Introduction:
When Hasan al-Banna founded Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 the Ottoman Empire had just collapsed and there is a churning in the Muslim world. Banba filled this void by arguing that Islam is more than a religion, but a comprehensive way of life based on the tenets of Wahhabism, better known as Islamism today. He added jihadia training for the students. Muslim Brotherhood (MB) represented a holistic religious and education movement that coupled political thought to the process. His MB or Hizb Al Ikhwan Al-Muslimoon developed into a popular movement, but violent streak in Wahabbism became to manifest on 28 Dec 1948 when a Brotherhood member assassinated the Egyptian PM Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi. MB perceived that the Egyptian PM is soft on the “Zionist” state of Israel. Al Banna, who rose from an elementary school teacher to a preacher of repute in Egypt he was also killed by security forces in Cairo in Feb 1949. In 1981 Anwar-as-Sadat, the PM of Egypt was killed by MB when he signed the Egypt-Israel peace agreement.
The MB runs an extensive network spread over seventy countries with violent jihadi groups like al Jihad, alGama’at al-Islamiya in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine being the primary ones. Hassan Al Banna worked in the town of Ismailia near the Suez Canal. The assassin of PM Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi was a 23 yr old veterinary student and Brotherhood member. The military takeover of Egyptian government in 2013 the MB formed two organizations called Hasm and Liwa al-Thawra, both of which are designated by US as terror organization. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri is a former MB.
After President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011, the MB senior leader Mohamed Morsi won the first free Presidential election but the military dissolved Parliament in 2012 and Morsi in 2013. The current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi considers MB a terrorist organization. An Associated Press team covering the Kurdish offensive in March 2019 in the last of Islamic State strongholds noted in his diary items left over by IS fighters, “The ID card of two men from Aleppo province.. a teddy bear... a copy of “Milestones”. Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Islamist theorist, writer and leading member of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood wrote “Milestones” in 1964, while in prison under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime. The appeal of Qutb’s ideas that captures the imagination of violent groups like IS lies in the idea that it combines religious framework to political struggles against post-colonial regimes that dominated the Arab World. The first serious crisis of those regimes came in the Arab Spring movement of 2011, that swept may regimes under its weight, including Qutb’s Egypt. Qutb’s execution in 1966 under Nasser’s regime gave him an iconic status in his martyrdom and inspired Salafi jihadi movement of 1990s in Egypt and after 2011 the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
State of Israel: History and Creation
The ancestors of the Jewish people, who are the residents of the State of Israel, were the wandering Hebrew tribes fleeing Mesopotamia (currently Iraq) as they were confronted with ten centuries of warfare and migration. Finally they found their way to Egypt, where again under Moses they began their forty year trek back to the hills of Judea. It rose to greatness under David and Solomon when in 586 BC warfare started with unrelenting assaults by Assyria, Babylon, Greece and Rome. The assaults went on till AD 70. The Jews were forced into exile as the Babylonians invaded them and the glorious Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem lay in ruins. The word “Yahweh” was so sacred and Holy to the Jews in the Old Testament that they didn’t even utter the word.
When they read and the word “Yahweh” appeared, they would pause in silence then only continue. And the scribes would bathe themselves and use a new feather every time the word Yahweh was to be written. Before WWI the Jews are scattered race, divided over time and space and most having lost their Hebrew language. But a young man barely into his twenties called David Green from Plonsk, near Warsaw in Poland changed the Jewish history and instrumental in creating the State of Israel. He took the name Ben-Gurion meant ‘son of a lion cub’.
The movement to strive for a Jewish homeland was inspired by a hilltop in Jerusalem, called Mount Zion, from which ‘Zionism’ took roots. First Great Britain took up the Zionist cause, and Ben-Gurion supported the allied cause, subsequently inked as Balfour Declaration. Balfour Declaration was translated into the British mandate over Palestine soon after WWI ended. The rise
of Nazism in Germany gave a new fillip to the initial disappointing immigration from other European countries. In 1935-6 immigration from Poland clocked 60,000. To keep the Turkish Ottoman Empire at bay, Great Britain engineered the Arab revolt against Turkey in 1916 led by the irrepressible TE Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia, having their own secret agreement with Arabs.
