Hamas and Israel: The Islamist Ideology Behind a Conflict That Is Not Only Territorial

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is often discussed through Gaza, borders, settlements, refugees, military operations and competing national claims.

Those issues are real. But Hamas’s own documents show that its conflict with Israel has never been limited to Israeli policy or to territory captured in 1967.

From its founding covenant to its later political platform, Hamas has repeatedly rejected the legitimacy of permanent Jewish sovereignty in the land it defines as Palestine. Its original charter described that land as an Islamic religious endowment that could never be surrendered. Its 2017 political document softened some of the movement’s rhetoric, but still refused to recognize Israel and maintained a claim to the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

That distinction matters.

A dispute over borders can theoretically be addressed by changing borders. A disagreement over a government's policies can theoretically be addressed when those policies change.

But an ideology that rejects the legitimacy of the other state’s continued existence presents a fundamentally different problem.

A recent analysis by the Center for the Study of Political Islam International, or CSPii, argues that this religious and ideological dimension helps explain the extraordinary importance Israel has acquired within parts of political Islam.

Some of CSPii’s broader claims go beyond what the evidence can establish. Muslims, Islamist organizations, Arab governments, Iran, Hamas and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation cannot responsibly be treated as one political actor.

But on Hamas itself, the documentary record is striking.

Hamas’s founding covenant went far beyond opposition to Israeli policy

Hamas issued its original covenant in August 1988.

The document explicitly identified the Islamic Resistance Movement as one of the Palestinian wings of the Muslim Brotherhood and declared Islam to be the framework from which Hamas derived its ideas and political program.

Its territorial doctrine was equally explicit.

Article 11 declared the land of Palestine an Islamic waqf, or religious endowment, consecrated for future Muslim generations. According to the document, no Arab country, Palestinian organization, king, president or other political authority had the right to surrender any part of it.

This is critical to understanding the ideological problem Israel faces.

The covenant was not merely demanding a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

It was denying the legitimacy of permanently relinquishing any part of the territory Hamas regarded as Palestine.

Article 13 then rejected peaceful initiatives and international conferences, stating that Hamas saw no solution to the Palestinian question except through jihad. Article 15 described jihad as an individual obligation when Muslim land had been taken.

In other words, Hamas's founding document transformed the conflict from a conventional territorial dispute into a religious as well as national struggle.

The covenant also contained explicit antisemitism

The 1988 covenant did not consistently separate Israel, Zionism and Jews.

Its introduction described Hamas’s struggle as a struggle against Jews. Article 7 incorporated an eschatological hadith depicting Muslims fighting Jews. Elsewhere, the document attributed extraordinary influence over finance, media, revolutions and international institutions to a collective Jewish enemy.

It also invoked the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, one of the most notorious antisemitic conspiracy texts in modern history.

That matters because this rhetoric cannot be reduced to criticism of Israeli settlements, military operations or government policy.

The document incorporated hostility toward Jews collectively alongside Hamas’s opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel.

At the same time, precision matters. The conspiracy mythology represented by the Protocols originated in modern European antisemitism, not solely in Islamic religious tradition. Hamas’s 1988 ideology fused Islamic religious motifs, Palestinian nationalism, opposition to Zionism and European antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Hamas changed its rhetoric in 2017, but it did not recognize Israel

In 2017, Hamas published a new political document.

The differences were significant.

Hamas now described itself as a Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement. The formal description of Hamas as a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood disappeared. The document removed the 1988 covenant’s most blatant Jewish conspiracy material and explicitly stated that Hamas’s conflict was with the Zionist project rather than Jews because of their religion.

It also gave more space to Palestinian nationalism, political pluralism and the possibility of a Palestinian state along the pre 1967 lines.

Those changes should not simply be dismissed.

But they should not be confused with recognition of Israel either.

The 2017 document explicitly states that there will be no recognition of the legitimacy of what Hamas calls the Zionist entity. It defines Palestine as extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and rejects any alternative to what it describes as the complete liberation of Palestine.

