The Latest on Israel-Gaza-Palestine (27 January)

Earlier Updates: The Latest on Israel-Gaza-Palestine (26 January)
Latest Post: Obama’s First “Reach-Out” to the Muslim World - The Interview with Al-Arabiya
Latest Post: Transcript of Obama Interview with Al-Arabiya
Latest Post: The Linking of Clenched Fists - Israel, Gaza, and Iran

11:50 p.m. When Hamas Isn't Extreme Enough....Make of this what you will. The Israeli Defense Forces say today's bombing that killed an Israeli soldier was carried out by "an extremist pro-Iranian group, which espouses a militant ideology that surpasses even Hamas' positions in its opposition to Israel. The group receives direct support from Tehran, but is connected in various ways to Hamas as well."

The same article states that a group called the "Jihad and Tawhid Brigades" --- "an Islamist group affiliated by Al Qa'eda" --- called Ramattan TV to claim responsibility for the attack.

So we have an attack supposedly carried out on Israel by "extreme Islamsts"-Al Qa'eda-Hamas-Tehran. The perfect terrorist storm or the perfect information campaign?

A quick search turns up reports that "Jiwad and Tawhid Brigades" were formerly led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leader of the Iraq insurgency who was killed by US forces in June 2006.

11:40 p.m. Turkey continues to manoeuvre for a Middle Eastern re-alignment in which Hamas is a recognised political party. Foreign Minister Ali Babacan urged the Gazan leadership through Turkish newspapers, ""Hamas should make a decision. Do they want to be an armed organisation or a political movement?" At the same time, Babacan pointed noted Hamas' support, "The party supported by Hamas got 44 per cent of the votes in the last elections. It is impossible to ignore this base."

11:35 p.m. Alive in Gaza has the latest audio interview with photojournalist Sameh Habeeb, discussing the latest situation, humanitarian relief, and Hamas' alleged control of funds.

11:20 p.m. US envoy George Mitchell, who is in Cairo for the first leg of his Middle East tour, may want to turn around and go home. Really.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thumbed her nose at Hamas and, indeed, verged on green-lighting another Israeli attack on Gaza. In her first news conference as Secretary, Clinton said:

We support Israel's right to self-defense. The (Palestinian) rocket barrages which are getting closer and closer to populated areas (in Israel) cannot go unanswered....It is regrettable that the Hamas leadership apparently believes that it is in their interest to provoke the right of self-defense instead of building a better future for the people of Gaza.

I cannot find an explanation for this that fits any sensible strategy of diplomacy, apart from the possibility that Clinton is clinging to the idea of working with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, isolating and undermining Hamas. If that is the case, it's a strategy whose time passed three weeks ago amidst the dead in Gaza.

11 p.m. In his first news conference since the Israel attack on Gaza on 27 December, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has pledged to tell US envoy George Mitchell:

Israel does not want peace, otherwise it would not have done this. We need to understand this and tell it to those coming from Europe and America. Israel wants to waste time to strengthen facts on the ground with settlements and the wall.

Abbas set out "red line" demands that would have to be met in any talks, ""We want a state in the 1967 borders, a fair solution to the refugee issue, removal of settlements. There will be no going beyond these points or bargaining." And, for good measure, he tried to put Israel on the moral defensive: "We will do all we can to prove Israel committed crimes that would make your skin crawl. We want the world to give us justice for once."

No doubt Abbas, who is in a good deal of political trouble even amongst his West Bank base, is playing to the Palestinian galleries. To what extent, however, is he serious about taking this position into talks with Mitchell? The answer to that will reveal if Israel's operations in Gaza have effectively ruled out any meaningful negotiations, at least in the near-future.

6 p.m. Gazan photojournalist Sameh Habeeb, speaking to Alive in Gaza, reports "limited [Israeli] ground troop presence" moving into Gaza.

4:15 p.m. Hamas claims two people have been wounded by an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza. Reports indicate all border crossings have been closed following the killing of an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian farmer this morning.

