“The worst day in Israeli history. » This is how an army spokesperson describes October 7, after the attack launched by Palestinian Hamas. The toll continues to rise: more than one thousand two hundred dead on Wednesday October 11 on the Israeli side. The offensive was accompanied by hostage-taking and assassinations of civilians, the very definition of terrorism. The victory of fear is definitive. Hamas, at the beginning of its existence, had not (yet) made this mode of action a specialty.
The first time the Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat Al-Moukawama Al-Islamiya) appears in The world, on June 21, 1988, he was the initiator of a general trade strike paralyzing the Gaza Strip, then occupied by the Israelis. The daily newspaper took up a dispatch from Agence France-Presse that day, which deals with this “Palestinian organization inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood movement” without mentioning the circumstances of his birth in December 1987, in the wake of the first Intifada.
A few weeks later, Alain Frachon, correspondent in Jerusalem, looks at the deployment of this “fundamentalist group”. A competitor for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its leader, Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian national movement.
“Traditionally, the Islamist current is strong in Gaza (sometimes even among Fat activists[a]h of Mr. Yasser Arafat) while in the West Bank it is rather the classic (secular) tendency of the PLO which dominates (itself divided between “hardliners” and “moderates”),” explains the journalist, August 25, 1988. ” Gold, continues Alain Frachon, for the first time since the beginning » of the Intifada, the Islamist movement acted autonomously by launching – alone – a call for a general strike in the West Bank. A ” challenge “ launched to Arafat’s authority.
Fratricidal clash
The Islamist organization spreads its emerging doctrine. “There is only one solution, “jihad” (holy war) for one goal, a “Muslim state over all of Palestine”,” write its leaders, quoted by the reporter on September 12, 1988. In short, without the State of Israel on the map. Hamas calls for “kill the Jews” at a time when the PLO is preparing to recognize Israel. A division of the Palestinian camp encouraged by the Israeli services, discreet supporters of this new actor, accuse Arafat’s supporters.
The fratricidal confrontation broke out in the summer of 1992 despite the outstretched hands of the PLO. “Between the secular activists of Fat[a]h of Mr. Yasser Arafat and the Islamist “bearded men” of Hamas, the knives are drawn, reports, on July 10, 1992, Patrice Claude, correspondent in Jerusalem. For the first time, guns, knives, machetes, clubs and slingshots were used in clashes between Palestinians. »
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