Israel - Izz ad-Din al Qassam Brigade

The military wing of HAMAS is the smallest section of the group, numbering only a few hundred young men. But the group's political followers number in the tens of thousands. HAMAS, like Hezbollah, has created schools, clinics, mosques and financial support systems for the poor, widows and orphans. The group even sponsors a soccer team.

Volunteers to the Qassam Brigade are trained in Sudanese camps and in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah. The Iranians provide more than US$30 million a year (compared to ten times that provided to fund Hezbollah), including use of a radio station in southern Lebanon that broadcasts messages of revolution into Israel. The HAMAS base of power is in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They have managed to create an alliance of the 10 Palestinian groups including the PLFP and the DFLP. The leadership of HAMAS is young and highly educated. HAMAS runs information offices out of Amman, Jordan (Ibrahim Ghosha and Mohammed Nazzal); Tehran; Lebanon (Mustapha Kanua), and Khartoum, Sudan (Mohammed Siam). Their U.S. rep (Moussa Abu Marzouk) operates out of Damascus, Syria.

There is some danger of the military wing splitting off from the more moderate political HAMAS.

Unofficial HAMAS page

http://www.hamas.org/

Official HAMAS site (Palestinian Information Center-Beirut, Lebanon)

http://www.palestine-info.org

http://www.palestine-info.net/hamas/

Just Another Day

There were 463 terrorists attacks in 1997 compared to 268 in 1996. Most attacks were in Hebron and West Bank.

2 bombings

4 suicide bombings

18 knife attacks

21 shootings

29 Israelis killed

50 roadside bombings

100 attacks prevented

340 Molotov cocktail attacks

400 stone throwing

414 Israelis injured

Source: Shin Bet