Israel's Government Funds Hamas and Works to Keep It In Power:
Follow this link to learn WHY
by John Spritzler
This also contains POST-Oct. 7, 2023 sources showing that Israel's Government is STILL working to keep Hamas in power
The URL of this article for sharing it is https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-funds-hamas-keeps-it-in-power
Read: "Hamas Leaders Are Billionaires Who Oppress Ordinary Palestinians"
[Also please read "Evidence that Israeli/Zionist Leaders Want Jews to Die at the Hands of Apparent Anti-Semites"]
Also see "Israeli Leaders and Hamas Need Each Other"
For the larger perspective on this kind of thing happening in many other nations and conflicts, see "Oppressors Need Bogeyman Enemies and Invent them When Necessary"
"What Would it Look Like if Hamas and Hezbollah Fought a Class War?"
READ: "What Ordinary Palestinians Want"
In this article I will first show the evidence that the Israeli government funds HAMAS big time and has done so for a long time, then I will show the evidence that the Israeli government has worked to keep HAMAS in power in Gaza. After this I will explain briefly WHY the Israeli government does this and provide a link to my article that explains in great detail with solid proof why the Israeli government does this.
Here's Evidence that Israel Funds Hamas
a. Here's evidence that Israel funded Hamas right from its beginning.
b. "Money trail to Hamas begins with Israeli banks" and continues through September 27, 2007 : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-israel-funds-exclusive/money-trail-to-hamas-begins-with-israeli-banks-idUSL0313911920070927
c. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: Israel continued as of June 30, 2008 to fund Hamas: http://www.effedieffe.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=63764
d. Forbes on January 16, 2009 reports:
"Incredibly, Israel also supplies Hamas with cash. It began transferring truckloads of cash to Gaza after Hamas' violent takeover of the territory in June 2007. The first transfer of more than $51 million (delivered in Israeli shekels) was purportedly to strengthen the influence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the Gaza Strip and pay the salaries of 35,000 Palestinian Authority employees then allegedly loyal to him. Among those employees, however, were Ismail Haniya, the Hamas-appointed prime minister in Gaza, and Mahmoud Zahar, Hamas' foreign minister.
"Zahar prides himself on many successful terrorist attacks against Israel, and his position regarding Israel is clear. "All of Palestine, every inch of Palestine belongs to the Muslims," he has said. If the goal was to strengthen Abbas' position, the cash should have been delivered to him in the West Bank city of Ramallah. From there, he could have transferred the money to Gaza, as he has done in the past, and claim credit for it." [ https://www.forbes.com/2009/01/16/gaza-hamas-funding-oped-cx_re_0116ehrenfeld.html?sh=707b61407afb ]
e. "Netanyahu: Money to Hamas part of strategy to keep Palestinians divided" reported March 12, 2019 in the Jerusalem Post at https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-to-hamas-part-of-strategy-to-keep-palestinians-divided-583082 Of course Netanyahu is just hiding the REAL purpose. Money is fungible, which means what any money Israel gives to Hamas for one purpose just frees up other money for Hamas to use for another purpose. As shown above and in much greater detail here, Israeli leaders need Hamas to commit terrorism against ordinary Israeli Jews so that those Israeli Jews will believe they need to be protected by the Israeli government from Palestinians despite the fact that the Israeli government oppresses ordinary Israeli Jews to make Israeli billionaires rich.
f. "Beginning in 2018, Qatar’s envoy traveled with millions of dollars packed neatly in Louis Vuitton suitcases from Doha to the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv and was escorted to the Gaza Strip by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. Yossi Cohen, former Mossad chief, even visited Qatar to iron out the details of the arrangement and encouraged the Qataris to keep the dollars coming. The cash purchased fuel for the besieged strip’s only power plant, funded infrastructure projects, and provided a monthly stipend of $100 to thousands of impoverished Palestinian families.
"Israeli intelligence officials, however, say they knew that Hamas—the Palestinian group that runs a de-facto government in Gaza but is treated by Israel and the United States as a terrorist group—siphoned off the funds. The thinking was that Qatari cash would keep Hamas quiet—that it would essentially buy them off from firing rockets at Israel’s southern cities.
"But the policy seems to have backfired, several former Israeli officials told Foreign Policy. “Did the Qatari procedure work for us? We don’t think so,” said Col Eran Lerman, former deputy national security adviser of the country.
