The Islamic Resistance Mouvement, better known by its Arab acronym Hamas, is terrorist organization which is — last, but not least — terrorizing the 2.3 million people living in the Gaza Strip aka “Hamastan”, where there is no rule of law, no freedom of speech or press or any other freedom.
Hamas was inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian cleric who, previously had dedicated his early life to Islamic scholarship in Egypt’s capital Cairo.
As the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas built schools, hospitals and infrastructure. However, terror was always part of their DNA. The year after their win in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election, Hamas expelled Fatah from the Gaza strip, crushed any dissent and established a brutal dictatorship.
In Gaza, other terrorist organizations such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are active too, including many micro-groups. Both the Sunni Hamas and the PIJ get financial, military and other support from the Shiite Iranian regime. As Iran, both Gaza groups are advocating the destruction of the state of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state on Israeli and Palestinian territory; the original 1988 Hamas Charter advocated genocide, the October 7, 2023 pogroms — including the beheading of Israeli children — shows that the original genocidal goals have not changed.
Together with Russia, Iran is the world’s most important sponsor of state terrorism and has been a crucial aid to extremist groups in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon (Hezbollah) as well as in the Gaza Strip (Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad).
The Iranian regime has been financially supporting Hamas since 1992. In addition to Iran, financial, military and/or diplomatic support for Hamas comes from countries such as Qatar, the NATO member Turkey, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan. Qatar not only supports the Gaza Strip with roughly $30 million per month but, since 2012, hosts the political bureau of Hamas in its capital Doha, where the Hamas chairman Ismail Haniyeh is mostly residing. In 2012, the then-emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, was the first head of state to visit Gaza under Hamas rule. In Egypt, Qatar backed the Muslim Brotherhood whereas, in Syria, Qatar backed Sunni insurgents who tried to topple the terror regime of dictator Bashar Assad. With its TV network Al Jazeera, not only during the so-called Arab Spring, Qatar has been in support of Islamist movements and Muslim Brotherhood movement in several countries (including seven European countries; read the Qatar Papers, available from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk), leading to an embargo by equally shady Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain in 2017, which ended in 2021, with Qatar walking away as the winner of the clash. With its oil billions, Qatar has corrupted many Western countries, including France. At the same, the United States operate three military bases in Qatar. Last, but not least, let’s not forget that the Taliban had opened a political bureau in Doha in order to regain control over Afghanistan.
As for Turkey, in addition to Ismail Haniyeh and his son Maaz, key figures of Hamas have obtained Turkish citizenship, have friendly relations and met with with Turkey’s dictator Erdogan and, from their Istanbul headquarters, Hamas groups have been planning terror attacks.
The United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and others consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Nevertheless, Gaza gets financial support from the West, which partly ends up in the hands of Hamas.
In July and August 2023, the Biden administration has approved the transfer of billions of dollars from Iraq to Iran as well as billions of dollars of frozen funds from South Korea to Iran. Back then, Washington officials naively claimed that the money can only be used for humanitarian purposes. Even it that was entirely true, the funds would free money for Tehran to use on its terror agenda around the globe. Already Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran was a fantasy, offering additional oil billions to the Iranian terrorist regime. Some people never learn.
If you want long term peace, you have to start with education. For years, the EU has been funding textbooks for school children, which incite the hatred of Jews and Israel, documented for instance in the 68-page report published by the NGO IMPACT-se in 2019 regarding the Palestinian school curriculum for the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and UNRWA.
Roughly half of the population of the Gaza Strip are teenagers with no future. The unemployment rate is around 50% , the GDP per capita and month is roughly $100. According to the United Nations, roughly two-words of the population of Gaza live below the poverty line. In such a climate, with such a school curriculum, Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, the PIJ and other extremist, terrorist organizations have no problem recruiting young militants ready to kill Israelis.
The recent Hamas massacres and pogroms in Israel have cost the lives of roughly 1.300 mostly Israeli civilians and included atrocities such as the beheading of children. There can be no excuse for such crimes. All those terrorists must be held accountable.
The upcoming war in the Gaza Strip risks to be ugly and to alienate public support for Israel around the globe. The Gaza Strip is roughly 40km x 10km and considered one of the worlds’s most densely populated areas. In an urban fight, with Hamas fighters hiding behind civilians, innocent victims cannot be avoided.
Hamas is a terrorist organization and has no legitimacy. The same holds true for the corrupt Fatah and “President Abbas”; Mahmoud Abbas (*1935) was elected in January 2005 for a mandate which ended in 2009. At the end of that year, the PLO Central Council voted him into office “indefinitely”. In short, he has no mandate from the Palestinian people. In addition, Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly distinguished himself as a holocaust denier and antisemite. The last parliamentary election in Palestine took place in 2006. The West is turning a blind eye on this fact because Hamas is polling higher than Fatah. In a March 2023 poll, 17% of the people in the West Bank and 22% in the Gaza Strip said they were satisfied with his job performance. In July 2023, some 80% of Palestinians said Mahmoud Abbas should step down.
