Hello,
You know who is one of the biggest supporters of Hamas, it is the Prime Minister of Israel himself, Benjamin Netanyahu. I think that for some, this was considered a leftwing overstatement, but, as usual, it wasn’t. Some amazing reporting recently gives reasons to support a cynical interpretation of Netenyahu’s motivations.
Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman (two excellent journalists; Mark Mazzetti’s book The Way of the Knife, about the CIA’s clandestine killing after 9/11 is fantastic!) recently reported that Netanyahu encouraged Qatar to send millions of dollars a month to Hamas, and has been supporting this for nearly a decade. It was to “maintain peace in Gaza,” which means: to perpetuate a status quo that is not conducive to a two-state solution. Of course Netanyahu’s office said that this support was for humanitarian reasons. But, more astutely and honestly, Mazzetti and Bergman understand it correctly: “each payout was a testament to the Israeli government’s view that Hamas was a low-level nuisance, and even a political asset.”
Israeli media, center-left and right, (Haareetz, The Jerusalem Post) has been reporting about this for years, but it’s good to see newspapers of record like The New York Times doing so now. Also, look at this transcript from an interview that The Wall Street Journal had with Richard Haass, former president of the Council of Foreign Relations and former Director of Policy Planning for George W. Bush from 2001-2003. Haass is the epitome of mainstream consensus and understanding. The topic was regarding Netanyahu’s endgame regarding his undermining of the Palestinian Authority (PA):
“His endgame is a perpetuation of a version of the status quo in Israel. Basically let Gaza be isolated. Israelis, for the most part, do not care about Gaza. It’s never been part of the settler movement in a serious way. It’s been a sideshow.
What the Israelis want to do is avoid a Palestinian state. They want to avoid limits on settlements. I say Israelis. I mean this coalition. Netanyahu and his colleagues. What they want is essentially what I would call the one-state nonsolution.”
Netanyahu is not interested in a two-state solution and he prefers Hamas governing Gaza than the PA because it’s plausible that the PA could one day achieve success. He knows that as long as Hamas governs Gaza, the status-quo settler colonialism project can go on uninterrupted. And as Haass argued elsewhere, using what we know about The Troubles, governments only resort to diplomacy after “only if, and when, the parties become convinced that more war will not bring them closer to their goals.” Netanyahu’s Doctrine is focused on keeping him in power; out of jail; and keeping the far-right project of settler colonialism from the River to the Sea alive.
That goal is dead if a sufficient and durable two-state solution is achieved.
Thanks for reading,
Patrick M. Foran
Netenyahu and his far right war cabinet are doomed in my opinion. Choosing apartheid rather than a two state solution has brought about this war. The unprecedented bombing and genocidal behaviour of his zionist government is going to unite more and more muslim countries to fight the Israelis. In the west people are waking up to the war crimes being committed by Israel too.The only country that could stop the carnage is the USA but Biden is a warmonger too! American tax payers are financing Israels genocide . Palastinians are being bombed by US made planes and bombs. and the muslim world knows this. The propaganda machine is falling apart . Netenyahu wont have "his status quo" and might go down in history as the man that lost the state of Israel.