What is Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian militant group that declared war on Israel?

Israel earlier on Saturday barrelled into an armed conflict with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose militants launched multi-pronged deadly assaults, invading the Jewish state via the land, air and sea on paragliders, pickup trucks and speed boats. The faction’s militiamen, whom Tel Aviv has officially designated as ‘terrorist’, infiltrated the southern border and fired a barrage of rockets towards Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip.

As the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) flooded the streets in dozens of regions, declaring the launch of ‘Operation Iron Swords’ to counterattack Hamas that launched an incursion deep inside the Israeli territory, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in a video on social media and told the stunned Israelis that the country is at war. He ordered strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, vowing "extensive reserve mobilisation" in response to the unprecedented incursion by Hamas, the deadliest in decades in Israel’s history. 

This morning, on Shabbat and a holiday, Hamas invaded Israeli territory and murdered innocent citizens including children and the elderly. Hamas has started a brutal and evil war.

We will be victorious in this war despite an unbearable price. This is a very difficult day for all…

— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) October 8, 2023

A short while ago, IAF fighter jets struck a compound belonging to the head of the intelligence department in the Hamas terrorist organization.

The IAF is currently continuing to strike terror targets in the Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/uSHsXGFNzz

— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) October 8, 2023

Netanyahu declared a continued offensive “without reservation and respite.” While thousands of casualties mounted, among those killed was Israel’s Lt. Col. Jonathan Steinberg who commanded the IDF's Nahal Brigade, a prominent infantry unit. As Hamas split into Israel from the Gaza Strip into nearby towns, killing, and abducting dozens of Israelis during the major Jewish holiday, Netanyahu said that the war against Hamas militants would ‘take time’ as Tel Aviv maintained a blockade on Gaza, the territory controlled by Hamas since 2007.

This is a locator map of Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Credit: AP

Since this morning, the State of Israel has been at war. Our first objective is to clear out the hostile forces that infiltrated our territory and restore the security and quiet to the communities that have been attacked.

The second objective, at the same time, is to exact an… pic.twitter.com/MzKs7tfv4M

— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) October 7, 2023 

Israel is at war. 

Earlier this morning armed Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israeli communities and started going house to house and murdering innocent Israelis. 

Some of the images are so disturbing we cannot even share them.

We will take every measure to protect our citizens… pic.twitter.com/BdvD6nYHwq

— Israel ישראל 🇮🇱 (@Israel) October 7, 2023

'Will use all strength to destroy Hamas’, declares Netanyahu

Netanyahu urged the Palestinians to evacuate Gaza, insisting that Israel would use ‘all its strength’ to destroy Hamas’ capabilities. Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh declared that the Palestinian militant group was on the verge of a great victory after infiltrating through the border fence into the Mediterranean country. Netanyahu, in a video message, declared that Israel has “embarked on a long and difficult war” and warned Gaza residents to “get out of there now” as the Israeli military would reduce the Hamas militants' hideouts to ‘rubble.’

But who are the Islamist Palestinian militant group Hamas who control the densely populated coastal Palestinian enclave of Gaza whom Israel’s forces are fiercely countering?

Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya ('Islamic Resistance Movement'), was established by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian cleric turned activist for so-called Muslim brotherhood, having dedicated his early life to Islam in Cairo in the late 1960s. Its archrival political wing Fatah, which dominates the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), rules in the West Bank. 

The two group's incessant hostility towards Israel has destabilised the besieged Gaza for decades. 

Hamas came to prominence during the outbreak of the first intifada, a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Initially, Hamas sought to eradicate the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Sunni Islamist militant group formed in the 1980s by Fathi Shikaki, a Palestinian inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, to resist the Israeli occupation in Gaza but did not agree with Hamas' strategies. Hamas, at one point, also strained its ties with Iran over its support for President Bashar Assad's forces in the devastating Syrian civil war but mended relations after the ouster of PIJ. The latter initiated ‘peace talks’ with Israel that Hamas did not agree with as it sought for the ‘destruction’ of Israel. 