3 p.m. It appears the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority has tried to get political breathing space by delaying Presidential elections until 2010. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had said that elections would take place in April, but that intention has been undermined by the effect of the Gaza conflict on Fatah's support.

Hamas claims that Abbas' term of office ended on 9 January but Abbas maintains that it runs until the expiry of the Parliamentary term next year.

1:55 p.m. Aid workers are protesting Israel's continued restrictions on their access to Gaza. Charles Clayton, chair of the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), which represents 75 agencies, says, "It is unacceptable that staff of international aid agencies with expertise in emergency response are still not given full access into Gaza, and that the crossings are not fully operational for humanitarian and commercial goods."

According to CARE, 89 percent of Gazans have not received humanitarian assistance since the first Israeli attacks on 27 December. About 120 trucks of aid are entering Gaza daily but this is far below the level of 600-800 trucks during last year's cease-fire period.

1:45 p.m. Egypt has proposed 22 February for the start of a dialogue between Palestinian groups, according to several of the factions. Hamas is more cautious, saying "This is among the ideas under discussions and to which we will give some responses in due course."

12:50 p.m. Sporting Reference of the Day. At the press conference announcing envoy George Mitchell's departure for the Middle East, President Obama gave this optimistic assessment, "Compared to steroids, this is going to be a breeze."

Explanation? In 2006 and 2007, Mitchell investigated drug-taking scandals in US professional baseball in 2006/7.

11:35 a.m. The Independent of London reports that the appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee for aid to Gaza, which the BBC refused to air but which was screened by Britain's ITV and Channel 4 last night, raised £600,000 even before the first broadcasts.

11:30 a.m. An Israeli soldier has been killed on the Gaza border by a bomb near the Kissifum crossing. Local medics say a Palestinian farmer was later shot dead by Israeli forces.

Overnight developments (8:30 a.m. Israel/Gaza time): The major symbolic development is President Obama's interview with Al-Arabiya, his first with any television channel, covering the Middle East and Iran. We've posted the transcript and an analysis. On Israel-Palestine, it offers little of substance, but it's a great statement in tone --- "what I told [envoy George Mitchell] is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating".

Meanwhile, Israel's own diplomatic move has been to block a French effort to lift the diplomatic and economic blockade of Hamas and Gaza. At the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, France had sought a closing statement that "the European Union would be prepared to hold talks with a future Palestinian unity government that agreed to honor the principles of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process".  Paris also wanted to open up a broad approach to the issue of Israel-Gaza crossings, striking the reference "in accordance with the 2005 agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority".

According to Ha'aretz, " Israeli officials conducted a frenetic diplomatic battle to torpedo the unwanted changes" over two days, persuading the Czech Republic (which currently holds the EU Presidency), the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy to sideline the French initiative.

A Middle East Economic Fact for Your Kind Consideration

According to India’s Strategic Foresight Group, the conflict between Israel and Arab countries, the Persian Gulf Wars of 1991 and from 2003, tensions between Iran and Israel, activities of al-Qaeda, and fights between Hamas and Fatah since 1991 have cost countries in the region $12 trillion.

According to the report, if peace opportunies had not been missed in 1991, individuals of the region would be 50% wealthier. Gross Domestic Product per capita in Israel would be $44,241 instead of $23,304, and it would be $2,427 instead of $1,220 in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Latest from Israel-Gaza-Palestine (26 January)

Earlier Updates and Links to Posts: The Latest from Israel-Gaza-Palestine (25 January)

10:10 p.m. So We're Hopeless at Diplomacy but....The European Union on Monday put itself firmly behind the US- and Israeli-led plan to block arms shipments to Gaza: ""The EU welcomes the commitment of the United States to contribute to stopping arms smuggling into Gaza and is prepared to identify ways to cooperate in such efforts."

An internal EU paper proposed that European help could include training of security forces, provision of necessary specialised equipment and, a curious and unclear provision, "the creation of alternative incomes".

