European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday, January 19, that Israel funded the creation of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority.
Borrell’s statement came during a speech before the University of Valladolid in Spain, Spanish newspaper El País reported.
He also stressed that creating a Palestinian state is necessary to solve the ongoing conflict.
Borrell said, “We believe that imposing the two-state solution from the outside is the only way to achieve peace, despite Israel’s insistence on opposing this solution.”
His statements come in public contradiction with the position of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who denied these accusations in the past.
Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007 after a short war with the Fatah movement led by President Mahmoud Abbas, who is based in the West Bank.
The war broke out in Gaza, after Hamas on October 7, 2023, launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, most of them civilians, including women and children.
In response to the Hamas attack, Israel pledged to eliminate the movement and according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, 24,762 people have been killed so far in Israeli raids, the vast majority of them women and children.
The UN reports that 85 percent of Gaza’s population is already internally displaced due to severe food, clean water, and medicine shortages.
