[ad_1]
Hamas Attack On Israel: Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a massive surprise attack, its biggest in years, on Israel Saturday, firing rockets from Gaza into southern and central Israel and leaving many dead and hundreds injured. Dozens of gunmen also crossed the border fence at several locations, entering Israel and taking back several Israelis as hostages, reports said.
According to the BBC, at least 40 people were killed in Israel, which responded with air strikes on Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas. The Palestinian health ministry has said at least 198 people died in the Israeli retaliation.
In a statement, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier said the country was “at war”, as he vowed that Hamas would “pay a price it has never known”.
From the Hamas side, its military wing leader Mohammed Deif is reported to have said that 5,000 rockets were fired into Israel Saturday to launch the “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm”, adding: “We’ve decided to say enough is enough.”
The Israel-Palestinian conflict dates back several decades, and Hamas’ armed resistance started in the late 1980s. Saturday’s attack is one of the most serious escalations in the history of the conflict.
ALSO READ | ‘Deeply Shocked’, PM Modi Extends India’s Support To Israel Amid Hamas Assault
What Is Hamas And Why Was It Formed?
Hamas is the acronym of Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, which is a militant Palestinian outfit active in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Founded in 1987, its stated aim is to establish an independent Islamic state in historical Palestine.
The largest Islamist militant group in Palestine is also one of the two major political parties in the region, ruling the Gaza Strip, which Israel had won from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war and left in 2005.
The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Israel, and many countries have designated Hamas, or its military wing in some cases, a terrorist group.
Created at the beginning of the first Intifada, or uprising, in Palestine against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by Israel, Hamas was opposed to what was seen as a secular approach of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and was against ceding any part of Palestine.
In his book, ‘Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide’, Khaled Al Hroub, professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwestern University Qatar, said Hamas is “the internal metamorphosis” of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood.
According to what Khaled told Al Jazeera in an interview, the Muslim Brotherhood established in Jerusalem in 1946 believed they needed to “Islamise the Palestinian society”, and that it was “a prerequisite for an engagement with the wider battle against Israel”. According to him, the brotherhood did not use armed struggle and had “remained on the margins of Palestinian politics for decades”, but during the First Intifada in 1987 it decided to transform itself and established Hamas with the “specific mission” to confront the Israeli occupation.
“Hamas is a manifestation of Palestinian resistance,” Khaled told Al Jazeera.
ALSO READ | Al-Aqsa Mosque: Frequent Flashpoint For Violence Between Palestinians And Jews
Hamas And Its Violent History
Hamas carried out its first attacks in 1989, targeting the Israeli military. Violence continued even after the first Oslo Accord, which aimed to establish peace between Israel and Palestine, was signed in 1993, as Hamas was opposed to the peace process.
The two states once again failed to reach a final agreement in the peace process, at a summit in the United States in 2000. Soon after, protests started in Palestine over Israeli leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in East Jerusalem and it led to the Second Intifada. The Al-Aqsa mosque compound is known to Jews as Temple Mount, the site of ancient Jewish temples, while Muslims regard it as Islam’s third holiest site.
During 2001 and 2002, as per reports, Hamas made massive assaults on Israel, which included a series of suicide bombings, an attack outside a Tel Aviv disco in June 2001, and killing of 30 Jews at a Passover seder dinner in Netanya in 2002. Hamas’s military commander Salah Shehadeh was killed in an Israeli air strike the same year, and Israel started a siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah in the West Bank.
The next few years saw more violence.
In 2004, after Israeli air strikes killed Hamas co-founders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was also a spiritual leader, and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a political leader, in Gaza, the Hamas leadership went into hiding.
The next year, by August, Israeli forces started a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza enclave, leaving it under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election in 2006 with a majority, but refused to renounce violence and recognise Israel. As a result, Israel and the US cut off aid to Palestinians.
The violence between both sides continued over the years, seeing massive escalations from time to time.
In 2007, Hamas took over Gaza from the then Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah forces after a brief civil war.
December 2008 saw an Israeli military offensive in Gaza after Palestinians fired rockets at Sderot, and it lasted 22 days. A ceasefire was agreed after about 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were reported killed.
A major flare-up was reported in November 2012 when Israel killed Hamas’s military chief of staff Ahmad Jabari, followed by eight days of rocket fires by Hamas and air strikes by Israel.
What happened in July-August 2014 was perhaps the deadliest, as the escalation after the kidnap and killing of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas left more than 2,200 Palestinians and 73 Israelis reported dead during the fighting that lasted seven weeks.
The next major escalation was in March 2018 when Israeli troops opened fire to keep Palestinian protesters back at Gaza’s fenced border. More than 170 Palestinians were reported killed in the several months of protests, prompting a fight between Hamas and Israeli forces.
Major Israel-Palestine Flare-Ups Since 2021
In May 2021, the Al Aqsa compound witnessed clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces, after weeks of tension during the month of Ramadan. Hundreds of Palestinians were wounded. Hamas demanded that Israel withdraw security forces from the compound, and later fired rockets from Gaza into Israel. Israel retaliated with airstrikes on Gaza, and the fighting went on for 11 days, leaving at least 250 people dead in Gaza and 13 in Israel, as reported by the international media.
In August last year, violence began after Israeli airstrikes hit a senior Islamic Jihad commander, and at least 44 people died in the next three days.
In January this year, it was reported that Israeli troops raided a refugee camp and killed seven Palestinian gunmen and two civilians. In response, Islamic Jihad fired two rockets towards Israel. While the rockets did not cause any casualties, Israeli retaliation on Gaza was reported.
Saturday’s surprise assault by Hamas has been the biggest on Israel in recent years. Islamic Jihad has said its fighters have joined Hamas in the attack, according to a Reuters report.
[ad_2]
Source link