Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, this week announced that Israel would retain an open-ended security presence in Gaza. Israeli officials talk of imposing a buffer zone to keep Palestinians away from the Israeli border. They rule out any role for the Palestinian Authority, which was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007 but governs semi-autonomous areas of the occupied West Bank.
The United States has laid out a much different vision. Top officials have said they will not allow Israel to reoccupy Gaza or further shrink its already small territory. They have repeatedly called for a return of the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority and the resumption of peace talks aimed at establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
These conflicting visions have set the stage for difficult discussions between Israel and the U.S.
Israel specifically chose to amplify the voice of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas. Now, to be fair, he had not founded Hamas when Israel chose him. Instead, he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization out of Egypt, that was banned in Egypt but allowed in Gaza under Israeli rule, because they kept attacking Egypt.
Israel took a man with known terrorist ties, and built him a college so that he could teach his terrorist adjacent dogma.
All because he was super orthodox religious, and the main Palestinian organization that Israel didn’t like was secular.
And you quibble because the word Hamas wasn’t uttered until later.
Sheik Ahmed Yassin took the legitimacy offered by Israel, and used it to found Hamas, and taught the first members out of the college built for him by Israel.