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

The Occupation suits the Palestinian Leadership no less than Israel

The time has come for everybody to cease the hypocrisy over the two-state solution. Both the Israeli and Palestinian leadership are against the Two-State Solution, (despite their statements to the contrary) for different reasons, yet the lowest common denominator is there - stalemate and no progress for a solution.

Settlement expansion and building in the West Bank occupied since the 1967 Six Day War is part of the right wing government coalition policy. Apart from cosmetic halting of settlements in certain areas, building and expanding existing settlements continues. This suits the present Israeli Government and its settlement enterprise. It also suits the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. It gives them something to cry about as their coffers fill up with more Palestinian pundit donations. Their propaganda machine against the settlements as well as Israel’s existence is very successful in international forums such as the UN and the disintegrating EU. These various bodies contribute billions of dollars to the ever-suffering Palestinians as their leadership uses this as an excuse to receive millions of dollars for funding. Nobody talks about transparency concerning these funds reaching projects to rehabilitate Gaza, or improve infrastructure and quality of life for Palestinians in the West Bank.

The reality is different. The financial donations go to terrorist projects of various kinds and the enrichment of the Palestinian leadership, who siphon the money into their own pockets. President Mahmoud Abbas’s net worth is over a $100 million, while his predecessor, Yasser Arafat had amassed $1 billion. Khaled Meshaal, leader of Hamas, personal assets is $2.6 billion, while in exile in Qatar living the good life. The rest of the leaders of the Palestinians are multi-millionaires. If the occupation ends so will their millions. If a Palestinian state by some miracle is declared, law and order as well as transparency will be part of the deal for it to be viable. The crocodile-tears shed by these corrupt leaders over the occupation bring them more money to enrich themselves. These false tears drops onto the hearts of human rights Palestinian pundits, who quickly blame Israel for Palestinian suffering under the occupation but do not care a damn for Palestinians in Yarmouk Camp, who are slaughtered like flies by Arab Islamist groups. They also do not care a damn for victims of ISIS terror in the Middle East or terrorist acts they commit in France, Belgium and Germany. Knifings of innocent Israelis have their full backing as well as the backing of Israel’s Daesh – Hamas!

Transparency, democracy, human rights, women’s rights and dignity is not part of the Palestinian Leadership’s lexicon whether the PA or Hamas. Absence of these values is a guarantee for the Palestinian leadership to remain corrupt and unaccountable to the Palestinian People they claim to represent. Distribution of wealth does not exist.

Wealth will remain in the hands of the Palestinian leaders of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as long as the occupation remains. They know it as well. All their mantras of Israel’s destruction and Palestinian suffering – imagined and otherwise, are the best insurance for these leaders to maintain their incredible wealth.

Below is an article by Amira Hass of Haaretz about Palestinian corruption under occupation:

Corrupt Palestinian Officials Too Comfortable to Resist the Israeli Occupation April 11th 2016

Palestinians don’t need the Panama Papers to expose what they see as corruption in the ranks of their leaders — there is visible concrete evidence of it everywhere.

The Palestinians are the last to be surprised over the recent Panama Papers revelations that indicate a connection between money and power among their leadership or, what in popular parlance, falls under the broad heading of “corruption.” There is nearly no daily conversation where allegations of corruption are not expressed, whether referring explicitly to individuals by name (cabinet ministers, senior members of the ruling Fatah party or NGO directors) or their institutions.

In conversations with Palestinians, they speak of a broad range of corruption that they believe is present at top levels of society: Outright theft of public funds, receiving of bribes and other favors in return for services, hugely inflated salaries and favors paid to senior NGO officials and high-level political interference in the replacement of senior civil servants.

