A History of Hamas

0:28This message comes from MSNOW. In response, Israel bombarded and invaded Gaza. According to Gaza health officials, more than 66 ,000 Palestinians have been killed in what an independent UN inquiry has classified as genocide. Since the start of the conflict, we've heard from many of you, our listeners, with questions about Hamas. Who are they? What do they want? And how did we get here? So in the weeks following the October 7th, 2023 attack, we talked to experts on all sides to answer those questions, people who know the history deeply and have even participated in it. This episode first aired in November 2023, and we wanted to bring it back to you again now to look back at the origins and influence of Hamas.

1:20Next week, we'll bring you our episode about the rise of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right wing. Today, we'll start in 1987 with the event that birthed Hamas.

1:41In December 1987, a military truck driven by an Israeli citizen collided with another vehicle in Gaza near the Jabaliyah refugee camp. Four Palestinians died. Authorities explained it as an accident, but many Palestinians viewed it as an act of revenge for the killing of an Israeli man in Gaza days earlier. But these events were just a spark that lit a flame. In the days after, frustration and anger from Palestinians poured out in an event known as the First Intifada, or uprising.

2:23The hostility and tension are everywhere on the streets in Arab East Jerusalem. In the shouting voices of Palestinian teenagers hurling stones at cars and soldiers.

2:37In the past month, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli sniper fire, adding to the already inflamed atmosphere. In the walkie-talkies of Israeli troops on patrol. With land, housing and potable water in short supply. In the cries of angry Palestinian women watching as their children are arrested and taken away. We want exactly what the Israeli people enjoy. Democracy, freedom and independence.

3:17Over 1 ,000 Palestinians and around 200 Israelis were killed in the 1987 Intifada. It shocked the world. But for people on the ground, it was the latest event in a cycle of attack and reprisal that dated back to the establishment of the State of Israel. Here's a very simple breakdown. In 1947, the United Nations called for the division of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states. The idea was to create a Jewish homeland where Jews could feel safe after centuries of anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in the Holocaust. And in 1948, Israel was established. But there were already hundreds of thousands of Arab Christians and Muslims living there.

4:05Almost immediately, Israel was attacked by neighboring states who argued that the UN division of land was not fair to the Arabs. A war ensued that Israel won. Then two more wars were fought, one in 1967 and one in 1973. Israel won those wars as well. The reasons for those wars and their outcomes are very complicated. We do not have the time to go into those things here. What's important to know for our story is that those wars resulted in mass exoduses of people. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from Arab countries where they'd lived for centuries. And hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes in what is now Israel.

4:51Key to the moment we're in right now is that as a result of winning these three wars, Israel gained control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, two territories that were recognized by the United Nations as Palestinian lands. So this meant that Israel became an occupying power over more than a million Palestinians. Palestinians still had a burning desire to establish their own state. An organization in exile called Fatah and its leader Yasser Arafat emerged as one of the main voices fighting for this state. Fatah became the most powerful group in a coalition called the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO.

5:34But in 1987, at the start of the first intifada, a new Palestinian organization was born in the Gaza Strip that would change everything. The group was called Hamas. Hamas is an acronym for the Arabic phrase for Islamic resistance movement. Harakat al-Muqawwama al-Islamiyya. Harakat al-Muqawwama al-Islamiyya. Hamas also happens to mean zeal or passion. This is Khalid El-Gindi, and I'm the author of the 2019 book called Blindspot, America and the Palestinians from Balfour to Trump. Khaled also served as an advisor to the Palestinian leadership during their negotiations with Israel in 2007. Hamas' overall vision was a Palestinian state in all of the land of historical Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

6:31Khaled says this goal to establish a Palestinian state was shared by other Palestinian liberation groups. But Hamas was different for one major reason. They were Islamist, whereas most of the Palestinian factions emerged in the 1950s and 60s and were either leftist, like strongly Marxist, or centrist. Hamas basically put Islam at the center of its political program. In their charter, they made it clear that it was only through Islam that Palestinians could achieve liberation. Part of Hamas's appeal was they didn't believe in diplomacy. They didn't believe in compromise. That's reflected in Hamas's charter published in 1988.

7:18It spells out their purpose and objectives. We've asked Throughline senior producer Devin Katiyama to read from the group's founding document. There's no solution for the Palestinian question, except through jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. Hamas, it is an expression of Palestinian anger, desperation, and frustration. This is Martin Keir. I'm a lecturer in international relations at the University of Sydney in Australia. He also wrote a book all about Hamas called Hamas in Palestine, the Contested Road to Statehood. Martin says that Hamas introduced itself as an organization dedicated to both Palestinian statehood and Islamic Jihad, or holy war.