10 p.m. President Bashir al-Assad, pressing his advantage from Syria's position in the Gaza conflict, has said that there can be talks with Israel but only on Damascus' terms, "If whoever is elected in Israel won't be willing to pull out of the Golan Heights, there will be no negotiations." He added:

We held talks with Israel over recent weeks, but Israel did not convey its commitment to peace talks, and it became clear that they only understand the language of force.

Assad took a no-cost shot at outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, "If Olmert were to come to me today and say that he was ready for peace, what could we tell him? We would tell him that he is a criminal and that we don't talk to criminals."

And the sharp-eyed might care to notice Assad's choice of outlet for his statement: Hezbollah's Al-Manar Television.




6:30 p.m. Reuters, summarising what we've been saying since the start of the Gaza conflict, observes, "Syria eyes strategic gains after Gaza war." A Damascus official lays out the new order: "The stiff resistance in Gaza has proved that Hamas is a political force to be reckoned with. There is a new regional reality and more countries are supporting this view. Turkey is one important player."

5 p.m. Extending the European Union's record of clumsy diplomacy in the Gaza conflict, the EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, said today, "I intentionally say this here - Hamas is a terrorist movement and it has to be denounced as such." Michel made the statement as he toured the town of Jabaliya, which suffered extensive casualties and damage during the Israeli bombardment.

Michel's statement is particularly inopportune, amidst the talks in Cairo seeking cease-fire proposal, as the EU's Javier Solana travels to the Middle East to meet President Obama's envoy George Mitchell and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak

4:45 p.m. Turkish Manoeuvres. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, having distanced Turkey from Israel at the start of the Gaza conflict and thus moving closer to Syria and Iran, has taken another public step today. Speaking to the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat, Erdogan said, "Hamas, without a doubt, erred by firing rockets at Israel, but immediately added:

We must consider that Hamas fully abided by the truce agreement with Israel for six months, even though Israel did not. Israel didn't do anything to lift the blockade and open the crossings despite the agreement, and provoked Hamas and Gazans.

Erdogan offered Turkish forces to monitor borders "if they are required to stabilize the truce between Hamas and Israel". He made clear, however, that Hamas had to be recognised openly and, possibly with an eye to the movement's strengthening political position, that "everyone must honor the [forthcoming] Palestinian Authority elections."

In a parting shot at Tel Aviv, Erdogan said, "I am not against the Israeli people, but I am against its political leadership and those who back barbaric killing."

3:30 p.m. Reconciliation? Amidst a relatively quiet day, a possible breakthrough: Hamas and Fatah officials have met for the first time in 10 months. Jamal Abu Hashem of Hamas and Azzam al-Ahmed of Fatah held the discussions as part of the talks in Cairo seeking proposals on a cease-fire and opening of border crossings.

Of course, this is only a small step forward: al-Ahmed told a press conference, "I agreed with [Abu Hashem] in a clear way to have another meeting."

9:30 a.m. A reader, noting yesterday's story that the Israeli Government has authorised a legal defence team for any military officers accused of war crimes, has asked us about the background to the story.

A search on Enduring America for "white phosphorous", "dense inert metal explosives", or "Spike missile" and glance at the stories will give you some idea of the scale of the allegations against Israel. For example, this was our first reference to Israel's apparent use of white phosphorous against civilians, posted on 5 January, two days after the Israeli ground invasion:

6:30 p.m. Following story in The Times of London that Israel used white phosphorous bombs to cover its ground invasion, Moussa el-Haddad, Gaza resident and father of blogger Laila el-Haddad (”Gazamom”), reports “series of bombs in a row, followed by a large white halo, white smoke; people in vicinity cannot breathe…irritation, and exposed areas [of body] become red, blistered, and itchy".

8 a.m. Israel/Gaza/Palestine time: No Israeli reaction yet to yesterday's news of a Hamas offer of a 12-month cease-fire, including an opening of border crossings and European Union and Turkish monitors.

Our colleagues at Alive in Gaza have posted an audio update and photographs from photojournalist Sameh Habeeb, "Empty Tunnels and Terrorist Chickens".

