While the mainstream media usually reports that Iran is the force behind then Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, it has also quietly reported about how Hamas is actually a creation of Israel.

In 2009, the Wall Street Journal published a report explaining that Israel was responsible for the creation of Hamas, and in following years similar articles were published in other mainstream sources such as The Washington Post.

It is claimed that Hamas “went rouge” in 1989 after it attacked Israel and aligned itself with Iran, however media reports are explaining that Israel has been supporting it since then as well.

After the October 7 terrorist attacks, The Times of Israel and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz had written articles drawing attention to the situation, where they explain that Israel has been continuing to support Hamas up until the present day in a strategy to ensure that Palestine does not achieve statehood.

This article summarizes the various mainstream news reports.

The Israeli government quietly acknowledges that it is responsible for the creation of Hamas, as detailed in media reports such as this 2004 Wall Street Journal article (which is also summarized later in this article.)  Following is a summary of what the various reports say:

In the 1970’s, the Israeli government was looking for a way to destabilize the PLO which at the time was a terrorist organization, so they decided to create a radical Islamist group in order to make them fight each other to neutralize the threat.

Israel began funding a group of radicals and their mosques, one of them being a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, whose organization Mujama Al-Islamiya was recognized by Israel as a charity in 1979 in order to receive the funding.  The charity designation allowed members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools.  In the meantime, Israel stood aside when the Islamists and their Palestinian rivals battled for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank, where Yassin’s organization was the precursor to Hamas.

In 1987, several Palestinians were killed in a traffic accident involving an Israeli driver, triggering a wave of protests that became known as the first Intifada, where Mr. Yassin and six other Mujama Islamists launched Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement.  Hamas’s charter, released a year later, is filled with anti-Semitic rhetoric and declares “Jihad its path and death for the cause of Allah its most sublime belief.”

In 1989, Hamas carried out its first attack on Israel, where it abducted and killed two soldiers, for which Israel arrested Yassin and sentenced him to life in prison.  Yassin was released a few year later in a prisoner swap.  Israel also arrested 400 Hamas activists and deported them to southern Lebanon, where they coordinated with Iran’s Hezbollah and eventually returned to Gaza and escalated their attacks.

At the same time, the PLO dropped its militant stance against Israel and started negotiating for a two state settlement, while Hamas accused it of treachery and continued its hostility toward it and Israel.

Israel then started stepping up its attacks against Hamas by targeting its leaders, but that only helped the group to gain support.

In 2007, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and has retained sole control over it, where to this day it remains a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel; but nonetheless it plays a mainstream role in Palestinian politics, where it is a political party and a provider of social services in addition to being a paramilitary force.

Recent reports are explaining that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been propping up Hamas by allowing massive infusions of money and offering work permits for Gazan laborers in Israel in order to ensure that the group remains in power.  Netanyahu had been quoted as saying at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019 that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel beginning in the early morning with a rocket barrage of at least 3,000 rockets, along with vehicle-transport and powered paraglider incursions into its territory.  Hamas fighters breached the Gaza–Israel barrier and targeted civilians to be killed in neighboring Israeli communities and attacking Israeli military bases.  In a single day, 859 Israeli civilians and at least 345 Israeli soldiers and policemen were killed in nearby towns, kibbutzim, military bases and at a music festival near Re’im.  Around 200 Israeli civilians and soldiers were taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip, of which the number of kidnapped children is about 30.

This video that was made in 2021 explains the harmful behavior of Hamas in Palestine.

A November 12, 2023 New York Times article explains that Israel had been directly and indirectly sending billions of dollars to the Gaza Strip in order to prop up the Hamas government between 2012 and 2023, even after it was learned that Hamas was planning a large attack.  (Note that the link is to a reprint of the article on the Irish Times media outlet.)

Israel had been directly and indirectly sending billions of dollars to the Gaza Strip in order to prop up the Hamas government between 2012 and 2023.

The payments even continued in 2023 after the Israeli military obtained battle plans for an upcoming invasion and significant terrorism exercises were observed on the other side of the border in Gaza.