8:07The Islamic resistance movement consider itself to be the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism, and a step on the road. Islamic groupings all over the Arab world should also do the same, since all of these are the best equipped for the future role in the fight with the warmongering Jews. While their charter in 1988 clearly lays all this out, Martin says we should not mistake it for some well-thought-out founding document. The people who wrote it were very insular. It was not as though the leadership of Hamas sat down and put this document together. Three people wrote it, and they'd never been outside of Gaza, never traveled.

8:48But Hamas, after that, rarely, if ever, mentioned its charter. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. The Hamas charter contains anti-Semitic language. Their plan is embodied in the protocols of the elders of Zion. And their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying. The first goal of Hamas is to destroy completely the state of Israel. This is David Hacham. He's a former colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF, where he served for 30 years.

9:36During my military service, I was for almost eight years in the Gaza Strip. I arrived to Gaza one year before the beginning of the first Palestinian uprising. David has written two books on Hamas and other Palestinian groups and is affiliated with the Miriam Institute, which is basically an Israel-focused think tank. He says that Hamas was expressly dedicated to the destruction of Israel from its inception. As a matter of fact, they are speaking about, in the first phase, about the establishment of a Palestinian Islamic state on the ruins of the state of Israel.

10:23Ultimately, Hamas's emergence in the chaotic, bloody years of the First Intifada signaled a change in the symbolic and material direction of the Palestinian fight against occupation. It allowed Hamas to frame their narrative that this was a sense, we are an Islamic resistance movement. And in the years after their launch, Hamas began carrying out the promise of its charter.

10:59I'm Ramtin Arablui. On this episode of ThruLine from NPR, we're going to tell you the history of Hamas from multiple perspectives and try to answer a few central questions. Why did Hamas form? In what context has it evolved into the organization it is today? And what does it represent to Palestinians, Israelis, and the rest of the world?

11:33Hi, this is Patrick Cornegay Jr. calling from Washington, D.C., and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Thanks. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here? And maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts. Part 1. Men in the Sun In 1988, Hamas was created explicitly as an Islamist organization.

12:22Now, you might be wondering what I mean by Islamist. Well, the larger context for that term goes all the way back to the early 20th century. Back then, European powers were slowly encroaching on and sometimes outright colonizing parts of the Middle East. This was a big change because since the medieval period, the Middle East and North Africa had been ruled by Muslim empires that were dominant politically, militarily, and economically on the international level. This was and is a point of historical pride for many in the Muslim world. I was reminded of it all the time growing up by people in my community.

13:03But as Europe and eventually the United States rose to power, those fortunes changed. By the 20th century, several kinds of responses to that formed. There was the leftist, anti-imperialist Marxist kind that was prevalent all over the world. Think like Che Guevara. There were also secular nationalists like Ataturk in Turkey. But there was another camp that basically said the problem in the Muslim world was that Muslims weren't Muslim enough. not religious enough, that if Muslims reconnected with Islam, then perhaps they could regain the glory of the past. This worldview created movements and organizations all over the Middle East.

13:45And one of those organizations, based in Egypt, was called the Muslim Brotherhood. They are key in the creation of Hamas. So the Muslim Brotherhood's goal is to connect Muslims again with Islam. And once that connection is made, then the people themselves will rise up and feel a sense of collective identity and through that, collective identity be able to get rid of foreign occupation. Even though it was founded in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood had chapters and supporters all over the Middle East, from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Iraq. But while the group did engage in political violence, It was different from extremist Islamist groups that we might think of today, like Al-Qaeda or ISIS.

14:33The Muslim Brotherhood started out by focusing on social welfare programs and preaching. The Palestinian chapter in Gaza and the West Bank provided education, food, and other kinds of social services to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. And it would be one of its members that would help found Hamas. a guy named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. So he was a young Palestinian. He was a quadriplegic. He was born in 1936 near the modern city of Ashkelon. Yassin came to Gaza as a refugee, like many other Palestinians, after the establishment of Israel. He was a product of the occupation. He had joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a young man in Egypt, In Gaza, he focused his efforts on Palestinian statehood.

