LONDON: Politics often gives rise to unexpected partnerships, which might at first glance seem illogical — even outright irrational. But for those who broker them, there is usually some inherent logic. In the case of the partnership between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, however, they can also be twisted and destructive.
The relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas, which began long before the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war in Gaza, is a prime example of a complete misreading by the Israeli prime minister of the true intentions of this fundamentalist organization, which would have tragic repercussions for both peoples.
What brings Netanyahu and Hamas together is that neither appear to have any interest in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a compromise that could lead to a two-state solution. For the longest-serving Israeli prime minister in the country’s history, averting an end to the conflict based on ending the occupation and agreeing to a two-state solution is his life’s mission.
James Dorsey of the Middle East Institute believes Netanyahu has developed a symbiotic relationship with the hardliners on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide as a tool for sabotaging any progress toward a peace process — let alone a successful conclusion.
One telling instance came soon after Netanyahu was first elected as prime minister in 1996 and Israel unexpectedly dropped the request made by his predecessor, Shimon Peres, for Hamas political bureau member Mousa Abu Marzouk to be extradited from the US, where he was a resident, against the advice of the security establishment.
This enabled a major Hamas figure to continue his advocacy for armed resistance freely from outside Gaza after his deportation to Jordan.
One might think that a right-wing leader, at a time when other Hamas leaders were in Israeli jails, including its founder, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, would be keen to put someone with Abu Marzouk’s history behind bars.
That is unless Netanyahu already saw the potential in Hamas, with its total resistance to Israel’s existence, of keeping him in power, allowing him to become increasingly authoritarian, and leaving the two-state solution as an eternally hypothetical option.
In the symbiotic relationship between the two, Netanyahu needed Hamas and Hamas needed Netanyahu, because they justified each other’s existence in convincing their respective constituencies that they are each other’s antidote.
Preserving the relevance of Hamas in Palestinian politics and the conflict with Israel have become key instruments in Netanyahu’s strategy of preventing Palestine from becoming a state, mainly by maintaining divisions within Palestinian society.
The victory of Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council election against the governing Fatah movement played into the hands of Netanyahu. He further relished the violent split in Gaza a year later between Fatah and Hamas, which left Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, in control of the West Bank and Hamas in control of Gaza.
With the Palestinian polity divided politically and territorially, and bad blood between the two factions, Netanyahu saw more than ever the opportunity to divide and conquer.
He is not the only one in Israeli politics to harbor this Machiavellian approach. Bezalel Smotrich, now Israel’s finance minister and one of the most extreme representatives of the settlers’ movement in the cabinet, told the Knesset Channel in 2015: “Hamas is an asset and Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is a burden.”
Speaking to Israeli media outlet Makor Rison in 2019, one of Netanyahu’s closest advisers, Jonathan Urich, praised the Israeli prime minister for succeeding “in achieving severance” between Gaza and the West Bank and “effectively smashed the vision of the Palestinian state in those two regions.”
One of the ploys to keep the Palestinian political system divided and paralyzed, many times with the unfortunate helping hand of Palestinian factions themselves, is to make it impossible to conduct free and fair elections. Such elections would offer the victor both domestic and international legitimacy, allowing them to advocate with enhanced credibility for an end to Israeli occupation.
On the rare occasion that holding elections seemed to be possible, as was the case in the spring of 2021, Israel created obstacles, such as ignoring the EU’s request to access the Palestinian occupied territories to observe the elections, in violation of the Oslo accords, and refusing to allow for East Jerusalemites to vote, knowing that without their participation, no Palestinian leader would agree to hold elections.
Elections, therefore, have not been held for nearly 20 years. This democratic deficit is constantly exacerbated, allowing Israel under Netanyahu to maintain that neither the leadership of Gaza or the West Bank are legitimate or credible entities with which to conduct peace negotiations, and question why it should negotiate with one faction while the other might reject any agreement anyway.
It is hardly an honest argument for an Israeli prime minister who has undermined every attempt at reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Worse for him and Israel, it served to maintain the apparent status quo, which imploded in the deadliest day in Israel’s history on Oct. 7, 2023.
In Netanyahu’s world, it is impossible to separate between what serves him personally and his political creed. Still, the leitmotif of opposing the two-state solution goes back to the Oslo accords. His name is closely associated with incitement against the agreement and those who signed it. It propelled him to his first term as prime minister and five subsequent terms.
When he expressed support for a two-state solution, it was for tactical reasons, under US pressure, or because he tried to form a coalition with more centrist elements in Israeli politics, but without conviction or the intention to ever make it happen.
When he returned to power in 2009, Netanyahu was more determined than ever to weaken the Palestinian Authority and its president, Abbas, with measures such as downgrading the cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian security forces in their fight against Hamas.
Years later, in 2018, when Abbas decided to entirely halt the transfer of money to Gaza, leaving the Hamas-led government teetering on the brink of collapse, Netanyahu was the one who came to its rescue, with the ill-advised idea of encouraging a flow of cash from Qatar, literally in suitcases, into the hands of Hamas.
It was alleged that $30 million passed through the Rafah crossing into Hamas coffers every month until October 2023. In addition, under the current Netanyahu government, Israel sanctioned more work permits than it had ever allowed prior to Hamas winning power.
While it improved the dire economic situation in Gaza, it provided Hamas with the resources to build tunnels and purchase weapons.
It has gradually transpired that Netanyahu was warned by security chiefs in the months leading up to the Oct. 7 attack that Hamas was preparing for another round of violence with Israel. At that point, however, he was too invested in the paradigm that Hamas had been pacified and had no interest in rattling the Israeli cage that might risk its hold on power.
A future independent state commission of enquiry into the Oct. 7 attack will have to address the folly of Netanyahu in propping up Hamas and how it enabled this major security lapse to occur.