"In the recent war with Hamas, Israelis were caught off guard by the group’s ability to hit deep inside Israeli cities, with not just Tel Aviv but Jerusalem within their reach. The group fired 4,360 rockets over a period of 11 days, four times more than it did in the 50-day war in 2014." [June 15, 2021 from https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/15/israels-big-new-shift-in-hamas-policy/ my emphasis]
This same information was later reported by the New York Times behind a paywall, but you can read about it in this newsbreak.com article.
g. "For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces: The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from. For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/?fbclid=IwAR023pzA8bcQz3bPrxNrreJO86jYkrbbm3oHs8TO-i6FcC9HCW795aLpt-I 8 October 2023, 3:58 pm
h. 'Can Netanyahu survive Hamas’s attack on Israel?
Israelis are increasingly aware of government failures that enabled Hamas’s attack, but that may not be enough to bring the Israeli prime minister down...
Netanyahu’s strategy has always been to allow Hamas room for manoeuvre in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and Palestinian society more generally. “Those who want to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas,” he stated at a Likud party meeting in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to differentiate between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.”' https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/11/can-netanyahu-survive-hamass-attack-on-israel 11 Oct 2023
Here's Evidence that Israel Certainly Knows that Its Attacks on Gaza STRENGTHEN Hamas
The Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza strengthen the Hamas leaders’ grip on power in Gaza.
There is plenty of evidence for this mutually beneficial relationship between the Israeli and Hamas leaders:
UPI Terrorism Correspondent, Richard Sale, wrote an article in 2002 titled, Hamas History Tied to Israel” in which he states:
"Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.
"Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.
"Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official." [emphasis added]
In 2009, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, wrote an article in which he said:
"Resistance movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas, by contrast, can plausibly claim that they forced Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab land while scoring impressive gains at the ballot box; they have also been reasonably free of corruption. As if determined to increase the influence of these radical movements, Israel has undermined Abbas and the PA at every turn…
"But Hamas will not be so easily defeated, even if Israel’s merciless assault and Hamas’s own obduracy have brought untold suffering on the people of Gaza and much of the Strip lies in ruins: like Hizbullah in Lebanon in 2006, all it has to do in order to proclaim victory is remain standing. The movement continued to fire rockets into Israel under devastating bombardment, and it looks likely to emerge politically stronger when the war is over… " [emphasis added]
John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, wrote an article (originally for The American Conservative) in 2009 in which he stated:
"More importantly, there is little reason to think that the Israelis can beat Hamas into submission and get the Palestinians to live quietly in a handful of Bantustans inside Greater Israel. Israel has been humiliating, torturing, and killing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967 and has not come close to cowing them. Indeed, Hamas’s reaction to Israel’s brutality seems to lend credence to Nietzsche’s remark that what does not kill you makes you stronger." [emphasis added]
Anthony H. Cordesman, who held the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, and who was also a national security analyst for ABC News, wrote an article in 2009 in which he stated in regard to the fighting in Gaza:
"At least to date, the reporting from within Gaza indicates that each new Israeli air strike or advance on the ground has increased popular support for Hamas and anger against Israel in Gaza. The same is true in the West Bank and the Islamic world. Iran and Hezbollah are capitalizing on the conflict…
What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting?…Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms?...To [be] blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes." [emphasis added]
Khalid Amayreh, in his blog in 2009, wrote about the Israeli attack on Gaza in an article titled, “Hamas gaining sympathy as onslaught continue”:
"With the massive Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip continuing unabated, and with Israeli political and military leaders threatening to “decimate” Hamas, Palestinian intellectuals as well as ordinary people expect Hamas’s popularity to rise dramatically when the present Israeli campaign is over…"
"Qassem predicted that the current Israeli campaign would actually lead to the boosting of Hamas’s popularity…
"Another Palestinian intellectual, Abdul Bari Atwan, predicts that public support for Hamas will increase as a result of the present Israeli campaign in the Gaza Strip." [emphasis added]
Al Jazeera English made a video report in 2009 titled “War on GAZA: Popular Support” in which they wrote:
"Since beginning its offensive in the Gaza Strip Israel has repeatedly declared it will maintain attacks to smash what it calls the Hamas terrorist machine. However, as Israel's bombardment continues, the appeal of Hamas in the Arab world appears to be growing. Al Jazeeras Hashem Ahelbarra reports on how the war has left Hamas gaining popular support." [emphasis added]
Some of these reports are by people who think Israeli leaders don’t realize that their massacres of Palestinians in Gaza strengthens the Hamas leaders’ power there. But there is evidence that the Israeli leaders understand this full well. There is a video of a talk given by Professor Juan Cole, an expert on the Middle East. The host who introduces Cole name-drops that he recently had lunch with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and then (starting at the 26:56 minute point of the video) reports having heard a startling eyewitness account of the following: that during the recent Israeli slaughter of people in Gaza, supposedly to wipe out Hamas, this eyewitness was on the phone directly with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack and told him he knew where the Hamas leadership was hiding, and Barack replied, "We know where Hamas's leadership is hiding, but we're not going to go further, we are trying to send a message."
