Josep Borrell's statement risks causing uproar in Israel. The head of European diplomacy accused the Hebrew state on Friday, January 19, of “founding” and “financing” the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which is currently in power in Gaza and the unprecedented deadly attack on October 7 on Israeli soil.
In a speech at the University of Valladolid (Spain), which awarded him an honorary doctorate, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs argued for the creation of a Palestinian state, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported.
“We believe it is a two-state solution [israélien et palestinien] It must be imposed from outside to bring peace. Even if, and I insist, Israel reiterates its rejection [de cette solution] and to prevent this, he went so far as to create Hamas himself,” Mr. Borrell said during a speech in Spanish. “Hamas was funded by the Israeli government to try to weaken the Palestinian Authority Fatah. But if we do not intervene decisively, the spiral of hatred and violence will continue from generation to generation, from funeral to funeral,” he added.
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2007 takeover of Gaza
Hamas was founded in December 1987, shortly after the start of the first Intifada, a Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories, by a group of Islamist militants claiming affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, including the influential Sheikh Ahmad Yassine. Hamas is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” and was specifically founded to defeat Islamic Jihad and compete with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a primarily secular movement led by Yasser Arafat.
Twenty years later, in June 2007, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip after a quasi-civil war against Fatah, a movement at the heart of the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Mahmoud Abbas – Yasser Arafat's successor.
In recent years, the Gaza Strip, under Hamas control and Israeli blockade, has received millions of dollars in aid from Qatar, drawing criticism from Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been accused by critics of funding the movement he supports denies having benefited.
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Netanyahu and the United States are at odds
The Israeli prime minister has again rejected the idea of creating a viable Palestinian state in recent days, drawing criticism from his American ally who says he advocates for a state of Palestine alongside Israel.
In a column published in Le Monde on January 15, 2024, Josep Borrell had already expressed his support for the creation of a Palestinian state and a “Palestinian Authority” following the release of the Israeli hostages and the end of the war between Israel and Hamas.
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“There are two lessons to be learned from the failure of the 1993 Oslo Accords,” which laid the foundation for a Palestinian state, he explained. “The first is that we must immediately establish the need for two states as a solution to the conflict. The second is not to rely solely on Israelis and Palestinians getting along. “The peace conditions must be implemented and guaranteed by the entire international community,” argued the head of European diplomacy.
Also read the decoding: Israel-Palestine: a century of conflict in maps and key dates