On January 19, 2024, according to an article in politico, the head of the European Union’s foreign policy, Josep Borrell, made a statement that caused quite a stir both in Israel and in the field of international relations. In fact, he had announced that Israel itself had financed Hamas in order to undermine the Palestinian Authority.
Following these statements, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, refuted the related accusations from his opponents inside Israel as well as from some international media who claim that his government has actively strengthened Hamas in Gaza for several years.
In detail, in a speech at the University of Valladolid in Spain as well as in statements to the El País newspaper, Borel claimed that the Israeli government has directly funded Hamas to weaken the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.
The Liberal Globe Analysis
Borel may not have elaborated further, but an experienced eye of an intelligence analyst could appreciate the following facts:
- The Times of Israel claims that governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu over the years have pursued a power-sharing approach between the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank in order to weaken Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas while supporting Hamas. In addition, the central idea of these actions was to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
- Thus, in the midst of this effort to weaken Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere group to an organization with which Israel conducted indirect negotiations through Egypt and which was allowed to receive foreign funding.
- For example, according to Bloomberg, about five years ago Hamas’s financial needs were funded with about $30 million a month from Qatar along with an allowance from the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, all with Israel’s approval.
- Israel’s finance minister and leader of the Religious Zionist party, Bezalel Smotrich, wants 1.8 million Palestinians from Gaza to be “encouraged to immigrate.” For Smotrich as to where these nearly 2 million Palestinian civilians could be displaced, they could go anywhere else. The important thing is that the end of the war in Gaza can support the establishment of Jewish settlements.
- The Fatah-Hamas conflict, which is an ongoing political and strategic conflict between Fatah and Hamas, i.e. the two main Palestinian political parties in the Palestinian territories, resulted in Hamas gaining control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. The process reconciliation and unification of the administrations of Hamas and Fatah remains incomplete and the situation is considered a frozen conflict.
While Fatah was founded in 1959 as a political movement and incorporated as a political party in 1965, Hamas was founded in 1987 immediately after the outbreak of the First Intifada, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Conclusions
The insistence on leveling Gaza and expelling Palestinians in the wake of last October’s Hamas offensive leads to the conclusion that it is part of a larger Israeli covert operation plan to evacuate the Strip.
In general, the planning and execution of such a plan before the start of any hostilities is very important for the conduct of a subsequent military operation.
Such a plan was drawn up by the US and NATO in Ukraine, but Russian counterintelligence provided valuable information to the Russian government to carry out the special military operation so as to prevent a very unpleasant situation within a radius of about 900 km from Moscow. That is, at a distance that would allow an attack by NATO with minimal reaction time from the Russian armed forces.
Any state that follows this way of executing secret plans has the advantage, unless the opposing counterintelligence, diplomacy and government take preventive measures. Any state that is ignorant of the secret operational plans of its adversaries will always be surprised by the weapons of its enemies.