The money was usually sent as cash in suitcases on a monthly basis with the help of the country of Qatar, and the article also explains how Israel also allowed Hamas to launder money through the Bank of China.

Whenever the issue of the payments was exposed in the media, the Israeli government publicly made excuses that the money was for “humanitarian purposes,” and others in the government made excuses that it was a military strategy to “buy peace.”

Surprisingly for a mainstream news article, it does essentially concede that Hamas is an Israeli operation: “As far back as December 2012, Netanyahu told prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.  … [and] Netanyahu would articulate this idea to others over the years.”

— For years the country of Qatar had been sending millions of dollars each month into the Gaza strip, which helped prop up the Hamas government, where the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu not only tolerated those payments, but he encouraged them.

— The payments totaled to billions of dollar over a decade’s time, where the article claims that sending the money was “a gamble by Netanyahu that a steady flow of money would maintain peace in Gaza.”  The payments continued until just weeks before Hamas launched its October 7th attacks in Israel.

— For years, Israeli intelligence officers escorted a Qatari official into Gaza, carrying suitcases filled with millions of dollars to be given to Hamas.

— The payments even continued when in 2023 the Israeli military obtained battle plans for an upcoming invasion and significant terrorism exercises were observed just over the border in Gaza.

— While the payments were supposedly a secret, they had been widely known and discussed in the Israeli news media for years, where Netanyahu’s critics labeled his practice as “buying quiet.”

— The article explains, “In interviews with more than two dozen current and former Israeli, US and Qatari officials, and officials from other Middle Eastern governments, the New York Times unearthed new details about the origins of the policy, the controversies that erupted inside the Israeli government, and the lengths that Netanyahu went to in order to shield the Qataris from criticism and keep the money flowing.”

— The money was claimed to be designated to be used for humanitarian goals such as paying government salaries in Gaza and buying fuel to keep a power plant running, however, “Israeli intelligence officials now believe that the money had a role in the success of the October 7th attacks, if only because the donations allowed Hamas to divert some of its own budget toward military operations.”

— The article claims that the Israeli government viewed Hamas as only a “low-level nuisance," and even a political asset, despite Hamas publicly stating its commitment to eliminating the state of Israel.

— The article also claims that Netanyahu’s strategy “was buttressed by repeated intelligence assessments that Hamas was neither interested in nor capable of launching a significant attack inside Israel.”

— The article says, “As far back as December 2012, Netanyahu told prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.  … The official in the prime minister’s office said Netanyahu never made this statement.  But Netanyahu would articulate this idea to others over the years.”

— The country of Qatar has very close relationship with Hamas, where it was a key financier for reconstruction and government operations in Gaza.

— In 2017 Netanyahu even lobbied Washington on Qatar’s behalf when Republicans attempted to impose sanctions on Qatar for its support of Hamas, where he dispatched senior intelligence officials to Washington.

— A former head of research for Israel’s military intelligence Yossi Kuperwasser said, “Some officials saw the benefits of maintaining an ‘equilibrium’ in the Gaza Strip.  ‘The logic of Israel was that Hamas should be strong enough to rule Gaza, but weak enough to be deterred by Israel.’”

— The Administrations of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden all broadly supported having the Qataris playing a direct role in funding Gaza operations.

— The article explains that Mossad agents who tracked terrorism financing are saying, “Netanyahu was not very concerned about stopping money going to Hamas”— including even beyond money from Qatar.  For example an agent Uzi Shaya is quoted saying that he along with Israeli intelligence discovered a Chinese money laundering operation for Hamas through the Bank of China, and after he retired he was disallowed from testifying in court about the matter on behalf of the family of a Hamas terrorist attack victim.

— Netanyahu’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said in 2015, “The Palestinian Authority is a burden.  Hamas is an asset.”

— In a 2018 Netanyahu cabinet meeting, a plan was hatched to distribute millions of dollars in cash in monthly payments to Gaza through Qatar as a part of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, and soon suitcases of cash began crossing over the border into Gaza.  The money was supposedly intended to pay salaries and other expenses, however “one senior Western diplomat who was based in Israel until last year said Western governments had long assessed that Hamas was skimming from the cash disbursements.”

