The Islamic Resistance Movement or better recognized by its Arabic acronym “Hamas” is well known for its terrorist attacks on the country of Israel. Hamas is the largest of several anti-Israel Palestinian Islamist militant groups. Hamas grew under a Muslim movement in the 1920s and continued to grow until they became registered as on official terrorist organization in 1978. They claim their main goal is the “social welfare agency that catered especially to the Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and, over time, developed a good reputation for improving the lives of Palestinians” (Jewishvirtuallibrary.org). In August of 1988 Hamas published their Islamic Covenant which made clear that they are opposed to Israel’s existence in any way. They …show more content…
Their main goal is to wipe the country of Israel and the Jewish people off the map. They have occupied the Gaza Strip since the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) pulled out in 2005. The IDF have tried 3 times to go back into the Gaza Strip and destroy Hamas but without avail. The first invasion by the IDF was in June 2006 after Hamas attacked an Israeli military post and kidnapped an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit. “Operation Summer Rains” was counted as a failed mission because they did not achieve any of their major goals: Hamas was not destroyed and Shalit was not rescued. The second invasion was in December 2008. The rocket fire from Hamas had become so frequent that the Israeli government could no longer ignore it. “Operation Cast Lead” tasked the IDF with destroying the rockets and rescuing Shalit. The IDF killed over 1,000 Hamas militants and dismantled many rocket stations but they still withdrew in January 2009 without recapturing Shalit. Finally, in July 2014 “Operation Protective Edge” fell in to effect and the IDF fought to destroy Hama’s terror capabilities. They focused on destroying all the tunnels Hamas had dug to invade Israel, to stop the rocket fire coming from the Gaza Strip and lastly to “bring to justice the individuals responsible for the abduction and murder of three Israeli teens” (Jewishvirtuallibrary.org). On August 26, 2014 Hamas and Israel came to a ceasefire and temporarily ended …show more content…
“Hamas has an annual budget of $70 million, according to the Council on Foreign Relations” (Jones). Even after the vast number of sanctions leveled on them by the U.S. and other nations, they remain a very dangerous organization. Iran itself is a big backer if Hamas. According to Jewishvirtuallibrary.org, “[Iran is] the largest backer financially and militarily of the organization’s military wing.” Relations are described between the two counties as “strong and warm” (Jewishvirtuallibrary.org). “The group also raises funds in the Gulf countries and receives donations from Palestinian expatriates around the world” (Pike). Hamas hit a major bump in the road with Iran when they did not support the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war. Iran froze their funds that were directed towards Hamas. However, now Iran is starting to send money and supplies back their way again. Hamas also receives a lot of help from Syria. Pike said, “The Syrian Government enables the Hamas leadership . . . to conduct their various activities on its soil, including the formulation of the Hamas operational strategy, the training of terrorist operatives, the funding of terrorist activity against Israel and assistance in the purchase of arms and ammunition. through its charities.” In the long run Hamas is not going away any time soon. Hamas will remain a threat to Israel if they still even exist in any shape or form. Israel and Hamas continue to hold their
The fight between Israel and Palestine has been seen as an unfair battle, due to the high-tech supplies given to Israel by the US. Israel’s military is extremely strong and constantly growing, with people joining from all over the world, while Palestine’s main defense is a terrorist group called Hamas. Israel has been forced into building a wall surrounding the Gaza strip to stop these terror attacks from harming the citizens of Israel. Palestine believes that Israel’s fighting is too severe compared to Palestine’s attempts at attacking Israel. Gideon Levy wrote, “Once again, Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification to them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law, and wisdom (Document 5, Palestinian View)”. The Palestinians believe that the Israeli military is fighting too much and unfairly, and should not be allowed to take these measures against them.
Bob Hawke once said; “Unless and until something concrete is done about addressing the Israeli-Palestinian issue you won't get a real start on the war against terrorism.” Perhaps Hawke put into a few simple words one of the most complicated issues within our world today, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As Israel continues to strip the Palestinians of their land and fears it’s very existence because of the Palestinians terrorist acts, there seems to be no solution in sight. The world appears to be split and all over the place when it comes to this matter. According to The Middle East Institute for Understanding approximately 129 countries recognize Palestine as a state while many others do not. Over all the political matters within this issue not only affect Palestine and Israel but the world as a whole, as the Middle East and the West seem to disagree. This has had and will continue to have an enormous impact on many political affairs all over the world particularly in the current fight against terrorism. Personally I feel that the Israeli Palestinian conflict while being a very complicated matter has a simple solution. Within this issue I am a firm believer that the occupation of the West Bank by Israeli forces is extremely unjust and must come to an end. Once this is achieved a two state solution will be the most effective way to bring peace to the area. The occupation of the West Bank violates political and legal rights, human rights, and illegally forces Palestinians who have lived in the area for hundreds of years from their land. This conflict is at the height of its importance and a solution is of dire need as nuclear issues arise in the Middle East due to the tension between Israel and it’s surrounding neighbors, and the...
