Yes -The Israeli Government Created Hamas

On 7th October 2023 Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (Hamas) attacked Israel in an operation it called Al-Aqsa Flood. All the evidence suggests that Israeli government, or elements within the Israeli government, allowed Al-Aqsa Flood to proceed. It appears to have been a LIHOP—let it happen on purpose—false flag terrorist attack.

Israeli defences were removed, years of gathered intelligence and surveillance data was ignored, pressing warnings of an imminent attack, from both Israeli security operatives and the public, were dismissed and Israeli civilians and security service personnel were abandoned by their own government. While Hamas has been blamed for all Israeli deaths, it is also evident that an unknown number were caused by Israel's military response to the attack.

In addition, Hamas would not exist in its current form were it not for the support it has received from the Israeli government. In no small measure, the Israeli government created Hamas and has continued to support it.

This is not to suggest that Hamas doesn’t have genuine Palestinian support, nor that it operates in partnership with the Israeli government. Quite clearly the animosity between Hamas and the Israeli state is real and deeply rooted.

We should be wary of assuming that, just because governments wage war, confrontation defines the full extent of their strategy. As we have seen in many conflicts, governments fight wars for numerous reasons. Wars are used to seize domestic "emergency powers," test technology, grab resources, widen spheres of political influence and more besides. It is childish to imagine that governments never want war. Often, they actively seek it.

Hamas’ Official Origins

Let's first consider a brief overview of the "official" history of Hamas that most of us are familiar with.

Following the 1948 mass displacement and genocide of the Arab and Syrian "Palestinians"—the Nakba—the Israeli occupation of the remaining Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Gaza) began in 1967. The Gaza Strip consists of five governorates: from north to south these are North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis and Rafah which borders Egypt. Commonly, the entire strip is referred to as Gaza.

The borders of the occupied Palestinian Territory were defined in UN Resolution 58/292 as the extant borders prior to conclusion of the 1967 Six Day War. Broadly, this is the border agreed following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, often referred to as the "Green Line."

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), while it still exists, practically became the Palestinian National Authority—or just Palestinian Authority (PA)—in 1994, following conclusion of the Oslo Accords. The PA is the internationally recognised, secular representative body of the Palestinian people. While the PA may be the "official" representative of the Palestinians, many Palestinians don't trust it and view its current political leadership as the amenable puppets of Israel.

The PA represents the supposed governing body of the Palestinians. It is formed by a coalition of Palestinian political parties, the largest of which—absent Hamas—is Fatah. Mahmoud Abbas is the leader of Fatah and president of the PA. Fatah currently dominates the PA as a result of Hamas strained relationship and limited cooperation with the PA and Fatah in particular.

Between 1993 and 1995 the PA (formerly PLO) and the Israeli government negotiated the Oslo Accords I & II. The PA agreed to control Areas A and B (the Palestinian enclaves) leaving the Israel administrative control of the remaining 60% of the West Bank (Area C). The Palestinian Authority (PA) had complete control of Gaza.

In 2005, the Israeli government withdrew from Gaza and around 9,000 Jewish settlers were forcibly relocated from Gaza by the Israeli government. The United Nations (UN) still considers Gaza to be under occupation. Following the Israeli withdrawal, in 2006, Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council for the Palestinian Authority (State of Palestine).

Under the leadership of Ismail Haniya, Hamas formed a Palestinian Authority government but Fatah refused to cooperate. Tension increased and sporadic fighting between Hamas and Fatah resulted in a five-day long battle in Gaza, in June 2007, which Hamas won.

Hamas has ruled Gaza ever since. The Gaza-Israeli conflict has been ongoing since 2008. Hamas are listed as a proscribed terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK, the US, other NATO aligned governments and the EU.

There is much more to the history of Hamas than this brief overview suggests.

Ismail Haniya

More Detailed Origins of Hamas

Sheik Ahmed Yassin formed the Islamic charity Mujama al-Islamiya (Mujama) in Gaza in 1973 while the strip was under Israeli occupation. Mujama was a project of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestinian branch. Avner Cohen was an Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza at the time. He stated that Israeli policy was to encourage the Islamists in order to divide Palestinian support for the secular PLO.