The video is titled, “Making a National Priority of Engaging the Muslim World and was published March 24, 2009, “Recorded @ uStream.Tv”
Watch this video of an Israeli soldier explaining that Israel's killing of civilians in Gaza only strengthens Hamas.
POST OCTOBER 7, 2023 (in chronological order):
This video by Ben Swann presents compelling evidence of many kinds that the Israeli government knew in advance of the Hamas October 7 attack, knew Hamas's exact plan of attack, and deliberately allowed it to succeed. I suspect that this accusation against the Israeli government is true; there is no particular reason for doubting it, since Israel has a history of doing things to make it seem that Jews are being violently attacked by antisemites, as I show here. But even if the Israeli government did not in fact know in advance that Hamas would attack as it did on October 7, what is undeniable is that the Israeli government knew that Hamas carried out terrorist violence aimed at killing unarmed non-combatant Israeli Jews whenever it felt like it, and Israel funded Hamas for decades for exactly this reason. Benn Swann is interviewed by Jimmy Dore here.
Here is evidence that even after October 7, Israel is working to increase, not decrease, Hamas's power over Palestinians in Gaza.
Paul Rogers, emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University and an honorary fellow at the Joint Service Command and Staff College, in his December 5, 2023 Boston Globe article titled, "Israel’s use of disproportionate force is a long-established tactic – with a clear aim," concludes by saying:
"The immediate Israeli aim, which may take months to achieve, appears to be eliminating Hamas while corralling the Palestinians into a small zone in the south-west of Gaza where they can be more easily controlled. The longer-term aim is to make it utterly clear that Israel will not stand for any opposition. Its armed forces will maintain sufficient power to control any insurgency and, backed by its powerful nuclear capabilities, will not allow any regional state to pose a threat.
"It will fail. Hamas will emerge either in a different form or strengthened, unless some way is found to begin the very difficult task of bringing the communities together. Meanwhile, the one state that can force a ceasefire is the US, but there is little sign of that – at least so far."
Palestinian poll shows a rise in Hamas support and close to 90% wanting US-backed Abbas to resign
BY KARIN LAUB
Updated 1:46 PM EST, December 13, 2023
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A wartime opinion poll among Palestinians published Wednesday shows a rise in support for Hamas, which appears to have ticked up even in the devastated Gaza Strip, and an overwhelming rejection of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas, with nearly 90% saying he must resign.
Mark Juergensmeyer, a distinguished professor emeritus of sociology and global studies and interim director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow and Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College, and a person who has had interviews with Hamas leaders, including the founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, some years ago when he was in Gaza and whose post-October 7, 2023 information, he says, has been buttressed by more recent communications with Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, writes:
"Though almost all Palestinians despise the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory they would not all have endorsed the cruelty of October 7, and many would likely have turned against the movement, especially if offered the promise of a long-range solution to Palestinian autonomy in the future. Instead, the massive destruction of Gaza buildings in the weeks since October 7 and the tragic loss of life—overwhelmingly women and children–has likely turned even moderate Hamas-hating Gaza residents into bitter enemies of Israel and grudging supporters of Hamas."
May 9, 2024 The level-headed and very close observer of events, Alexander Mercouris, though not sharing my analysis of events, nonetheless in his video here (starting at time point 1:15:35) explains that whatever Israel decides to do next in Rafah (Israel is preparing a possible major attack on the Gaza city of Rafah at the time of this video's creation),
"Hamas will survive in Gaza, in fact politically it is going to get still stronger and Israel's overall diplomatic position will continue to get weaker."
“Hamas or some organization like it is going to survive — unless you’d have started much earlier to align the sun, the moon and the stars into something that would create a counter,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There is no counter. That’s the problem.”
...
“They will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency because a lot of armed Hamas will be left, no matter what they do in Rafah, or if they leave and get out of Gaza, as we believe they need to do,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said over the weekend. “Then you’re going to have a vacuum, and a vacuum that’s likely to be filled by chaos, by anarchy, and ultimately by Hamas again.”
John Mearscheimer talk May 15, 2024:
In this video talk Professor Mearsheimer says that Netanyahu worked to keep Hamas in power (his explanation for this is wrong, as discussed below) and that Hamas is not going to disappear from Gaza unless Israeli ethnic cleansing removes every single Palestinian from Gaza.