The Latest from Israel-Palestine-Gaza (25 January)

Later Updates: The Latest from Israel-Palestine-Gaza (26 January)
Earlier Updates: The Latest from Israel-Palestine-Gaza (24 January)
Latest Post: How Israel Helped Spawn Hamas

11:15 p.m. Finally, Some White Smoke. After talks in Cairo today, Hamas official Ayman Taha said his organisation is offering a one-year cease-fire to Israel.

This is just an opening move, however. The Hamas delegation has to confirm the 12-month offer with the organisation's leadership in Damascus, and it is linked to a full opening of Gazan borders. Israel's offer of an 18-month cease-fire, presented by the Egyptians to Hamas, held out only a partial opening of crossings.

10:45 p.m. Soft Power, Tehran Style. While aid to Gaza is held up by Israeli restrictions, Iran continues to further its political objectives with assistance. Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani said today that Iran will rebuild the Gazan Parliament destroyed by Israeli air raids.

9:30 p.m. While there were no concrete results from the Cairo talks, Egypt is publicly rushing away from Israel and towards "the Palestinians". In Brussels, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit appealed to Europeans to press Tel Aviv to ease the economic blockade, "I ask the European Union to do (things) very, very quickly to rebuild to help the Palestinians to get out of this crisis. We need to force the Israelis to negotiate and also tell them to open crossings and to give Palestinians a chance to live in a normal way."

Gheit's statement is more rhetoric than substance, however. Egypt is refusing to have foreign monitors on its side of the border, so it is effectively passing the buck to Israel, which is balking at an arrangement on the Gazan side.

Meanwhile, some Europeans are still stuck on the old script of the Palestinian Authority's triumphant re-entry into Gaza. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband proclaimed, ""The reunification of the Palestinians under the recognised and cherished voice of President Abbas is so important."



6:35 p.m. No significant news from the talks in Cairo with Hamas and Fatah delegations. Egyptian officials have issued a holding statement that  "Egyptian efforts to consolidate the ceasefire, reach a [permanent] truce, reopen Gaza crossings and resume Palestinian national dialogue" were discussed.

6:10 p.m. As expected, Israel's Cabinet has approved a measure providing legal protection to its military officers if they are accused of war crimes over the Gaza conflict.

5:15 p.m. Propaganda of the Day. Uzi Mahnaimi, who writes from Tel Aviv for the Times, trumpets, "An American naval taskforce in the Gulf of Aden has been ordered to hunt for suspicious Iranian arms ships heading for the Red Sea as Tehran seeks to re-equip Hamas."

That's not news --- we posted this days ago --- but then Mahnaimi is not a reporter in any meaningful sense of the day. Instead, he's a channel for Tel Aviv's "information" line, which in this case is ramping up the campaign against Iran.

Thus Mahnaimi states that a US ship intercepted a "former Russian vessel" and held it for two days --- again, not news, as we noted the incident when it occurred earlier this week --- and adds, "According to unconfirmed reports, weapons were found." Very unconfirmed: the former Russian vessel had artillery, which Hamas does not use, and no further arms were found when it was searched in report.

Of course, this doesn't stop Mahnaimi, who tosses in the Israeli suspicion that two Iranian destroyers, sent to help fight piracy off the Somalian coast, are part of a scheme to run weapons to Gaza. And he has more:

Iran plans to ship Fajr rockets with a 50-mile range to Gaza. This would bring Tel Aviv, its international airport and the Dimona nuclear reactor within reach for the first time.

Of course, Iran may be supplying weapons to Hamas but this story is Israeli-inspired misinformation, of value to Tel Aviv's political schemes but worthless for any analysis of the aftermath of the Gaza conflict.

3:30 p.m. Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Beirut, has issued a defiant statement about the attempt to block arms shipments to Gaza: "We will continue to get weapons into Gaza and the (West) Bank. Let nobody think we will surrender to measures. Perhaps matters will get more difficult, but we are ready to ride out any difficulty ... so that the resistance continues."

Hamdan added that those who think monitoring can detect the movement of weapons through tunnels "are deluded".

11:15 a.m. Rafah Kid has posted a series of new photos from Jabaliya with the note, "It's a mess here."