— A senior Middle East analyst at the CIA Chip Usher explained, “Anything that Hamas didn’t have to use out of its own budget freed up money for other things.”

[Also see this Haaretz article explaining that Netanyahu sent the Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen to Doha, Qatar on February 5, 2020 in order to ensure that Qatar continues its financial aid policy to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.]

— Naftali Bennett, who was Israel’s education minister in 2018 called the payments “protection money.”  However, Bennett also continued the policy despite griping about doing it when he began his one year stint as prime minister in 2021, when Qatar was spending about $30 million a month in Gaza.  Bennett then reached a compromise where the United Nations was agreed to distribute the money instead.

An October 8, 2023 Times of Israel article explains Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current nefarious approach of propping up the Hamas terror group in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian State.  Following is from the article:

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

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products.

Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm.

…

Additionally, since 2014, Netanyahu-led governments have practically turned a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip.

…

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While Netanyahu does not make these kind of statements publicly or officially, his words are in line with the policy that he implemented.

…

Bolstered by this policy, Hamas grew stronger and stronger until Saturday, Israel’s “Pearl Harbor,” the bloodiest day in its history — when terrorists crossed the border, slaughtered hundreds of Israelis and kidnapped an unknown number under the cover of thousands of rockets fired at towns throughout the country’s south and center.

The country has known attacks and wars, but never on such a scale in a single morning.

One thing is clear: The concept of indirectly strengthening Hamas — while tolerating sporadic attacks and minor military operations every few years — went up in smoke Saturday.

…

Hamas became stronger and used the auspices of peace that Israelis so longed for as cover for its training, and hundreds of Israelis have paid with their lives for this massive omission.

The terror inflicted on the civilian population in Israel is so enormous that the wounds from it will not heal for years, a challenge compounded by the dozens abducted into Gaza.

On October 9th, two days after Israel declared war on Hamas, the Israeli news outlet Haaretz which is opposed to Netanyahu and regularly points out his acts of corruption— published an article that said the following:

Effectively, Netanyahu’s entire worldview collapsed over the course of a single day.  He was convinced that he could make deals with corrupt Arab tyrants while ignoring the cornerstone of the Arab-Jewish conflict, the Palestinians.  His life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible.  En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.

The PM told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019:  “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.  This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

An October 11, 2023, Haaretz article explains Netanyahu’s dealings with Hamas in recent years:

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.

This is solidly documented.  Between 2012 and 2018, Netanyahu gave Qatar approval to transfer a cumulative sum of about a billion dollars to Gaza, at least half of which reached Hamas, including its military wing.  According to the Jerusalem Post, in a private meeting with members of his Likud party on March 11, 2019, Netanyahu explained the reckless step as follows: The money transfer is part of the strategy to divide the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.  Anyone who opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support the transfer of the money from Qatar to Hamas. In that way, we will foil the establishment of a Palestinian state (as reported in former cabinet member Haim Ramon’s Hebrew-language book “Neged Haruach”, p. 417).

In an interview with the Ynet news website on May 5, 2019, Netanyahu associate Gershon Hacohen, a major general in reserves, said, “We need to tell the truth.  Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner.  Openly Hamas is an enemy.  Covertly, it’s an ally.”

In a tweet on May 20, 2019, Channel 13 quoted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak saying: “Netanyahu isn’t interested in the two-state solution.  Rather, he wants to separate Gaza from the West Bank, as he told me at the end of 2010.”  Mubarak said that during an interview with the Kuwaiti daily Al-Anba.

It’s worth dwelling on the horrifying significance of these remarks.  An Israeli prime minister himself 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.

“This government has blood, rivers of blood, on its hands,” Iris Leal justifiably wrote in Haaretz this week, (Haaretz, Oct. 8).  But one should acknowledge and clearly and explicitly state that, on the Israeli side, the person bearing the fundamental responsibility for the killing of more than a thousand Israelis by Hamas is Benjamin Netanyahu – its covert ally, as Maj. Gen. Cohen put it, but also an effective and essential one for the Palestinian religious nationalist terrorist organization, at least between 2012 and 2019.

