Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) Introductory Memorandum In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful: First: Date of Formation The Islamic Resistance Movement announced itself to the world in a public communiqué distributed in the Gaza Strip on 12 December 1987 and in the West Bank on December 14, 1987. It declared the beginning of a new stage in the struggle of the Palestinian people against the Zionist occupation, that is, the stage of the blessed popular intifada. Ever since that time, the movement has issued regular monthly statements directing the activities of the intifada as well as occasional memoranda and publications giving its perspective on the nature of the struggle with the Zionist enemy and delineating its positions and policies toward various subjects and events. These positions finally crystallized and were defined in its charter distributed by the movement in August 1988. Second: Motives for Formation, Hamas came into existence as a result of the interaction of many factors affecting the Palestinian people since the first catastrophe of 1948, and especially after the defeat of 1967. These factors cluster around two axes: the political developments of the Palestinian question and what became of it at the end of 1987, and the evolution of the Islamic awakening in Palestine and the stage it reached in the mid-10980s. On the first axis, it became increaslingly clear to the Palestinians that their case, which to them is a question of life or death and a cultural struggle between the Arabs and Muslims on one side and Zionism on the other, had been transformed into a mere refugee problem in the aftermath of the first catastrophe and into a matter of negotiating a way out of the 1967 defeat by negotiating away occupied Arab land. In the 1980s, the Palestinian revolutionary program, under the leadership of the PLO, suffered a series of internal and external setbacks that shook and weakened it. In the preceding decade, the Palestinian position had softened considerably. There were signs from the Palestinian camp signaling the possibility of accepting compromises that were contrary to provisions of the Palestinian national Charter. These signals became clearer and took the form of concrete proposals for a compromise settlement, especially after the signing of the Camp David agreements. This softening notwithstanding, the Zionists invaded south Lebanon and laid siege to Beirut in 1982. This dealt the Arab nation its greatest humiliation since 1967, despite the historic stand of the Palestinian resistance. The siege of an Arab capital continued for three months without any meaningful Arab response. This resulted in further weakening the PLO and its departure from Lebanon. On the heels of this exit, settlement inclinations increase within the organization, inclinations that resulted in disputes and dissension. The settlement proposals included making concessions on two grave points that the Palestinian masses, in conformity with Palestine's long history since the conquest by Omar, vowed never to do: Recognize the Zionist existence and its legitimacy Cede the larger part of Palestine to the Zionist entity. Under circumstances wherein these proposals found favorable responses from the PLO, the strategy of armed struggle retreated, as did the interest of other Arabs in the question of Palestine, which became just another routine item on the agendas of their meetings and conferences. Wittingly or unwittingly, Arab countries now started to work separately, shifting the focus from larger national issues to more provincial ones having to do with the meaning and implications of their identity as individual entities. The Palestine question was marginalized further by the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, which commanded the interest of the region for nearly the entire 1980s. Simultaneously, the policy of the Zionist entity became more arrogant. Encouraged and supported by the United States, with whom it signed a treaty of strategic cooperation in 1981, it annexed the Golan and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor that same year. Zionist contempt for Arab ability reached its zenith in 1982 when Zionist forces swept into south Lebanon and laid siege to Lebanon's capital and bombarded it for months and afterward permitted the horrendous massacres of Sabra and Shatilla, which claimed hundreds of Palestinian vitims. The odd contrast in that year was the convening of an Arab summit conference at Fez, Morocco, in September 1982, which came as a sort of indirect response to Reagan's 1981 peace proposal which rejected any solution containing any form of an independent Palestinian state. The resolutions of that conference included one of the most dangerous turns of official, collective, and public policy at the Arab level: the implicit recognition of the right of the state of "Israel" to exist. The resolutions also included a call to create a special confederation between Jordan and Palestine. This call was followed by discussions between the parties that culminated in the agreement of February 1985, later to be cancelled. While Arab policy was fumbling about in the false hope that it attached to successive American administrations, Zionist extremists in the form of rightist parties were tightening their grip on the policy and administration of the Zionist entity. Meanwhile, the policy of deterrence that the Zionist entity has maintained for decades was one that did not elicit any disagreement among the parties. For that reason, it carried out with haughtiness "Operation Hammam