What Hamas is

What it is

Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist movement founded in December 1987, at the start of the first intifada, by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a cleric who had been active in Muslim Brotherhood branches after studying in Cairo. ² It began as the Brotherhood's political arm in Gaza, built to recover the Brotherhood's fading influence by taking up violence against Israelis, in competition with the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad. ² The movement says as much itself. Article Two of its 1988 covenant calls Hamas "one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine." ¹

Hamas issued that covenant on Aug. 18, 1988. Article Six commits the movement to "raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine." ¹ Article Eleven declares Palestine "an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection," which no one may renounce in whole or in part. ¹ Article Thirteen states that there is "no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad," and calls international conferences and proposals "a waste of time, an exercise in futility." ¹ Article Seven quotes a hadith about a final battle in which rocks and trees call out to Muslims that a Jew is hiding behind them, and to come and kill him. ¹ Article Twenty-Two claims Jewish interests control world media and stood behind the two World Wars. ¹ Article Thirty-Two cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as proof of an expansionist scheme stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. ¹ Articles Seven, Twenty-Two, and Thirty-Two put Jews as such, and not Israel alone, inside the document's stated enemy.

On May 1, 2017, Hamas published a second text, "A Document of General Principles and Policies." ³ Article 16 states that the movement's conflict "is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion." ³ Article 17 says antisemitism and the persecution of Jews are "phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims." ³ Article 20 calls a sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital "along the lines of the 4th of June 1967" a "formula of national consensus," while keeping the movement's rejection of the Zionist entity and relinquishing no claims. ³ Article 21 rejects the Oslo Accords. ³ Article 25 keeps armed resistance as "the strategic choice." ³ The document does not revoke the 1988 covenant and makes no reference to superseding it. ³

The 2017 document supports two opposing readings. The case for treating it as a real shift: the blood-libel material and the killing-Jews hadith are gone, the conflict is redefined against a political project rather than a people, and a state on the 1967 lines is named as acceptable, which is the shape every negotiated settlement has taken. ³ The case for treating it as packaging: the 1967 state is framed as national consensus rather than as a final peace, recognition is explicitly withheld, armed struggle stays the strategy, and the 1988 text was never withdrawn. ³ Nothing in the document itself settles which reading is right.

The money has been traced more precisely than the intentions. Iran provides as much as $100 million a year to Hamas and allied Palestinian groups, along with weapons and training. ² Qatar hosts the movement's political office and has supplied hundreds of millions of dollars in annual assistance, coordinated with Israeli knowledge. ² As of 2021, Hamas reportedly took in upward of $12 million a month taxing goods imported from Egypt. ² Separately, it built an investment portfolio estimated at $500 million to $1 billion, held through companies in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Qatar; the U.S. Treasury sanctioned the financial facilitators running it in October 2023. ⁶ The rest comes from extortion inside Gaza, crowdfunding from witting and unwitting donors, and the charitable sector. ⁶

Why it still matters

Hamas won a Palestinian Legislative Council election. In 2006 it took 74 of 132 seats to Fatah's 45. ⁴ The following year, after a week of fighting, it routed Fatah's militias and took Gaza outright. ² No election has been held there since. ⁴ The Palestinian Authority canceled the vote planned for 2021, and a 2022 reconciliation deal that promised elections within a year produced no visible progress. ⁴

Freedom House rates the Gaza Strip 8 out of 100 and Not Free, describing a de facto one-party state where the judiciary is subject to political control, special military courts operate, security forces carry out arbitrary arrests, and people affiliated with Fatah face persecution. ⁴ Hamas ran the courts under a reading of Islamic law more restrictive than the law itself required, including rules on how women dress and enforced gender segregation in public. ² Freedom House found in 2020 that the Hamas-controlled government had no effective or independent mechanism for transparency about where its funding went or what it did. ² Women are largely excluded from leadership in the movement. ⁴

The designations carry legal teeth. The United States designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. ² In December 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reviewed that designation under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and found the circumstances behind it had not changed in a way that warranted revocation. ⁵ The European Union maintains its own listing, and dozens of countries designate the group, though some restrict the designation to the military wing rather than the whole organization. ² That split is why you will see one government call Hamas a terrorist organization and another call only the Qassam Brigades one, and why arguments over funding and charitable transfers turn on which line a given country drew.

It comes down to whether there is a version of Hamas that can sign something. The 1988 covenant answers no in writing. ¹ The 2017 document leaves the answer open and keeps the 1988 text on the shelf. ³

The words you'll hear

The Muslim Brotherhood. The transnational Islamist movement Hamas came out of; the 1988 covenant calls Hamas "one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine," and Hamas began as the Brotherhood's political arm in Gaza. ^{1 2}

The Covenant. The Hamas charter of Aug. 18, 1988, which commits the movement to Islamic rule over all of Palestine, rejects negotiation as futile, and cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. ¹

Waqf. An Islamic religious endowment. Article Eleven of the covenant declares all of Palestine a waqf held until the Day of Resurrection, which is the theological form of the claim that no part of it can be traded away. ¹

The 2017 document. "A Document of General Principles and Policies," published May 1, 2017, which drops the covenant's language about Jews, names a state on the June 4, 1967 lines as a national consensus, withholds recognition of Israel, and keeps armed resistance as strategy. ³

FTO. Foreign terrorist organization, a U.S. designation made under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Hamas has held it since 1997, and the State Department reaffirmed it in December 2022. ^{2 5}