Hamas has become Israel’s staunch enemy. However, there is an irony in history behind this. Quite a few former Israeli military and intelligence officials have said through numerous media interviews and books that “it was the Israeli government that helped give birth to Hamas 40 years ago.”
Islamists, the ‘mother’ of Hamas, entered Gaza in the 1970s. The Gaza Strip has been under Israeli military occupation since Israel won the Third Middle East War in 1967 until its withdrawal in 2005.
At the time, Israel was suffering from terrorism committed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a leftist force led by Yasser Arafat (died in 2004). At this time, when ‘peaceful’ Islamists who appeared to be solely focused on studying the Koranic scriptures appeared in Gaza, the Israeli government regarded them as ‘opponents’ to the PLO and Arafat and helped them expand their power.
However, this Islamist organization, which initially started as a ‘charity organization’, developed into the current Hamas, which adopted ‘elimination of Israel’ as its platform during the first uprising (Intifada) of the Palestinian people in late 1987. And in 1989, starting with the kidnapping and murder of two Israeli soldiers, he launched a full-scale attack on Israel.
◇The ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ appeared in Gaza in the 1970s
In the 1970s and 1980s, the PLO committed terrorism inside and outside Israel, including hijacking airliners, assassinations, and bus explosions. The core political faction of the PLO was Fatah, led by PLO Chairman Arafat, and was a leftist group with deep ties to communist forces. Israel defined the PLO as a ‘terrorist group.’
Meanwhile, when Egypt was defeated by Israel in the Third Middle East War (Six-Day War) in 1967, control of Gaza was transferred from Egypt to Israel. Then, in the 1970s, Palestinian branches and followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been severely oppressed in Egypt, flowed into Gaza under Israeli military rule.
The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, argued that the suffering of the Arab world was caused by society becoming secular and abandoning the Islamic faith, and its slogan was “Islam is the answer, and the Koran is our constitution.”
However, Egyptian President Abdel Nasser, a secular nationalist, executed Sayed Qutb, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, in 1966.
In 1973, Palestinian Islamists in Gaza, who had escaped Egyptian rule, applied to the Israeli military government as a charitable organization for an organization called ‘Mujamaa al-Islamiyah (Islamic Center). Israel judged that the descendants of the Muslim Brotherhood were focused only on the study of the Koran and approved the establishment of the group.
◇Israel seeks a counterpart to Arafat and the PLO
Israel continued to look for a ‘soft’ partner who would be trusted by the Palestinian people and would not commit terrorism against Israel.
Israeli intelligence authorities initially looked favorably on Yassin, an Islamic cleric who focused solely on spreading Islam and building libraries, kindergartens, hospitals, and schools. Yassin, a follower of Qutub, was paralyzed from the waist down and was confined to a wheelchair.
Yassin, founder of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, when he was still alive. He was paralyzed from the waist down, lived in a wheelchair, and was killed at the age of 67 by an Israeli helicopter’s Hellfire missile in 2004. /Reuters Yonhap News
Yassin publicly preached the Islamic message, and the Israeli government also approved Yassin’s establishment of the Islamic University of Gaza. The Islamic University of Gaza later became the focal point of the anti-Israel resistance movement. At the time, Arafat’s PLO criticized Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as a “collaborator” of Israel.
It was not that there were no warnings about Yassin. Traditional Islamic clerics in Gaza continued to warn Israeli intelligence officials that “Yasin is a devilish figure and that if left unattended, the Mujamaa group will become a dangerous force in the future.” However, this information was ignored within the Israeli government.
For both Israel and Yassin, the PLO and Fatah were the ‘common enemy’. Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who led Israel’s military government in Gaza in 1979, said in a Wall Street Journal interview in 2009, “Our main enemy was Fatah, and Yassin was still 100% peaceful,” and “Israel also oppressed Yassin.” “I was reluctant to be called an ‘enemy of Islam,’” he said.
