Al-Qassam Brigades
 Al-Qassam Brigades  (Freedom fighters, Terrorists)   | |
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The Al-Qassam Brigades group is the military wing of the Palestinian organisation Hamas, operating in the Gaza Strip and currently led by Mohammed Deif whose deputy is Marwan Issa.
The Al-Qassam Brigades have the will and capability to launch attacks inside Israel. They have a substantial weapons inventory of light automatic weapons and grenades, improvised rockets, mortars, bombs, suicide belts and explosives. The Brigades fire ‘Qassam’ rockets and mortar shells into Israel on a regular basis. The group engages in military style training, including training in Iran and Syria on a range of weapons designed to inflict significant casualties on Israeli civilian and military targets.
The Brigades, with two other groups, were responsible for the action which led to the death of two Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit in June 2006.[1]
Contents
Genocide in Gaza
During the 2023 Gaza−Israel conflict, the IDF published its intelligence about the Hamas military in the Gaza Strip and put the strength of the Qassam Brigades there at the start of the war at 30,000 fighters, organised by area in five brigades, consisting in total of 24 battalions and about 140 companies.[2]
Fighting back
On 19 December 2023, Asa Winstanley posted on X:
Incredible Qassam Brigades footage of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza City taking the fight to the enemy invaders, released yesterday.
"Israel" massacres civilians (Palestinian and Israeli alike) but Palestinian defence forces fight military targets.[3]
On 25 December 2023, Hamas leader Yahyah Sinwar said:
“Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades are fighting a fierce, violent and unprecedented battle against the Israeli occupation forces, and the occupation army suffered heavy losses in life and equipment.
"The Qassam Brigades targeted during the ground war at least 5,000 soldiers and officers, a third of whom were killed, the other third seriously injured, and the last third with permanent disabilities, but at the level of military mechanisms, 750 of them were destroyed, between total and partial destruction.
"The Al-Qassam Brigades have shattered the occupation army, and they are on the path of its smashing, and they will not be subject to the conditions of occupation.”[4]
History
The Al-Qassam Brigades are named after Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Muslim preacher and mujahid in Mandatory Palestine. In 1930, al-Qassam organised and established the 'Black Hand', a militant organisation that was opposed to Zionism and British and French rule in the Levant. Before dying in a dramatic shootout with British forces in 1935, al-Qassam exhorted his followers to embrace martyrdom and fight until the last bullet, which turned him into a role model for Palestinian resistance.
Created in mid-1991, the group was at the time concerned with blocking the Oslo Accords negotiations. From 1994 to 2000, the Al-Qassam Brigades have claimed responsibility for carrying out a number of attacks against Israelis.[5]
Aims
According to the Al-Qassam Brigades, their aims are:
To contribute in the effort of liberating Palestine and restoring the rights of the Palestinian people under the sacred Islamic teachings of the Holy Quran, the Sunnah (traditions) of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and the traditions of Muslims rulers and scholars noted for their piety and dedication.
Irish analogy
The Al-Qassam Brigades are an integral part of Hamas. While they are subordinate to Hamas' broad political goals and its ideological objectives, they have a significant level of independence in decision making. In 1997, political scientists Ilana Kass and Bard O'Neill described Hamas' relationship with the Brigades as reminiscent of Sinn Féin's relationship to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and quoted a senior Hamas official:
"The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade is a separate armed military wing, which has its own leaders who do not take their orders [from Hamas] and do not tell us of their plans in advance."
Carrying the IRA analogy further, Kass and O'Neill argued that the separation of the political and military wings shielded Hamas' political leaders from responsibility for terrorism while the plausible deniability this provided made Hamas an eligible representative for peace negotiations as had happened with Sinn Féin politician Gerry Adams.[6]
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Priti Patel's Israel links undermined British diplomacy in the Middle East | Article | 23 December 2021 | Martin Linton | Home Secretary Priti Patel, who was fired from her previous government post by Theresa May for holding secret meetings with Israeli ministers, spearheaded the blacklisting of Hamas as a "terrorist organisation" in a move that angered Palestinians and undermined British diplomacy |
References
- ↑ "Hamas's Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades"
- ↑ "How Hamas secretly built a 'mini-army' to fight Israel"
- ↑ "Incredible Qassam Brigades footage of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza City taking the fight to the enemy invaders"
- ↑ "Yahyah Sinwar's official statement"
- ↑ "Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’: how Hamas and Tehran are attempting to galvanise their allies against Israel"
- ↑ "The Deadly Embrace: The Impact of Israeli and Palestinian Rejectionism on the Peace Process" Archived 5 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine University Press of America, Ilana Kass & Bard E. O'Neill, 1997
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