Ramallah- Since the announcement of its establishment on this day (December 14) in 1987, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has been subjected to major and severe strikes, targeting its leaders, cadres, organizational structure, and institutions affiliated with it, including associations, sports and cultural clubs, and even the government that it ran.
Although the movement has operated in Palestine for some time as an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, its actual establishment came with the launch of the first intifada at the hands of the martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, along with others, including the martyr Abdul Aziz Al-Rantisi and Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar, in the Gaza Strip.
Below we present the most important turning points and blows that the movement went through, but after that it emerged stronger to continue the journey of resisting the occupation.
Arrest of the founder (1989)
The arrest of the movement’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was the beginning of a journey of challenges for Hamas. On May 18, 1989, Sheikh Yassin was arrested along with hundreds of members of the emerging movement, and then on October 16, 1991, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
On December 13, 1992, a guerrilla group affiliated with the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, attempted to liberate Sheikh Yassin and some other elderly detainees, by kidnapping an Israeli soldier near Jerusalem, and demanding the release of its prisoners in exchange for him.
Meadow of Flowers (1992)
In response to the kidnapping of the soldier, the occupation launched a massive arrest campaign in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as a result of which 416 members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements were deported to southern Lebanon on December 17, 1992.
The deportees rejected the decision and remained in the “Marj al-Zuhur” area in southern Lebanon, despite the bad weather and lack of resources, until Security Council Resolution No. (977) was issued for their return. Most of them returned within a year, and a few of them remained outside the country.
According to former deportees who Tel Aviv Tribune Net spoke to, the deportation “turned the magic on the magician” and was “harmful and beneficial,” as their camp in southern Lebanon turned into a destination for international media, and they turned into a platform for conveying the suffering of their people, as well as receiving solidarity and opening lines of communication and relations with various parts of the country. the world.
Peacemakers Summit (1996)
After a series of bombing attacks inside Israel claimed by Hamas, the “Peacemakers Summit” was held in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh on March 13, 1996 at the invitation of Egypt and the United States of America, and its most prominent outcomes were “combat terrorism and its sources of financing,” in reference to the Palestinian resistance.
Assassination attempt on Khaled Meshal (1997)
On September 25, 1997, the head of the Hamas political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, was subjected to an assassination attempt in the Jordanian capital, Amman, at the hands of two Israeli Mossad agents.
The attempt failed and constituted a qualitative shift for the movement, as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was released days later, specifically on October 1, and transferred to treatment in Jordan, in exchange for the release of the two Mossad agents. There he received a special welcome, before he returned to Gaza on the 6th of the same month and was later subjected to harassment by the Palestinian Authority, to the point of imposing house arrest on him.
In the year following his release, Ahmed Yassin visited a number of countries and held public meetings about his movement’s program to liberate Palestine, in what resembled a massive public relations campaign for Hamas abroad.
Deportation from Amman to Doha (1999)
After the Jordanian authorities decided to close Hamas’ offices, its leaders were deported to the State of Qatar on November 21, 1999, where it opened a political office, and to this day maintains a distinguished relationship with Qatar.
Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000)
With the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (Second Intifada), following the Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon’s storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque on September 28, 2000, and then invading Palestinian cities, the movement’s leaders became targets for assassination and arrest in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Assassination of the founder and his successor (2004)
At dawn on March 22, 2004, an Israeli Apache helicopter launched 3 missiles that assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, while he was leaving the dawn prayer in his wheelchair from the Islamic Complex Mosque in the Al-Sabra neighborhood in the Gaza Strip.
On March 24, 2004, two days after the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Rantisi, one of the founders and spokesman for the deportees of Marj Al-Zuhur, was chosen as the leader of the movement in the Gaza Strip, and then he was assassinated on April 17, 2004.
The two assassinations fueled the Palestinian resistance operations, which forced the Israeli occupation to withdraw from the Gaza Strip settlements in 2005.
Elections and division (2006)
After Hamas won the 2006 elections, the rest of the Palestinian factions refused to participate in forming the government, so Ismail Haniyeh formed the government and assumed his duties as its president on March 19, 2006, and since then he imposed a siege on the Gaza Strip.
In mid-2007, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip after clashes with the Palestinian Authority. It was put to the test of combining the option of resistance and management of the Strip. Despite being subjected to siege, it accumulated and developed its military capabilities, which it successively revealed in subsequent wars.
2006 war
On June 25, 2006, the Al-Qassam Brigades captured the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and the occupation quickly responded by launching a massive arrest campaign that targeted hundreds of members of the movement in the West Bank, led by the newly elected President of the Legislative Council – Aziz Al-Dweik, and the movement’s representatives in the Council from the West Bank. And Jerusalem.
The result of the campaign was that Israel was not able to free the soldier except by releasing 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in a deal that took place on October 18, 2011. The movement added a new achievement by liberating the prisoners after the evacuation of the Gaza settlements.
Battle of the Furqan (2008)
On December 27, 2008, Israel began a war on the Gaza Strip, which lasted 23 days with the aim of ending the rule of Hamas in the Strip, eliminating the resistance, stopping rocket attacks, and reaching Gilad Shalit. Hamas responded by launching the “Battle of Al-Furqan”, targeting with missiles the settlements around the Gaza Strip and even the cities of Ashdod and Beersheba.
Israel did not achieve any of the declared goals, but rather turned the “Gaza enveloping” settlements into a target for resistance missiles.
Shale Stones (2012)
This war began on November 14, 2012, and lasted 8 days, after the assassination of Ahmed Al-Jaabari, the commander of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement. The occupation set its goal as “destroying missile storage sites,” and the resistance responded with Operation “Shale Stones,” where 1,500 missiles arrived for the first time in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The Eaten Storm (2014)
The occupation launched a massive aggression against the Gaza Strip on July 7, 2014, which lasted 51 days and included more than 60,000 raids, with the aim of “eliminating Hamas and destroying its tunnels and missile power.” The resistance responded with a “devouring storm” battle.
While the occupation’s goal was to destroy the resistance’s missile storage sites, the response was with more than 8,000 missiles, some of which caused the suspension of flights at Tel Aviv Airport, in addition to the capture of the Israeli soldier Shaul Aaron.
Al-Aqsa Flood (2023)
At dawn on Saturday, October 7, 2023, the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip launched an operation called “Al-Aqsa Flood” against Israel, during which it entered settlements in the “Gaza envelope” and stayed there for approximately 6 hours, during which it eliminated what is known as the “Gaza Division” in the army. The Israeli attack has so far led to the killing of hundreds of soldiers and settlers.
On the other hand, the occupation launched the largest aggression in the history of its crimes against the Palestinian people, resulting in thousands of victims, especially women and children.
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the goal of the aggression was to politically and militarily eliminate the Hamas movement, and to recover dozens of its prisoners held by the resistance, which it has not been able to achieve so far, after two months of continuous bombing and a massive ground incursion into the Gaza Strip.