Benjamin Netanyahu: he had nothing to do with the creation of Hamas, which happened in 1928, 20 years before Israel was created and before he was born. Hamas wasn’t a puppet of Israel, but Israel used it to create division among Palestinians and make Israel look good to western governments. Now, Netanyahu has discovered that the West supports his Gaza genocide (despite the vehement opposition of those nations’ populations).
Did an Israeli government create Hamas to become a ‘bogeyman’ for its own population – and to present to the international community as a reason Palestinian land should be occupied or walled off, and Palestinian people subjugated?
Maybe not. It always seemed a strange claim to This Writer. In the thread below, Mouin Rabbani examines the evidence.
I’m not saying any of the following is accurate; I’m merely putting it up for discussion. If you have better evidence, then please offer it.
One caveat: if you don’t have evidence, but just feel the need to fling around some pejorative comments, then please take them somewhere else. Let’s try to keep the standard of debate high.
TL:DR: Hamas had its origins long before Israel. After the creation of Israel, that nation favoured Hamas over other organisations as part of a “divide and rule” policy. Benjamin Netanyahu had nothing to do with such actions, though. And now he has discovered that he can simply murder many thousands of Gazans with the full support of western governments, so he’s doing that instead.
Here’s the thread:
This is an extremely important (long) thread on the role of Hamas in relation to the Zionist regime. Some in the pro-Palestine movement are arguing that Hamas was 'created' or 'financially supported' by the Zionists – as if it was or remains a proxy of the Zionists (and the… https://t.co/cf3RJooTDe
— David Miller (@Tracking_Power) December 4, 2023
have asserted that Israel is responsible for the creation of Hamas. They furthermore claim that Netanyahu bears personal responsibility for Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip,
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
There’s a plethora of statements by penitent Israeli officials, dating to long before 7 October, amplifying these assertions, particularly concerning Israel’s purported midwifery of Hamas’s establishment.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Hamas, which was established during the late 1980s, is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), a regional Islamist movement established in Egypt in 1928.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
akin to that of the Soviet communist party (CPSU). Elsewhere, national chapters were established in various states, and activists joined branches based on their place of residence rather than countries of origin.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
In the Gaza Strip a local branch, much more autonomous given the separation of Gaza from the Egyptian mainland by the Sinai Peninsula, effectively operated as a Palestinian branch. (This may have also formally been the case given that,
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
The Jordanian branch of the MB, conservative and pro-royalist in an age dominated by republican pan-Arabism and leftist challenges to the established order, prioritized the Islamization of society over confrontation.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
than out of ideological conviction. In any event the Gaza MB, like others in the territory, was largely disarmed and demobilized by Egyptian intelligence – already at war with the MB – in the wake of the 1956 Suez Crisis.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
After the Israeli occupation commenced in 1967, the West Bank MB remained part of the Jordanian branch, and the Gaza branch continued to operate separately. With the ascendancy of the PLO, the MB in Palestine became a marginal organization.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Under the Israeli occupation, which in the West Bank and Gaza Strip functioned as a military dictatorship administering a quasi-totalitarian regime, any activity of significance required a permit issued by the military governor.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
It was enabled/encouraged/facilitated (choose your term) by the Israeli authorities, and the permits it received for the establishment of various charities and institutions, primarily in the Gaza Strip, indisputably helped it grow.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
What is pernicious here is not the permits and funding Israel’s military government provided to MB institutions, but rather the permits and funding (sourced from Palestinian taxes) it systematically denied to others.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
And during the 1980s there were in fact a series of clashes between MB activists and those of rival organizations, particularly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) but also others, primarily in the Gaza Strip.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
But in this particular case it later emerged, including to the satisfaction of Abdel-Shafi, that the attack was in fact the work of Fatah activists.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
It reflects the extraordinary self-regard for which Israeli officials, who like to pretend that nothing happens unless they make it happen, are legendary.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