15:28He wasn't an ideologue. Now, there's certainly that Islamic frame of reference, but you wouldn't say that he was an ideologue. There's this very action-orientated, and when I say action, it doesn't necessarily mean violence. It's a, we need to be the controllers of our own destiny. To do this, he founded an organization in Gaza in 1973, which was licensed to operate by the Israeli government in 1979. He came with a request from the Israeli military government in the Gaza Strip in order to bring him like the green light for the establishing of al-Mujama al-Islami. This organization David's talking about, al-Mujama al-Islamiyah, or the Islamic Center, was the precursor to Hamas.

16:19It was an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Israeli government approved Yassin's request for the Islamic Center because it was basically a charity organization. But according to David, it did more than that. During the 80s, al-Mujama al-Islami did its utmost with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin at his head to gain, you know, public support, to take control of local associations, to open, you know, mosques. So Sheikh Yassin and several other Gazans established Hamas out of the Islamic center. Hamas was created because a number of Palestinians who believe in armed resistance and this Islamist ideology created the organization.

17:05This is Tariq Bakoni. He's a scholar and president of the board of Al-Shabaka, a nonprofit focused on Palestinian policy research and author of the book... Hamas contained the rise and pacification of Palestinian resistance. When Hamas was established out of that structure, and it began to engage in resistance activities. Like attacks on military posts and abducting Israeli soldiers. Immediately, Israel's approach to dealing with Hamas changed, and it stopped being one of approval. It started being an antagonistic relationship, because obviously now it's a resistance party. In retrospective, I think this was, I call it the original sin of the Israeli authorities, the Israeli security authorities that did not understand that period of time what can be developed of this innocent organization movement, Al-Mujama al-Islami.

18:06As the First Intifada went on, many Palestinians became more and more frustrated, not only with the occupation, but with the PLO slash Fatah as it attempted to negotiate a two-state solution with Israel. The reality was that Fatah and some of the smaller parties were interested in joining a peace process that would result in a compromise situation of a West Bank and Gaza state. It's certainly by this stage, 1987, 20 years of occupation. What have the PLO done? When I say PLO, what has Fatah done? Nothing, virtually. We've been fighting for 20 years, resisting for 20 years. Nothing has changed.

18:51In fact, it's actually gotten worse. We're further away from an independent state than we've ever been before. This sense of desperation and frustration among Palestinians is part of what allowed for Hamas' argument that compromise and negotiation are losing strategies, that fighting was the only way forward. And part of Hamas' appeal at this time was that their founders and members were from Gaza. They grew up there under an occupation that, according to a 1985 UN committee report, included a stagnant economy, broken communities, depleted natural resources, and violations of fundamental human rights.

19:33Meanwhile, many of the PLO-slash-FATAR leaders lived in exile, and in some cases, luxury. The key FATAR people, most of FATAR are living in the diaspora. They're the ones living in the four-story houses, driving around in their gold Mercedes. they're not experiencing the day-to-day privations of the occupation. Whereas Hamas, they're a product of the occupation. You can see them walking in the streets, you can see them at the market. People may not necessarily agree with their narrative as an Islamist movement, but they get a lot of respect for the fact that they live amongst the community.

20:16The body of an Israeli border policeman kidnapped two days ago by the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement was found today in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In 1992, Hamas carried out a plan that would set in motion a cascade of events altering their path. They took an Israeli border policeman hostage, a man named Nisim Toledano. and he was eventually killed by the kidnappers. We don't think that it is kidnapping. It's capturing because we are the state of the world and we are struggling to expel our enemy from our land. This is our land. Hamas did this at a time when the PLO was starting negotiations with the Israeli government on a peace deal that could potentially create a two-state solution.

21:06Prime Minister Rabin said Hamas wanted to murder both Jews and peace, but they would not succeed. Nothing will move us from here, Rabin said, not stones, Molotov cocktails or knives. Not Hamas, not the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and not the PLO, he said. We will live here forever. Rabin said Israel would pursue the world. I was there. I was in all the meetings that took place with our Prime Minister, Itzhak Rabin. At the time, David Hakam was serving in the Israel Defense Forces and as an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. And after the killing of Nisim Toledano, there was a decision taken by Yitzhak Rabin as the Israeli Prime Minister to expel 415 Hamas activists from both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

22:02During the night, security forces woke up more than 400 of the 1 ,500 Palestinians who have been arrested in the past two days. The deportees were blindfolded, their hands bound with plastic handcuffs, and loaded onto buses which headed for the Lebanese border. It was a way of dismantling and disrupting Hamas, and it did for a time, because these were the key members of, key leadership of Hamas. but it was a public relations disaster for Israel. About 400 Palestinians deported by Israel are trapped in a no-man's land in southern Lebanon. The international community found out and it was like, well, okay, how come you're deporting 415 people?

