Listening to an Israeli spokeswoman there on Sky News who said Hamas has proven that you cannot have a separate Palestinian state.
Of course she forgot some minor details.
Professor Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official and Tunisian-born Jew, publicly acknowledged that "Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation" and that Israel had "encouraged them as a counterweight to ... Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah."[66] David Hacham, who worked in Gaza as an Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military in the late 1980s and early 1990s stated, "When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake. But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results."[67] Similar statements have been made by Yasser Arafat. For example, in an interview with Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera in December 2001, he referred to Hamas as a "creature of Israel".[68][69]
Use of Hamas as a tool to disengage from peace talks
Shlomo Brom [he], retired general and former deputy to Israel's national security adviser, believes that an empowered Hamas helps Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state, suggesting that there is no viable partner for peace talks.[10]