For Russia, the Hamas massacres are a welcome diversion from the war in Ukraine. The Israeli counter-attacks on Gaza to eliminate the Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) threat, which necessarily lead to the death of numerous civilians, are an excuse for the many war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
The Egyptian regime of dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has no interest in opening the Gaza-Egypt border to let Palestinians flee to the Sinai. In 2013, General Al-Sisi ousted the democratically elected Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in a bloody, military coup. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. If Egypt opened the border, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would flood the Sinai, where there is no infrastructure for them. As we have seen with the Palestinian refugee camps set up in Lebanon (and elsewhere) in 1948 and 1949 and later, they are still full of Palestinians today. The “temporary solution” would risk to become permanent. In addition, Egypt would not only import a migrant problem, but most likely also hundreds of the estimated 30.000 Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) terrorists. For years, Egypt has been struggling to get the terrorist problem in the Sinai under control where Al-Qaeda, ISIS-linked terror groups and others are or were active, with Hamas controlled tunnels leading from Egypt into Gaza. Al-Sisi is a dictator with blood on his hands. He is surely not naive enough to import a Palestinian problem through the Rafah border.
Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and others, including Shiite groups in Iraq, are trying to pressure Israel on all fronts. Militarily, they are no match for Tzahal, but the Israeli Defense Forces and their Iron Dome would come under extreme pressue if Hezbollah was about to launch thousands of rockets on Israel.
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The October 7, 2023 pogroms and massacres by Hamas (and probably other Gaza extremists) on Israeli territory, which cost the lifes of some 1.300 people, with an estimated 150 to 200 people abducted from Israeli territory into the Gaza Strip, has led to strong reactions from the state of Israel [added on Oct. 16: according to the latest Israeli numbers, Hamas took 199 people hostage]. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are planning an attack on Gaza by land air and sea. A ground offensive seems imminent.
As we noted regarding the 2008/09 Gaza War against Hamas, only regime change would “justify” a large scale military intervention which could lead to the death of countless civilians. In 2008/09, Israel did not do that. The Hamas terror regime was not removed. This time, the situation seems to be different. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government seem to be ready for a ground operation to remove the Hamas regime once and for all.
At the end of 2022, Prime Minister Netanyahu presented a government including extremists. On October 9, 2023 after the pogroms committed by Hamas fighters in Israel, the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated regarding the Gaza Strip: “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Measures as drastic as the ones announed by Yoav Gallant amount to collective punishment, they violate the humanitarian rights of the Palestinians living in the Gaza strip. Israel has to respect the international humanitarian law — or its answer to one of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in history will lose its legitmacy. Hamas is obviously counting on this and will do everything possible to have the Israeli military operation end in a bloodbath of civilians.
On October 12, 2023 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed a war cabinet including the former Minister of Defense and former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, the former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and others who came from the opposition benches. But the government still includes the extremists Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. That is why the main opposition leader, Yair Lapid of the liberal, centrist party Yesh Atid was not ready to join the war cabinet. It is obvious that, even in the case of a great victory by Israel, a Netanyahu government including extremists (settlers, racists, etc.) will not be able to ensure long term peace. What’s Israel’s post-war plan?
Regarding Prime Minister Netanyahu and his corruption cases, the judiciary should speed up the process. The former Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit had previously served at Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet Secretary. Therefore, one can speculate if he was reluctant to investigate his former boss with all the force necessary. We are not necessarily talking of sabotage — it was Mandelblit who decided to indict Netanyahu (bribary, fraud, breach of public trust) — but, as a close former aid, he was maybe (at least initially) psychologically restrained.
The present Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has no such ties to Netanyahu and should finish the job. There is plenty of evidence which should allow to convict Benjamin Netanyahu. In any case, the prime minister must be removed from office to avoid additional damage not only to the reputation of the state of Israel but also to avoid more damage to the security of Israeli citizens. In order to come back to power and avoid a prison sentence, Netanyahu was ready to form a coalition with far-right and religious extremists, to propose a shady judicial reform and to appoint ministers who are visibly unfit for their jobs.
Trump and Netanyahu thought they could directly deal with Arab leaders and ignore the Palestinians (Abraham Accords). An illusion, also regarding the mood of the “Arab street”. As for Obama and Biden, their illusion was to think that they could strike a deal with the Iranian regime, integrate Iran in the “civilized” world.
Neither Hamas nor Iran nor the Netanyahu cabinet including extremists offer a road to peace. The situation is obviously even more complex and would need an entire book to explain. One last question: where does China stand?
P.S. Added at 18:32 Swiss time: Israel allows again water into Gaza, as is requested by international humanitarian law.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photograph: US State Department. This photo is in the public domain.
Article added on October 15, 2023 at 16:39 Swiss time. Typing error corrected at 22:56 Swiss time: The Israeli war cabinet was formed on October 12, 2023 (not 2024). Even we cannot (yet) predict the future 🙂
