Anonymous Comrade writes "Middle East News Online has posted an examination by Ray Hanania of the curious, destructive and symbiotic relationship between the Palestinian HAMAS organization and the Israeli Likud Party: How Sharon and the Likud Party Nurtured the Rise of Hamas.

An Excerpt: In 1978, [former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud founder Menachem] Begin sought to undermine Arafat's influence by funding a program of pacification to win over the hearts and minds of the Palestinian masses. Years later, Begin would unleash his war-mongering defense minister on Lebanon to finish Arafat.



Over the objections of many Palestinian Islamic leaders including the Commissioner of the Muslim Waqf in the Gaza Strip, Rafat Abu Shaban, Israel registered the newly formed 'Islamic Association' which [religious leader Sheik Ahmad] Yassin founded.
Yassin was willing to cooperate with the Likud government because he, too, shared the goal of undermining Arafat's secular influence over the Palestinians. More importantly, and in line with Likud policies, he sought to block the creation of a Palestinian State based on land-for-peace.



Israel's Likud government permitted Yassin to launch a newspaper and to set up charitable fundraising organizations. With funding Yassin raised and with Israeli funds directed through the Village Leagues, the Islamic Association built new mosques, new schools, hospitals and medical clinics. The group established social service and humanitarian agencies and even job creation venues. Despite its later turn to armed struggle and suicide bombings, Hamas meticulously directed nearly 95 percent of the funds it raised to these worthy humanitarian projects. Yassin's followers won significant influence over the Village Leagues system, another Israeli supported scheme intended to undermine the PLO's influence and strengthen the hand of local leaders that Likud believed could be co-opted politically.



Yassin was not initially involved with violence. Most of the violence was directed either by Arafat's Al-Fatah organization, based in Lebanon, or by the other PLO umbrella partners like the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Inside the occupied territories, another Islamic group called Islamic Jihad was struggling to gain support among Palestinians living under occupation.



The Islamic Association was a shadow organization and prodigy of the more radical Moslem Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Bana. The group created a Palestinian branch in the 1930s but waged a mainly rhetorical battle against oppression in the Arab World.



Initially, the Moslem Brotherhood and Sheik Yassin's Islamic Association were not supportive of armed struggle against Israel. Yassin adopted the Moslem Brotherhoods approach toward a slow Islamicization of the region.

The complete text of Ray Hanania's article How Sharon and the Likud Party Nurtured the Rise of Hamas"