A. Why Israel helped create Hamas

Since the founding of Hamas in 1987, Israeli, American and Palestinian officials have repeatedly acknowledged that Israel did indeed help create and fund the Islamist group.

The point made by many of these officials is not that Israel "allowed" the rise of Hamas or that Hamas emerged in response to Israeli "occupation" of Palestine. Rather, their point was and is that Israel's intelligence agencies actively helped create and finance the Hamas group.

As the officials cited below make clear, the overall goal of supporting Hamas has been to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state and avert the implementation of a two-state solution to the Palestine question. From Israel's perspective, a two-state solution would reduce Israel's territory to the internationally recognized pre-1967 borders, prohibit any future territorial expansion, and prevent the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital city.

More specifically, supporting the Islamist Hamas group has served several Israeli objectives at once: first, it undermined Yasser Arafat's secular nationalist PLO; second, it helped prevent the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Accords; third, it undermined the Palestinian National Authority and isolated Gaza from the Westbank; fourth, it impeded Western support for the Palestinian cause; and fifth, it justified Israeli (counter-)attacks on Palestinian territory.

In other words, by secretly supporting a group that does not recognize the existence of the state of Israel and does not accept a two-state solution, Israel does not have to accept the existence of a Palestinian state and does not have to support a two-state solution, either.

It is sometimes argued that while Israel initially supported the creation of Hamas, the Islamist group got out of control and Israeli officials came to regret their support (the "blowback theory").

While this is certainly true for some Israeli officials and for the Israeli population affected by Hamas rockets and terrorist attacks, it is not true for Israeli grand strategists, as the quotes below make clear: for them, Hamas has continued to serve its intended purpose even after the Oslo Accords in 1993 and after Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

For the grand strategists, the presence of Hamas in the remaining Palestinian territories might provide, one day, the necessary pretext for a "final solution" to the Palestinian question.

B. "A creature of Israel"

The following sections provide a chronological overview of insider statements on the creation of Hamas made since 1981 by Israeli, American and Palestinian officials.

These officials include a former Israeli military governor of the Gaza Strip, an Israeli military intelligence chief, two Israeli intelligence whistleblowers, a retired IDF Major General, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians, as well as former American government and intelligence officials, late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and an early Hamas leader.