Gaza Strip: Josep Borrell accuses Israel of “creating” and “financing” Hamas

European diplomacy chief Josep Borrell accused Israel on Friday night of “creating” and “financing” the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which is in power in Gaza and behind the unprecedented October 7 attack on Israeli soil. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in recent days reiterated his opposition to the creation of a viable Palestinian state. A position that has drawn criticism from its American ally, which advocates a “two-state solution,” meaning a State of Palestine next to Israel.

“We believe that the two-state solution must be imposed from outside to bring peace. Even if (and I insist on this) Israel confirms its refusal (of this decision) and in order to prevent it, it has gone so far as to create Hamas itself,” said Josep Borrell. “Hamas was funded by the Israeli government to try to weaken the Palestinian Authority Fatah. But unless we intervene decisively, 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 US.

Hamas was created in December 1987, shortly after the outbreak of the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the Occupied Territories, by a group of Islamist militants posing as the Muslim Brotherhood. It has both a political branch and an armed branch, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades. Its attacks – suicide bombings, rocket attacks, etc. – against Israeli soldiers and civilians have earned the movement designation as a “terrorist” movement by the European Union and the United States.

Hamas, an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, was founded in part to counter Islamic jihad and compete with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a predominantly secular movement then led by Yasser Arafat. Twenty years later, in June 2007, after a quasi-civil war against Fatah, the movement behind the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat’s successor, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip.

“Hamas represented an opportunity”

The Palestinian movement has become a powerful force in Palestine, both politically and militarily. “The population is tired of Fatah (rival side) because she believed that the negotiating game had failed and that nothing had been achieved, and therefore Hamas represented an opportunity,” Marie Durieux, a doctoral student associated with Irsem, had already explained to Le Parisien.

But some observers, such as journalist Charles Enderlin, a former correspondent in Jerusalem and a leading expert on the region, believe successive Jewish state governments 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 next to Israel. The moment you allow Hamas to exist and encourage it, you allow this terrorist organization to develop,” he said last October.

Regarding Hamas funding, the Gaza Strip, under Palestinian control and under Israeli blockade, received several million dollars in aid from Qatar. Financial support that has drawn criticism from Benjamin Netanyahu, who is accused by his detractors of helping finance the movement. Charges he has always denied. According to Didier Billion, deputy director of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris), Qatar “will allocate $30 million a month to pay civil servants in the Gaza Strip.”