Israel Must Bear the Responsibility for the Creation of Hamas

The situation in Gaza has become intolerable for Gazans. Israeli pundits, including the Israeli Government, have laid the blame for this inhuman situation on Hamas and its allies. If this is the case then we must widen the blame game even further.

All fingers must point to Israel. Prior to the establishment of Hamas, Israel had been playing dirty politics by adopting a policy of “divide and rule” (הפרד ומשול) in order to weaken the Palestinian Liberation Organization under Yasser Arafat. Hamas rose as an offshoot of the Gaza Mujama al-Islamiya branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which had been actively encouraged by Israel to expand as a counterweight to the influence of the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. 1 Israel had ruthlessly given its support to the predecessors of Hamas:

“Israel's military-led administration in Gaza looked favourably on the paraplegic cleric, who set up a wide network of schools, clinics, a library and kindergartens. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin formed the Islamist group Mujama al-Islamiya, which was officially recognized by Israel as a charity and then, in 1979, as an association. Israel also endorsed the establishment of the Islamic University of Gaza, which it now regards as a hotbed of militancy. The university was one of the first targets hit by Israeli warplanes in the [2008-9 Operation Cast Lead]”. 2.

‘The Islamic associations’, the Israeli weekly magazine Koteret Rashit observed in October 1987, ‘have been supported and encouraged by the Israeli military authorities’ who were ‘convinced that the activities [of the Islamists] would weaken both the PLO and leftist organizations in Gaza.’ While most of these activities were funded largely by contributions from the Gulf states, some former Israeli intelligence officers claim that money also came covertly from Israel itself. 3.

The Muslim Brotherhood had been founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna to reclaim Islam’s political dimension lost with the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in the wake of the First World War. ‘Allah is our objective’, the Brotherhood declared in its founding statement. ‘The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.’

Surveying the wreckage of a neighbour's bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile's trajectory back to an "enormous, stupid mistake" made 30 years ago.

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction. 4.

In retrospect, Israel had a huge hand in the creation of Hamas as a balance to combat the PLO under the leadership of Yasser Arafat in the 1970s. We all see how they had helped to create this monstrous organization that had backfired against Israel to this very day and it will remain so for many years to come.

The decision by Israel in those days can be viewed as one of the gravest errors that Israel had made. It had bounced back at Israel with a vengeance and together with Israel’s right-wing has dealt a death blow to any peace agreement in the foreseeable future.

The lowest common denominator that links the right-wing Israel Government to Hamas is their opposition to the Two-State Solution. The former is in favour of a One-State Solution with a certain amount of autonomy being given to the Palestinians to run their own affairs. This is similar to the old Bantustan Policy of apartheid South Africa that will ensure the inferiority and powerlessness of the Palestinian People. The latter wishes to replace Israel with a Palestinian State that is ruled by Hamas that today does not recognise Israel's right to exist nor is it even prepared to negotiate any form of a peace agreement let alone a solution to the conflict. The newly revised Hamas Charter of 2017 makes this perfectly clear.

One does not have to be an expert on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict to conclude that there is no common ground between the two sides to even initiate negotiations on a solution to this festering conflict. The Palestinian Authority under the failing leadership of Mahmoud Abbas is becoming irrelevant.

The present unrest in Gaza with its demonstrations and rioting that has cost the lives of 62 Palestinians over the past week is a terrible tragedy. On the one hand, Israel has a right to defend itself against this unrest that threatened to break the security fence and create havoc and bloodshed on the Israeli side of the border. The moral dilemma that has arisen as to whether Israel's Defence Force was justified to use sniper fire to kill these demonstrators (many of whom, though certainly not all were armed). The answer to this is not all that clear-cut. Bearing in mind that the death of any human being is a tragedy, it would have been more justifiable to use non-lethal methods of violent riot control and arrest those responsible for the damage caused to property as well as injury to innocent people.

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas. Accessed 14 May. 2018.
2. The monster Israel Helped Create Pandemonium
3. How Israel Helped Create Hamas Washington Post.
4. How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas WSJ

PANDAEMONIUthe monster that israel helped create