Hamas has a host of leadership bodies that perform various political, military, and social functions.

The movement went on to spearhead violent resistance during the second intifada, in the early 2000s, though PIJ and Fatah’s Tanzim militia were also responsible for violence against Israelis. In 1997, the United States designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organization. Hamas condemned the accords, as well as the PLO’s and Israel’s recognition of each other, which Arafat and Rabin officially agreed to in letters sent days before Oslo. The historic pact established limited self-government for parts of the West Bank and Gaza under a newly created entity called the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Hamas first employed suicide bombing in April 1993, five months before PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords. In what observers called an attempt to moderate its image, Hamas presented a new document in 2017 that accepted an interim Palestinian state along the “Green Line” border established before the Six-Day War but that still refused to recognize Israel. In 1988, Hamas published its charter, calling for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic society in historic Palestine. 1987, following the outbreak of the first intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.Īt 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. Yassin established Hamas as the Brotherhood’s political arm in Gaza in Dec. 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. 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. The split in Palestinian leadership and Hamas’s unwavering hostility toward Israel have diminished prospects for stability in Gaza. Its rival party, Fatah, which dominates the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and rules in the West Bank, has renounced violence. Iran provides it with material and financial support, and Turkey reportedly harbors some of its top leaders. Israel has declared war on the group in response and indicated its military is planning for a long campaign to defeat it.įind the latest live updates on Day 9 of the war here.ĭozens of countries have designated Hamas a terrorist organization, though some apply this label only to its military wing. 2023, Hamas launched a massive surprise attack on southern Israel, killing hundreds of civilians and soldiers and taking dozens more as hostages. It governs more than two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but the group is best known for its armed resistance to Israel.

Sometimes, as in Italian, it is reduced to s- (as in spend, splay, sport, sdain for disdain, and the surnames Spencer and Spence).Hamas is an Islamist militant movement and one of the Palestinian territories’ two major political parties. The usual confusion prevails.Īs a living prefix in English, it reverses or negatives what it is affixed to. In English, many of these words eventually were altered back to dis-, while in French many have been altered back to de. In classical Latin, dis- paralleled de- and had much the same meaning, but in Late Latin dis- came to be the favored form and this passed into Old French as des-, the form used for compound words formed in Old French, where it increasingly had a privative sense ('not'). The PIE root is a secondary form of *dwis- and thus is related to Latin bis 'twice' (originally *dvis) and to duo, on notion of 'two ways, in twain' (hence 'apart, asunder'). The Latin prefix is from PIE *dis- 'apart, asunder' (source also of Old English te-, Old Saxon ti-, Old High German ze-, German zer-). 'apart, away' (as in discard), from Old French des- or directly from Latin dis- 'apart, asunder, in a different direction, between,' figuratively 'not, un-,' also 'exceedingly, utterly.' Assimilated as dif- before -f- and to di- before most voiced consonants. 'opposite of, do the opposite of' (as in disallow) 3. Word-forming element of Latin origin meaning 1.

Time to dis meaning