Letters to the Editor
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Actually Hamas was formed from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
while Hezbollah was formed with Syrian and Iranian help, to establish a Shiite militant beachhead in perennially unstable Lebanon in the wake of their civil war and the rise of the political strength of the Druze and Maronite Christian political factions between 1975 and 1979 - the peak of the civil war there. See after Jordan threw out the PLO in 1970 they migrated to southern Lebanon and began to do what they always do - foment a war. But they were solidly in the pocket of the Soviets then and not considered either politically reliable nor sufficiently religious by the Shiite factions in Lebanon.
Hamas was orginally founded as a so called social welfare organization and flew under the radar for several years until the Oslo accords. Hamas decided it couldn't abide by Arafat's conciliation with Israel and took a different tack - suicide bus bombings between 1994 and 2000 that claimed the lives of about 900 Israelis.