Hamas mourns one of its founders

One of the founders of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement passed away on Thursday evening. Ibrahim Al-Yazouri was 80, and died after a long illness.

Al-Yazouri and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin founded Hamas in December 1987. In the following year, the Israeli occupation forces arrested all of the founders of the movement, except for Sheikh Yassin. When Sheikh Yassin was assassinated by Israel on 22 March, 2004, Al-Yazouri’s son, Moamen, was also martyred.

Ibrahim Fares Al-Yazouri was born in the village of Bayt Daras in 1941, seven years before the Nakba (Catastrophe) when Israel was created in occupied Palestine. He studied the first grade of primary school in the village and then dropped out of school due to the 1948 war. Bayt Daras was located 32 kilometres north-east of Gaza, and was “depopulated” — ethnically cleansed — by the Zionists terrorists. It ended up as one of more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages to be destroyed and wiped off the map by the Israelis.

Al-Yazouri moved from his village to Ashdod and stayed there with his family for several days, and after the withdrawal of the Egyptian army he went to Majdal to escape the oppression of the Israeli gangs. He and his family ended up in Khan Yunis refugee camp.

Enrolled in schools run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), he finished primary and middle school in Khan Yunis, and then graduated from high school and went to Cairo University in 1960 to study at the Faculty of Pharmacy. After graduating from university in 1965, he returned to Gaza, where he opened his own pharmacy.

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