Hamas

Hamas

Flag of Hamas

Hamas is an Islamic terror organization.

Background

From the National Counterterrorism Center:

"HAMAS formed in late 1987 at the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada (uprising). Its roots are in the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it is supported by a robust sociopolitical structure inside the Palestinian territories. The group’s charter calls for establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel and rejects all agreements made between the PLO and Israel. HAMAS’ strength is concentrated in the Gaza Strip and areas of the West Bank.

HAMAS has a military wing known as the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades that has conducted many anti-Israel attacks in both Israel and the Palestinian territories since the 1990s. These attacks have included large-scale bombings against Israeli civilian targets, small-arms attacks, improvised roadside explosives, and rocket attacks..."

Hamas Leaders

• Ghazi Hamad is a member of the Hamas politburo and Hamas deputy prime minister.
• Ali Baraka is a senior Hamas official.
• Ismail Haniyeh is chairman of the Hamas politburo.
• Moussa Abu Marzouq is a senior Hamas official.
• Khaled Mashal is a leader and former head of Hamas.
• Basem Naim is Hamas' Head of Political and International Relations.

Pro-Hamas Letter

In the wake of a terror attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, Harvard University students signed an open letter blaming Israel. After the students received negative media coverage, the ANSWER Coalition jumped to their defense in an open letter titled: "Open letter against intimidation at Harvard: Defend the freedom to speak in support of Palestine!" Excerpt:

We stand together against the racist harassment and demonization of Pro-Palestine student activists at Harvard and elsewhere across the country. These attacks are designed to intimidate, weaken, and silence people's right to speak out in support of the Palestinian people's struggle against occupation and apartheid. Their educational and professional futures are being threatened and right wing political operatives have even rented a TV truck to drive around campus displaying the students' faces. Some are even receiving death threats..."

Hamas Meets with Russia 2023

From Ivan Nechepurenko at the New York Times on October 26, 2023:

A group of high-ranking members of Hamas arrived in Moscow on Thursday, meeting with a senior Russian official in what looked like an affront to the West aimed at demonstrating how the Kremlin still holds sway over key players in the bloody conflict in the Middle East.

A deputy foreign minister of Iran, another major power in the unfolding conflict, was also in Moscow on Thursday, meeting with his Russian counterpart.

The meetings highlighted how, despite a slow start, Russia is trying to retain the role of an important power broker in the Middle East, presenting itself as an alternative platform for possible mediation. They also underscored President Vladimir V. Putin’s vision of international conflicts as an extension of the grand collision between Western states and the rest of the world, with Moscow at the forefront of that fight.

But by conducting a meeting with Hamas members, Moscow also engaged in a balancing act, further risking its already fragile relationship with Israel. On Thursday, the Israeli foreign ministry called Russia’s decision to invite the Hamas delegation “a reprehensible step that gives support to terrorism and legitimacy to the horrific acts of Hamas terrorists.” The ministry called on Russia to immediately expel the Hamas officials.

The delegation of the Palestinian military group was led by Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, who met with Bogdanov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, Hamas said in a statement.

The two sides have discussed the release of foreign hostages from the Gaza Strip, the Russian foreign ministry said, according to RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency. They also discussed the evacuation of Russians and other foreigners from the region. In its statement, Hamas praised Mr. Putin’s position on the conflict and the active efforts of Russian diplomacy.

Since Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, Russia has kept a conspicuous distance from the conflict. Days after, in his first comments about the war, Mr. Putin called it “a clear example of the United States’ failed policy in the Middle East.”

In subsequent comments, Mr. Putin continued to accuse the United States of monopolizing the efforts to resolve the conflict and of neglecting the fundamental political issues that are preventing its resolution. He also called for an immediate cease-fire and the resumption of talks in the framework of the U.N.-approved two-state solution to the conflict.

But as the United States engaged in an intense flurry of talks with regional powers, presenting itself as the main power broker in the Middle East, Russia risked its assumed role as one of the major international powers with enough clout to be relevant in all major crises.

Recently, Russia has been trying to catch up. Last week, Mr. Putin called all major leaders in the region, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Mr. Bogdanov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, met with Hamas leadership in Qatar this week, according to Tass, the Russian state news agency. The meetings in Moscow on Thursday built on these efforts.

