Submitted by an SOTN contributor<\/p>\n
Since the founding of Hamas in 1987, Israeli, American and Palestinian officials have repeatedly acknowledged that Israel did indeed help create and fund the Islamist group.<\/p>\n
The point made by many of these officials is not that Israel \u201callowed\u201d the rise of Hamas or that Hamas emerged in response to Israeli \u201coccupation\u201d of Palestine. Rather, their point was and is that Israel\u2019s intelligence agencies actively helped create and finance the Hamas group\u2026<\/p>\n
More specifically, supporting the Islamist Hamas group has served several Israeli objectives at once: first, it undermined Yasser Arafat\u2019s secular nationalist PLO; second, it helped prevent the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Accords; third, it undermined the Palestinian National Authority and isolated Gaza from the Westbank; fourth, it impeded Western support for the Palestinian cause; and fifth, it justified Israeli (counter-)attacks on Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n
\n
\n\u201cAnyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.\u201d \u2013 Benjamin Netanyahu (2019)<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the visible dimension Hamas is an enemy, in the hidden dimension it is an ally.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 IDF Major General Gershon Hacohen (2019)<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\u201cIsrael started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Charles Freeman, US diplomat and ambassador (2006)<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/blockquote>\nHamas has continued to serve its intended purpose even after the Oslo Accords in 1993 and after Israel\u2019s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.<\/p>\n
For the grand strategists, the presence of Hamas in the remaining Palestinian territories might provide, one day, the necessary pretext for a \u201cfinal solution\u201d to the Palestinian question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why Israel Created Hamas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}