HAMAS, an Arabic acronym meaning “Islamic Resistance Movement”, is the name of the socio-political organization currently in power over the Gaza Strip. For decades Jews & Muslims and Israelis & Palestinians, often one in the same, have fought for control over the region. Each have killed thousands of the other, destroyed infrastructures and used underhanded tactics to gain an advantage. Nations such as Japan, the European Union, the United States and (of course) Israel classify the group as terrorists, while nations such as Turkey, Russia and Switzerland do not. (King, 2010) Many factors are taken into consideration before a Nation-State denounces an organization as a “terrorist group”. A profile of HAMAS may help make clear why it is not uniformly denounced by all nations and with historical context, if they truly are freedom fighters in a resistance movement.
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted for a partition resolution that led to the establishment of the nation of Israel in May, 1948. This was great news for Jews in Palestine and the diaspora as it meant the fulfillment of the quest for the rebirth of their nation in their previous homeland after many years of wandering (Pappe, 2006, p. 12). However, their Palestinian Arab counterparts opposed to the establishment from the start felt cheated by the international community and remained categorical that the final answer to the Jewish problem would only be solved in blood and fire (Karsh, 2002, p. 8).
Israel has long held a policy of counter attack to deal with terrorists harbored by governments of neighboring countries. Following 9/11, the United States government adopted this policy. As part of this new policy the US military went after terrorists in Afghanistan and destroyed the country’s infrastructure as well as innocent civilians in the process. In early 2003, Iraq was attacked for the same reasons, with the same resulting damage. Terrorism directed against Iraqis and Coalition forces as well as military retaliation by Coalition forces continues to make the headlines in occupied Iraq. The cycle of violence continues.
“There is no such thing as a Palestinian.” Stated former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir after three fourths of one million Palestinians had been made refugees, over five hundred towns and cities had been obliterated, and a new regional map was drawn. Every vestige of the Palestinian culture was to be erased. Resolution 181, adopted in 1947 by the United Nations declared the end of British rule over Palestine (the region between the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River) and it divided the area into two parts; a state for the Jewish and one for the Arab people, Palestine. While Israel was given statehood, Palestine was not. Since 1947, one of the most controversial issues in the Middle East, and of course the world, is the question of a Palestinian state. Because of what seems a simple question, there have been regional wars among Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, terrorist attacks that happen, sometimes daily, displacement of families from their homes, and growing numbers of people living in poverty. Granting Palestinian statehood would significantly reduce, or alleviate, tensions in the Middle East by defining, once and for all, the area that should be Palestine and eliminating the bloodshed and battles that has been going on for many years over this land.
The Israeli-Palestine conflict is an event that has been well documented throughout the course of Middle-Eastern history. The conflict dates back as far as the nineteenth century where Palestine and Zionist, will later be known as Israel, are two communities each with different ideologies had the same overwhelming desire to acquire land. However, what makes this clash what it is, is the fact that both of these up and coming communities are after the same piece of land. The lengths that both sides went to in order obtain they believed was theirs has shaped the current relationship between the two nations today.
The ongoing and explosive Israeli-Palestinian conflict has its roots in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when two major nationalist movements among the Jews and Arabs were born. Both of these groups’ movements were geared toward attaining sovereignty for their people in the Middle East, where they each had historical and religious ties to the land that lies between the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Toward the end of the 19th century, Southern Syria (Palestine) was divided into two regions, inhabited primarily by Arab Muslims, and ruled by the Turkish Ottoman Empire (BBC News). At this time, most of the Jews worldwide lived predominantly in eastern and central Europe. When the Zionist political movement was established in 1887 and began to fund land purchases in the Ottoman Empire controlled region of Palestine, tensions between the two groups arose. Since then, Israel and Palestine have been vying for control of this land that they both covet, and this conflict remains as one of the world’s major sources of instability today, involving many different players. One of these players who continues to halt the peace process, is a militant fundamentalist Islamic organization called Hamas. Hamas has intensified extreme opposition and bloodshed in the region, with the aim of destroying the state of Israel. However, few people know that starting in the mid 1970s, Israel secretly supported an organization that would later emerge as Hamas, even though both groups had competing future visions for the nation. Why did it choose to do this when it had so much at stake? This paper will address the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict leading up to the beginning of Israeli support of Hama...
