian Territories

Israel

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Terrorism and Counterterrorism

Political Movements


RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

For Foreign Affairs, CFR Distinguished Fellow Martin Indyk looks at why Hamas
attacked Israel in 2023 and why Israel was taken by surprise.

This Backgrounder looks at U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Israeli NGO Gisha maps access to the Gaza Strip [PDF] and documents
restrictions on the movement of people and goods enforced by Israel and Egypt.

The European Council on Foreign Relations explores Palestinian politics.


 * Palestinian Territories
 * Israel
 * Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
 * Terrorism and Counterterrorism
 * Political Movements
 * Middle East and North Africa

Jonathan Masters, Alice Hickson, and Zachary Laub contributed to this
Backgrounder. Will Merrow created the graphic.

For media inquiries on this topic, please reach out to communications@cfr.org.
Introduction What are the group’s origins? Who are its leaders? How is Hamas
funded? How does it govern Gaza? How do Palestinians view Hamas? How has Hamas
challenged Israel? How is Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 different?
Recommended Resources
Close



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Iran has greeted the attack by Palestinian militant forces on Israel and with
its backing of Hamas and Hezbollah has been working to coordinate pressure on
Israel, threatening further escalation of the shadow war between the two
countries.

In Brief by Ray Takeyh October 8, 2023 Middle East Program

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Surprise Palestinian Attack Spawns Fears of Wider Mideast War


The shocking assault by Gaza militants on Israel will trigger massive
retaliation from Israeli forces and likely have region-wide security
repercussions.

In Brief by Steven A. Cook October 7, 2023 Middle East Program


TOP STORIES ON CFR

United States

Why New York Is Experiencing a Migrant Crisis


The arrival of more than one hundred thousand migrants and asylum seekers in New
York City and other major U.S. cities over the past year has sparked renewed
debate over U.S. immigration policy.

Article by Will Freeman October 5, 2023 Latin America Studies Program

India

Modi’s Statement on the Israel Crisis Demonstrates a Transformed India-Israel
Bilateral Relationship


Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement condemning Hamas and offering
support for Israel amidst the recent crisis illustrates that ties between the
two nations have changed dramatically in the last two decades.

Blog Post by Manjari Chatterjee Miller October 9, 2023 Asia Unbound

Iran

Iran’s Support Against Israel Bolsters Hamas


Iran has greeted the attack by Palestinian militant forces on Israel and with
its backing of Hamas and Hezbollah has been working to coordinate pressure on
Israel, threatening further escalation of the shadow war between the two
countries.

In Brief by Ray Takeyh October 8, 2023 Middle East Program


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