The document simultaneously says that the establishment of a Palestinian state along the June 4, 1967 lines can be considered a formula of national consensus.

The distinction is crucial.

Hamas was signaling that it could accept a Palestinian state on part of the territory without recognizing Israel or relinquishing its claim to the rest.

The 2017 document also did not formally revoke the 1988 covenant.

So while Hamas moderated important elements of its language, especially regarding Jews, its rejection of Israel as a legitimate permanent sovereign state remained.

The issue is not simply where Israel’s borders should be

This is where the ideological dimension becomes especially relevant to Israel.

Israeli governments can change.

Settlement policies can change.

Military tactics can change.

Borders can theoretically be negotiated.

But none of those changes, by themselves, resolve an ideological doctrine under which permanent Jewish sovereignty anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean remains illegitimate.

Hamas’s 2017 language is more politically flexible than its 1988 covenant, but it still creates a basic obstacle to any settlement that requires Hamas to accept Israel as a permanent state.

That does not mean every Palestinian holds this position.

It means Hamas does.

And Hamas’s own documents are the evidence.

Jerusalem gives Hamas a cause far larger than Gaza

Jerusalem is central to this ideological framework because it connects Palestinian nationalism to Islamic sacred geography.

The Haram al Sharif compound, which contains Al Aqsa Mosque and is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is one of the most sensitive religious sites in the world.

In Islamic tradition, Jerusalem is associated with Muhammad’s Night Journey and ascent and with Islam’s first direction of prayer.

Hamas has repeatedly incorporated this religious significance into its political struggle.

The 1988 covenant describes Palestine as containing major Islamic holy sites and explicitly presents the Palestinian problem as a religious problem that Muslims should understand on that basis. It connects Al Aqsa directly to the obligation to mobilize beyond Palestine itself.

This allows Hamas to transform a local or national confrontation into a transnational cause.

A clash in Jerusalem can be framed as an attack on Muslims far beyond Jerusalem.

A conflict originating in Gaza can be presented as a battle for Al Aqsa.

That mechanism became unmistakable on October 7, 2023.

October 7 was named “Al Aqsa Flood” for a reason

Hamas did not name its October 7 assault after Gaza.

It called it “Al Aqsa Flood.”

Mohammed Deif, then commander of Hamas’s military wing, invoked Al Aqsa, Palestinian prisoners and other grievances as he announced the operation and appealed to audiences across the Arab and Muslim world.

The name helped Hamas present the attack as something larger than a Gaza based military operation. It connected the assault to Jerusalem and one of Islam’s most important religious sites.

But Hamas’s stated justification should never be confused with an objective account of what happened on October 7.

The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that civilians were intentionally targeted during the assault and that the attack had been planned and coordinated over a significant period. It found that the attacks were led and coordinated by Hamas and carried out by Hamas’s military wing alongside other Palestinian armed groups. The Commission also documented abductions of civilians into Gaza, including children.

Hamas later sought to portray the operation as principally directed against Israeli military targets.

The independent evidence does not support that account.

The significance of the name “Al Aqsa Flood” therefore lies not in validating Hamas’s justification, but in revealing how the movement framed an attack involving deliberate violence against civilians as part of a broader religious and national struggle centered on Jerusalem.

The Muslim Brotherhood connection began decades before Hamas

Hamas did not invent the idea of Palestine as an Islamic political cause.

The Muslim Brotherhood became deeply involved with Palestine decades before Hamas existed.

Under Hassan al Banna, the movement mobilized around the Palestinian issue during the British Mandate period, and Brotherhood members and volunteers participated in the 1948 war.

Hamas consciously placed itself inside that historical lineage.

Its 1988 covenant identified the movement as a Palestinian Brotherhood wing and referred to earlier Brotherhood participation in the struggle over Palestine.

But Hamas cannot be explained purely as an imported Egyptian ideological project.

