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Hamas

Hamas is an Islamist terrorist organization that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and planned and carried out the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. It is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and others.

Etymology

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Hamas is an Arabic acronym, حماس, for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, “Islamic Resistance Movement.” The acronym itself is also a real Arabic word meaning zeal or enthusiasm, a deliberate double meaning built into the name from the start.

Founding and scope

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Hamas was founded in Gaza in December 1987, at the start of the First Intifada, by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Its 1988 founding covenant called for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state across all of historic Palestine, framing the conflict in explicitly religious and antisemitic terms, including a citation of the antisemitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The full covenant text is preserved at Yale’s Avalon Project. Hamas has two main wings: a political bureau, led for years by Ismail Haniyeh until his 2024 assassination, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which carries out attacks and holds hostages. Iran and Qatar are its principal external funders, placing it inside the broader axis of resistance alongside Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

History of the term’s usage

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During the 1990s Oslo years, Hamas positioned itself as the rejectionist alternative to Fatah and the PLO, carrying out a wave of suicide bombings intended to derail the peace process. It won the January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, then in June 2007 violently expelled Fatah’s forces from Gaza in a short civil war, splitting Palestinian governance in two. Since then it has fought Israel in successive wars, Operation Cast Lead in 2008 to 2009, Pillar of Defense in 2012, Protective Edge in 2014, and the 2023 to present Gaza war triggered by October 7, when Hamas-led fighters killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages into Gaza. In 2017 Hamas issued a “Document of General Principles and Policies” that softened some public language and accepted a Palestinian state on 1967 lines as a stage, without renouncing the 1988 covenant or armed struggle; the document itself says it does not replace the covenant.

Misuse and accurate usage

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Two distortions recur in coverage and activism. First, “resistance”: Hamas markets its own name that way, and sympathetic commentary, including academics like Judith Butler, has echoed the framing even for the October 7 attack. See what “resistance” actually means as a term of art versus a euphemism for terrorism against civilians. Second, collapsing Hamas into “the Palestinians” as a monolith, whether to indict all Gazans for Hamas’s crimes or to launder Hamas’s crimes as popular will; see Hamas versus the Palestinians for the distinction, and did Israel create Hamas for the related myth about its founding. The accurate usage is narrow and factual: Hamas is the specific armed and governing organization founded in 1987, its covenant and Qassam Brigades are documented primary sources, and its designation as a terrorist group by dozens of governments is a matter of public record, not opinion.

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Sources

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