In 1978, Mujama established the Islamic University in Gaza which Israel says has long served as a Hamas recruitment and training centre. Nonetheless, the Israelis gave Mujama charity status and, in 1979, licensed it as an association. This enabled Yassin's fledgling organisation to raise significant funds to build Mosques and a wide network of schools, clinics, libraries and kindergartens, further consolidating its Gazan power base. This Mujama social and cultural network was called the Da'wah.

Israeli Defence Force (IDF) Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev was appointed governor in Gaza in 1979. He reports having many meeting with Sheik Yassin, as the Israeli government assisted Mujama’s growth. Segev told the New York Times' Jerusalem bureau chief that he was funnelling money from the Israeli government to Mujama during the 1980s.

All of this is viewed as an error of judgement by people like IDF Brig. Gen. Shalom Harari who served as a senior intelligence officer in Gaza. He and other Israeli officials have emphasised that Israeli intelligence and military efforts were focused upon the PLO at the time. Yet everyone appeared to understand what support for Sheik Yassin and Mujama would inevitably lead to.

In 1984 Avner Cohen wrote an advisory report to senior Israeli officials, in which he said:

I believe that by continuing to turn away our eyes, our lenient approach to Mujama will in the future harm us. I therefore suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face.

By 1984 Mujama was arming itself, undoubtedly thanks in part to the money it had received from the Israeli government. Acting on a Fatah tip-off, Israeli troops raided a mosque and found a cache of weapons. Sheikh Yassin was jailed but served less than a year before being released in the "Jibril deal" prisoner exchange. Yassin immediately resumed his leadership role.

Sheik Ahmed Yassin (June 1936 – 22 March 2004)

The First Intifada

By 1986 Sheikh Salah Shehada had started to form a network of armed Mujama resistance cells called “Al-Mujahidoon Al-Filistinion” (the Palestinian fighters). On 8th December 1987, an IDF truck crashed into a Palestinian vehicle, killing the occupants. This triggered a popular uprising across Gaza and the West Bank as the Palestinians revolted against nearly 40 years of violent Israeli occupation. The "First Intifada" combined strikes, mass protests, boycotts, tax strikes and outbreaks of violence and civil unrest.

According to the 1993 published account of Ziad Abu-Amr, the spontaneous outpouring of Palestinian anger caught both the PLO/PA and the Muslim Brotherhood behind Mujama by surprise. Seeking to capitalise on public mobilisation, Sheik Ahmed Yassin convened a number of meetings to discuss how the Muslim Brotherhood could tactically support the First Intifada. The creation of Hamas was ultimately the result.

Ziad Abu-Amir wrote:

[. . .] until the very eve of the uprising, Yasin and the other leaders had been arguing that the time had not yet come for the actual jihad. [. . .] Yasin and his close associates in the Brotherhood had to find a way to join the intifada without compromising the future of the movement [the Da'wah] they had built up with such painstaking efforts [. . .]. It was Shaykh Yasin's idea, as a way out of these dilemmas, to create an ostensibly separate organization out of the Muslim Brotherhood to take responsibility for its participation in the intifada. The calculation was probably that if the intifada failed the Brotherhood could disclaim Hamas and escape Israeli retribution for its participation, whereas if the intifada continued, the Brotherhood could derive benefit by claiming Hamas as its own.

The IDF response to the First Intifada was notorious for its "break the bones" policy, seemingly ordered by senior Israeli officials. For example, IDF Colonel Yehuda Meir later testified that then Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave orders, in January 1988, to break the bones of Palestinians as a form of punishment. Video and photographic evidence from the time clearly showed IDF troops using rocks and rifle buts to fracture the limbs of young Palestinian protesters who were usually armed with little more than stones and slingshots.

In June 1988, the new Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar, proposed a peaceful resolution in a submission to Yitzhak Rabin. Abu-Amir also noted that Sheik Ahmed Yassin said:

[. . .] If Israel acknowledges our full rights and recognizes the Palestinian people's right to live in its homeland in freedom and independence [. . .] I do not want to destroy Israel. [. . .] We want to negotiate with Israel so the Palestinian people inside and outside Palestine can live in Palestine. Then the problem will cease to exist.

In August 1988 Hamas published it's original charter or "covenant." The 1988 covenant alluded to the obliteration of Israel but its forthright language stood in contrast to the diplomatic efforts of Hamas leaders at the time.