22:47To Israel's surprise, they became a kind of cause celebre as these self-sacrificing, the exiles, they represent kind of a microcosm of what the Palestinian movement is about. And it was also seen as an especially cruel move. I mean, of course, it's a violation of international law. You can't deport elements of the population. The international media starts to take more attention. What is it about Hamas? Why were these people deported? Is it a human interest story or whatever. So people start to pay more attention to Hamas. Hamas' narrative. They're interviewed on international media. They get their narrative out.

23:29They get their story out for the first time, really, to the outside of the Arab world. The only ones doing anything to help the Palestinian people, he says, is Hamas. He's especially... Well, all of a sudden, you can talk to these people. And it's ten fingers, ten toes, two arms, two legs. They're just like me.

23:55And the other thing that happens is that Hezbollah, which is another resistance movement to Israeli occupation, this time of southern Lebanon, looks after these deportees. Hezbollah is an Islamist organization based in Lebanon that was founded during the Israeli invasion of that country in the 1980s. The group is backed by Iran. Both movements see a convergence of interests in their opposition, their militant opposition to Israel. They were totally indoctrinated ideologically by Hezbollah, by Iran. I think Hamas saw Hezbollah as someone they could learn from politically, tactically, and in other ways.

24:42Hezbollah introduces Hamas to the idea of suicide terrorism, to car bombs, a more violent resistance to Israeli occupation. It adopts the tactic of suicide bombing from Hezbollah and brings that back to Palestine when the international community essentially forces Israel to take them back in. People come back in dribs and drabs. Israel admits that over time that, OK, these 10 people were illegally deported, these five people. This was another mistake taken by Israel. I'm not speaking about the expel. I'm speaking about the coming back to the territory. Coming up, Hamas begins to put the lessons learned in Lebanon into practice.

25:39Hi, my name is Fabio Ferrari. I'm calling from New York City. You are listening to Throughline from NPR.

25:51Part 2. 1994. When the first intifada ended around 1993, the path to a potential two-state solution seemed more possible than ever. Israel and the PLO culminated months of negotiations in Oslo, Norway. It was the first agreement in what would come to be known as the Oslo Accords. The agreements recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and called for the creation of the Palestinian Authority to handle some policing and municipal authority in some parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In exchange, they had to ensure the security of Israeli civilians from Palestinian attacks.

26:35Israel agreed to negotiate on the status of its settlements during the peace process. The terms of the deal would be implemented over the course of five years and promised further negotiations. Many in the world viewed the deal as a groundbreaking step towards a Palestinian state and towards peace. PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres were all given the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. But many in Israel and the Palestinian territories saw it completely differently. I think there's a lot of misinformation about what the Oslo Accords actually were.

27:15They certainly weren't about peace. The Oslo Accords were designed to transfer administrative control of Palestinians from the Israeli occupation to Palestinians. So it would be the Palestinian Authority who was in charge of the provision of basic services to Palestinians. Making Palestinians responsible for their own administration means that if anything goes wrong, if there are starving Palestinians, If there are Palestinians who can't access healthcare basic services, that's not the responsibility of the occupation. That's the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority. Even though the occupation controls everything that's going on, controls all of the money that goes in.

27:55There was a lot of suspicion. It looked like, in some ways, a bad deal. But for the Palestinian public, there was a sense of, well, let's give it a chance. Let's see what happens with this peace process. Fatah signed it to get back in control of Palestinian life. The PLO had been forced out of Lebanon in 1982. They'd been cast adrift. No direct contact. They're becoming irrelevant. So Arafat was desperate to get back in control. And the suspicion grew into despair as it became clear the peace deal wouldn't deliver a better life for most Palestinians. It's really when the process began to falter.

28:36when the peace dividends in economic terms never actually materialized, when closures were imposed, when Israel didn't meet its commitments to withdraw from certain areas by a certain deadline. Hamas has said that the Oslo Accords was the biggest betrayal of Palestinian nationalism ever. Hamas opposed the Oslo Accords from the beginning. Unlike the PLO, Hamas did not believe in compromise and negotiation. They didn't think it would make a difference. And this gave Hamas an incentive to oppose the peace deal because they feared what might happen if it were to succeed. Hamas had gained enormous support and popularity in the territories and it was fast becoming the dominant resistance movement.