In the aftermath of Saturday’s terrorist and military attacks on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “The forces of civilization must support Israel in defeating Hamas…In fighting Hamas, Israel is not only fighting for its own people, it is fighting for every country that stands against barbarism.”
Those sentiments are quite different from ones Netanyahu privately shared in 2019.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told Likud Party legislators. Doing so would help prevent the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) from ruling Gaza and giving Palestinians a relatively moderate, unified voice at the negotiating table. “This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Israel’s reckless exploitation of Hamas is as old as the group itself. Indeed, decades before Netanyahu’s closed-door candor, the Israeli government pushed Hamas into its initial prominence, with direct and indirect financial support.
Throughout the 1970s, Israel’s nemesis was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In stark contrast to Hamas—which emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood—the PLO was a secular, leftist organization, led by Yasser Arafat, who headed the PLO’s Fatah faction.
As a former senior CIA official told UPI’s Richard Sale in 2001, Israel’s initial boosting of Hamas “was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative.”
Islamist groups began rising in prominence in Gaza in the wake of the 1967 War, as they undertook educational, cultural, social and infrastructure initiatives to make life better for Palestinian refugees there.
When it first registered with Israeli authorities in 1978, Hamas was led by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a half-blind, wheelchair-bound Muslim cleric who launched schools and clinics throughout Gaza. Israel backed his efforts, and also approved the founding of the Islamic University of Gaza…which would go on to become an extremist hub deemed worthy of Israeli bombs.