The dismemberment of Turkey will benefit the Arabs, is what the British Resident in Egypt, Sir Henry MacMohan told the Arabs, whereas the MacMohan letters skipped the word Palestine, the Arab homeland. To keep the imperial designs alive, Great Britain entered into a secret agreement with France, crystallised into Sykes-Picot Agreement. So there were three separate agreements that eventually saw the Arabs getting a raw deal on their homeland Palestine, where 600,000 Arabs live. And Balfour to the Arabs in Palestine became a purely imperialist design. The first signs of conflict began between Palestinian and British and Jewish communities began in 1936-39, against the hungry tide of WWII looming large over Europe.
The Mufti of Palestine, Haji Amin al-Husseini, who is also Head of Arab Higher Committee, reached out to Adolf Hitler of the Third Reich at the British treachery. In 1943 Himmler, placed al-Husseini in charge of recruiting as many as 100,000 Muslim fighters for Balkans, North Africa and Middle-East theatre. The momentous day for which Ben-Gurion and his fellow Zionists waited so impatiently came after the end of WWII, as Germany catapulted, on November 29, 1947. The place was Flushing Meadow in New York, where fifty six delegates of UN General Assembly deliberated on the fate of Israel, with the high priests of the Global World Order firmly on the US lap. On May 12, 1948
David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. US President Harry S. Truman recognized it the very next day.
The first Arab-Israel War started almost immediately in 1948 that led to an estimated 725,000 Arab refugees. From 1948- 1964 when the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) was born were lost years for Palestinian nationalism. The 1956 War with Egypt also called Suez Crisis when Israel invaded Egypt as it aims to regain control of the Suez Canal as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser closed it from Oct 1956. In 1964 crossborder raids into Israel were carried out by Fatah, the guerrilla organization under Yasser Arafat, from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. The stage is set for a unified Arab assault on Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israel war.
The Fatah raids precipitated the confrontation between six Arab states and Israel, who also broke ties with Washington. On 6 Oct 1973 Syria and Egypt staged a surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, with Israel dominating the conflict, on 25th Oct it declared ceasefire. The four wars placed on Israel the areas called West Bank (controlled by Jordan) of the Jordan River and Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt) beyond the original mandate. These wars proved the overwhelming superiority of IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) in face of combined assaults by Arab armies. Meanwhile extremist group Black September (a Fatah splinter group) on Sept 5, 1972 kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes and held them hostage at the Munich Olympic Games.
In 1975 another Palestinian group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) kidnapped Ernest Morgan,
US military attached to Lebanon. Two attacks by the same group were also carried out inside Israel. A rash of Palestinian terrorism followed with Sep 1986 Abu Nidal (a Fatah splinter) hijacking of a Pan Am flight from Pakistan that led to the death of 22 hostages. The rise of terrorism ushered in the First Intifada in Dec 1987. Groups like Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas are stepping up attack in Israel during 1995-96, when Arafat launched the Al-Aqsa Intifada, a low level war against the Israelis in Sep 2000.
As a consequence of Oslo Accords Palestinian Authority (PA) was formed in 1993-95, dominated by Fatah that exercise control of West Bank. Hamas an acronym of ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’ the rival of the now moderate Fatah, won the Palestinian legislative election in 2006 and now ruling Gaza Strip after 2007 Battle of Gaza. Ismail Haniyeh is head of Hamas after Khaled Meshaal. In 13th Oct 2016 the Legal Committee of the Palestinian Legislative Council requests the return of Haniyeh’s government to Gaza Strip, following its June 2014 resignation.
Islamic Jihad and Israel:
The formation of Hamas in 1988 after the First Intifada marked the birth of Islamic jihad in Palestinian controlled territories of West Bank and Gaza. Led by its Izzedine al-Qassam brigades, it carried out multiple bus bombings killing many Israelis. In 1995 Dec Israel assassinated its chief bomb maker Yahya Ayyash. Hamas is an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Gaza became a Hamas hotbed after 2007 after it ousted Fatah from it that led Israeli led blockade of Gaza. This was followed by Hamas rocket strikes inside Israel and counter bombings by IDF. The most deadly bombings was on 2014 that saw 67 IDF losing their lives and six
Israeli civilians killed, and 2,252 Palestinian losing their lives. Most recently in May the conflict took 256 people in Gaza and 13 in Israel.
