The Israeli media was certainly surprised when Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip announced the appointment of a woman as the movement’s new English-language spokesperson.

The Hamas army has long included women, who bore arms and practiced military drills. “Women of Hamas” has become a comprehensive term for the stalwart hard-core female Hamas supporters, who were an integral part of the armed struggle against Israel. The women of Hamas were directly involved throughout the second intifada, attacking Israeli targets or aiding terrorists to launch their attacks, or indirectly as teachers and educators, preaching the taking up of arms against the “Zionist enemy.”

The movement’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades military wing had a female suicide bomber, Reem Al-Riyashi, who received a fatwa from Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin himself to blow herself up in a suicide mission. It was in the wake of that attack that Israel found the operational justification it needed to assassinate Yassin.

Hamas also had a female militant member of parliament, Umm Nidal Farhat, who earned the epithet “Mother of Martyrs” after sending three of her sons on suicide missions.