How Israel helped create Hamas
All signs indicate that
the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared
to wage a protracted battle in the battered Gaza Strip as it seeks to crush
the capabilities of the Islamist militant group Hamas. The ongoing
conflict has already exacted a bloody toll, with the Palestinian death
count approaching the total
of Israel's 2008-2009 bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza,
which led to the deaths of at least 1,383 Palestinians over three weeks.
Netanyahu wants to wholly demilitarize
the Palestinian enclave, beginning with the network of tunnels that
allow Hamas's fighters to infiltrate into Israeli territory. But Hamas, a
dogged outfit that thrives in wartime, is digging in its heels. On Tuesday, a Hamas spokesman said Netanyahu's "threats did not frighten Hamas or the Palestinian people."
The
current fighting — a clash between Israel's vastly superior armed
forces and Hamas's insurgents — obscures the greater challenges facing
Israelis and Palestinians, including the thorny question of how to
accord equal rights to millions of Palestinians living under occupation
in the event that a separate Palestinian state turns out not to be viable.
It
also obscures Hamas's curious history. To a certain degree, the
Islamist organization whose militant wing has rained rockets on Israel
the past few weeks has the Jewish state to thank for its
existence. Hamas launched in 1988 in Gaza at the time of the first
intifada, or uprising, with a charter now infamous for its anti-Semitism
and its refusal to accept the existence of the Israeli state. But for more than a decade prior, Israeli authorities actively enabled its rise.
At the time, Israel's main enemy was the late Yasser Arafat's Fatah party,
which formed the heart of the Palestinian Liberation Organization
(PLO). Fatah was secular and cast in the mold of other revolutionary,
leftist guerrilla movements waging insurgencies elsewhere in the world
during the Cold War. The PLO carried out assassinations and kidnappings
and, although recognized by neighboring Arab states, was considered a
terrorist organization by Israel; PLO operatives in the occupied
territories faced brutal repression at the hands of the Israeli security
state.
A picture taken along Israel's border with the Gaza Strip shows the sun setting over the Palestinian enclave. (Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
