Scott Ritter on how Israel supported Hamas in order to sabotage a Palestinian state

The Israelis have been fostering Hamas from the very beginning.  Hamas was conceived by the Palestinians as its own thing, but it was the Israeli government that said, "This we can use."  You see, Israel didn't want the Palestinian Liberation Army, or PLO, to become this powerful entity because the last thing Israel wants is a viable Palestinian state.  I'll say that one more time just so people understand what I'm saying: Israel does not want a Palestinian state.  Never has.  Won't tolerate it.  They talk about it, but they knew they were never going to allow it to happen.  And one of the ways they prevented it from happening was to create a division within the Palestinian population.  So they promoted Hamas, they funneled money into Hamas, they openly collaborated with Hamas - even though I don't think Hamas understood they were being collaborated with - and they empowered Hamas.

All of the terrorist acts that took place in the 1990s took place because Israel wanted them to take place.  I'm not saying they planned them.  What I am saying is that Isreal viewed that as a very effective way of not only dividing the Palestinian population, but then demonizing them in the eyes of the world so that there wouldn't be a Palestinian state.  You see, if Hamas is going around blowing up buses and bridges, no one's going to support a Palestinian state because everybody's bought into the notion that Israeli security must come first.  

Israel was facilitating the acts of terror that took place against them by creating the organization that produced the terrorists.  That doesn't mean that Israel wasn't hunting them down and killing them.  Of course they were.  I'm just saying that Israel's not an innocent party here.  Netanyahu's not an innocent party.

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The only solution to this problem - the only solution - is the creation of a Palestinian state.  If you want to defeat Hamas - and the only way you're going to defeat Hamas - you have to create a Palestinian state that diffuses Hamas's reason to exist.  Hamas exists to resist Israel, but if there's a Palestinian state, there's really nothing left to resist.  So Hamas will go away.

~ Scott Ritter, "US Marine Corps Officer Scott Ritter Reveals Truth About Israel War," Cyrus Janssen, 13:10 mark, November 1, 2023