Is Hamas just a pawn of Israel?

Hamas has played a major role for a long time in Israel-Palestine conflict. And we always assumed it as an Iranian proxy. But at various points in time, we witnessed a connection between the Israeli government and Hamas leaders. So now it became a big question, is Hamas really an Iranian proxy or an Israel-funded militant group? Or is Hamas trying to play the double game?

*Most of the sources I used here are Israeli sources. Others are Indian, Japanese or Western sources. I intentionally avoided Middle East-based sources, to avoid the debate of biasness. All the sources are given at end.*

© Said Khatib / AFP

From the first look, Hamas and Israel are pure rivals. But history and intelligence information don’t tell the same story. Israel or Israeli ruling government always got some benefits from Hamas’ attacks either pushing and justifying occupations or staying in power. Netanyahu and Hamas, none of them want peace, and both were responsible for the failure of the peace agreement in mid-90s. Both of them doing their politics based on mutual hatred. They gonna be in power as long as this conflict. If it gone, their influence and power also will. We observed how Hamas attacks when Israel faces an internal political issue or Netaniyahu’s popularity decreases. Is that just a coincidence? Maybe, but maybe not.

© Rebecca Jane / UK Independence Party

Israel was planning to occupy Gaza for a long period. Various plans of Israel were revealed during the first days of this war like gas exploration and Ben Gurion Canal. Israel has exploited the attack to justify their genocide and occupation in Gaza. Israel’s full focus is on taking control of Gaza, not destroying Hamas.

Gaza must be occupied. Stay inside it and encourage the voluntary migration of its residents.— Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s Minister of National Security

Talking of Itamar Ben Gvir, he has been convicted on at least eight charges including supporting a terrorist organization. Even IDF rejected him from mandatory military service. Now he is Israel’s Minister of National Security, thanks to Benjamin Netanyahu.

They are very determined about their plan of occupying Gaza. And from recent bombings in Gaza, it has been clear that Israeli government doesn’t care about the Palestinian civilians or the Israeli hostages in Gaza. Israeli government has chosen violence rather than achieving its aim of security for Jews a long time ago.

The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.— Daniel Hagari, IDF spokesperson

Their main goal is to take control of Gaza, not destroy Hamas. IDF also admitted that it killed three hostages during fighting in Gaza. Hamas has claimed that over 60 Israeli hostages were killed in Israeli airstrikes.On October 7th, IDF attacked their civilian areas with tank fire and heavy weapons. Israeli tanks targeted both their own citizens and Hamas members. They killed 14 people just in the house, including children, despite knowing about the civilians.

At that point, it was clear to me that our role is to be a human shield between our (Israeli) forces that arrived and them (Hamas).

— Hadas Dagan, only survivor of Kibbutz Be’eri incident

An Israeli police investigation revealed that in Hamas's attack on the Nova music festival, an Israeli attack helicopter killed some of the attendees. There are several claims like this against IDF. It has been proven multiple times that Israeli officers were making false claims on October 7 attack. They did everything that could justify their genocide and occupation.Hamas was officially founded in 1987 at the start of the first Palestinian Intifada or uprising against the Israeli occupation. It was created by Ahmed Yassin, a member of Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood was an Islamist group repressed by Egypt in Gaza before 1967. But when Israel invaded and occupied Gaza, they started to encourage them. Israel at that time wanted to counter the power of the dominant political force PLO, led by the Fatah party of Yasser Arafat.

Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yassir Arafat.— Ron Paul, former United States Representative

Israel thought that by empowering Yassin and Muslim Brotherhood, they could divide and rule the occupied Palestinians and play them off against each other. They did as they thought, and it also worked for them. Israel helped Yassin to grow his network as well as funded some of his projects.

The Israeli Government gave me a budget and the military government gives to the mosques.— Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, former Israeli military governor of the Gaza Strip

Israel invested more than 20 years and a huge amount of resources to build Hamas. And many Israeli officials admitted how Israel supported Yassin in the '70s.

Hamas to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.— Avner Cohen, writer, historian and former Israeli government advisor

In the '90s Israel started to take action for peace. But right-wing Israelis didn’t take that well, nor did Hamas. Hamas started continuously attacking Israel. On the other hand, right-wing Israelis start violent protests across the land. Leader of the opposition then, Benjamin Netanyahu, was the keynote speaker at two infamous demonstrations where the crowd chanted “Death to Rabin”. In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession with a fake black coffin. At one point, Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin was brutally assassinated by an Israeli extremist and the peace was sabotaged.

They were crying not only for the prime minister — they were crying for their fate.— Prof. Joseph Klausner, general surgery specialist

Following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Hamas launched a series of attacks to dismantle any progress made toward peace.Some believe Netanyahu had a direct hand behind this assassination. Even Yitzhak Rabin’s family blames Netanyahu.

I’m not ready to forgive Netanyahu. I’ll never forgive him.— Leah Rabin, wife of Yitzhak Rabin

This assassination was a turning point in Israeli politics. 7 months after the death of Yitzhak Rabin, Netanyahu took over the office. From then till now we have observed some notable coincidences, Hamas launching attacks whenever the Israeli government is facing some internal political issues, and the great savior Netanyahu saving Israel and enriching his portfolio.

This is where we get to this paradoxical alignment, almost alliance between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, the enemy of Israel.— Johnny Harris, independent journalist

In 2006, Israel left Gaza and an election was held. Fatah lost this election for incompetence and corruption. And Hamas won the election with a relative majority. But Fatah started a protest to keep Hamas out of power. At that time, Israel was hoping for Hamas to take over Gaza, if not supporting.

Israel would be happy if Hamas took over Gaza because the IDF could then deal with Gaza as a hostile state.— Amos Yadlin, Chief of Staff of IAF and Head of Aman

From time to time, we saw Israel drive cars full of suitcases stuffed with cash into Gaza to keep Hamas in power. If that’s not funding them, what does?

They knew how and from where Hamas was getting money, but they remained silent. They also worked with Qatar to keep the money flowing to Hamas.

Hamas at this point in my opinion will be an asset.

— Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Minister of Finance

Israeli officials knew of October 7 attack a year ago, an approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, was Hamas’s battle plan of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Israel also received an official warning from Egypt of a possible attack from Gaza three days before Hamas launched its attack.

We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen.….I don’t want to get too much into classified [details], but a warning was given. I think the question was at what level.— Michael McCaul, United States Representative

Still Israel chose to weaken the border with Gaza at that time, instead of strengthening it. Even though knowing about the plan, IDF took more than 6 hours just to respond. In most of the places, they took more than 8 hours. And some Israelis had to wait for as many as 26 hours for help to arrive.Netanyahu and Hamas have been working on a similar goal, none of them wants peace to occur. Both of them doing their politics based on this hate, this conflict. If this conflict ends, their days will also end. So we need to start asking if it’s just a paradoxical alliance or an actual one.

Major sources:

by Robert Dreyfuss

by Mohammed K. Shadid from Third World Quarterly Vol. 10