Definition: Izz al-Din al-Qassam was born in Syria in 1880 in a Sufi family. He was best known for his Islamism and insurgent leadership in Plaestine in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was a mujahid and founding member of Palestinian resistance to the British mandate over Palestine and to the growing Jewish presence under the mandate.
Because of Qassam's death in a gun battle with British forces in 1935, in which he reportedly refused to be taken alive, his name is synonymous with Palestinian martyrdom and attaches itself to two contemporary factors in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:
- The Ezzedine el-Qassam Brigades , which is the militant arms of Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian organization and rival to the more secular Palestinian Authority.
- The Qassam rocket, a crude, improvised steel rocket made by Hamas in the Gaza Strip and used in random, largely inaccurate bombings against Israeli targets (half the rockets fall inside Gaza).
Alternate Spellings: Ezzedine el-Qassam, Ezzedine al-Qassam
