2024-01-20 11:44:27
The head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell accused Israel on Friday evening of having “created” and “financed” the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in power in Gaza and behind the unprecedented attack of October 7 on Israeli soil. . Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reaffirmed in recent days his opposition to the creation of a viable Palestinian state. A position which led to criticism from its American ally pleading for the “two-state solution”, i.e. a State of Palestine alongside Israel.
“We believe that a two-state solution must be imposed from the outside to bring peace. Even if, and I insist, Israel reaffirms its refusal (of this solution) and, to prevent it, it went so far as to create Hamas itself,” declared Josep Borrell. “Hamas was funded by the Israeli government to try to weaken the Fatah Palestinian Authority. But if we do not intervene firmly, the spiral of hatred and violence will continue from generation to generation, from funeral to funeral,” he added during a speech in Spanish at the University of Valladolid .
A group classified as “terrorist” by the EU and the United States
Hamas was created in December 1987 shortly after the start of the first Intifada, a Palestinian uprising in the Occupied Territories, by a group of Islamist militants claiming to be the Muslim Brotherhood. It has both a political branch and an armed branch, the Ezzedin al-Qassam brigades. Its attacks – suicide bombings, rocket attacks, etc. – targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians have earned the movement a “terrorist” classification by the European Union and the United States.
An acronym in Arabic for “Islamic Resistance Movement”, Hamas was founded in particular to counter Islamic Jihad and compete with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a mainly secular movement led by Yasser Arafat. Twenty years later, in June 2007, following a quasi-civil war against Fatah, a movement at the heart of the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat’s successor, Hamas took control of the strip. from Gaza.
“Hamas represented an opportunity”
The Palestinian movement has become a powerful force in Palestine, both politically and militarily. “The population was fed up with Fatah (the rival party) because they considered that the bet of negotiations had failed and that nothing had been obtained, and therefore that Hamas represented an opportunity,” Marie Durrieu already explained to Le Parisien, associated doctoral student at Irsem.
But for certain observers, like the journalist Charles Enderlin, former correspondent in Jerusalem and great expert on the region, the successive governments in the Jewish state bear some responsibility for the rise of Hamas.
“The strategy of the Israeli right was to prevent a peace agreement and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. From the moment you allow the existence of Hamas and you encourage it, you allow this terrorist organization to develop,” he said last October.
Concerning the financing of Hamas, the Gaza Strip, under the control of the Palestinian movement and under Israeli blockade, received aid of several million dollars from Qatar. Financial support which has drawn criticism from Benyamin Netanyahu, accused by his detractors of having favored the financing of the movement. Accusations that he has always denied. In detail, Qatar “would provide $30 million per month to pay civil servants in Gaza,” according to Didier Billion, deputy director of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris).
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