In April, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant suggested that Iran provides Hamas with some $100 million annually. The group also receives donations from some Palestinians, other expatriates and its own charity organizations, it said. The US State Department in 2021 said that Hamas receives funding, weapons, and training from Iran, as well as some funds that are raised in Gulf Arab countries. The group has over the years claimed many attacks on Israel and has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and Israel. The PA, whose credibility among Palestinians has suffered over the years, is led by President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas presents itself as an alternative to the PA, which has recognized Israel and has engaged in multiple failed peace initiatives with it. Palestinian Hamas militants attend the funeral of their comrade in the southern Gaza Strip in August 2017. The Accords also established the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In 1993, it opposed the Oslo Accords, a peace pact between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that saw the PLO give up armed resistance against Israel in return for promises of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Unlike some other Palestinian factions, Hamas refuses to engage with Israel. It considers Israel an illegitimate state. The group, like most Palestinian factions and political parties, insists that Israel is an occupying power and that it is trying to liberate the Palestinian territories. The word “Hamas” is itself an acronym for “Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamiyya” – Arabic for Islamic Resistance Movement. It was an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist group that was founded in the late 1920s in Egypt. Hamas said the attack was retribution for what it described as attacks on women, the desecration of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the ongoing siege of Gaza.Īn Islamist organization with a military wing, Hamas first came into being in 1987. “Hamas will no longer be Hamas that we knew years ago,” Michael, who previously served as the deputy director general and head of the Palestinian desk at Israel’s Ministry for Strategic Affairs, told CNN. There is nothing in Israeli history that compares to this attack, he said. “Things will change forever,” said Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv.

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