Al-Qassam Website - Since its founding in 1987, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas has adopted the option of resistance against the Israeli occupation as a strategic way to liberate occupied Palestinian lands and holy places.

Since then, Hamas has been committed to its principles and the freedom struggle against the Israeli occupation and has fought and continues to fight to realize the aspirations of the Palestinian people at home and abroad in liberation and freedom. Hamas will continue to defend the Palestinian people, land, and holy places until liberation and return.

Hamas's inception was a natural development of the Palestinian people’s struggle and stubborn resistance against the Israeli occupation. Despite hardships, aggression, oppression, siege, and obliteration schemes, the Hamas movement steadily protects the Palestinians’ rights and holy places and works towards liberating occupied Palestine and all detainees in Israeli occupation prisons.

Hamas knew that standing against the Israeli occupation was not all roses, and in spite of the anticipated challenges, controversies, and plots against it, it never deviated from the path of resistance. But rather, supreme sacrifices were made by its leaders and members in their quest for liberation and return.

Hamas’ inception coincided with the outbreak of the 1987 First Intifada, thus mounting determined and considerable resistance against the Israeli occupation. As Hamas, throughout the course of the First and Second Intifada, increasingly materialized the concept of resistance to frame military actions, the occupation authorities tried to crush the Palestinian people’s stubborn resistance.

In 1989, to quell the will of the steadfast and valiant Palestinians, the Israeli occupation detained more than a thousand Palestinian leaders and members of Hamas.

Three years later, the Israeli occupation authorities deported 415 Palestinian figures, mostly from Hamas, to Marj al-Zuhur in southern Lebanon. This was hard on the heels of the al-Qassam Brigades’ capturing and killing of Israeli occupation soldier Nassim Toledano after the occupation authorities failed to accept the imposed conditions.

In botched attempts to break down resistance, the Israeli occupation authorities resorted to the targeted assassinations of senior leaders of Hamas and its military wing. From 2001 to 2004, the Israeli occupation forces assassinated Hamas’ leaders Jamal Mansour, Jamal Saleem, Qassam chief of staff Salah Shehada, members of Hamas Political Bureau Dr Ibrahim Al-Maqadma Ismail Abu Shanab, and Hamas founding leader Ahmed Yassin.

The four destructive wars against the Gaza Strip the Israeli occupation has waged, coupled with a crippling siege, have scarred Gaza in ways that can be difficult to quantify, yet the power of Hamas has increased.

Despite the Israeli occupation’s vain attempts to annihilate Hamas and its leaders, the movement never diverged from its path and has been and will always stick to its unwavering positions until liberation and return.