Following is a summary of a January 24, 2009 Wall Street Journal article that explains how Israel created Hamas:

— “Israel’s experience echoes that of the U.S., which, during the Cold War, looked to Islamists as a useful ally against communism.  Anti-Soviet forces backed by America after Moscow’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan later mutated into al Qaeda.”

— “At stake is the future of what used to be the British Mandate of Palestine, the biblical lands now comprising Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza.  Since 1948, when the state of Israel was established, Israelis and Palestinians have each asserted claims over the same territory.”

— “The Palestinian cause was for decades led by the PLO, which Israel regarded as a terrorist outfit and sought to crush until the 1990s, when the PLO dropped its vow to destroy the Jewish state.  …”

— “Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset … Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah.  Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas.  Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with ‘Yassins,’ primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.”

— “…  [In the 1980’s] the Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity.  It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools.  Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank.”

— “Israeli officials who served in Gaza disagree on how much their own actions may have contributed to the rise of Hamas.  They blame the group’s recent ascent on outsiders, primarily Iran.  This view is shared by the Israeli government.  ‘Hamas in Gaza was built by Iran as a foundation for power, and is backed through funding, through training and through the provision of advanced weapons,’ …”

— “Hamas traces its roots back to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group set up in Egypt in 1928. …”

— “[Up until 1967] Gaza was ruled by Egypt.  The country’s then-president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a secular nationalist who brutally repressed the Brotherhood.  In 1967, Nasser suffered a crushing defeat when Israel triumphed in the six-day war.  Israel took control of Gaza and also the West Bank.”

— “In Gaza, Israel hunted down members of Fatah and other secular PLO factions, but it dropped harsh restrictions imposed on Islamic activists by the territory’s previous Egyptian rulers.  Fatah, set up in 1964, was the backbone of the PLO, which was responsible for hijackings, bombings and other violence against Israel. …”

— “The Muslim Brotherhood, led in Gaza by Sheikh Yassin, was free to spread its message openly.  In addition to launching various charity projects, Sheikh Yassin collected money to reprint the writings of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian member of the Brotherhood who, before his execution by President Nasser, advocated global jihad.  He is now seen as one of the founding ideologues of militant political Islam.”

— “… Israel’s military-led administration in Gaza looked favorably on the paraplegic cleric, who set up a wide network of schools, clinics, a library and kindergartens.  Sheikh Yassin formed the Islamist group Mujama al-Islamiya, which was officially recognized by Israel as a charity and then, in 1979, as an association.  Israel also endorsed the establishment of the Islamic University of Gaza, which it now regards as a hotbed of militancy. …”

— “… Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who took over as governor in Gaza in late 1979, says he had no illusions about Sheikh Yassin’s long-term intentions or the perils of political Islam.  As Israel’s former military attache in Iran, he’d watched Islamic fervor topple the Shah.  However, in Gaza … the cleric ‘was still 100% peaceful’ towards Israel. …”

— “Mr. Segev says he had regular contact with Sheikh Yassin, in part to keep an eye on him.  He visited his mosque and met the cleric around a dozen times.  It was illegal at the time for Israelis to meet anyone from the PLO. Mr. Segev later arranged for the cleric to be taken to Israel for hospital treatment.  ‘We had no problems with him,’ he says.”

— “[An Israeli military intelligence officer Mr. Harari] says [warnings about Yassin] were ignored.  But, he says, the reason for this was neglect, not a desire to fortify the Islamists: ‘Israel never financed Hamas. Israel never armed Hamas.’”

— Roni Shaked, a former officer of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and author of a book on Hamas, says Sheikh Yassin and his followers had a long-term perspective whose dangers were not understood at the time.  “They worked slowly, slowly, step by step according to the Muslim Brotherhood plan.”

— “In 1987, several Palestinians were killed in a traffic accident involving an Israeli driver, triggering a wave of protests that became known as the first Intifada, [where] Mr. Yassin and six other Mujama Islamists launched Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement.  Hamas’s charter, released a year later, is studded with anti-Semitism and declares ‘jihad its path and death for the cause of Allah its most sublime belief.’”