Foreign Affairs (the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations), June 21, 2024, in its article titled, "Hamas Is Winning: Why Israel’s Failing Strategy Makes Its Enemy Stronger" by Robert A. Pape, states in its first words:
"Nine months of Israeli air and ground combat operations in Gaza have not defeated Hamas, nor is Israel close to vanquishing the terrorist group. To the contrary, according to the measures that matter, Hamas is stronger today than it was on October 7."
BBC July 4, 2024 (the following italicized text is from the end of the article, contradicting its headline):
Some, like 26-year-old Jihad Talab, still strongly support Hamas. Displaced from the Zeitoun area of Gaza City with his wife, daughter and mother, and now sheltering in Deir al Balah, he said the group was not responsible for their suffering. “We must support [Hamas] because it’s the one working on the ground, the one who understands the battle - not you or I,” he said. “Empty accusations only serve the Occupation [Israel]. We’ll support it until our last breath.”
A regular poll carried out by a West Bank-based think tank, the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, claims that most people in Gaza still blame Israel and its allies for the war, rather than Hamas.
The latest survey in June said that almost two-thirds of Gazan respondents were satisfied with Hamas - a rise of 12 points from December - and suggested that just around half would still prefer Hamas to run Gaza after the war ends, over any other option.
Note that the headline of this BBC article is "Hamas faces growing public dissent as Gaza war erodes support." Yet the article's substantive content says the opposite. The fact of the matter is that Hamas is run by billionaires and it does indeed--as mentioned in the BBC article--oppress Palestinians in Gaza, and for this reason there is indeed much dislike of Hamas by ordinary Palestinians in Gaza. But, contrary to the BBC article's headline, this popular opposition to Hamas is not growing but lessening since October 7, 2023. It seems that the BBC wants its general public readership to think that Israel is weakening Hamas even though the elite rulers know and read in their exclusive Foreign Affairs journal (see the article in it above) that Israel has strengthened support in Gaza for Hamas.
Why Does the Israeli Government Fund and Keep Hamas In Power?
To read the answer to this question, with enormous amounts of proof based on establishment media sources, including Israeli sources, read my article, "The Israeli Government Attacks Ordinary Jews As Well As Palestinians" at https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-s-government-attacks-jews-to (a slightly shorter version with additional graphics is here.)
Very briefly, the answer is this. Like the United States, the Israeli government is controlled by a very wealthy Israeli upper class that economically severely oppresses Israeli Jewish working class people. The Israeli upper class controls the Israeli Jewish working class by pretending to be its protector against its "real enemy--Palestinians."
To make the Palestinians be an effective bogeyman enemy, the Israeli upper class needs HAMAS to be as frightening to Jews as possible, for HAMAS to declare as it did in its 1988 Covenant that it wants Islam to be sovereign in all of Palestine including the part now called Israel with these words:
Article 31:
Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror.
Hamas's new 2017 document (which does not replace the earlier Covenant still in effect) describes the role of Islam as an umbrella for all other faiths with these words:
-
By virtue of its justly balanced middle way and moderate spirit, Islam – for Hamas - provides a comprehensive way of life and an order that is fit for purpose at all times and in all places. Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. It provides an umbrella for the followers of other creeds and religions who can practice their beliefs in security and safety. Hamas also believes that Palestine has always been and will always be a model of coexistence, tolerance and civilizational innovation.
The Israeli upper class needs for HAMAS to deliberately direct lethal violence (suicide bombers in the past and rockets more recently) against noncombatant Israeli Jewish civilians (i.e., to commit terrorism) to make it seem that the Palestinians want to kill all the Jews in Israel and drive them into the sea.
Hamas has in the past in fact targeted lethal violence against non-combatant Israeli unarmed civilians, but it now tries to deny that it does this. Here is a video interview of Dr. Basem Naim, Hamas's head of political and international relations, conducted on October 9, 2023. In this interview the BBC journalist repeatedly asks if, during Hamas's October 7 attack, it killed Israeli civilians. Listen to this interview carefully. Note that Naim does not ever say that Hamas is opposed to the killing of noncombatant Israeli civilians. Instead, he replies to the BBC journalist's question by a) describing the injustice of Zionist oppression of Palestinians, b) citing Israel's Hannibal Doctrine, which tells Israeli military forces to kill Israelis seized by Hamas rather than let them be taken as hostages, and c) denying that ANY of the people killed by Hamas on October 7 were properly defined as noncombatants because of the kind of job they had.
