Not much discussion happens about this one topic that has perhaps been pushed down the Orwellian hole — at least in the US academia and media cultures — that Hamas was created by Israel. The secular leaning PLO, headed by Yasir Arafat, wanted to accept outlandish Israeli demands in order to secure a peaceful Palestinian state. The Israelis feared that despite their weird demands and evil designs, the unabated Israeli plan of denying the creation of a Palestinian state, which was more pronounced by the only female Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, would perhaps become a reality. To counter that, Israel created the militant and Islamist organisation called Hamas which would provide a contrast to the secular make-up of the PLO and hence an excuse for the Israelis to continue to deny negotiating Palestinian statehood.
Hamas is not a terrorist organisation like Al Qaeda but it has echoes of that because just like the US helped create Al Qaeda and exploited its Jihadist make-up to fight against the communist superpower on the soil of Afghanistan, Hamas provided that counter reality to the PLO. And just as Al Qaeda turned against its erstwhile supporter, Hamas followed the same pattern, except that Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people in the 2006 elections. The US and Israel punished the Gazans for voting the wrong way and denied Hamas the victory. That convinced Hamas that violence against Israel was the only practical approach.
Before the flattening of the Gaza project, Israel had turned Gaza into an open air prison. The Palestinians could not move from point A to point B without passing through excruciating checkposts manned by the Israelis. Every material that ever entered or left Gaza was heavily inspected by Israel. Israel killed innocent people in Gaza based on whim. All these everyday realities convinced many Palestinians that the only way to deal with Israel was to use violence instead of securing a seat at the negotiating table. Israel has been directly responsible for indoctrinating a generation of Palestinians to join the ranks of Hamas in order to take the fight to Israel.
But here comes the interesting fact that was published by The New York Times in detail. With the intense inspections at every entry point into Gaza for years, how did Hamas manage to make bombs, rockets and other ammunition for use against Israel? Hamas had the most reliable supplier for all the parts needed for making bombs and rockets. That supplier was Israel.
And I don’t mean to spin around some conspiracy theory here. Israel has for years unleashed rockets into the coastal territory that Gaza is. It has been quite common knowledge that about 15% of those rockets didn’t explode upon landing and remained intact. Hamas got their hands on those unexploded rockets and put their own engineers to work in turning them into usable weapons against Israel. And they did that with remarkable success. Israel has for years banned construction material to enter Gaza because they were aware that many components in construction material can be used in making lethal bombs, which Hamas would use against Israel.
But guess what; the unexploded Israeli rockets sure did help Hamas in making their own bombs and rockets, but those Israeli rockets that actually did explode perhaps helped Hamas equally, if not more. The houses that were flattened by Israeli bombing gave Hamas access to that construction material that was banned from entering Gaza. Hamas went to work. Those unexploded rockets were actually the unexploded anger of the Palestinian people. The flattened houses became the ingredients for making the bombs because no good is ever going to emerge from dead bodies of children under the rubble of a flattened house.
In a nutshell, Israel provided the Palestinians the reason to be angry and also the lethal weapons to turn that anger into real violence. This is a perfect story of counter-productivity which should be taught at universities and war colleges around the world.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 1st, 2024.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