Despite IDF violence, as noted in 2014 by Jean-Pierre Filiu in Gaza: A History, by the start of 1989 Hamas had yet to turn to armed attacks:

The first year of the intifada ended with an especially high toll of dead and wounded in the Gaza Strip. Whereas 142 Palestinians had died, not a single Israeli had been killed in the territory. Seventy-seven Palestinians fell to gunfire and thirty-seven died after inhaling teargas (most of whom were older people and very young children or infants who are especially vulnerable to this kind of attack).

In May 1989 Hamas abducted and killed two IDF soldiers in its first officially sanctioned attack on Israeli military targets. Israel responded by arresting many Mujama and Hamas leaders, including Yassin. The Israeli government declared Hamas an illegal "terrorist" organisation on September 28th 1989.

Jonathan Shanzer identified this decision as crucial for building support for Hamas among Palestinians:

This designation was pivotal for the group’s legitimacy on the Palestinian street. Prior to this time, Palestinians reportedly distrusted Hamas due to the fact that Israel had previously supported Yassin’s Islamic Center, the very foundation of Hamas.

After its identification by the Israeli state as a "terrorist organisation" Hamas increasingly engaged in violence. In October 1990 the IDF opened fire on unarmed Palestinian protesters. Seventeen Palestinians were killed by the IDF at the Temple Mount massacre. In reprisal, in December 1990, Hamas began killing Israeli civilians when it reportedly murdered three Israeli workmen in the port of Jaffa (Tel-Aviv).

The retaliatory Israeli crack-down and arrests forced Hamas to reorganise. Hamas' current military, the Izz ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, were formed in 1991. They were initially commanded by Yahya Abd-al-Latif Ayyash who was known to be a highly skilled bomb maker. However, Hamas activity was still largely confined to more rudimentary attacks and routing out Israeli collaborators within Gaza.

The First Intifada ended in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo I Accord. However, the occupation and the violence rumbled on. In February 1994 ultra-Zionist American extremist Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron. In response, as the IDF continued to shoot and beat Palestinian protesters, Hamas began targeting Israeli civilians in earnest. They turned to suicide bombings in Afula, Hedera and elsewhere.

Between 1993 -2000 support for Hamas among Palestinians grew steadily. Israelis continued to build illegal settlements in both the West Bank and Gaza by forcibly evicting Palestinians from their homes and off their land. At the same time, Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad were attacking Israeli military and civilian targets. By 2001, Palestinian polls showed that more than 74% of Palestinians considered opposing the Israeli occupation by far the most crucial political issue.

According to Palestinian statistics, by the start of the Second Intifada (2000 - 2005), the IDF, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and other Israeli security services, had killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians including 281 children. An additional 115 Palestinians, including 23 children, had been killed by Israeli civilians. During the same period, 177 Israeli civilians, including 14 children and 59 members of the Israeli security services were killed by Palestinian militants, predominantly by Hamas and aligned groups.

Beyond the Second Intifada

The Second Intifada, known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada by Palestinians, was ignited in 2000 when then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon toured the highly contentious Al-Aqsa Mosque compound: the "Noble Sanctuary" of the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif).

Sharon arrived in the company of an estimated 1,000 Israeli security personnel. The visit ignored advice from Israel's intelligence partners who warned against any provocation following the collapse of the Oslo Accord peace process amid continued Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied territories. Sharon's actions could not have been more provocative.

The Second Intifada was even more violent than the first. By 2005 the Palestinian Authority estimated that 6,371 Palestinians had been killed, of whom 1,317 were young children. Israeli officials estimated that more that 1,010 Israelis were killed including 46 under the age of 12 years old.

In accepting the Oslo Accords, the PLO under Yasser Arafet—later the PA—fully recognised the state of Israel and renounced violence. In return, the Palestinians were promised that the associated "peace process" would lead to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state within five years. The so-called "two-state solution" would see Palestine established, in keeping with UN resolution 242, with borders ostensibly demarcated by the "Green Line."

More than a decade later, the Palestinian state had yet to materialise and the Israeli government had continued to build settlements and forcibly relocate and kill Palestinians, just as it continues to do today. Given such circumstances, it is not difficult to understand why a group that was openly hostile both to the Israeli "enemy" and to those it perceived as accommodating or even collaborating with that "enemy," would enjoy popular Palestinian support.

Palestinian support for the Fatah and PA approach of negotiating with the Israeli government was dwindling as Palestinians became increasingly militant. That militancy was epitomised by Hamas whose support consequently grew.