If Hamas were truly opposed to the deliberate killing of noncombatant Israeli civilians, Naim would have stated this fact clearly and explicitly, and he would have explained that Hamas no longer supports its past suicide bombings at Israeli bus stops and restaurants, etc., nor its having recently aimed rockets at civilians in the Israeli town of Sderot. But Naim did none of these things; he merely deflected the question.
HAMAS plays the role of Palestinian antisemitic terrorist perfectly; it is exactly what the Israeli ruling class needs to stay in power.
Here is somebody else's article about Hamas that--with great documentation--makes essentially the same point as I do above (and here regarding Hamas's motive) about WHY Israel funds Hamas, although erroneously in my opinion restricting its point to only the recent years of Likud rule in Israel. The article is "The Secret History of Hamas," by James Corbett, which states:
"Once again, it is important to understand the dynamic: the Likudnik crazies need the most extreme elements of Hamas to keep the Israeli public terrified and clamoring for security. Likewise, the Hamas hardliners need the radical Zionists in the Israeli government, military, political and religious institutions to continue their campaign against the Palestinians in order to justify their no-compromise, fight-to-the-death ideology."
Israel's Leaders' Excuse
Israel’s long-time support for Hamas is not a secret. When the subject comes up, Israeli leaders “explain away” this support by saying it was simply a clever way of weakening the PLO. What such Israeli leaders never, however, explain is this. The REASON Zionist leaders wanted to weaken the PLO and strengthen Hamas was because the PLO, before caving in to pressure to advocate for a “two-state solution” (that would make the ethnic cleansing from most of Palestine—the part called Israel—permanent) advocated something that appealed to many Israeli Jewish working-class people: that Israel be a secular democracy, a state of ALL its citizens, not just of the Jews, in which Jews and non-Jews would have equal rights under the law and live in peace with each other. Even the PLO's current acceptance of the "Two State Solution" is not nearly as frightening to most Israelis as Hamas's aim to make Islam sovereign in all of Palestine and have it ruled by people with a history of flagrantly killing unarmed Israeli Jewish civilians.
Zionist leaders FEARED Israeli have-nots viewing Palestinians as friendly, not threatening, people. THIS is why Israel’s leaders began funding Hamas—to ensure that Palestinians would be perceived as wanting to kill all the Jews.
Some so-called experts, such as Professor John Mearscheimer, in a talk given May 15, 2024, argue that the reason Netanyahu supported Hamas was because he and Hamas both opposed the two-state solution in contrast to the PLO (Palestine Authority), which supported it; Netanyahu thus wanted to have Hamas prevail over the PLO. The problem with this explanation is three-fold.
First, Israeli support for Hamas was ongoing (for proof see items b, c and d in the section "Here's Evidence that Israel Funds Hamas" above) when Ehud Olmert was prime minister from 2006 to 2009 and was adamantly in favor of a two-state solution. Ha'aretz November 29, 2007, reported:
" 'If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished,' Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz Wednesday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008.
" 'The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us,' Olmert said, 'because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents.' "
Second, as he explains in this May 14, 2024 video interview, Netanyahu only opposes a two-state solution before the defeat of Hamas when that solution would enable Hamas to be in power in the Palestinian state and to control a military force capable of threatening Israel; he says he does in fact want there to be a Palestinian state (i.e., a two-state solution) with the political power to rule over its residents, just not with the power to have a military force that could threaten Israel. Netanyahu thus supports a two-state solution. Mearsheimer's contention that Netanyahu supported Hamas because Hamas opposed the two-state solution makes no sense. Why would Netanyahu support Hamas because of its opposition to a two-state solution when his fear of Hamas controlling a Palestinian state is the only reason he opposed a two-state solution going into effect before the defeat of Hamas?
Third, Hamas does not in fact oppose the two-state solution. APnews.com April 25, 2024 reports:
Hamas official says group would lay down its arms if an independent Palestinian state is established
ISTANBUL (AP) — A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders.
The comments by Khalil al-Hayya in an interview Wednesday came amid a stalemate in months of talks for a cease-fire in Gaza. The suggestion that Hamas would disarm appeared to be a significant concession by the militant group officially committed to Israel’s destruction.
August 5, 2024 CNN video: "Nearly half of Hamas’ military battalions in northern and central Gaza have rebuilt some of their fighting capabilities despite more than nine months of Israel’s brutal offensive, according to analyses by the DC-based American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, the Institute for the Study of War and CNN. Watch the full investigation on CNN.com." Listen to further discussion of the significance of this information presented by Alexander Mercouris starting at time point 20:57 of his video here. Mercouris makes it clear that Israeli violence against Hamas is not eliminating Hamas from power and cannot do so, and yet the violence continues. Clearly the purpose of the violence is something other than removing Hamas from power.