We must first realize that resistance was in no way a survival strategy. Yet, even when it seemed obvious that death was near inevitable, why did they not put up a fight? This argument is still puzzling to many holocaust historians, yet the arguments of Raul Hilberg and Yehuda Bauer offer insight to possible reasons why they did not fight and that resistance was more widespread than most people think.
In mid-November of last year amidst rising tensions in the Middle East, Israel launched a major offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza on Wednesday, killing the military commander, Ahmed Al-Jabari of Hamas in an air strike. This strike on a car carrying the commander stemmed the beginning to what is known by the Israeli’s as operation “Pillar of Defense”. Following this “surgical” assassination, the Israeli air force struck over 20 underground rocket launch sites belonging to Hamas (governing terrorist organization in Gaza) and the Islamic Jihad. According to Palestinian sources these strikes killed an additional six Palestinians.
The three concepts of Judaism, Zionism, and Israel are different in many ways. To begin, the state of Israel was formed in 1948 by the United Nations as a result of the Partition Resolution, which was originally established in 1947. The Partition Resolution sought to divide Great Britain’s previous Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states and provide reconciliation to the Jews for the calamities of the Holocaust. This means that neither Jews nor Zionists (Jewish descendants) officially established the state of Israel in which Jew’s call home. Meanwhile, Jews and Zionists whom occupy the state of Israel are very different in themselves. Jews believe in one God who created the Torah and with whom they have a covenant. While Zionists reject the Creator, his revelation, reward and punishment. Zionism and its followers continue to persecute the Palestinian people with the belief that military aggression will end Jewish exile. All the while Torah Jews reject the Zionists movement and believe that they bring shame to the Jewish culture.
After the Six Day War Israel security forces were attempting to cultivate and expand islamism. In between the years 1967 and 1987 the number of mosques in Gaza went from 200 to 600. While islamism was expanding at this time so were the other smaller nationalist terrorist groups, such as the PLO, were also expanding in the streets, and in schools. Hamas was founded in 1978, during the expansion of islamism and terrorist nationalist groups, by Ahmed Yassin as a Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The real terrorist acts from this group started happening around the 1990’s ...
When Yasser Arafat addressed the United Nations General Assembly, he tried to articulate the actions the Palestinian Liberation Organization had taken and to justify those actions. Arafat points out that the struggles with Imperialism and Zionism began in 1881 when the first large wave of immigrants began arriving in Palestine. Prior to this date, the Muslims, Jews (20,000) and Christians all cohabitated peacefully (pop. 1/2 million). In 1917, the Belfour Declaration authorized increased immigration of European Jews to Palestine. 1 From 1917 to 1947, the Jewish population in Palestine increased to 600,000 and they rightfully owned only 6% of the Palestinian arable land. Palestine population at this time was now up to 1,250,000. 1
that’s why it has all this extra territory and control over the area. The US supports Israel in all
Soon after Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary elections, Israel imposed an increasingly harsh blockade on Gaza to put pressure on Hamas. The blockade imprisoned 1.8 million innocent Palestinians leading many of them to live below poverty levels due to limited food, medical supplies, and essential goods. The siege of the Gaza Strip made getting news coverage a near impossibility for foreign news media. In order to receive a press card to Gaza, journalists needed to undergo a security check and sign a censorship form agreeing to submit the articles they have written during their time in Gaza to the Israeli government. If reporters or journalist did not follow the rules of Israel or practice censorship, they were harassed, imprisoned, or threatened by the Israeli government. Many reporters kept what they seen to themselves until they were safely back in their countries where they wrote what they truly seen inside. Others just wrote what they believed was right while they were in Gaza jeopardizing their lives. The United States Media, however, was strictly on the Israeli side and would overlook or avoid certain topics about the Gaza blockade. Many times the American media manipulated or framed the story in a way to mislead readers from what the reality of the Gaza blockade was.