Israel vs. Iran by Yaakov Katz & YOAZ HENDEL

Author:Yaakov Katz & YOAZ HENDEL
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potomac Books Inc.
Published: 2012-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

5

HAMAS: IRAN’S OTHER ARMY

June 2007 remains the turning point in Iran’s love affair with Hamas. A year and a half after Hamas won the general elections that the U.S. government had imposed on the Palestinian Authority, Hamas violently conquered the Gaza Strip, becoming its exclusive ruler. The streets of Gaza emptied as armed Hamas terrorists with an easy finger on the trigger roamed the streets in search of not Israelis but their so-called Fatah brethren.

A local member of Fatah risked his life to tape a group of Hamas men capturing his party’s members, taking them to the top of a three-story building, and throwing them alive off the roof. They tied up and shot others. Hamas members overran the hexagonal building in Gaza that had served as the Palestinian Authority’s counterintelligence headquarters, which Israeli intelligence had thoroughly bugged.

Palestinian Authority (PA) officials in Ramallah were absolutely stunned as the vision of a united Palestinian state—combining the West Bank with the Gaza Strip—was being shattered right before their eyes. Later on, behind closed doors, PA president Mahmoud Abbas requested assistance from Israel to topple the Hamas government.1 Word of this request was leaked to the media when immediately after Operation Cast Lead Abbas blamed Israel for a disproportionate military response.

The rest of the world was already discussing the Palestinians’ self-destruction and the PA’s ongoing internal struggles since Yasser Arafat’s death in 2004, but Israel’s defense establishment was busy dealing with a far more tangible danger. For the first time since Iran had begun its efforts to export the ideas of the Islamic Revolution, its investment had paid off and generated real results. Without getting involved itself, Iran had taken over an area packed with activists full of anti-Israel sentiment and motivation. Dr. Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee at the time, called Gaza a “forward Iranian base.” While Aman toyed with different scenarios with the aim of restoring Fatah’s control in Gaza, Hamas and its patron, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, made it clear that they had no intention of surrendering their new territory.

The Israeli defense establishment was not prepared for Hamas’s takeover of Gaza, according to a trove of diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. One cable dated June 11, 2007, summed up a meeting between Yuval Diskin, then the head of the Israeli Shin Bet Security Agency (the equivalent of the FBI), and Richard Jones, who was then the U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv. Diskin said clearly that he did not believe Hamas was capable of taking over Gaza.2 Another cable quoted the head of Aman at the time, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, as saying that Israel would be happy if Hamas took over Gaza since then it could declare it “hostile territory” and Iran’s influence would subsequently diminish.3 Both Diskin and Yadlin were wrong. Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, and Iran set up another forward base along Israel’s southern border.

Until June 2007, Iran had threatened Israel mainly through Hezbollah. The message coming from Tehran

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