HAMAS, the Islamic fundamentalist movement that pulled off a stunning victory in last week's parliamentary election, sweeping aside Fatah's decades-long dominance of Palestinian politics, first came to public notice in the summer of 1988. That was when it challenged the secular leadership of the first intifada against Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza.

Founded in Gaza the year before, the group is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which began in Egypt in 1928 with the slogan "The Koran Is Our Constitution." An acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas is also the Arabic word for "zeal."

From the start, the group has been a wild card in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In the early years, Israeli authorities appeared to tolerate Hamas in the hope that it would be a counterweight to Yasir Arafat's leadership.

After the Israelis and Palestine Liberation Organization reconciled themselves to the terms of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Hamas continued to reject efforts to negotiate peace with Israel, and its attacks on Israeli civilians, particularly suicide bombings, helped stymie progress toward a final settlement.