In mid-January 2024, Josef Borrell, Foreign Policy Head of the EU, was the most recent to remark that Israel itself had funded the creation of Hamas in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority. This statement came in the midst of the war that Israel is waging against the Gaza Strip, under the pretext of its intention to eliminate the Hamas movement, which Israel financed at its inception and throughout years of growth, even allowing suitcases of money to enter the Strip right up to the eve of October 7, 2023. Then they turned on each other and trampled the people under tanks and destroyed buildings… So what is this really all about, how did it begin and how has it reached this ending
The narrative is an old one and well-known, based on the British policy: divide and rule, which was imitated by American policy, and then also resorted to by Israel. From the 1967 war onwards, it encouraged the religious associations in the Gaza Strip, which later crystallized into the Hamas movement, until Hamas felt strong enough to confront the secular nationalist movement represented by the PLO factions such as Fatah and the Popular and Democratic Fronts. This was the movement that had been demanding a secular democratic state in all of Palestine, and then turned, due to the Israeli refusal to even consider the idea, to demanding the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, thus thwarting Israel’s expansionist plans… This is why Israel resorted to developing the Islamic movement to confront the national movement while it sat supporting Hamas against the others
After the Oslo Accords and the Hamas movement’s response to a peaceful solution by engaging in suicide operations, Israel returned to supporting the Fatah movement and the Authority against the Hamas movement. Years passed, and Israel decided to sabotage the Oslo Accords and get rid of the developing Palestinian Authority. It returned to encouraging Hamas and passing money to it, with Netanyahu’s knowledge, even before the invasion of October 7, 2023, which was known to more than one Israeli official, to UN officials, and carried out with the acknowledgment of American intelligence. According to statements by the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles Freeman; The Israeli internal security service Shin Bet was behind the creation of Hamas and he says: “Israel created Hamas.” It was a Shin Bet project in an effort to dislodge the Palestine Liberation Organization
As we said, this method was not an Israeli invention; In his book “Sleeping with the Devil,” Robert Pierre, a former CIA employee, described the “dirty little secret” in Washington of the early 1950s, saying: “The White House considered the Brotherhood a hidden ally and a secret weapon against communism. Al Qaeda itself, which became the most radical and ambiguous grouping, emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood movement.” Britain had exploited the Brotherhood movement in Egypt against the nationalist movement, and Washington followed suit, especially during the war against the Soviets in the brutal Afghan war, a war that was conducted with American-British-Saudi support for the mujahideen. This is exactly what Israel imitated by encouraging the emergence of the Hamas movement in the face of the ideas of secular nationalism, and it was their intention to attack the idea of Palestinian secular democracy, to eliminate any opportunity for a political, humanitarian, democratic, Palestinian-Israeli rapprochement
Israel was relieved that Hamas maintained its strict religious orientation and traditional policies. The clear goal of the West and Israeli support for extremist Islamists, from Egypt to Palestine to Afghanistan, became: to isolate, weaken and destroy the prominent political regimes and movements that were based on the ideas of Western democracy itself… This trend had been evident since the end of World War I, with British-Western support for the idea of establishing an Arab caliphate, and the deception of the Great Arab Revolt became clear…and then the subsequent exploitation of political Islam to reach Afghanistan, and the same policy was repeated in the so-called Arab Spring when the West, the Gulf states, and political Islam allied themselves against the Arab revolutionaries and sought to lead them, destroying the region and displacing the Arab peoples in the process
Since 1967, Israel has allowed Islamic movements freedom of movement in the West Bank and Gaza… Thus, the number of mosques in Gaza increased and tripled in just two decades from 1967 to 1987, from 200 to 600 mosques. This is attributed to the money that flowed from outside Palestinian territories, specifically from wealthy conservatives in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries, whether through donations or official funds, in implementation of their policy of spreading Wahhabi thought… Since the beginning of the seventies, and specifically after the setback of the nationalist Nasserite regime, Wahhabi ideology was launched through building ideological mosques[حساب2] , financing the Brotherhood in Arab countries and influencing the course of social life. This included all Arab countries, but especially Egypt and the Gaza Strip, where the effects of the setback were most evident. It was easy to encourage the people to seek comfort from religion and become saturated with Wahhabism without being aware of it
We now know that Israeli forces have destroyed all the old mosques and those built after 1987; The rift occurred between the religious Jews in the government and the religious Muslims in Gaza, when they jumped beyond what was planned for them from an Israeli perspective and launched the October invasion. This development in the Hamas-Israel relationship is similar to what happened between Al-Qaeda and the American administration. When Washington needed the Mujahideen against the Soviets, it recognized them as liberation forces, and promised to look sympathetically at Muslim issues, including the Palestine issue. The mujahideen headed to Afghanistan with Western American support and official Arab urging from Sadat’s Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states in general. Mujahideen from all over the Arab world flocked to Afghanistan and did not think about jihad first in Palestine. Rather, Palestinian fighters and leaders went out and headed for jihad against communism for the benefit of Western capitalism. The war ended, the Soviets were defeated, and the West disavowed Al-Qaeda. They launched the invasion of New York on September 11, 2001, which prompted Washington to take revenge on the region and Al-Qaeda, and it destroyed Iraq, which had nothing to do with the invasion or with political Islam, but was manufacturing weapons and hostile to Israel therefore it had to be disposed of