Then there are the allegations of partnership interests of senior figures from the ruling party and government ministries in private businesses, the provision of public land to senior officials and the payment of huge sums from the political organization level for construction of homes, for medical care or to attend conferences abroad. There are allegations of relatives being appointed to government ministries (and one of the most common allegations is that every minister fills his ministry with locals from his own home region). People speak of officials drawing two salaries at the same time (for example, a senior official in a political organization, a former legislator). And this is just a partial list of allegations that render almost every senior figure or public official into a corrupt suspect, who is therefore untrustworthy.

The animosity raging between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and former senior Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan also includes regular mutual recriminations of corruption. Last year a court in Ramallah dropped an indictment filed by the Palestinian prosecution against Dahlan over major embezzlement charges and ruled that the stripping of the immunity from prosecution that Dahlan had enjoyed as a legislator was not carried out according to the law.

Dahlan’s associates regularly mention Abbas’ sons’ global business interests. They probably would have welcomed the Haaretz Panama Papers reporting by Uri Blau and Daniel Dolev regarding Abbas’ son Tareq and his hefty interests in a private company with links to the Palestinian Authority, but they would certainly not have been surprised.

In a shtetl-like society, which the Palestinian one is, namely small and with extended families whose members are at almost every rung of the social ladder, everyone is exposed to some kind of incriminating morsel of information, in his own view, about senior people or what would fit the popular definition of corruption.And in contrast to the sparsity of written documents that may be exposed to bolster the allegations, there is other visible, concrete evidence of what is perceived as corruption: the ornate large private home or second home purchased by someone who is not known to hail from a wealthy family (meaning where the source of wealth is no longer questioned); the snazzy new car; the time spent at fancy clubs; and the use of official vehicles for personal purposes.
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research regularly asks if people think there is corruption at the institutions of the Palestinian Authority. In the most recent poll, published at the beginning of the month, 79 percent answered that there is, and this response has been more or less constant for years.

In the interest of fair disclosure, in this writer’s opinion, the occupation (including the allocation of land on both sides of the Green Line to Jews alone) is the mother of all corruption, but that should not let the Palestinians off the hook easily. On the contrary, as part of a people fighting a despotic and fraudulent foreign occupation, the Palestinian leadership (the Palestine Liberation Organization, Fatah and Hamas as well) is more highly obligated than anyone else to act with integrity. And they are failing the test.

Under circumstances of occupation, it is natural the definition of corruption would be wide. When the newly-minted head of Israel’s Civil Administration in the territories, Munir Amar, was killed in a plane crash, several senior Fatah and Palestinian Authority officials, including political associates of Abbas, went to pay a condolence call. The Civil Administration is not a neutral Israeli entity. It should be remembered that it is the operational arm of a policy of land theft, water theft, home demolition, settlement, etc. Are their narrow personal interests (currying the favor of the overlords who issue the travel permits) the reason for the typical disregard that they have demonstrated towards their own people?

The senior Palestinian Authority officials continue to securely remain in their posts, not as representatives of the people but rather under the auspices of international support for continued negotiations with Israel in advance of the “establishment of a Palestinian state.” That means continued support for a lie: the status quo of Israeli domination, accelerated colonization, a stable security situation that is undermined from time to time and pockets of Palestinian self-rule.

In these pockets, one finds many senior officials and those linked to them who owe their personal and family wellbeing to that same status quo. In other words, they are incapable of turning the tables and imagining and developing a new and inclusive form of struggle (that does not necessarily require arms) against Israeli domination since that is liable to harm their economic status and that of those around them. And this is corruption.

This is an incredible admittance of Amira Hass concerning Palestinian leadership corruption. She is very sympathetic to Palestinian issues. 

The ‘human rights” Palestinian pundits and BDS activists will continue in their hypocritic fight against Israel’s existence using the occupation to justify their cause. These “human rights” Palestinian pundit xenophobes (anti-Semites) and their ilk, including BDS wish to replace Israel with a totalitarian Palestinian State oblivious of human rights and dignity, based on sharia law that must be Judenrein (free of Jews).

Ending the occupation is against the interests of the Palestinian Leadership.

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