Further evidence Netanyahu propped up Hamas

Plus: Arafat on Hamas as "a creature of Israel"

In my last post I explained how Netanyahu played a crucial role in bolstering Hamas in order to “divide and conquer” the Palestinians and delegitimise the Palestinian National Authority — the continuation of a strategy which Israel had been pursuing, in various forms, since the 1980s. An article which appeared in Haaretz sheds more light on this disturbing policy:

[S]ince he took office as prime minister a second time in 2009, Netanyahu developed and advanced a destructive, warped political doctrine that held that strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority would be good for Israel.

The purpose of the doctrine was to perpetuate the rift between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. That would preserve the diplomatic paralysis and forever remove the “danger” of negotiations with the Palestinians over the partition of Israel into two states — on the argument that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t represent all the Palestinians.

That flawed strategy turned Hamas from a minor terrorist organization into an efficient, lethal army with highly trained, dehumanized stormtroopers, bloodthirsty killers who mercilessly slaughtered innocent Israeli civilians including women, children and the elderly.

[In other words, Netanyahu] knowingly and calculatingly cultivated one of Israel’s most bitter and fanatic foes, an enemy whose declared aim is to destroy the country. And he did it to prevent the horror scenario from his standpoint of a return to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Netanyahu recklessly gambled on the lives of Israelis, and in fact, last Shabbat, more than 1,000 of them paid the price of that foolish gamble with their lives.

The Times of Israel carried a similar story headlined “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces”:

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.