The Hamas movement is the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood organization of Egyptian origin, which Britain created before the revolution, as it created the Arab League. When the organization in Egypt tried to assassinate Jamal Abdel Nasser, they were arrested, including members of the organization in Gaza like Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The Gaza Strip was under Egyptian administration from the Nakba of 1948 until the defeat of 1967. Following the defeat and Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip, it released the Islamist detainees and arrested members of the Fatah, leftist and Arab nationalist movements, who had decided on armed resistance and were active in obstructing the involvement of Palestinian workers in the Israeli economy
In the two decades following the setback, the Islamists in the Gaza Strip rejected armed resistance, and behaved similarly to the Takfir and Hijra groups, in the sense of denouncing society and calling it to religion first as a basis for any liberation movement. From this standpoint, and with Israeli support, they preferred to confront national organizations with words, then with clubs in universities and unions, and later with weapons, of course, when they took control of the Gaza Strip and expelled and killed members of Fatah, the Authority, and the left. The transformation of Islamic groups occurred with the beginning of the first intifada, and the entire Palestinian people’s response to the occupation. So they boarded the train and rode along until the uprising reached a peaceful solution, starting from the Madrid Conference until the Oslo Accords and the amendment of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s charter to acknowledge recognition of the State of Israel… Here the official divorce occurred between the emerging authority and the Islamists who had evolved into the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, and the Al-Qassam Brigades
Hamas decided to thwart the peace process by killing Israeli civilians by the dozens in suicide bombings in all the cities of occupied Palestine… The goal was to thwart the Authority in its mission of ensuring internal Palestinian security and stopping armed resistance, which was one of the requirements for implementing the peace agreement. Successive Israeli governments, with Western support, began demanding that President Arafat punish Hamas and prevent its operations. Arafat began demanding additional concessions and withdrawals from them in order to win the street against Hamas, whose support had grown due to the suicide operations
The story is long, but it went on in the same way: Israel supported this against that, then that against this, until the Palestinian situation reached rock bottom and any possibility of unity between Hamas and the Authority ceased. Then Hamas recognized the two-state solution, meaning it recognized Israel just like the Palestinian Authority, but it held on to the reins of affairs in the Strip and went through several wars, until it brought us to the war of annihilation, which is not surprising because it has been presented and celebrated as a clear victory. The silence of the Arab regimes throughout the massacre was due to them waiting to get rid of the last strongholds of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region, even if it was at the hands of Israel and at this horribly high price
The narration continues: In reality, we are in the middle of a battle for domination and seats. The West wants to dominate by deceiving regimes and groups about the possibility of gaining seats. Let us remember when the masses moved spontaneously and forcefully to reject the regimes and induce change in what was known as the Arab Spring, it was not clear to the West or others what change was sought because the uprisings came independent of any specific parties and orientations. From their point of view it became necessary to ride along and direct them to where they wanted. The Gulf oil states moved immediately to support any Islamic political tendencies, with money, weapons, propaganda, and then with diplomatic support, and Western governments moved in the same way to the point that the British Foreign Secretary demanded, and supported sending Islamists to fight in the revolting countries, and French embassies began delivering money in bags to the Islamists, and the US President personally met with the leaders of the armed groups operating in Syria, and left the meeting shaking his head, saying that they were a group of grocers. Meaning all they did was ask for more and more money
Support for Islamic terrorist militias developed into a competition, then an economic and diplomatic conflict between those who wanted to lead Sunni Islam in the region after they took over the leadership of the revolting countries. Disagreement broke out between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar… In short, we can say that Syria, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt were destroyed, and when the Islamists succeeded in the elections, the Gulf people became aware of the danger of the dominance of the idea of elections among Muslims. The time for coups and retreats came, especially after Prince Mohammed bin Salman took control of power in Riyadh, the siege of Qatar, and the effective destruction of the Turkish economy. Suddenly, no party was at the forefront of leading Sunni Islam, and no party moved to support the Hamas movement, as it is the last bastion of political Sunni Islam. They do not want this line to achieve any victory that upholds the conviction that Islam is the solution and leads to the return of Arab popular uprisings. Here, Arab, Palestinian (Ramallah), Israeli and Western wills meet
(When you create Frankenstein, expect him to hurt you)