11 a.m. From the diary of Mohammad Dawwas, reprinted in The Independent of London:

22 January: I went to the burns department in Shifa hospital. I've never seen anything like this in my life. These phosphorus burns. Their bodies were black. One person has stitches everywhere. It's worse than killing people. They look like the living dead. I also went to the north, to Beit Lahiya. This was one of the most beautiful areas of farmland. Now it's gone, you can't recognise the place. I wanted to cry.

10:05 a.m. More on the aid front: Iran has established a Gaza Reconstruction Headquarters to "build 1,000 houses, 10 schools and five mosques, and reconstruct 500 shops, a hospital and a university".

10 a.m. Hamas has begun distribution of $52 million of aid in Gaza, with families receiving $1300 for each member killed and $650 for each wounded. The Observer of London has a lengthy background article.

Morning update (9:20 a.m. Israel/Gaza time): Important talks in Cairo today with Hamas and Fatah delegations on issues such as the manning of the border crossings. Hamas representatives will meet the head of Egyptian intelligence, Omar Suleiman, who met with an Israeli envoy on Thursday.

As we noted yesterday, if Hamas and Fatah agree on an arrangement in which some Gazan-based members of the Palestinian Authority join the border force, along with guards from European Union countries and Turkey, it will throw a difficult choice back at Israel. Tel Aviv will either to hold out, maintaining its stranglehold on aid and the Gazan economy, or ease its policy on the crossings.

How Israel Helped Spawn Hamas

We're privileged to re-post Andrew Higgins' outstanding piece of journalism in today's Wall Street Journal, which combines an impressive historical summary with contemporary analysis. He establishes how Israel assisted with the creation and growth of Hamas from the late 1970s. (I've known this for years from academic works; however, many people --- including a number I've encountered on the Net in recent weeks --- refuse to accept the evidence.)

More importantly, however, Higgins offers lessons which Israel's leaders conveniently forgot for the sake of this conflict:

When it became clear in the early 1990s that Gaza's Islamists had mutated from a religious group into a fighting force aimed at Israel -- particularly after they turned to suicide bombings in 1994 -- Israel cracked down with ferocious force. But each military assault only increased Hamas's appeal to ordinary Palestinians.

HOW ISRAEL HELPED TO SPAWN HAMAS
Andrew Higgins

Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor's bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile's trajectory back to an "enormous, stupid mistake" made 30 years ago.

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.

Last Saturday, after 22 days of war, Israel announced a halt to the offensive. The assault was aimed at stopping Hamas rockets from falling on Israel. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hailed a "determined and successful military operation." More than 1,200 Palestinians had died. Thirteen Israelis were also killed.

Hamas responded the next day by lobbing five rockets towards the Israeli town of Sderot, a few miles down the road from Moshav Tekuma, the farming village where Mr. Cohen lives. Hamas then announced its own cease-fire.

Since then, Hamas leaders have emerged from hiding and reasserted their control over Gaza. Egyptian-mediated talks aimed at a more durable truce are expected to start this weekend. President Barack Obama said this week that lasting calm "requires more than a long cease-fire" and depends on Israel and a future Palestinian state "living side by side in peace and security."

A look at Israel's decades-long dealings with Palestinian radicals -- including some little-known attempts to cooperate with the Islamists -- reveals a catalog of unintended and often perilous consequences. Time and again, Israel's efforts to find a pliant Palestinian partner that is both credible with Palestinians and willing to eschew violence, have backfired. Would-be partners have turned into foes or lost the support of their people.

Israel's experience echoes that of the U.S., which, during the Cold War, looked to Islamists as a useful ally against communism. Anti-Soviet forces backed by America after Moscow's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan later mutated into al Qaeda.

At stake is the future of what used to be the British Mandate of Palestine, the biblical lands now comprising Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Since 1948, when the state of Israel was established, Israelis and Palestinians have each asserted claims over the same territory.

