Movements essay
October 15, 2014
Hamas
The word Hamas is an acronym, from the Arabic for Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas grew out of the ideology and practice of the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood movement that arose in Egypt in the 1920s. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin founded this Palestinian Islamic group in 1987 during the first intifada, as a result of the Israeli taking up most of the West Bank or Gaza strip and later emerged at the forefront of armed resistance to Israel. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was a Palestinian imam and politician who became an activist in local branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. He served as a spiritual leader of the organization, and he was strongly backed by many charitable organizations and other social institutions. Starting in the late 1960s, Yassin preached and performed charitable work in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, both of which were occupied by Israeli forces following the 1967 Six Day War. Yassin and other activists linked to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement had set up a network of charities, schools, and clinics in the West Bank and Gaza strip in the 1960s-1980s. Hamas is a Palestinian militant movement that also serves as one of the territories two major political parties. The Hamas was founded to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation and to establish an Islamic state in the area that is now the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Initially, the organization followed the Muslim Brotherhood’s model of acting mainly as a social welfare agency that provided especially to the Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip. Hamas gained popularity in Palestinian society by launching education systems, hospitals, libraries, and other services. Initially, their activities were supported and encouraged by some Israeli politicians, who saw the group as an alternative to the PLO and a way of weakening the influence of Yasser Arafat’s leadership. However, the Hamas has also claimed responsibility for a number of
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