Hamas seeks to set Middle East ablaze

Excerpt

Hamas planned a massive attack on Israel that was designed to massacre as many civilians as possible, while also striking at Israeli military posts along the Gaza border. It may not have known how much the October 7 attack would result in laying waste to 20 border communities in Israel, causing 50,000 to evacuate and leading to the deaths of 1,300, but it knew this was its largest attack in history. As the war grows and Iranian-backed groups begin to threaten a wider conflict it’s worth looking at what might come next. To understand that we need ot know how Hamas got to this point and what are its plans for the region.  

Hamas, founded in the late 1980s during the First Intifada, has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and has sought to blend religious extremism with Palestinian nationalism, to present an alternative to the more popular Palestinian groups that dominated from the 1950s to 1970s. Hamas also rode a wave of interest in religious extremism in the region in the 1990s and early 2000s, benefiting from the same winds that buffeted Al Qaeda and other groups. However, historically, Hamas was seen as have pretensions toward political power, even as it used suicide bombings and gun violence to kill Israeli civilians. 

The writer is the author of After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East (2019) and adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).