al-Shatt," in which it bombed the headquarters of the PLO in Tunis in October 1985, with the full support and encouragement of the American administration to which Arab summits attach so much hope. On the international scene, the United States surged ahead of the Soviet Union in the power game, thus imposing its will and spreading its hegemony, not only on the area, but world wide. Apparently, the Soviet Union was plagued by increasingly more serious internal problems that required it to shift attention to domestic matters. This in turn changed the priorities of the Soviet leadership, leading to a gradual retreat from regional conflict, which left the field to the Americans. The Soviet role in the region ended in a way that was as disappointing to its Arab allies, including some Palestinians, as it was unexpected by them. Bye the middle of 1987, the proposal for an international conferenc to "resolve the Middle East conflict" was dead because of the Zionist-American position. In its place, the Labor Party, the ruling party at that time, proposed a scheme to share functional responsibilities in the West Bank and Gaza between the Zionist entity and Jordan. As for the subject of Islamic awakening, Palestine, like other Arab countries, witnessed a clear and noticeable evolution on this front. This facilitate the ideological and organizational development and growth of the Islamic movement, both in the part of Palestine occupied in 1948 as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Islamic trend came to the realization that it faced a great challenge attributable to (1) the downgrading of the Palestine question to the bottom of the list of priorities of the Arab states; and (2) the retreat of the Palestinian revolutionary program from a strategy of armed struggle to an acceptance of an imposed political settlement. In the shadow of these retreats, and with the maturing of resistance among the Palestinians inside Palestine - not outside it - a project of Islamic struggle was inevitable. Its characteristic features emerged with the appearance of, among other groups, the Jihad community in 1981 and the Sheikh Ahmed Yassin group in 1983. By the end of 1987, the conditions had matured sufficiently to initiate a new strategy to liberate Palestine based on new foundations. Thus the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) came into being, and the Muslim Brothers in Palestine had a fundamental role in its formation. Third: The Political Identity of Hamas Hamas is a popular struggle movement that seeks to liberate Palestine in its entirety from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan. It bases its ideology and policies on the teachings of Islam and its juridical tradition. It welcomes all those who believe in its ideas and stands and who are ready to bear the consequences of sacred struggle for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment in it of an independent Islamic state. It is thus a broad popular organization and not a narrow party or group arrangement. It believes that its vision, positions, and policies make it a substantive and qualitative addition to the ranks of the national effort. It is not a substitute for any group and considers the arena of Palestinian national struggle large enough to encompass all approaches and visions. Fourth: The View of Hamas on the Nature of Struggle and the Way to Conduct It Hamas believes that the ongoing conflict between the Arabs and Muslims and the Zionists in Palestine is a fateful civilizational struggle incapable of being brought to an end without eliminating its cause, namely, the Zionist settlement of Palestine. This aggressive enterprise complements the larger Western project that seeks to strip the Arab Islamic nation of its cultural roots in order to consolidate Western Zionist hegemony over it by completing the plan of greater Israel and establishing political and economic hegemony over it. Doing so implies maintaining the state of division, backwardness, and dependency in which the Arab Islamic nation lives. The conflict as described is a form of struggle between truth and falsehood, which obligates Arabs and Muslims to support the Palestinians and to bear the consequences of a holy struggle to extirpate the Zionist presence from Palestine and prevent its danger from spreading to other Arab and Islamic countries. Hamas believes that the Zionist colonization scheme only can be extirpated through a comprehensive holy struggle in which armed struggle is a basic instrument. Hamas also sees that the best way to conduct the fight with the Zionist enemy is to mobilize the resources of the Palestinian people to raise the banner of struggle in Palestine and to keep the embers of conflict burning until the conditions for a decisive battle with the enemy are complete. These include the rising of the Arab and Islamic nation, the acquisition of the elements of power, the mobilization of its energies and resources, and unification of its will and political decisions. Believing in the sacredness of Palestine and its Islamic status, Hamas believes it impermissible under any circumstances to concede any part of Palestine or to recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of it. Fifth: the Movement's Strategy Based on our understanding of the nature of the conflict with the Zionist enemy and its connection with the Western project to append the Arab Islamic nation to Western civilization by imposing dependency and backwardness on it, and given the complexity of the situation in the world and the region and the clear and lopsided imbalance in balance of power in favor of the Zionist-American alliance, Hamas builds its strategy in confronting the Zionist occupation as follows: 1. The Palestinian people, being the primary target of the occupation bears the larger part of the burden in resisting it. Hamas, therefore, works to mobilize the energies of this people and to direct it toward steadfastness. 