Black Hand (Palestine)

The Black Hand () was an underground Islamist militant organization that operated in the British Mandate of Palestine. It was founded in 1930 and led by Syrian-born Shaykh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam until his death in 1935. The British authorities regarded it a terrorist group.

Al-Qassam justified violence by religious grounds. After the 1929 Hebron massacre, he intensified his anti-Semitic agitation and obtained a fatwa from Shaykh Badr al-Din al-Taji al-Hasani, the Mufti of Damascus, authorizing the use of violence against the British and the Jews.

After the failure of the 1921 Syrian revolt that he led, al-Qassam escaped to Haifa and engaged in recruitment and military training of Arab peasants. The clandestine cells had no more than five people. This organization became known as the Black Hand. In all, he had enlisted between 200 and 800 men. In various acts of violence they targeted Jewish civilians in northern Palestine between 1930 and 1935 and killed at least eight Jews.