And that's been Netanyahu's exact playbook in preventing the beginning of the talks for a two-state solution -- perpetuating a rift between Hamas and PA, and then stating Palestinian Authority doesnât represent all the Palestinians -- a gamble that now seems to have backfired:
"Since he took office as prime minister a second time in 2009, Netanyahu developed and advanced a destructive, warped
political doctrine that held that strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority would be good for Israel. The purpose of the doctrine was to perpetuate the rift between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. That would preserve the diplomatic paralysis and forever remove the âdangerâ of negotiations with the Palestinians over the partition of Israel into two states â
on the argument that the Palestinian Authority doesnât represent all the Palestinians. That flawed strategy turned Hamas from a minor terrorist organization into an efficient, lethal army with highly trained, dehumanized stormtroopers, bloodthirsty killers who mercilessly slaughtered innocent Israeli civilians including women, children and the elderly."
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Between 2012 and 2018, Netanyahu gave Qatar approval to transfer a cumulative sum of about a billion dollars to Gaza, at least half of which reached Hamas, including its military wing. According to the Jerusalem Post, in a private meeting with members of his Likud party on March 11, 2019, Netanyahu explained the reckless step as follows: The money transfer is part of the strategy to divide the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Anyone who opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support the transfer of the money from Qatar to Hamas. In that way, we will foil the establishment of a Palestinian state (as reported in former cabinet member Haim Ramonâs Hebrew-language book âNeged Haruachâ, p. 417). In an interview with the Ynet news website on May 5, 2019, Netanyahu associate Gershon Hacohen, a major general in reserves, said, â
We need to tell the truth. Netanyahuâs strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, itâs an ally.â
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In a tweet on May 20, 2019, Channel 13 quoted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak saying: âNetanyahu isnât interested in the two-state solution. Rather, he wants to separate Gaza from the West Bank, as he told me at the end of 2010.â Mubarak said that during an interview with the Kuwaiti daily Al-Anba. Itâs worth dwelling on the horrifying significance of these remarks. An Israeli prime minister himself knowingly and calculatingly cultivated one of Israelâs most bitter and fanatic foes, an enemy whose declared aim is to destroy the country. And he did it to prevent the horror scenario from his standpoint of a return to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Netanyahu recklessly gambled on the lives of Israelis, and in fact, last Shabbat, more than 1,000 of them paid the price of that foolish gamble with their lives."
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