Hamas is a branch of the Islamic movement. It was
formed in Gaza in 1987 by the Moslem Brotherhood with the goal of
establishing an Islamic state in “Palestine”. Its leader was Shaykh
Ahmad Yasin, who together with other Shaykhs, drafted the Islamic
Charter. The articles of this charter are very extreme – stating that
Palestine in its entirety is sacred to Islam in perpetuity and that no
Moslem has the right to relinquish even the slightest part of it.
During the years of the intifada, Hamas
committed extremely cruel acts of terror, including suicide bombings
perpetrated in the wake of the killing at the Tomb of the Patriarchs and
the elimination of Yahya Ayyash. Hamas vehemently opposed the peace
process, criticized it, battled against it and believed that it would
fall. After ‘Arafat’s entry into Gaza in July 1994 and the consolidation
of his power in the autonomous territories, Israel urged him to arrest
members of Hamas in order to prevent them from carrying out further acts
of terror. ‘Arafat partially acceded to Israeli demands in order to
acquire additional areas in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.
The leaders of Hamas saw that the Peace Process was
successfully progressing and the Palestinian Authority was securely
established in the autonomous territories, while their own policies were
suffering repeated failures and they decided, for the time being, to toe
the line and “bend in the face of the storm”. In the course of 1996,
they began to issue relatively moderate declarations and the head of the
Hamas political office – Musa abu-Marzuq – presented a new plan.
According to the plan, Hamas expressed willingness to sign a cease-fire
agreement with Israel and stop all terror attacks in exchange for a
complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Judea, Samaria and East
Jerusalem and the dismantling of all settlements.
In their declarations, the leaders of Hamas added
that they would support ‘Arafat’s policies in order to attain as much as
possible of Palestine in this generation and leave the liberation of the
remainder to future generations. Hence, Hamas, for all intents and
purposes, adopted the “step-by-step policy”, which had been the policy
of the PLO for some time.
During the years 1996-1997, ‘Arafat continued to
“eat away” at Hamas. In those years, three major factions developed
within Hamas: One, a relatively small faction, abandoned the jihad
and returned exclusively to cultural and philanthropic activities; the
second, central faction, supported suspending the jihad, for the
time being, and focusing on political activity as opposition within the
Palestinian Authority; and the third, smallest faction, continues to
advocate the path of jihad. The central faction, which is the
predominant one, established, in 1996, a party named the “Islamic
National Salvation Party”. This party is, so to speak, a political arm
of Hamas and functions as a legal, political opposition party in the
context of the Palestinian Authority.
In
addition, the Islamic movement has, to a certain degree, split, and
other small Islamic parties which function within the Palestinian
Authority have been established. The central faction in Hamas attempts,
as far as possible, to avoid a confrontation with the Palestinian
Authority which would lead to a situation similar to the one encountered
by the fundamentalist Islamic movements in Egypt and Algeria – a bloody
war with the current regime.
This paper was published as the ACPR's Policy Paper
No. 127, 2001