The Palestinian cause was for decades led by the PLO, which Israel regarded as a terrorist outfit and sought to crush until the 1990s, when the PLO dropped its vow to destroy the Jewish state. The PLO's Palestinian rival, Hamas, led by Islamist militants, refused to recognize Israel and vowed to continue "resistance." Hamas now controls Gaza, a crowded, impoverished sliver of land on the Mediterranean from which Israel pulled out troops and settlers in 2005.

When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank.

"When I look back at the chain of events I think we made a mistake," says David Hacham, who worked in Gaza in the late 1980s and early '90s as an Arab-affairs expert in the Israeli military. "But at the time nobody thought about the possible results."

Israeli officials who served in Gaza disagree on how much their own actions may have contributed to the rise of Hamas. They blame the group's recent ascent on outsiders, primarily Iran. This view is shared by the Israeli government. "Hamas in Gaza was built by Iran as a foundation for power, and is backed through funding, through training and through the provision of advanced weapons," Mr. Olmert said last Saturday. Hamas has denied receiving military assistance from Iran.

Arieh Spitzen, the former head of the Israeli military's Department of Palestinian Affairs, says that even if Israel had tried to stop the Islamists sooner, he doubts it could have done much to curb political Islam, a movement that was spreading across the Muslim world. He says attempts to stop it are akin to trying to change the internal rhythms of nature: "It is like saying: 'I will kill all the mosquitoes.' But then you get even worse insects that will kill you...You break the balance. You kill Hamas you might get al Qaeda."

When it became clear in the early 1990s that Gaza's Islamists had mutated from a religious group into a fighting force aimed at Israel -- particularly after they turned to suicide bombings in 1994 -- Israel cracked down with ferocious force. But each military assault only increased Hamas's appeal to ordinary Palestinians. The group ultimately trounced secular rivals, notably Fatah, in a 2006 election supported by Israel's main ally, the U.S.

Now, one big fear in Israel and elsewhere is that while Hamas has been hammered hard, the war might have boosted the group's popular appeal. Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in Gaza, came out of hiding last Sunday to declare that "God has granted us a great victory."

Most damaged from the war, say many Palestinians, is Fatah, now Israel's principal negotiating partner. "Everyone is praising the resistance and thinks that Fatah is not part of it," says Baker Abu-Baker, a longtime Fatah supporter and author of a book on Hamas.

A Lack of Devotion

Hamas traces its roots back to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group set up in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood believed that the woes of the Arab world spring from a lack of Islamic devotion. Its slogan: "Islam is the solution. The Quran is our constitution." Its philosophy today underpins modern, and often militantly intolerant, political Islam from Algeria to Indonesia.

After the 1948 establishment of Israel, the Brotherhood recruited a few followers in Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza and elsewhere, but secular activists came to dominate the Palestinian nationalist movement.

At the time, Gaza was ruled by Egypt. The country's then-president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a secular nationalist who brutally repressed the Brotherhood. In 1967, Nasser suffered a crushing defeat when Israel triumphed in the six-day war. Israel took control of Gaza and also the West Bank.

"We were all stunned," says Palestinian writer and Hamas supporter Azzam Tamimi. He was at school at the time in Kuwait and says he became close to a classmate named Khaled Mashaal, now Hamas's Damascus-based political chief. "The Arab defeat provided the Brotherhood with a big opportunity," says Mr. Tamimi.

In Gaza, Israel hunted down members of Fatah and other secular PLO factions, but it dropped harsh restrictions imposed on Islamic activists by the territory's previous Egyptian rulers. Fatah, set up in 1964, was the backbone of the PLO, which was responsible for hijackings, bombings and other violence against Israel. Arab states in 1974 declared the PLO the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people world-wide.

The Muslim Brotherhood, led in Gaza by Sheikh Yassin, was free to spread its message openly. In addition to launching various charity projects, Sheikh Yassin collected money to reprint the writings of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian member of the Brotherhood who, before his execution by President Nasser, advocated global jihad. He is now seen as one of the founding ideologues of militant political Islam.