Alexandra Appelberg, an editor with the Detaly news outlet in Israel, said that “Russia is trying to demonstrate that the West’s plan to isolate it following the invasion of Ukraine has failed and that it plays an important role.”

According to Ms. Appelberg, Russia has “practically no real levers” that can allow Moscow to influence the situation, but that it might want to “raise its prestige in the Arab world.”

Russia has historically capitalized on its ability to speak to all major parties in the ongoing conflict. One year after Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Mr. Putin met with Khaled Meshaal, then the group’s leader, in Moscow. Despite its own traumatic history with terrorism, Russia has never designated Hamas as a terrorist group.

During a meeting with Russian religious leaders in the Kremlin on Wednesday, Mr. Putin offered his condolences to Israeli citizens and said that Russia “knows firsthand what international terrorism is all about.”

But he also criticized Israel, saying that “the fight against terrorism cannot be conducted on the notorious principle of collective responsibility resulting in the deaths of the elderly, women, children, entire families.”

Mr. Bogdanov also met with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Bagheri Kani, on Thursday. In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry said that the two sides acknowledged the need “to stop armed hostilities in the Gaza Strip and around it.”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

A correction was made on Oct. 26, 2023: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the focus of Hamas’s terrorist attacks. Hamas attacked Israelis inside Israel; it did not attack Israeli settlements. The article also misstated when President Vladimir V. Putin met with Russian religious leaders in the Kremlin. It was Wednesday, not Thursday.

Hamas Visits Moscow 2006

From the New York Times artice from March, 2006 titled "Hamas Delegation Visits Moscow for a Crash Course in Diplomacy".

By Steven Lee Myers and Greg Myre

March 4, 2006

MOSCOW, March 3 - Russia greeted the leaders of the militant Palestinian group Hamas on Friday with a pointed warning that the organization had to recognize Israel and dismantle its militias or face isolation.

As Hamas officials began a high-profile, three-day visit here, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said that Moscow would convey to them a position shared by the United States and other international mediators in the Middle East conflict, as well as "most of the Arab capitals." He said Hamas, which won control of the Palestinian parliament last month, needed to transform itself into a legitimate political movement on the model of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland.

"I don't think Hamas would have any serious future if Hamas doesn't change," Mr. Lavrov said in a briefing for American news organizations shortly before he met the Hamas delegation at the Foreign Ministry.

Hamas has shown little interest in moderating its positions, which call for the destruction of Israel. After meeting with Mr. Lavrov, Hamas's political leader, Khaled Meshal, reiterated the group's demands that Israel leave the territories it occupied in 1967, allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, release Palestinian prisoners and tear down the security barrier it has been building.

"In our opinion, the problem is not in the position of the Palestinian people, but in the occupation," Mr. Meshal, who lives in Syria, said in remarks at the airport. "We are for peace in the region, which may become possible only after the end of the occupation."

The invitation from President Vladimir V. Putin, announced last month during a visit to Spain, surprised and angered Israeli and American officials, who had tried to isolate Hamas after its victory in Palestinian elections. Russia has since sought to reassure its sometime partners that it did not intend to diverge significantly from international efforts to resolve the conflict.

The Hamas visit had all the trappings of an official one, with the delegation coursing around a snowy Moscow under heightened security. Mr. Putin was not scheduled to meet with Mr. Meshal or the other Hamas leaders, but the Palestinians have been offered a tour of the Kremlin on Sunday, as well as meetings with lawmakers, diplomats, Russia's Muslim leader, Ravil Gainutdin, and the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Aleksy II.

Though Hamas delegations have visited Iran and Turkey since the election, the trip to Moscow is the first outside the Islamic world. It has given the group, classified by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization, an international legitimacy it clearly desires, much to Israel's chagrin.

"The Russian invitation has broken the Israeli and American effort to isolate Hamas," Saleh Bardawil, a Hamas leader who was elected to the Palestinian parliament, said in an interview in Gaza City. "It is a political achievement and a victory for the Palestinian people."

