Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: destruction of the Jewish State of Israel. Established in Gaza in 1988, Hamas arose out of an earlier Brotherhood front group (Mujama’) that was founded by Ahmad Yassin in 1973. Ironically, it was the Israeli administration in Gaza that in- itially encouraged and even indirectly funded this welfare charity in the belief that it would serve as a useful counterweight to Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War. Most of Hamas’ funding, however, came from local zakat collections, Gulf Islamic organizations and the Palestinian diaspora.331 The 1988 formation of Hamas gave the Brotherhood a way to participate in the first Palestinian Intifada against Israel. Founding members of the organization include: Ahmad Yassin, ’Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, Dr. Mahmud Zahar, Musa Abu Marzook and Khalid Meshaal. Hamas’s charter, edited and approved by Yassin (considered the group’s founder and leader), makes clear that all of historical Palestine is held to be “sacred space,” land endowed by Allah to Muslims in perpetuity because it was once conquered and ruled by Muslims. As noted earlier in this report, waqf is land that can never be relinquished to the control of non-Muslims – much less Jews – and must be reconquered, by violent jihad if ne- cessary, in order to subjugate it to shariah and re-incorporate it into the Dar al-Islam. Hamas was created with three principal wings: (1) a politi- cal wing for dawa, fundraising, and the takeover of mosques; (2) an intelligence apparatus, known as al-Majd (glory); and (3) a mil- itary wing, the ’Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades. The political wing created a social infrastructure of clinics, hospitals and schools for the purpose of disbursing welfare and performing the indoctrination and recruitment required for dawa. At first, Israel did little to disrupt Hamas activities as the latter’s 192 social support network was seen to be a useful means of marginal- izing the PLO.332 The intelligence wing was tasked with internal policing, in particular the identification and killing of actual and suspected collaborators, which it did ruthlessly. The intelligence wing later merged with the ’Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades. Despite the unambiguous language of its Covenant,333 Hamas military operations against Israel did not become a signifi- cant security challenge until after the First Gulf War in 1991, when Arafat’s error in supporting Saddam Hussein resulted in a massive shift of support from Gulf sheikhdoms away from the PLO and towards Hamas. Millions in new funding enabled Ha- mas to take over what had been the PLO’s social support role among Gazans, whose loyalty shifted accordingly. The pan-Islamic jihad meetings held in Khartoum in the early 1990s at the invitation of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and radical Sunni cleric Hasan Turabi brought Palestinian repre- sentatives from Hamas and the PLO together with Osama bin La- den’s emerging al Qaeda group, Hezbollah, and the Shiite Iranian regime. Dedication to jihad and shariah, hatred of Jews and Israel and enmity towards the United States and the West unified this otherwise disparate group in a shared dual purpose: destroying Israel and doing battle with infidels. Imbued with the zeal of this deadly purpose, Hamas op- posed the Oslo Accords of 1993 and launched a campaign of sui- cide bombing that same year. At about this time, too, Hamas lea- dership began perpetrating an endless and familiar taqiyya cam- paign that persists to the current day. Taking a page from the sha- riah playbook that Arafat successfully employed, Hamas leaders offer statements for Western consumption that sound conciliatory to the intended audiences. Periodic suggestions for a truce (or hudna) alternate with demands for territorial concessions from 193 Israel and protestations of victim status that succeed all too well in demonizing Israel in gullible Western eyes. At the same time, like Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and others in the Palestine Liberation Organization/Palestinian Authority leadership, those who run Hamas stake out very different posi- tions in Arabic for the ears of their home constituencies. To such audiences, they explicitly revile Jews and espouse the destruction of their state. Political antagonism between Hamas and Fatah domi- nated the relationship from the start, not least due to deliberate encouragement of such tensions by Israel. Hamas’ Islamic vision for a Palestinian society based on shariah and derived directly from its Muslim Brotherhood roots, inevitably clashed with the more overtly national, secular image cultivated by Arafat, Fatah and the PLO. As the battle against Israel continued through the 1990s and especially during the al-Aqsa Intifada that broke out in September 2000, the rivalry for the hearts and minds of Palestini- ans intensified, eventually evolving into full-blown hostilities.334 Israeli reprisals – including the targeted killing of two top Hamas leaders, Ahmad Yassin and Abdul Azziz Rantisi in 2004, the death of Arafat in November 2004 and international condem- nation of Hamas, all seemed only to fuel the group’s resolve and inexorable rise to preeminence in Gaza. Then, Israeli Prime Min- ister Ariel Sharon’s decision unilaterally to evacuate all Israeli set- tlers and troops from Gaza in 2005, like the Jewish State’s earlier abandonment of South Lebanon to Hezbollah, confirmed for the Hamas leadership that violent jihad is effective. A critical turning point was reached with the loss of Saudi funding in this period, which provided an opening for Iran to re- place and increase that support, despite the Sunni character of Hamas.335 That support helped assure that Hamas’ decision to participate in the January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council 194 elections translated into a decisive political victory over the PLO and Fatah. The overwhelming decision by Gazan Palestinians to cast their votes in those elections for the party of violent jihad and sha- riah should have been predictable in an environment devoid of the building blocks of civil society. But apparently it came as a complete surprise to both American and Israeli policymakers.336 In the aftermath of the balloting, armed clashes between Fatah and Hamas broke out. They escalated over the following year and, despite a March 2007 agreement to form a national unity government, Hamas launched a military offensive in June that ef- fectively ended the fighting with all of Gaza under its repressive administration of shariah.337 Hamas legalized the savage hudud punishments of ampu- tation, crucifixion, and flogging. Women were forced into the hi- jab and men were required to grow beards. Authorities strictly segregated the sexes, enforcing virtual imprisonment of women in the home. The Islamicization of Gazan society by Hamas has been imposed on the courts, educational system, media and social institutions in general. Gaza’s tiny remaining Christian population faces incessant, unchecked and violent persecution. An intractable ideological and political crisis – over tactics and power in the pur- suit of more-or-less shared goals divides Gaza and the West Bank, and blocks any meaningful progress towards a unified Palestinian nationhood. Palestinian Authority presidential elections have been put on hold indefinitely.338 Particularly noteworthy to any discussion of the threat posed by Hamas is the incessant indoctrination of Gazan children aimed at instilling in them a dedication to shariah, jihad, and re- vering of shaheed (martyrs). Such brainwashing begins in pre- school and kindergarten and is intended to prepare the next gen- eration of Hamas terrorist operatives and suicide bombers. 195 A barrage of television programming, videos and video games, formal classes, cultural performances like skits and plays and summer camps inculcate Palestinian youth with Jew-hatred and themes of armed violence against Israel from the earliest ages.339 As many as 100,000 youngsters attended some 700 Ha- mas summer camps in 2009 where banners, slogans, and songs glorified suicide bombers as role models. In addition to crafts, hiking, and swimming, boys in these camps train with plastic and wooden rifles on the rudiments of military tactics, such as am- bushes and kidnapping.340 In the spring of 2010, masked intruders destroyed United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) summer camps in Gaza that provided an alternative to the Hamas message and pro- grams. (According to Arab media sources, the An-Nusseriat camp was one of two UNRWA summer camps whose facilities were hit by arson during May and June 2010.341) In fact, UNWRA has been fully in bed with the radical Palestinian agenda for many years. A better explanation for the attacks on it may be that Hamas is simply interested in cutting out the middle-man and controlling directly and by itself all of the U.N.’s billions of dollars of humani- tarian relief that is allocated to Gaza. Hamas has eschewed any pretense of nation-building, in favor of a policy of intensified rocket and missile strikes on Israel, coupled with a skillful taqiyya campaign to dupe impressionable Westerners with claims of moderation and victimhood. The roughly four-thousand attacks against Israeli villages and towns within range of Gaza finally provoked Israel to launch Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 to deter further rocket fire. Despite the destruction of much of Hamas’ military infrastructure in a campaign noted for extraordinary efforts by the Jewish State to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza and a much-condemned naval blockade of Gaza by Israeli naval forces, Hamas continues to re- arm with longer-range and upgraded rockets. As with Hezbollah’s 196 overland resupply route, Hamas seems to be relying primarily for its access to arms and other war materiel on relatively secure ground transits, primarily tunnels under Gaza’s border with Egypt.