Mr. Cohen, who worked at the time for the Israeli government's religious affairs department in Gaza, says he began to hear disturbing reports in the mid-1970s about Sheikh Yassin from traditional Islamic clerics. He says they warned that the sheikh had no formal Islamic training and was ultimately more interested in politics than faith. "They said, 'Keep away from Yassin. He is a big danger,'" recalls Mr. Cohen.

Instead, Israel's military-led administration in Gaza looked favorably on the paraplegic cleric, who set up a wide network of schools, clinics, a library and kindergartens. Sheikh Yassin formed the Islamist group Mujama al-Islamiya, which was officially recognized by Israel as a charity and then, in 1979, as an association. Israel also endorsed the establishment of the Islamic University of Gaza, which it now regards as a hotbed of militancy. The university was one of the first targets hit by Israeli warplanes in the recent war.

Brig. General Yosef Kastel, Gaza's Israeli governor at the time, is too ill to comment, says his wife. But Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who took over as governor in Gaza in late 1979, says he had no illusions about Sheikh Yassin's long-term intentions or the perils of political Islam. As Israel's former military attache in Iran, he'd watched Islamic fervor topple the Shah. However, in Gaza, says Mr. Segev, "our main enemy was Fatah," and the cleric "was still 100% peaceful" towards Israel. Former officials say Israel was also at the time wary of being viewed as an enemy of Islam.

Mr. Segev says he had regular contact with Sheikh Yassin, in part to keep an eye on him. He visited his mosque and met the cleric around a dozen times. It was illegal at the time for Israelis to meet anyone from the PLO. Mr. Segev later arranged for the cleric to be taken to Israel for hospital treatment. "We had no problems with him," he says.

In fact, the cleric and Israel had a shared enemy: secular Palestinian activists. After a failed attempt in Gaza to oust secularists from leadership of the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross, Mujama staged a violent demonstration, storming the Red Crescent building. Islamists also attacked shops selling liquor and cinemas. The Israeli military mostly stood on the sidelines.

Mr. Segev says the army didn't want to get involved in Palestinian quarrels but did send soldiers to prevent Islamists from burning down the house of the Red Crescent's secular chief, a socialist who supported the PLO.

'An Alternative to the PLO'

Clashes between Islamists and secular nationalists spread to the West Bank and escalated during the early 1980s, convulsing college campuses, particularly Birzeit University, a center of political activism.

As the fighting between rival student factions at Birzeit grew more violent, Brig. Gen. Shalom Harari, then a military intelligence officer in Gaza, says he received a call from Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint on the road out of Gaza. They had stopped a bus carrying Islamic activists who wanted to join the battle against Fatah at Birzeit. "I said: 'If they want to burn each other let them go,'" recalls Mr. Harari.

A leader of Birzeit's Islamist faction at the time was Mahmoud Musleh, now a pro-Hamas member of a Palestinian legislature elected in 2006. He recalls how usually aggressive Israeli security forces stood back and let conflagration develop. He denies any collusion between his own camp and the Israelis, but says "they hoped we would become an alternative to the PLO."

A year later, in 1984, the Israeli military received a tip-off from Fatah supporters that Sheikh Yassin's Gaza Islamists were collecting arms, according to Israeli officials in Gaza at the time. Israeli troops raided a mosque and found a cache of weapons. Sheikh Yassin was jailed. He told Israeli interrogators the weapons were for use against rival Palestinians, not Israel, according to Mr. Hacham, the military affairs expert who says he spoke frequently with jailed Islamists. The cleric was released after a year and continued to expand Mujama's reach across Gaza.

Around the time of Sheikh Yassin's arrest, Mr. Cohen, the religious affairs official, sent a report to senior Israeli military and civilian officials in Gaza. Describing the cleric as a "diabolical" figure, he warned that Israel's policy towards the Islamists was allowing Mujama to develop into a dangerous force.

"I believe that by continuing to turn away our eyes, our lenient approach to Mujama will in the future harm us. I therefore suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face," Mr. Cohen wrote.

Mr. Harari, the military intelligence officer, says this and other warnings were ignored. But, he says, the reason for this was neglect, not a desire to fortify the Islamists: "Israel never financed Hamas. Israel never armed Hamas."

