Hamas capable of attacks in USA

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Just a few days ago, FBI Director Robert Mueller stated that the Middle Eastern terrorist group Hamas, infamous for its murderous attacks on Israeli civilians, is also capable of attacking targets in the United States. “Of all the Palestinian groups,” said Mueller, “Hamas has the largest presence in the United States with a strong infrastructure, primarily focused on fundraising, propaganda for the Palestinian cause, and proselytizing. Although it would be a major strategic shift for Hamas, its United States network is theoretically capable of facilitating acts of terrorism in the United States.”

Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawamat al-Islamiyya - “Islamic Resistance Movement”) is a radical fundamentalist group that was founded on December 14, 1987 by the 69-year-old Muslim Brotherhood . As a single Arabic word rather than an acronym, “Hamas” means “zeal.” With tens of thousands of loyal supporters, its strength is concentrated principally in the Gaza Strip and a few areas of the West Bank. The group’s leadership is dispersed throughout these same areas, with a few senior leaders residing in Syria, Lebanon, and the Gulf States.

Hamas is best known for using violent means - including suicide bombings against Israeli military and civilian targets - of pursuing its desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic Palestinian state. Though it receives some funding from Iran, Hamas is supported primarily by donations from Palestinian expatriates around the world and private benefactors in Arab nations. Some clandestine fundraising takes place in Western Europe and North America as well, and there was a significant financial connection between Hamas and the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.

The Hamas Covenant, written in 1988, declares: “There is no other solution for the Palestinian problem other than jihad [holy war]. All the initiatives and international conferences are a waste of time and a futile game.”

When in 1990 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chief Yasser Arafat took Iraq President Saddam Hussein’s side in the impending Gulf War, Saudi Arabia responded by diverting part of its usual PLO funding instead to Hamas.

After the Gulf War and the start of PLO Oslo peace process negotiations with Israel, instead to Iran reportedly “pledged $30 million a year to uncompromising Hamas, and agreed to train thousands of Hamas activists in Iran and in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon.”

“We do not accept…any agreement made by Israel and its supporter America. Our enemy only understands force - so they will get it soon,” saidHamas co-founder and “spiritual leader” Sheikh Ahmed Yassin of an October 2000 Israeli-Palestinian cease fire agreement. He warned that his militants would use “stones, guns and explosions,” as they did days after he spoke with a car bomb in Jerusalem that killed two young Israelis.

“Surprise the enemy with your operations and brave resistance,”said a Hamas leaflet, “with arms, knives, Molotov cocktails and all available resistance tools and forms.”

After a “violent incident” in 1994 between Hamas and Arafat’s Fatah , the two groups have reached what appears to be a “good cop, bad cop” partnership aimed at manipulating Israel and the West. While Arafat talks peace and calls for Israeli restraint, terrorists from Hamas’ military wing , the Izz al-Din al-Qassam (“Allotment of the Power of Religion”), have continued to carry out terrorist and suicide bombings against Israel.

Fatah was “never different from Hamas,” said PLO political chief Farouq Al-Qaddoumi on January 3, 2003. “Strategically, we are no different from it.”

By 1994, Hamas had said it would cease military operations if Israel and its settlers withdrew completely from the “occupied territories” and restored the “Green Line” of 1948 patrolled by international forces.

The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram on September 20, 1995 reportedly published the full text of a proposed agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority. It included provisions “to recognize the right of brothers in Hamas to participate in the institutions of the Palestinian National Authority at all levels,” and “to establish a permanent coordinating committee consisting of the two parties ‘Fatah and Hamas’ to consider all issues.”

Hamas founder and leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin was killed on March 22, 2004, by Hellfire missiles fired by Israeli helicopter gun ships. Yasser Arafat declared three days of mourning and praised Yassin.

Yassin was immediately replaced by Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al Rantisi, who escaped an Israeli assassination attempt in June 2003. The 54-year-old pediatrician declared himself Yassin’s successor without waiting for any formal succession process by the Hamas leadership. He initially threatened retaliatory attacks against both Israel and the United States, but later said that Hamas would target only Israel. On April 17, An Israeli helicopter launched a strike on Rantisi's car, killing him and two others -- one of them a bodyguard.

In April 2004 Yasser Arafat told the German magazine Focus that prepared to include Hamas and Islamic Jihad in a new leadership structure to operate in parallel with the Palestinian Authority.
“Forming a unified Palestinian leadership does not contradict the Palestinian Authority,” Fatah Central Committee member Hani al-Hassan told Fatah-connected newspaper Al-Ayyam, “as it is an internal Palestinian factional issue.”

“We think that all political movements should take part in the political decision-making process,” said senior Hamas figure Sheikh Said Siam. “We want a political partnership along new guidelines which take into account the weight of the various movements.”

Hamas, most of whose supporters live in Gaza, is among the strongest and most popular of Palestinian movements. This is attributed partly to its zeal, partly to the social services it provides to the poor where the Palestinian Authority has not, and largely to a perception among Palestinians that Hamas, whatever its faults, is more honest than those now in positions of power in Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.Discover the Network