What is the organizational chart of Hamas?

Founded in 1987 in Gaza, Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) is a Palestinian Islamo-nationalist group, stemming from the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Its charter, written in 1988, calls for the destruction of Israel. Article 20 of a document amended in 2017 states that “Hamas considers the creation of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, according to the limits of June 4, 1967, with the return of refugees and displaced persons towards the houses from which they were expelled, as a formula of national consensus”. This is an implicit recognition of Israel. But until today, Hamas is not ready to explicitly recognize the Jewish state.

Hamas relies on four centers of power: the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, prisoners in Israel, and the Palestinian diaspora.

The Political Bureau and the military branch (the Ezzedine al-Qassam brigades) are its main governing bodies. Some of the members of the Political Bureau are sheltered abroad, mainly in Qatar, Turkey and Lebanon. It sets the overall strategy of the Islamist formation whose priority is to put an end to the Israeli occupation of the Occupied Territories (West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip). The military branch deals with the operational aspects of the armed struggle against the Jewish state.

Since 2003, after a wave of suicide attacks that killed a significant number of Israeli civilians, Hamas has been considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, in addition to the Jewish state. Israel vowed to “annihilate” it, after the unprecedented attack it committed on October 7 – 1,140 dead, the majority of them civilians.