Dolan wrote:Not sure about that. It seems that, in the past, the Israeli government has funded Hamas, the radical Islamic organisation, because they wanted to discredit any moderate, decent alternative of Palestinian political representation (such as the PLO - the Palestinian Liberation Organisation), in order to make sure the conflict continued and the USA only had one credible partner in talks, Israel. More details about this story here:
https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2002/0 ... 024445587/
That doesn't quite look like the Israeli government wanted peace, doesn' it?
That bolded claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny, it's an assumption based on a simplistic and fundamentally flawed understanding of the conflict (Israelis as cartoon villains, always scheming; Palestinians as peaceful victims, never ill-intentioned).
The PLO back then wasn't moderate or decent, it was a collection of radical terrorist outfits committed to the destruction of Israel. The PLO was founded in the early 1960s, years before Israel's occupation of the "Palestinian territories" (i.e., Gaza and the West Bank); they were opposed to the existence of a Jewish state anywhere in the region and worked to destroy Israel via armed conflict. Naturally, there was no prospect for peace back then, just constant terrorist attacks by the PLO, such as the Munich Olympics massacre and the Entebbe plane hijacking, as well as various other hostage situations and school massacres and random shootings.
As you can imagine, the PLO was viewed as the primary Palestinian threat to Israel's security. The Israelis helped prop up Yassin (founder of Hamas) as a means of weakening the PLO's stranglehold on Palestinian politics, not because they wanted to discredit a mythical "moderate" PLO in order to continue the conflict in perpetuity like cartoon villains. However, the Israelis were largely unaware of (or grossly underestimated) the violent aims of Yassin and the threat that Islamism would later pose. This was at about the same time that the US was helping the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
More complete account of the affair:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847
[spoiler=.]
[/spoiler]A look at Israel's decades-long dealings with Palestinian radicals -- including some little-known attempts to cooperate with the Islamists -- reveals a catalog of unintended and often perilous consequences. Time and again, Israel's efforts to find a pliant Palestinian partner that is both credible with Palestinians and willing to eschew violence, have backfired. Would-be partners have turned into foes or lost the support of their people.
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.
...
When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. 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.
"When I look back at the chain of events I think we made a mistake," says David Hacham, who worked in Gaza in the late 1980s and early '90s as an Arab-affairs expert in the Israeli military. "But at the time nobody thought about the possible results."
...
Arieh Spitzen, the former head of the Israeli military's Department of Palestinian Affairs, says that even if Israel had tried to stop the Islamists sooner, he doubts it could have done much to curb political Islam, a movement that was spreading across the Muslim world. He says attempts to stop it are akin to trying to change the internal rhythms of nature: "It is like saying: 'I will kill all the mosquitoes.' But then you get even worse insects that will kill you...You break the balance. You kill Hamas you might get al Qaeda."
When it became clear in the early 1990s that Gaza's Islamists had mutated from a religious group into a fighting force aimed at Israel -- particularly after they turned to suicide bombings in 1994 -- Israel cracked down with ferocious force. But each military assault only increased Hamas's appeal to ordinary Palestinians. The group ultimately trounced secular rivals, notably Fatah, in a 2006 election supported by Israel's main ally, the U.S.
...
Brig. General Yosef Kastel, Gaza's Israeli governor at the time, is too ill to comment, says his wife. But 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, says Mr. Segev, "our main enemy was Fatah," and the cleric "was still 100% peaceful" towards Israel. Former officials say Israel was also at the time wary of being viewed as an enemy of Islam.
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.
...
A leader of Birzeit's Islamist faction at the time was Mahmoud Musleh, now a pro-Hamas member of a Palestinian legislature elected in 2006. He recalls how usually aggressive Israeli security forces stood back and let conflagration develop. He denies any collusion between his own camp and the Israelis, but says "they hoped we would become an alternative to the PLO."
A year later, in 1984, the Israeli military received a tip-off from Fatah supporters that Sheikh Yassin's Gaza Islamists were collecting arms, according to Israeli officials in Gaza at the time. Israeli troops raided a mosque and found a cache of weapons. Sheikh Yassin was jailed. He told Israeli interrogators the weapons were for use against rival Palestinians, not Israel, according to Mr. Hacham, the military affairs expert who says he spoke frequently with jailed Islamists. The cleric was released after a year and continued to expand Mujama's reach across Gaza.
Around the time of Sheikh Yassin's arrest, Mr. Cohen, the religious affairs official, sent a report to senior Israeli military and civilian officials in Gaza.
Describing the cleric as a "diabolical" figure, he warned that Israel's policy towards the Islamists was allowing Mujama to develop into a dangerous force.
"I believe that by continuing to turn away our eyes, our lenient approach to Mujama will in the future harm us. I therefore suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face," Mr. Cohen wrote.
Mr. Harari, the military intelligence officer, says this and other warnings 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 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, including Mr. Zahar, and deported them to southern Lebanon. There, they hooked up with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed A-Team of anti-Israeli militancy.
...
Walking back to his house from the rubble of his neighbor's home, Mr. Cohen, the former religious affairs official in Gaza, curses Hamas and also what he sees as missteps that allowed Islamists to put down deep roots in Gaza.
He recalls a 1970s meeting with a traditional Islamic cleric who wanted Israel to stop cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood followers of Sheikh Yassin: "He told me: 'You are going to have big regrets in 20 or 30 years.' He was right."
In the early 1990s, Israel and the PLO agreed for the first time to work toward a peace settlement. Among other things, the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel's right to exist, and in turn was recognized by Israel as the representative of the Palestinian people.
The PLO hasn't kept its end of the bargain, but in general they're nowhere near as violent as they used to be, and they've been rewarded for it. The Palestinians were granted self-government, and the PLO controls more Palestinian territory now than when they were engaged in open warfare against Israel. Palestinians have their own courts, police, and so on.
Hamas and some other Palestinian groups reject this path and prefer to continue the armed conflict against Israel, with the financial and military backing of Iran. Every once in a while they start a major war with Israel.
The idea that Israel is opposed to peace runs counter to all the historical evidence. Israel has worked to make peace with all its neighbors, often making huge concessions in the process, like giving up the Sinai Peninsula, which made up ~60% of Israel's territory at the time. Not exactly something an expansionist state with no interest in peace would do.
