How Sharon and the Likud Party nurtured the rise of Hamas

Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has declared Hamas as one of Israel’s greatest threats, but he was one of the architects who encouraged the rise of an Islamic alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization that gave Hamas its start.

In the past quarter century, Sharon and his Likud government party midwifed the birth of Hamas and coddled the rise of Islamic extremists through policies that were more concerned with undermining the peace process.

Sharon’s Likud Bloc party’s extremist policies even provoked party loyalists to acts of violence that in turn pushed Hamas to expand from “armed struggle” against Israel’s military to suicide bombings of civilian targets.

Ironically, the two bitter foes, Likud and Hamas, benefit politically from each other’s extremism over the years.

These Likud policies were intended to undermine the influence of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, who was anointed at the Rabat Arab Summit in October 1974 as the only person who could negotiate for the return of the Occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem.

But they inadvertently provoked the Islamic movement to evolve to a higher level of terrorism. Their first suicide bombing occurred in April 1994 in response to a Likud-inspired settler fanatics murder of Muslims who were praying at the Hebron Mosque.

The number of Hamas suicide bombings has only steadily increased since, bringing the Middle East today to its worst crisis in decades. In the wake of September 11th, the suicide bombings have taken on a more ominous look and given Likud a stronger mandate to finally achieve their long term goals of destroying not only Arafat but any hope for Palestinian state hood.

Since the second Intifadah began in September 2000, there have been more than 60 suicide bombings all in a 19 month period.

The rise of the violence and suicide bombings have only served to undermine the peace process, one of Likud’s primary goals, and to undermine the political power of its main Israeli political rival, the Labor Party.

On a more personal level for Ariel Sharon, the recent Hamas violence and suicide bombings have allowed him to take what may be his second and last shot at destroying his arch rival, Arafat.

His first try in 1982 to destroy Arafat by assaulting his PLO bases in Lebanon and Beirut ended in embarrassment for Israel, which was forced into a humiliating retreat. Sharon left with his reputation tarnished, blamed for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

As Israel’s prime minister, Sharon is personally directing the invasion of the West Bank in the hopes of finishing what he started and failed to do in Lebanon.