In an attempt to ameliorate growing Palestinian, particularly Gazan, hostility toward the PA, the PA issued the Cairo Declaration in 2005. It tried to reaffirm its position as the "official" voice of the Palestinians.

Hamas had refused to participate in PA elections but, following the 2004 death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Hamas was enticed to sign the Cairo Declaration due to the inclusion of the following statement:

Those gathered confirmed their adherence to Palestinian principles, without any neglect, and the right of the Palestinian people to resistance in order to end the occupation, establish a Palestinian state with full sovereignty with Jerusalem as its capital, and the guaranteeing of the right of return of refugees to their homes and property.

Hamas publicly questioned Fatah's commitment to this objective and, after its victory over Fatah in 2007, the conflict between Hamas and Israel intensified. While significant clashes and cross border attacks continued throughout the period, these escalated into full scale warfare—primarily defined by Israel's mass military assaults on Gaza—in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021.

Who Funds Hamas?

Gaza, and by extension Hamas, receives foreign aid, allegedly to sustain the lives of the Gazans by maintaining essential infrastructure and paying salaries. The administration of most of this supposed aid is overseen by the United Nations relief and works agency for Palestine refugees in the near east (UNRWA).

With 1.7 million people registered as refugees in Gaza, having been displaced by the Israeli occupation, UNRWA's current annual budget stands at around US$ 1.6 billion. It receives most of its funds in the form of voluntary contributions from governments including the UK, the EU and the US.

UNRWA funds are designated for the estimated 5.9 million Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. Of these populations, UNRWA considers Gazans—the "Gaza poor"—to be in the most acute need.

Despite the "aid," the economic situation in Gaza has deteriorated markedly since Hamas came to power. This is largely a consequence of the numerous air, land a sea blockades imposed by Israel and Egypt. While international “aid” is all well and good, the blockades, tacitly if not openly agreed by many of the governments providing said “aid,” have cost the 141 square mile territory of Gaza somewhere in the region of US $16.7 billion.

The impact of the blockades is most evident when we compare the economies of Gaza and the West Bank. While unemployment in Israel is around 3.5%, it stands at 24% in the West Bank, which is bad enough, but according to UN figures, prior to its recent destruction, unemployment had already reached a society crushing 46% in Gaza. By every economic measure, Gaza is one of the most impoverished places on Earth.

As the government of Gaza, Hamas also raises funds through taxation. Some extremely limited cross border trade, smuggling, numerous international investments—including cryptocurrency investments—and the financial support it receives from the international community, add to its financial resources. Hamas also receives direct political and financial support from a number of governments. Primarily Iran, Turkey and Qatar.

When it Hamas first consolidated political power in 2006, Iran publicly pledged its financial support. This has led many to argue that Hamas—a Sunni Islamist organisation—is a stooge of the Shiite Iranian government. However, even the most hawkish of US thinks tanks, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), has conceded that Hamas is no Iranian puppet.

When US-led coalition sponsored an Islamist insurrection against the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, Hamas backed the so-called rebels. Initially, the US-led coalition relied quite heavily on its al-Qaeda—-then al-Nusra Front—proxy but later the Obama administration supported ISIS to widen the Syrian and regional conflict. Iran backed the Syrian government and withdrew much of its military and financial support from Hamas as a result.

Many of the Sunni Islamist groups operating in Syria on behalf of the US-led coalition—including al Qaeda and later ISIS—were funded by Qatar and other Sunni Arab states, like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Collectively they formed a Sunni Arab state alliance against Syria.

Leaked US State Department emails, published by Wikileaks, revealed that the Qatari and Saudi funding for these proscribed terrorist organisation was known and accepted by the US led coalition. Hamas alignment, essentially with US coalition interests, wasn't welcomed by Tehran.

The relationship between Hamas and Iran remained "on-off" but deteriorated further when Hamas pulled out of Iran's HQ in Syria. Iran remained conditionally willing to support Hamas, for its opposition to Israel, but it wasn't until 2017 that Iran restarted full cooperation. Hamas took the money and the military assistance but refused to support Iran's stance against Saudi Arabia at the time.

The CFR observations were seemingly correct. The idea that Hamas is simply an Iranian proxy isn't true.

Official state support from NATO member state Turkey appears to be more political than financial. Nonetheless, there are also many apparent examples of money being funnelled through Turkish back-channels to Hamas. In 2011, The Palestinian Authority reported that Turkish Prime Minister Receb Tayyip Erdogan had ordered a US $300 million transfer from the Turkish Ministry of Finance to Hamas.

