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Anonymous ID: f95606 Oct. 14, 2023, 3:38 p.m. No.19737369   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>7388

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-is-hamas-what-to-know-about-its-origins-leaders-and-funding

 

What is Hamas? What to know about its origins, leaders and funding

World Updated on Oct 13, 2023 11:08 AM EDT — Published on Oct 10, 2023 4:10 PM EDT

 

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.

 

Yassin established Hamas as the Brotherhood’s political arm in Gaza in Dec. 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

Anonymous ID: f95606 Oct. 14, 2023, 3:41 p.m. No.19737388   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>7446 >>7645

>>19737369

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.