It emerged from a specifically Palestinian environment shaped by the first intifada, Israeli rule in the territories captured in 1967, refugee communities, Palestinian nationalism and competition with the secular Palestine Liberation Organization.

Hamas is consequently both Islamist and Palestinian nationalist.

Understanding one side while ignoring the other produces an incomplete picture.

Palestine is central to the OIC, but the OIC is not Hamas

The special importance of Palestine also extends beyond armed Islamist organizations.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation was established in 1969 following the arson attack on Al Aqsa Mosque.

That historical connection remains embedded in the organization’s language.

At an emergency OIC meeting on February 26, 2026, the organization again emphasized the centrality of Palestine and Al Quds to the entire Islamic Ummah and described support for the Palestinians as a political, legal, historical and moral responsibility.

That is powerful evidence that Palestine occupies an exceptional institutional position in the politics of the Islamic world.

But it is equally important not to distort what the OIC actually advocates.

The organization officially supports an independent Palestinian state along the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital. Its 2025 Istanbul Declaration described a two state solution as the viable route to regional peace and stability.

That position is materially different from Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel.

The OIC therefore demonstrates the extraordinary symbolic importance of Palestine across Muslim majority states, but it does not prove that those states share Hamas’s ideology.

Muslim majority states themselves disprove the idea of one Islamic policy toward Israel

There is no single Muslim foreign policy toward Israel.

Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

Jordan followed in 1994.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain established diplomatic relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords in 2020, while Morocco resumed official relations with Israel that same year.

Azerbaijan and several other Muslim majority countries have maintained relations with Israel for decades.

These governments can criticize Israeli policy, support Palestinian statehood and emphasize the Islamic significance of Jerusalem while simultaneously accepting diplomatic relations with the State of Israel.

That alone demonstrates why “Islam,” “political Islam,” “Hamas,” “Muslims” and “the Islamic world” cannot simply be used as interchangeable terms.

Where the CSPii argument is strongest

The strongest part of CSPii’s thesis does not require sweeping claims about every Muslim or every Islamic organization.

The documented Hamas record is powerful enough on its own.

Hamas’s original covenant described Palestine as permanently Islamic land.

It declared jihad central to its struggle.

It explicitly incorporated hostility toward Jews alongside opposition to Israel.

Its later political document removed much of that rhetoric but continued to reject the legitimacy of Israel and preserved Hamas’s claim to all of historic Palestine.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem and Al Aqsa give Hamas an ideological instrument that can transform a Palestinian territorial conflict into a cause addressed to a much wider Muslim constituency.

Those are documented facts.

The argument becomes weaker when it attempts to convert them into universal claims about Muslims or into supposed numerical measurements of Islamic doctrine.

The evidence does not justify those leaps.

And they are unnecessary.

What this means for understanding Israel’s conflict with Hamas

There is a temptation to explain every stage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict primarily through Israeli policies.

In the case of Hamas, that explanation is incomplete.

Israeli policy unquestionably affects Palestinian politics and public attitudes. The conflict has territorial, national, security and humanitarian dimensions that cannot be wished away.

But Hamas’s ideological record demonstrates that its rejection of Israel is not simply a reaction to one Israeli prime minister, one military campaign, the settlement movement or the borders created after the 1967 war.

The organization’s foundational doctrine rejected permanent Jewish sovereignty as such.

Its later document moderated the rhetoric but retained the basic refusal to recognize Israel.

That distinction is essential.

It means that Israel can change policies without necessarily resolving Hamas’s ideological objection to Israel’s existence.

It also means that attempts to explain Hamas purely as a response to Israeli conduct leave out what Hamas itself has repeatedly said about its objectives.

The Israeli Palestinian conflict remains territorial, political and national.

For Hamas, it is religious as well.

That is not an accusation imposed on the movement by its opponents.

It is contained in Hamas’s own documents.

And any serious attempt to understand the conflict must begin by taking those documents seriously.