Turkish political support for Hamas has been more overt. For example, speaking in 2014 President Erdogan said that Hamas was not a terrorist organisation. A number of senior Hamas figures established operations in Turkey, including  Saleh al-Arouri, the co- founder of the Izz ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, and Hamas' envoy to Iran, Imad al-Alami. In addition to its official offices in Istanbul, Hamas runs its cyber-warfare and counter-intelligence operation out of the Turkish capital.

Qatar is a major financial supporter of Hamas. Arguably, Qatar’s relationship with Hamas is far more influential than Hamas’ relationship with Iran. This perhaps goes some way to explain Hamas’ opposition to Iranian interests in regard to the Syrian conflict.

As soon as Hamas was elected in 2006, the then Emir of Qatar, Shaikh Hamad Al Thani, openly pledged support for Hamas. In 2012 he was the first foreign leader to visit Hamas in Gaza. Qatar reportedly channelled somewhere in the region of US $1.8 billion to Hamas throughout the period.

With the assistance of Israel, Hamas used the money to fortify Gaza with an extensive subterranean infrastructure. What began as smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border, notably at the Rafah Crossing, rapidly expanded into a major engineering project.

During the initial phase of the current war against the Palestinians, Israel was at pains to justify its bombing of the Dar al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. It claimed it held a key Hamas command and control centre is beneath it. Israel helped Hamas engineers construct the extensive basement compound during a multi-million dollar refurbishment of al-Shifa in the 1980s.

In 2009, Yuval Diskin, then Shin Bet (or Shabak) director, stated that the intelligence agency believed the underground complex was being used by senior Hamas leaders. More recently, in an interview with CNN, the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barack said "[. . .] the bunkers originally built by Israeli constructors under al Shifa were used as a command post of Hamas."

Hamas' ongoing rift with the Fatah and the PA hasn't helped its finances. Despite notable attempts to form interim governments and promises of full Palestinian Territory elections, tensions have continued to spillover into hostility and violence. For example, the apparent 2012 deal between Hamas and Fatah saw the EU resume funding for Hamas through the PA, only for Hamas to lose access to the same funding stream again when its PA agreement broke-down a few months later.

Like any government, Hamas also raises funds through taxation. For an already impoverished Gazan population, Hamas taxation has often been heavy handed and ill timed. For instance, following Egypt's decision shut down the smuggling tunnels on Gaza's southern border, amid ongoing sanction imposed by the Fatah-led PA, Hamas hiked taxes in Gaza.

The US Trump administration's decision to cut funding to UNRWA soon heaped further financial pressure on Gazan families as the UN World Food Program cut food aid. Amid the chaos, caused by a the slew of sanctions and the Israeli and Egyptian blockades, the situation deteriorated to the point where the UN was working with Israel to allow Qatari officials to literally deliver suitcases containing millions of US dollars, in cash, to Hamas.

Supposedly, Israel no longer funds Hamas directly. That said, Hamas would not receive the financial support that it does without Israel intervening on its behalf.

Israel had been working with Qatar to direct funds to Hamas since 2014 as part of its alleged strategy to use Hamas to divide Palestinian support. Avigdor Liberman, then head of the Israeli Defense Ministry, resigned in 2019 stating that "Israel is funding terrorism against itself.” Between 2012 - 2018 Israel had reportedly "officially" approved another US $1.1 billion in cash transfers from Qatar to Hamas.

In 2019, when the Qatar's relationship with Hamas faltered, Liberman said that then director of Mossad, Yossi Cohen, was dispatched to Doha in an effort to keep the money flowing. The diplomatic effort appeared to work and the Hamas leadership thanked Qatar, but not Israel, for restarting the cash pipeline.

It has been widely reported that Benjamin Netanyahu told a 2019 meeting of his own Likud Party:

Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.

Shin Bet estimates a third of all funds that enter Gaza are taken by Hamas, either through intentional direct financing, taxation or confiscation. Speaking in 2021, IDF Major General Gershon Hacohen said:

Netanyahu's [the Israeli government's] strategy is to prevent the two-state solution, and that is why he made Hamas his closest partner. In the visible dimension Hamas is an enemy, in the hidden dimension it is an ally.