In 2022 the group’s military wing issued a threat that it will carry out unprecedented attacks should IDF target its top leadership, in targeted killing, especially Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar. Israeli intelligence used targeted killing of Hamas leadership operations over the country’s 74 year old history. Use of targeted killings peaked during the Second Intifada. In a latest wave of attacks in Israel on March 22, left 19 people dead in Israel and West Bank. On April 29 attack by Hamas on West Bank killing a security officer, is raising the spectre of an Israeli response. Palestinian Islamic Jihad(PIJ) first appeared in 1981 based from Damascus in Syria. It carried out numerous attacks including suicide bombings. Its, armed wing called Al-Quds Brigade steadily rose in power as Israel and Egypt squeezed funds of Hamas in 2014. Both Hamas and PIJ are offshoots of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and are members of the Alliance of Palestinian Forces. Shaqaqi the too leader of PIJ was assassinated in Malta in 1995 and he is replaced by Ramadan Shalah became GS of PIJ.
From 2021 President Mahmoud Abbas decided to cancel PA elections. A year before PA suspended security cooperation with Israel as President Trump’ unveiled his “deal of the century”. In the largest West Bank refugee camp in Jenin that houses 10,000 inmates COVID response was abysmal that led to rapid inroads by PIJ and Hamas among the struggling citizens and youths who found a new job of shooting IDF or hurl a bomb. On 2 April, ’22 Israeli Special Forces assassinated three PIJ operatives in Jenin. The war between Israel and the 12 factions that make the Islamic
Alliance include PIJ, Hamas, PFLF (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Islamic jihad has evolved from mere political to religious, as it grapples to find answers in an increasingly divided sectarian and politically charged Middle-East.
Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7: The deadliest day in Israel’s history
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the largest- ever terrorist attack on Israeli soil. The Palestinian organisation, considered a terrorist group by the EU and the US, stormed through the security fence separating Gaza and Israel in the early morning, killing 1,189 people, including 815 civilians, wounding 7,500 and taking 251 hostage. One year on, FRANCE 24 looks back at an event that shook the region and the world. Hamas unleashed a barrage of rockets and mortar shells on Israeli towns and military bases. It was the start of what the armed wing of Hamas called “operation Al-Aqsa deluge”, a reference to the AlAqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest site. This was the opening salvo in the deadliest terrorist attack against Israel since its birth in 1948. The bloody incursion caught Israel off guard, timed to coincide with the Jewish Sabbath and the vast day of the religious holiday of Sukkot. This intelligence failure had a precedent: 50 years and one day earlier, on October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria had launched a surprise offensive, igniting the Yom Kippur War.
Hamas fighters cross the border:
The rockets served to cover the coordinated incursion by Hamas commandos. Hundreds of fighters from Hamas’s armed
wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, headed for dozens of points along the 59-kilometre barrier separating the Gaza Strip and Israel. Hamas targetes Israeli armourrd vehicles, equipments including cameras and communication devices at the border. The security fences were breached next to allow hundreds of Hamas commandos to cross the Erez border.
IDF estimated close to 3000 Hamas fighters ingiltrated in motorbikes, trucks and assorted vehicles through the breached fence. IDF bases like Erez, Zikim, Nahal Oz, Sufa, and two other basss near Kerem Shalom and Be”eri were attacked. IDF lost fifty sdeirs in. nahal Oz mostly women. At 7 am Hamas entered the town of Sderot (a km from Gaza) kiling 20 civilians by rand fiting.
The Kibbutzim of Yahini, Nir Oz, Kfar Aza nearGsz were attacked. In Be”eri Jinnutz a town of several thousand the madsacre stretched to hours together. The residents were attacked house to house. Total 101 people were killed including 31 security personnel and 33 people were taken hostage. In Kfar Aza 18 people were taken hostage and 64 were killed. Re”im Kibbutz thr site of Supernova music festival saw thr biggest massacre. Out of the crowd of 3000 mostly young people 364 we’re killed and 44 taken hostage.