2. The field of confrontation with the enemy is Palestine, the Arab and Islamic lands being fields of aid and support to our people, especially the lands that have been enriched with the pure blood of martyrs throughout the ages. 3. Confronting and resisting the enemy in Palestine must be continuous until victory and liberation. Holy struggle in the name of God is our guide, and fighting and inflicting harm on enemy troops and their instruments rank at the top of our means of resistance. 4. Political activity, in our view, is one means of holy struggle against the Zionist enemy and aims to buttress the struggle and steadfastness of our people and to mobilize its energies and that of our Arab Islamic nation to render our cause victorious. Sixth: Positions and Policies of the Movement On the Palestinian Front Hamas sees the Palestinian arena of struggle against the Zionist occupation as broad enough to accommodate all views and approaches. But Hamas believes that the unity of the Palestinian national effort is a goal for which all Palestinian groups ought to strive to achieve. Hamas strives to cooperate and coordinate its efforts with all the forces and groups, its guide being the golden rule: "We cooperate in what we agree about; and we excuse one another in what we differ about." Hamas is not a substitute for any organization, and it regards the PLO as a national accomplishment and an institution worth preserving. Furthermore, it has no objection to participating within the framework of the PLO on the basis of a commitment by the latter to work for the liberation of Palestine and not to recognize the Zionist enemy by conferring on it the legitimacy of existence on any part of Palestine. Hamas believes that, regardless of how deep the differences in point of view or approaches may be, it is not permissible for anyone under any circumstances to resort to the use of violence or weapons to resolve disputes or to impose their views. Hamas further believes that, irrespective of the differences in the political orientation of Palestinian groups, it is able to work collectively with them to confront the enemy and to intensify popular resistance represented in the blessed intifada. In this connection Hamas aoffered initiatives to form a joint leadership for the intifada and a proposal to set priorities in the Palestinian national action. Hamas gives special priority to unifying Islamic action groups and believes that the common factors among them are much greater than the factors that separate them. Hamas is a broad popular organization dedicated to the defense of Palestinian causes without discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity. II. On the Arab Islamic Front Hamas maintains contact with all governments, parties, and forces regardless of political disagreements that they may have with Hamas and cooperates with any party ready to support the steadfastness and resistance of our people against the unjust Zionist occupation. Hamas is not concerned with, and nor does it interfere in, the internal affairs of countries. Hamas makes an effort to encourage Arab and Islamic governments to resolve their differences and to unify their stands on national causes. However, it refuses to stand with one party to a dispute against another or to join one political axis against another. Hamas believes in Arab and Islamic unity and blesses any effort expended in this direction. Hamas requests all Arab and Islamic governments, parties, and forces to do their duty and to aid in the cause of our people and to support its steadfastness and resistance to Zionist occupation and to facilitate the work of our movement by aiding it in performing its tasks. III. On the International Front Hamas communicates with all foreign governments, parties, and forces irrespective of their ideology, citizenship, or political system. It has no objection to cooperating with any quarter in the service of the just cause of our people to obtain its legitimate rights or in enlightening world public opinion about the practices of the Zionist occupation and its inhuman and repressive measures against our people. Hamas harbors no hostility toward anyone on the basis of religious belief or race. And it does not oppose the stance of governments or organizations provided that they refrain from practicing oppression and injustice against our people or aiding and abetting the aggressive practices of the Zionist occupation against our people. Hamas respects the decisions of international organizations as long as they do not contradict our people's legitimate rights in its homeland and its right to struggle until liberation and self-determination. Hamas does not believe in moving the battle against the occupation from Palestine to any other international arena. Hamas's program does not include striking at foreign interests. Seventh: Hamas's Stance on Political Settlement Hamas bases its position on political settlement on two factors: Its profound understanding of the Zionist enemy, its intellectual background in the Torah and the Talmud, the writings of the founders of the Zionist movement, and its attachment to the myths of the promised land, God's chosen people, and Greater Israel. Moreover, our awareness of the depth of enemy