The western legacy media is trying to convince us that the US administration is attempting to sever Hamas from its Israeli approved Qatar funding channels but faces difficulty due to "the scope and intricacy of the Hamas funding network." In truth, US interests are deeply intertwined with Qatar's and its's leverage in the independently wealthy, gas rich kingdom is limited.

The Al Udeid Air Base is located west of Doha. It houses the headquarters for the US Central Command (USCC) and the US Air Force Central Command (USAFCC). Al Udeid also hosts the UK's Royal Air Force No. 83 Expeditionary Air Group. It is the largest US military base in the entire Middle East and is vital to the regional interests of the US and its closest allies. The land the Al Udeid Air Base sits on is owned by the Emir of Qatar.

Al Udeid Air Base

Announcing allegedly stringent sanctions against the assets of the Hamas leadership, the UK's new foreign secretary and former prime minister, David Cameron, said:

We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to disrupt the abhorrent activity of this terrorist organisation [Hamas], working with the United States and our other allies, making it harder for them to operate and isolating them.

"Every tool" at the UK foreign secretary's disposal doesn't appear to extend to weakening the UK's flourishing relationship with Qatar. The UK government announcement made no mention of Qatar, despite it being the primary source of Hamas funding over many years. Instead the focus of the western political establishment remains on Hamas' evidently less consequential financial arrangements with Iran

As a major customer for UK weapons manufacturers, Qatar currently shares two UK air force bases. In March of this year, RAF Air Marshal Sir Richard Knighton said that Qatar was "an important regional partner." He added that the UK's military partnership with Qatar made "an important contribution to promoting peace and stability in the region [the Middle East]."

In reality, the West has an interdependent, strategically indispensable relationship with Qatar. Qatar is a defence contract customer for its military industrial complex and is used as financial conduit for supporting terrorist and paramilitary groups such as ISIS and Hamas. ISIS certainly advances western aligned interests in the Middle East and it appears Hamas, whether wittingly or not, is similarly useful.

Israel's Support For Hamas

As we've already discussed, Israel gave considerable assistance, including financial support, to Mujama and then Hamas. Many of its own officials were wary of the likely consequences of encouraging Islamic fundamentalism in Gaza but all such warnings were ignored. Just as warnings were ignored to allow Al-Aqsa Flood to proceed.

Furthermore, key Israeli government decisions, such as the 1989 outlawing of Hamas and the 1991 break up of the Al-Mujahidoon Al-Filistinion cells, only served to empower a larger, more popular and better organised Hamas adversary.

In 2004 Israel assassinated Sheik Ahmed Yassin with a helicopter launched missile strike. They repeated the same feat a month later and assassinated his replacement Abdel al-Rantisi—the "Lion of Palestine." Once again, this enhanced Hamas' reputation among Palestinians.

The official explanation for this is so-called "blowback." In attempting to pit secular, nationalist Palestinians against religious, Islamist Palestinians, the blowback theory suggests, in effect, that the Israeli government "accidentally" created Hamas.

It is abundantly clear that, by the mid 1980s, the Israeli government, and its international partners, could not have had any illusions about their "monster.” Yet that support has continued unabated. The evidence clearly suggests that Israel deliberately created Hamas.

Writing for the Italian outlet VP News, the journalist Patrizio Ricci, noting Israeli support for Hamas, outlined why the government of Israel may have wanted to empower a monster:

[. . .] support for the Islamic group Hamas served several Israeli objectives simultaneously: first, it undermined Yasser Arafat's 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 West Bank; fourth, it prevented Western support for the Palestinian cause; and fifth, it justified Israeli counter attacks on Palestinian territory.

The two-state solution does not suit the ambitions of the Zionists in either Israel or internationally. It limits the potential territorial expansion of the Israeli state. In addition, it makes full international recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and not Palestine, more problematic. There are also other global economic and geopolitical reasons why some would like to remove Gaza from the map. A two-state solution doesn't help to achieve those globalist objectives either.

Israeli government support for Hamas is commonly acknowledged by the Israeli press. Following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation this is now reported as a monumental policy "failure." While the alleged objective of undermining the supposed efforts of Mahmoud Abbas and the PA to establish a Palestinian state is accepted, the so-called "blowback" risk is now deemed unacceptable in hindsight.

