For Israel, a symbol of Islamic terrorism

The founder and leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was the most important Palestinian leader after Yasser Arafat. For Israelis he was the symbol of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis.

Many blame Israel for Yassin's emergence as a political leader. In the early 1980s, he was identified as a religious leader seemingly uninterested in politics, and regarded by the military occupation in Gaza as an alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization. He was so preferred by the military that the army sent him to Tel Hashomer for treatment for his paralysis, from which he had suffered since childhood, apparently the result of an accident while playing some sport in his youth.

Within a few years, he would emerge as the leader of the Palestinian jihad against Israel.

Key dates in Yassin's biography:

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