— “Israeli officials, … initially unaware of the Hamas charter, continued to maintain contacts with the Gaza Islamists.  Mr. Hacham, the military Arab affairs expert, remembers taking one of Hamas’s founders, Mahmoud Zahar, to meet Israel’s then defense minister, Yitzhak Rabin, as part of regular consultations between Israeli officials and Palestinians not linked to the PLO.  Mr. Zahar, the only Hamas founder known to be alive today, is now the group’s senior political leader in Gaza.”

— “In 1989, Hamas carried out its first attack on Israel, abducting and killing two soldiers.  Israel arrested Sheikh Yassin and sentenced him to life.  It later rounded up more than 400 suspected Hamas activists, … and deported them to southern Lebanon. There, they hooked up with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed A-Team of anti-Israeli militancy.”

— “Many of the deportees later returned to Gaza.  Hamas built up its arsenal and escalated its attacks, while all along maintaining the social network that underpinned its support in Gaza.”

— “Meanwhile, its enemy, the PLO, dropped its commitment to Israel’s destruction and started negotiating a two-state settlement.  Hamas accused it of treachery.  This accusation found increasing resonance as Israel kept developing settlements on occupied Palestinian land, particularly the West Bank.  Though the West Bank had passed to the nominal control of a new Palestinian Authority, it was still dotted with Israeli military checkpoints and a growing number of Israeli settlers.”

— “Unable to uproot a now entrenched Islamist network that had suddenly replaced the PLO as its main foe, Israel tried to decapitate it.  It started targeting Hamas leaders.  This, too, made no dent in Hamas’s support, and sometimes even helped the group.  In 1997, for example, Israel’s Mossad spy agency tried to poison Hamas’s exiled political leader Mr. Mashaal, who was then living in Jordan.”

— “The agents got caught and, to get them out of a Jordanian jail, Israel agreed to release Sheikh Yassin.  The cleric set off on a tour of the Islamic world to raise support and money.  He returned to Gaza to a hero’s welcome.”

— “Efraim Halevy, a veteran Mossad officer who negotiated the deal that released Sheikh Yassin, says the cleric’s freedom was hard to swallow, but Israel had no choice.  After the fiasco in Jordan, Mr. Halevy was named director of Mossad, a position he held until 2002.  Two years later, Sheikh Yassin was killed by an Israeli air strike.”

— “Mr. Halevy has in recent years urged Israel to negotiate with Hamas.  He says that ‘Hamas can be crushed,’ but he believes that ‘the price of crushing Hamas is a price that Israel would prefer not to pay.’   When Israel’s authoritarian secular neighbor, Syria, launched a campaign to wipe out Muslim Brotherhood militants in the early 1980s it killed more than 20,000 people, many of them civilians.”

— “In its recent war in Gaza, Israel didn’t set the destruction of Hamas as its goal. It limited its stated objectives to halting the Islamists’ rocket fire and battering their overall military capacity.  At the start of the Israeli operation in December, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told parliament that the goal was ‘to deal Hamas a severe blow, a blow that will cause it to stop its hostile actions from Gaza at Israeli citizens and soldiers.’”

More recently on October 19th, 2023, the Wall Street Journal wrote another report about the matter.  Following is from the article:

The flow of money illustrates the conundrum Israel and the West have faced since 2007, when Hamas wrested control of the strip from its rival, the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority: How to support Palestinian civilians in Gaza without empowering a group promoting violence against Israel.  The recent Hamas attacks show how the international community has struggled to walk that line.

International aid “was designed to be humanitarian in nature, but money is fungible, and that also allows Hamas to divert money from providing for its people to support its war machine,” said Alex Zerden, a former senior U.S. Treasury national security official.

A 2014 Washington Post article similarly explains how Hamas was created by Israel, where it also stated the following about the situation at that time:

… As Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center, observes, a strange, self-sustaining relationship remains.  Israel’s hawkish government — comprising many politicians who have little interest in seeing the creation of a separate Palestinian state — dwells on the security threat that Hamas’s crude rockets pose.  Hamas depends, Miller writes, on “an ideology and strategy steeped in confrontation and resistance.”

And so, he concludes, they are “two parties who can’t seem to live with one another — or apparently without one another either.”