Hamas' governing structure over the years. Credit: Council on Foreign Relations. 

• Hamas took over Gaza between June 10 and 15 in 2007 after the Fatah–Hamas conflict. Hamas gained prominence after the now-ousted Fatah forces, loyal to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the centre of the power struggle in Palestine's political scene, were defeated in the bloodiest battle leaving Hamas to de facto rule Gaza after driving Fatah out. 

Trigger warning: Hamas terrorists kidnapped an Israeli young woman earlier today. 

Hamas = Isis. 

Same ideology, different names.

The footage coming out of southern Israel makes this absolutely clear. pic.twitter.com/DV1buYx2Br

— Israel ישראל 🇮🇱 (@Israel) October 7, 2023

• Palestinian armed militants ‘Hamas’ were emboldened after securing a win in the deadly battle with the Fatah-allied security forces for control of the seaside strip of Gaza that descended into civil war. Israel’s battles, and staccato of gun battles in recent time is reminiscent of Islamic militant group Hamas’ yearlong goals of systemic power in the West Bank.

Hamas militants seized an Israeli tank and set it ablaze. Credit: AP

Rockets launched from Gaza Strip by the Hamas militants on Israel. Credit: AP

• Hamas has sought to seize the dozens of towns bordering Israel in fits and spurs since defeating the Fatah’s strongman Mohammed Dahlan. It sealed the victory in the parliamentary elections in January 2006, with an intent to oust the President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas.
• Abbas accused the Palestinian Islamist militia Hamas of attempting to take the Gaza ‘by force and coercion.’ The territory of Gaza is the contentious 41km- (25-mile) long and 10km-wide strip with a population of 2.3 million, tucked away between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.
• While Israel controls the airspace, and the shorelines over Gaza, Egypt controls the transits on who passes in and out of the strip. Hamas militants, albeit, label Israeli control as the 'occupation',' arguing that the Israeli state was created in 1948. 
• Hamas calls the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza as ‘Palestinian territories’, while Israel insists that they’re Jewish kingdoms and are ancient homes to the Jews as outlined in the bible.  

Hamas militants broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip and rampaged through nearby Israeli communities. Credit: AP

• The Palestinian resistance forces, led by Hamas, do not recognise Israel’s ‘right to exist.’
• The spinoff of the Palestinian Islamist militia was created in the late 1980s and wants to create an ‘independent Palestine’. 
• The United States and European Union, Israel, the UK and dozens of other countries have designated Hamas as a ‘terrorist organization’ owing to its consistent and unwavering armed resistance against Israel, which it deems as a ‘zionist regime.’
• The Islamic Republic of Iran flows the material, munitions and financial backing to Hamas, while Turkey is accused of harbouring some of the faction’s top commanders.

A ball of fire and smoke rise from an explosion on a Palestinian apartment tower following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Credit: AP

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in 2018, said that Hamas “is not a terrorist organization.” “Reminder to Netanyahu: Hamas is not a terrorist organization and Palestinians are not terrorists. It is a resistance movement that defends the Palestinian homeland against an occupying power,” Erdogan wrote on his official X account, formerly Twitter. “Netanyahu is the PM of an apartheid state that has occupied a defenceless people's lands for 60+ years in violation of UN resolutions,” Turkish President asserted.
• In what can be seen as the broader regional conflagration, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, designated as a ‘terrorist organization’ by dozens of countries, supports Hamas. Its fighters have rampaged into nearby Israeli towns to the border, striking the Israeli military positions, taking IDG soldiers captives, abducting the citizens, and spurring armed flare-ups in the disputed area along the border with Syria's Golan Heights.

Police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, southern Israel. Credit: AP

• Hamas officials attribute the longstanding Israel-Palestine tensions and violent conflagrations between the Hamas militants and IDF to the dispute over the sacred al-Aqsa mosque compound or the Temple Mount (as known to Israelis) holy to both Muslims and the Jews.