cunning, especially the deception associated with the armistice agreements of 1948 and the Camp David agreements, leads us to believe that the Zionist enemy intends the political settlement to be a mere stepping stone toward a new phase of expansion and colonization. It is capable of realizing its goal, owing to the obvious and clear asymmetry of the international and regional balance of power in its favor. Truly, the principal of political settlement, whatever its source and details, entails the capitulative acceptance of the Zionist right of existence on a part of Palestine. Since this matter enters the domain of Islamic jurisprudence, in our view it cannot be accepted. For Palestine is a sacred Islamic land that has been forcibly seized by the Zionists, and it is the duty of Muslims to conduct a holy struggle to regain it and to expel the invader from it. Accordingly, the Movement has rejected the proposals of Shultz and Baker, Mubarak's ten points, Shamir's plan, and others. Hamas believes that the most dangerous of the settlement proposals proffered to date is the self-rule proposal now under discussion in Washington. Its danger stems not only from its implicit affirmation of the legality of Zionist sovereignty over all of Palestine, the normalization of Zionist-Arab relations, and granting Zionist hegemony a free hand over the region. Its danger also comes from the consent and acceptance of it by a Palestinian side, even if it does not truly represent the Palestinian people. Such acceptance also would mean the closing of the Palestinian file and depriving the Palestinian people of the right to seek its legitimate rights or to use legitimate means to obtain them. Additionally, such acceptance would sanction the principle of depriving most Palestinians of living in their homeland and legitimize the consequences that flow from it, not only for the Palestinians but also for other Arab people. Because of the danger posed by the currently proposed settlement, the Movement has adopted a position based on the following points: Alerting the Palestinian people to the perils of the self-rule proposal and its implications. Working to unite the Palestinian forces that reject this proposal and to articulate its stand on the matter on the Palestinian, Arab, and international stages. Demanding that the negotiating team and the effective leadership in the PLO withdraw from the negotiations. Contacting the relevant Arab and Islamic governments and requesting that they withdraw from the negotiations and adopt our stand, which rejects the proposal for self-rule. Eighth: The Organizational Structure of the Movement The Movement has worked hard to build an organizational structure that both suits the circumstances of the Palestinian people and guarantees the effectiveness and continuity of its efforts. The principle field of action the Movement is Palestine, where the activity of its apparatuses and institutions takes place. But its systems permit it to expand its activities outside Palestine in proportion as suits its requirements and strategy. The structure of the Movement consists of two main bodies: a consultative council, which determines general policies and approves plans and budgets, and an executive body that directs the activities of the movement. The executive body in turn consists of the following offices and institutions: the political office, the information office, the military wing ('Izzidin al-Qassam Brigades), the security apparatus, the department for the affairs of the occupied homeland, the department of organization and mass mobilization, and the official spokesman (who is headquartered abroad). The Movement has supporters in various parts of the Arab and Islamic world. Ninth: Hopes and Aspirations Despite its relative youth, the Movement, with God's help, has played a prominent role in intensifying the struggle of our people against the Zionist occupation. The blessed intifada and its intensification was the first great step that we took. This, together with the participation of other popular forces, caused the struggle of our people to take a qualitative leap as the arena of struggle shifted to the internal Palestinian scene, replacing the outside field, which had been the focus since the first catastrophe of 1948. The movement also transformed Palestinian society into an effective, activist society, a participant in the activities of the intifada, and it transformed the resistance from a narrow, segmented effort into a broad mass effort. This in turn made the world hear and see clearly that the Palestinian people is subjected to repressive Zionist practices that are contrary to all values and standards associated with human rights, and gained numerous supporters all over the world for the Palestinian cause. Hamas, which ahs been able to garner the support of half of the Palestinian people within the scope of a few years, fervently hopes that Palestinian people as well as the Arab Islamic nation, with its strategic human depth and potential support for the Palestinian cause, will embrace it. We are well aware that the hour of the decisive battle has not yet arrived, but we detect in our people and in the larger Arab and Islamic nation the factors of change and receptivity. "No night but is followed by daylight, and no straitening but is followed by ease." We in Hamas are determined to proceed on the path of holy struggle (jihad). We have made a pledge to God and to our people to do so. Our hope for triumph is great. If the road is long, "they ask thee when is it [the return to Mecca], say perchance, it is near." May God grant us success.