The Jerusalem Post reported on May 29, 1989

The Jerusalem Post reported on May 29, 1989, that, until the late 1980s, the Moslem Brotherhood

“organizations in Gaza and the Islamic University received much encouragement from the [Israeli]

military government. . . . The military government believed that their activity would undermine the

power of the PLO and of leftist organizations in Gaza. They even supplied some of their activists with

weapons, for their protection.” During the first Intifada (uprising), the PLO and Hamas openly clashed

over how to resist the Israeli occupation. The Jerusalem Post noted: “The [Israeli] security forces

greeted this tension [between Palestinian groups] with satisfaction, in line with the principle of

divide and conquer. In several cases, Palestinians noticed that troops stood by quietly during Hamas

street activity, but did interfere when PLO activists engaged in the same activity.” The Israeli

government assumed that if the PLO could be thwarted, the Palestinian problem would be solved. But

Hamas was far more bloodthirsty and radical than the PLO. The PLO effectively recognized Israel’s

right to exist in 1988, while Hamas devoted itself to seizing all of Palestine for an Islamic state.

Want to see first-hand reporting from Gaza? Al-Jazeera’s team was there before journalists were

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