MADRID: The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell accused Israel of having “created” and “financed” the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which launched unprecedented attacks on Israel on October 7.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in recent days reaffirmed his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, drawing criticism from his US ally, which is still advocating a “two-state solution”.
“We believe that a two-state solution must be imposed from outside to bring peace. Although, I insist, Israel is reaffirming its refusal (of this solution), and to prevent it they have gone so far as to create Hamas themselves,” Borrell said.
“Hamas has been financed by the Israeli government to try to weaken the Palestinian Authority of Fatah.
“But if we do not intervene strongly, the spiral of hate and violence will continue from generation to generation, from funeral to funeral, as the seeds of hatred that are being sown in Gaza today flourish,” he added during a speech in Spanish at the University of Valladolid in central Spain, which awarded him an honorary doctorate.
Hamas was created in December 1987 shortly after the start of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories by a group of Islamist militants claiming to be from the Muslim Brotherhood, including the influential Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Hamas, the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, was notably founded to counter the Islamic Jihad militant group and compete with the mainly secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) then led by Yasser Arafat.
Twenty years later, in June 2007, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip following a quasi-civil war against the Fatah movement of Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, which partially administers the occupied West Bank.
Air strikes shake Khan Yunis
Gunfire and air strikes shook Gaza’s Khan Yunis city on Friday as Israel pressed its southward push in the besieged territory. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported intense artillery fire near the city’s Al Amal hospital, while the Gaza Strip’s health ministry said 77 people were killed in Israeli bombardment.
At the Al Nasser hospital, a child with a bloodied face cried on a gurney. Ambulances arrived with the injured and the dead while in the darkened city beyond, automatic weapons fire sounded. An orange fireball flashed above rooftops. Israel says it still expects the `military operation’ to continue for months.
But a divide over Gaza’s future with key ally the United States came into sharp focus after Washington again stressed the creation of a Palestinian state as the only way to guarantee Israel’s long-term security. According to the United Nations, roughly 85 per cent of Gaza’s population had been displaced since the Oct 7 outbreak of hostilities.
Aid agencies say improved access is needed urgently as famine and disease loom, but a communications blackout, which continued on Friday for an eighth day, only added to the challenges. Loss of connectivity “prevents people in Gaza from accessing life-saving information or calling for first responders and impedes other forms of humanitarian response,” said the UN humanitarian agency, OCHA.