Ronnie Shaked, a former official of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet (Shabak), wrote in a 1994 book about Hamas that “Yasin and his followers were moving step by step according to the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan, with a very long-term perspective, and we did not know it.” “He said.
◇Hamas exposes its claws
In December 1987, when the Palestinian people launched the first uprising (Intifada) against Israel, Yassin denied Israel as a nation and launched Hamas, which promoted destruction and anti-Semitism. And in 1989, it kidnapped and killed two Israeli soldiers, launching its first attack on Israel. Israel also arrested 400 Hamas members, including Yassin.
Meanwhile, Israel and the PLO agreed to establish two states in Palestine and recognized each other through the 1993 Oslo Peace Agreement. Now the PLO and Fatah have become Israel’s partners, and Hamas has become Israel’s biggest enemy. The name of the anti-tank rocket developed by Hamas in 2004 was ‘Yasin’.
Israel has begun full-scale removal of Hamas leadership. In 1997, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency Mossad attempted to poison Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal, who was in exile in Jordan, but two Mossad agents were arrested by Jordanian police. In order to free Moshad agents, Israel had to release Yassin, who was serving a life sentence.
Israel assassinated Yassin in March 2004. An Israeli attack helicopter fired Hellfire missiles at Yassin as he was leaving morning prayers at a mosque that day. To cover up the noise of the approaching helicopter, an Israeli Air Force F-16 fighter jet flew overhead.
◇Hamas becomes the only political faction that rules Gaza
Yassin was murdered, but in the Palestinian general elections held in January 2006, Hamas won 44.5% of the votes in both Gaza and the West Bank, becoming the largest party. Of the total 132 seats, Hamas had 74 seats and Fatah had 45 seats. Palestinian residents were disillusioned with Fatah’s extreme corruption and cronyism, failure to implement the Oslo Peace Agreement, and lack of leadership, and chose Hamas as an alternative.
However, Hamas and Fatah engaged in a bloody conflict over the division of power, and Hamas eventually took over the Gaza Strip under one-party rule. The West Bank was handed over to Fatah, which formed the Palestinian Authority (PA).
At the time, President George W. Bush also supported the ‘spread of democracy’ and pushed for a general election in Palestine. Bush evaluated Hamas’ victory as “positive in that the election was held peacefully and it sounded a wake-up call to the (corrupt) Palestinian leadership.”
On the 9th, the Israeli Air Force completely destroyed a mosque in the Gaza Strip named after Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a night bombing operation, reducing it to a pile of rubble./AFP Yonhap News
However, regarding the rise of Hamas, which has never once acknowledged the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine and has not given up armed terrorism, it is said that even within the Bush administration, complaints arose, asking, “Who on earth recommended elections?” When Hamas took control of Gaza, Israel began blocking the border between Gaza and Israel.
◇70% of current Gaza residents did not even have the right to vote 17 years ago
The median age of Gaza residents is 18. Half of the population was not even born 17 years ago when Hamas was elected as the largest party. Additionally, 70% of the population is under the age of 30. The story is that more than 70% of the population of Gaza did not even have the right to vote at the time.
On the 22nd, New York Magazine reported, “Many Gaza residents do not like being ruled by Hamas militia members. “But I don’t have the strength to risk my life and resist, and it’s so hard to make a living day after day.”
Arie Spitzen, former director of the Israeli military’s Palestine Department, said, “Would it have been different if Hamas had been eliminated earlier?” He added, “Just as eliminating mosquitoes disrupts the ecological balance and causes pests more threatening than mosquitoes to proliferate, eliminating Hamas will allow Al Qaeda to invade Israel.” “It would have appeared,” he said.
However, Abner Cohen, who worked as an Israeli intelligence official in Gaza, said in a WSJ interview in 2009, “In the 1970s, a traditional Palestinian Islamic cleric told me, ‘If you cooperate with Yassin’s group, you will regret it 20 or 30 years from now.’ And he was right.”
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2023-10-26 08:33:33