Roni Shaked, a former officer of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, and author of a book on Hamas, says Sheikh Yassin and his followers had a long-term perspective whose dangers were not understood at the time. "They worked slowly, slowly, step by step according to the Muslim Brotherhood plan."

Declaring Jihad

In 1987, several Palestinians were killed in a traffic accident involving an Israeli driver, triggering a wave of protests that became known as the first Intifada, Mr. Yassin and six other Mujama Islamists launched Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas's charter, released a year later, is studded with anti-Semitism and declares "jihad its path and death for the cause of Allah its most sublime belief."

Israeli officials, still focused on Fatah and initially unaware of the Hamas charter, continued to maintain contacts with the Gaza Islamists. Mr. Hacham, the military Arab affairs expert, remembers taking one of Hamas's founders, Mahmoud Zahar, to meet Israel's then defense minister, Yitzhak Rabin, as part of regular consultations between Israeli officials and Palestinians not linked to the PLO. Mr. Zahar, the only Hamas founder known to be alive today, is now the group's senior political leader in Gaza.

In 1989, Hamas carried out its first attack on Israel, abducting and killing two soldiers. Israel arrested Sheikh Yassin and sentenced him to life. It later rounded up more than 400 suspected Hamas activists, including Mr. Zahar, and deported them to southern Lebanon. There, they hooked up with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed A-Team of anti-Israeli militancy.

Many of the deportees later returned to Gaza. Hamas built up its arsenal and escalated its attacks, while all along maintaining the social network that underpinned its support in Gaza.

Meanwhile, its enemy, the PLO, dropped its commitment to Israel's destruction and started negotiating a two-state settlement. Hamas accused it of treachery. This accusation found increasing resonance as Israel kept developing settlements on occupied Palestinian land, particularly the West Bank. Though the West Bank had passed to the nominal control of a new Palestinian Authority, it was still dotted with Israeli military checkpoints and a growing number of Israeli settlers.

Unable to uproot a now entrenched Islamist network that had suddenly replaced the PLO as its main foe, Israel tried to decapitate it. It started targeting Hamas leaders. This, too, made no dent in Hamas's support, and sometimes even helped the group. In 1997, for example, Israel's Mossad spy agency tried to poison Hamas's exiled political leader Mr. Mashaal, who was then living in Jordan.

The agents got caught and, to get them out of a Jordanian jail, Israel agreed to release Sheikh Yassin. The cleric set off on a tour of the Islamic world to raise support and money. He returned to Gaza to a hero's welcome.

Efraim Halevy, a veteran Mossad officer who negotiated the deal that released Sheikh Yassin, says the cleric's freedom was hard to swallow, but Israel had no choice. After the fiasco in Jordan, Mr. Halevy was named director of Mossad, a position he held until 2002. Two years later, Sheikh Yassin was killed by an Israeli air strike.

Mr. Halevy has in recent years urged Israel to negotiate with Hamas. He says that "Hamas can be crushed," but he believes that "the price of crushing Hamas is a price that Israel would prefer not to pay." When Israel's authoritarian secular neighbor, Syria, launched a campaign to wipe out Muslim Brotherhood militants in the early 1980s it killed more than 20,000 people, many of them civilians.

In its recent war in Gaza, Israel didn't set the destruction of Hamas as its goal. It limited its stated objectives to halting the Islamists' rocket fire and battering their overall military capacity. At the start of the Israeli operation in December, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told parliament that the goal was "to deal Hamas a severe blow, a blow that will cause it to stop its hostile actions from Gaza at Israeli citizens and soldiers."

Walking back to his house from the rubble of his neighbor's home, Mr. Cohen, the former religious affairs official in Gaza, curses Hamas and also what he sees as missteps that allowed Islamists to put down deep roots in Gaza.

He recalls a 1970s meeting with a traditional Islamic cleric who wanted Israel to stop cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood followers of Sheikh Yassin: "He told me: 'You are going to have big regrets in 20 or 30 years.' He was right."