The “Blowback” Misnomer

We might question what this supposed "divide and conquer" tactic was intended to achieve. If the enemy you are attempting to divide is fully aware of your efforts to divide it, then your strategy is hollowed out by its exposure. In a 2001 interview with the the Italian daily L'Espresso, following a spate of Hamas attacks, Yasser Arafet reportedly said:

Hamas was constituted with the support of Israel. The aim was to create an organization antagonistic to the PLO. They received financing and training from Israel. They have continued to benefit from permits and authorizations [. . .] Some collaborationists of Israel are involved in these [terror] attacks.

In 1992, Israeli arms dealer and intelligence operative Ari Ben-Menashe discussed how Israel financed Palestinian "terrorism" and deployed intelligence operatives to manipulate terrorist attacks:

The slush fund helped finance the intelligence community’s “black” operations around the world. These included funding Israeli-controlled “Palestinian terrorists” who would commit crimes in the name of the Palestinian revolution, but were actually pulling them off, usually unwittingly, as part of the Israeli propaganda machine.

The suggested strategy of division becomes even more dubious if terrorists on both sides of the supposedly sought-after divide are promoted by the government that is purportedly trying to cause division. It is not unreasonable to wonder if there would be any violence without government manipulation.  Perhaps the objective is to use "terrorism" to achieve broader geopolitical goals?

Sabri Khalil al-Banna, commonly known as Abu Nidal, formed the Abu Nidal Organisation (ANO) as an "extremist" wing of the PLO during the mid 1970's. The ANO was widely held responsible for hundreds of terrorist murders.

Abu Nidal

Renowned Middle East analyst and journalist Patrick Seale claimed that the ANO was practically run by Isreali Special Operations Intelligence (Mossad). Numerous ANO attacks, such as the 1988 bombing of the Greek ship the City of Poros, were entirely contrary to Palestinian interests and favourable to Israel's. The Greek government was one of the most sympathetic European governments to the Palestinian cause at the time. It seems Israel viewed both MIHOP and LIHOP false flag terrorism as strategically advantageous.

In a 2001 article, citing numerous intelligence sources, the US based global news agency, UPI, reported that the Israeli government "aided Hamas directly." UPI noted:

Funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

While we should always be wary of media reports from "unnamed" intelligence officers and state officials, nevertheless, the UPI reports were congruent with many others from named sources. US intelligence operatives reportedly outlined the extent to which Israeli intelligence had infiltrated Hamas. They also revealed a possible motive for hard-line factions within the Israeli state to promote terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens:

The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place. [. . .] Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with.

According to UPI, the former CIA operative and US National Security Council Director of Intelligence Programs, Vincent Cannestraro, said that the Israeli intelligence agencies did "more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it." When UPI journalists asked for an Israeli response to Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev account of funnelling Israeli funds to Hamas, Israeli officials didn't comment but didn't deny Segev's claims either.

In his 2006 book "The Devils Game," US investigative journalist Rober Dreyfuss reported the statements of US diplomat Charles "Chaz" Freeman who said that Hamas was "a project of the Shin Bet [Israel's domestic intelligence agency]." Wikileaks published a 2007 communiqué from the US Ambassador to Israel recounting his conversation with Amos Yadlin, the head of Isreali Military Intelligence—the Aman—in which he noted that Yadlin said Israel would be "happy" if Hamas took over Gaza because the IDF could then deal with Gaza as a hostile state.

Hamas were undoubtedly responsible for AL-Aqsa Flood. The official explanation from Israeli authorities is that Hamas succeeded because of a string of frankly unbelievable Israeli "failures" and "mistakes." We are also told that similar mishaps—blowback—allowed Hamas to become the political and military force it is today. None of this is credible.

Many influential groups, both in Israel and among the wider international community, cite Hamas' mere existence as an alleged justification to kill Palestinians and expand Israeli territory. Hamas attacks also place the Israeli people in a state of fear. As demonstrated by the use of the strategy of tension throughout Operation Gladio, governments employ terrorist organisations to strike fear into the hearts and minds of their own people. Thus making their population easier to manipulate.

While the Israeli government's aim to divide and conquer shouldn't be dismissed, it is unlikely to be its only motivation for playing such a major role in the creation of Hamas. Israel has continued to support Hamas far beyond the point where it could plausibly claim any ignorance about either Hamas intentions or its capabilities.

Bluntly, Hamas could not exist in the form it does today without the significant assistance of Israel. Hamas would not have been able to launch a military operation like Al-Aqsa Flood were it not for years of consistent support from the Israeli government.