The first significant challenge to the Palestinian MB came in 1981, when a number of members, primarily from the Gaza Strip, and influenced by Islamic revolutionary movements in Egypt and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, left the MB to form Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
namely the Palestinian popular uprising that erupted throughout the OPT in December 1987. By that time the West Bank and Gaza Strip branches of the MB had already formed a unified Palestinian MB national branch, and the MB in the Gaza Strip was itself becoming more militant.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Given the intensity of the uprising and of popular participation in it, the MB faced a real risk of its membership deserting en masse to other factions if it remained on the sidelines.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
But such individuals are few and far between, and tend to be older West Bankers who were previously in the Jordanian MB and continue to prioritize the Islamization project.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
I tend to find February 1988, when it issued its first communiques, more accurate. I also find it telling that Hamas was established as a separate organ:
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
In the event Hamas proved a successful venture, for several reasons. One was the growing allure of religious movements in the Middle East,
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
A second is that Israel and its Western sponsors had for decades wasted no effort to weaken and make ineffective the PLO, and ensure it failed to achieve the strategic objective of Palestinian self-determination.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
particularly in towns with large Christian populations like Bethlehem or others known to be strongholds of rival factions. By contrast it went to extremes in its attempts to break the strikes called by UNLU.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
By the early 1990s Hamas had become a significant and increasingly effective force. Its growth, and a shared interest between Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat in curtailing it, helped lay the groundwork for the Oslo Accords.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Hamas, which was very significantly weakened by the combined efforts of Israel and particularly the Palestinian Authority (PA) during the 1990s, did not initially participate in the Second Intifada.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
When it became apparent Arafat could no longer control the uprising and was tacitly encouraging it, Hamas went all-in. With Ariel Sharon primarily focused on eviscerating the Palestinian Authority, Hamas was a clear beneficiary.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Arafat’s inept successor, Mahmoud Abbas, in 2006 called PA legislative elections. In addition to seeking to consolidate his own position and legitimacy, he hoped to weaken his own, unruly Fatah movement by incorporating Hamas into the political system as a minority faction.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Israel, its Western sponsors, and the PA immediately set about to undermine the election result and ensure Hamas was prevented from governing.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Hamas’s regular military attacks on soldiers and settlers in Gaza, and the Israeli manpower needed to defend these, was an important motivation, as was the desire to achieve US approval for the permanent retention of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Numerous statements by Israeli leaders and analysts from that period predicted that these policy choices laid the groundwork for a Palestinian schism in which sooner or later the Gaza Strip would become “Hamasstan” and the West Bank “Fatahstan”.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
In 2007, anticipating an imminent coup attempt by the PA, planned in full coordination with the US (and Elliott Abrams in particular), Hamas pre-emptively seized power in the Gaza Strip.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
During the first half decade at the very least, Israel could easily have deposed Hamas and installed the PA – the preferred policy of Israel’s Western sponsors – but deliberately chose not to do so.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Hamas rule in Gaza also made it easier for Israel to maintain the blockade of this territory, keep it weak and on the brink of starvation, and periodically launch intensive assaults against the Gaza Strip.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
In 2008 Israeli specialists calculated that Gaza’s Palestinians required 2,279 calories per day to survive, and limited the foodstuffs permitted into the Gaza Strip accordingly.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Rather, in 2014 his far-right Foreign Minister, Avigdor Liebermann, several months after demanding the expulsion of United Nations envoy Robert Serry on fraudulent claims that Serry planned to smuggle USD 20 million in Qatari funds to Hamas,
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
It is an arrangement that continued since 2014, supported by a consensus of Israeli political and military leaders, in order to relieve international pressure on it to relieve the blockade.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) December 3, 2023
Great thread. I was a proponent of the “Israel created Hamas” theory until someone explained to me that this claim also functions as a tool to weaken legitimacy in eyes of Palestinians as being something created by Israel.
— 🪦Tommy (@TommyCarullo) December 3, 2023
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