Only a year ago, Mr. Putin made the first visit by a Kremlin leader to Israel, where he received a red-carpet welcome. After Mr. Putin invited Hamas leaders to Moscow, Israel's transportation minister, Meir Sheetrit, called the gesture "a real knife in the back." Since then, Israel has moderated its criticism of Moscow, evidently reassured by Russian promises to press Hamas to accept Israel's right to exist, to respect past agreements and, in effect, to disarm.

Mr. Sergey Lavrov repeated those demands on Friday, though he cautioned that the process could be lengthy. "I'll be very frank," he said in the briefing with American reporters, speaking English. "We don't expect that Hamas will do all this and change themselves overnight. It will be a process -- hopefully, not as long as the process in Great Britain regarding Northern Ireland."

"But it will be a process," he added, "and I have some precious hope that having become now a legitimate political factor in the Palestinian and Middle East life, Hamas will reassess its new role, for which maybe it was not ready when the elections took place."

The Hamas visit underscored a new assertiveness in Russia's foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond, seemingly at the expense of the United States. At a news conference in January, Mr. Putin described Hamas's electoral victory as "a very serious blow" to American diplomacy and called for a collective, multinational effort to promote peace.

The first day of the Hamas delegation's visit appeared to resolve little. "The Israeli state is the aggressor and the occupier," Mr. Lavrov said in a news conference Friday evening. "The Palestinians are the victims, so who should recognize whom?"

The Russian Foreign Ministry, however, issued a statement saying that Hamas had agreed to adhere to a March 2005 cease-fire, provided that Israel refrained from violence.

Israel and the United States seemed resigned to Russia's new role as a mediator. After a meeting on Russian-Israeli relations on Tuesday, Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said Israel valued relations with Russia and that "ways must be found to improve them and tighten the understanding."

The statement did not mention the Hamas trip to Moscow. Amnon Sella, a Russian expert at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, said in an interview that Israel would like to see the world united in isolating Hamas and Iran, but preferred, for now, not to pick a fight with the Kremlin.

"If we had it all our way, then Israel would like a united front, with the whole world leaning on Iran and Hamas," Mr. Sella said. "But that is not going to happen. So what is the second-best choice?"

Russia/Hamas Timeline (Not Exhaustive)

• October, 2023: "Vladimir Putin sought to intervene in the Middle Eastern conflict on Thursday by inviting senior Hamas and Iranian leaders to Moscow. In a move condemned by Israel as an 'obscene step' that 'gives support to terrorism', Russian officials met with the terror group who praised them for taking an 'active role' in the war. Ali Bagheri Kani, the deputy foreign minister of Iran, the main foreign sponsor of Hamas, was also in Moscow for talks...A photograph released by Hamas showed Bassem Naeem, its head of international relations, and Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of the Hamas politburo, in a meeting with Mikhail Bogdanov, Putin’s special envoy in the Middle East. Western observers said the meetings suggested Putin had abandoned his long-standing alliance with Israel in favour of closer ties with Iran and its Islamist allies, who carried out the Oct 7 terror attacks on Israel and have stepped up a bombing campaign on American troops in the wider Middle East..."

• September, 2022: "Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, his deputy Saleh al-Arouri and bureau members Moussa Abu Marzouq and Maher Salah paid an official visit to Moscow last week at the invitation of the Russian Foreign Ministry. The Hamas men met with several Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his deputy Mikhail Bogdanov. The delegation members emphasized their support for Moscow’s positions on several issues, while Russian officials expressed their support for Hamas, according to a report by MEMRI.,

• March, 2020: "On March 2, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Chairman of the Politburo of the Hamas Palestinian Movement Ismail Haniyeh, who is in Moscow with a delegation from the movement.The officials held in-depth discussions on measures to restore Palestinian national unity on the political platform of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, as well as on various aspects of developments in Gaza, including in the context of efforts taken towards a lasting and comprehensive settlement in the Middle East based on international law. Later that day, Ismail Haniyeh held extended consultations with Special Presidential Representative for the Middle East and Africa and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov."

• February, 2006: While other countries condemned Hamas rise to power, Vladimir Putin legitimized them: “We are maintaining our contacts with Hamas and intend, in the near future, to invite the leadership of this organisation to Moscow...We have never called Hamas a terrorist organisation."