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Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich once described Hamas as an “asset” for Israel, in a tweet that was unearthed on Tuesday.
Mr Smotrich, long one of the main players in Israel’s growing far-right, said in the same post on Twitter from 2015 that the Palestinian Authority was a “burden”.
The discovery adds to swirling allegations that Israeli policymakers have over the years been taking decisions that empower Hamas in a bid to weaken the rival PA, which has long been the international community’s preferred governing body in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The PA is supposed to be interim governing body for Palestinians until the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
It lost control of the Gaza Strip in 2006, after Hamas won a shock electoral victory in the enclave. Clashes broke out after the election between Hamas and Fatah, the main faction in the PA, which resulted in Hamas governing Gaza and the PA governing the occupied West Bank.
Despite Hamas’s virulently anti-Israel and Islamist ideology, Israel has been accused of allowing the group to flourish at the expense of the PA in order to decrease the likelihood of the Palestinians ever having an independent state.
EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said on Friday that Israel financed the creation of Hamas, despite strong denials from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Hamas was financed by the government of Israel in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah," Mr Borrell said in a speech.
“Mr Borrell is wrong. Far from seeking to strengthen Hamas, as the EU foreign policy chief alleged, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit Hamas hard in three large-scale military operations; in 2012, 2014, and 2021,” said Ophir Falk, an adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister, in a statement quoted by Politico.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly vowed to destroy Hamas in the ongoing Gaza war, which began when the group led an attack on southern Israel on October 7 that killed about 1,200 people. About 240 others were kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
More than 25,490 Palestinians have since been killed in the war in Gaza.
Sheikh Zayed's poem
When it is unveiled at Abu Dhabi Art, the Standing Tall exhibition will appear as an interplay of poetry and art. The 100 scarves are 100 fragments surrounding five, figurative, female sculptures, and both sculptures and scarves are hand-embroidered by a group of refugee women artisans, who used the Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery art of tatreez. Fragments of Sheikh Zayed’s poem Your Love is Ruling My Heart, written in Arabic as a love poem to his nation, are embroidered onto both the sculptures and the scarves. Here is the English translation.
Your love is ruling over my heart
Your love is ruling over my heart, even a mountain can’t bear all of it
Woe for my heart of such a love, if it befell it and made it its home
You came on me like a gleaming sun, you are the cure for my soul of its sickness
Be lenient on me, oh tender one, and have mercy on who because of you is in ruins
You are like the Ajeed Al-reem [leader of the gazelle herd] for my country, the source of all of its knowledge
You waddle even when you stand still, with feet white like the blooming of the dates of the palm
Oh, who wishes to deprive me of sleep, the night has ended and I still have not seen you
You are the cure for my sickness and my support, you dried my throat up let me go and damp it
Help me, oh children of mine, for in his love my life will pass me by.
South Africa squad
Faf du Plessis (captain), Hashim Amla, Temba Bavuma, Quinton de Kock (wicketkeeper), Theunis de Bruyn, AB de Villiers, Dean Elgar, Heinrich Klaasen (wicketkeeper), Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, Morne Morkel, Wiaan Mulder, Lungi Ngidi, Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada.
Classification of skills
A worker is categorised as skilled by the MOHRE based on nine levels given in the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) issued by the International Labour Organisation.
A skilled worker would be someone at a professional level (levels 1 – 5) which includes managers, professionals, technicians and associate professionals, clerical support workers, and service and sales workers.
The worker must also have an attested educational certificate higher than secondary or an equivalent certification, and earn a monthly salary of at least Dh4,000.
The biog
DOB: 25/12/92
Marital status: Single
Education: Post-graduate diploma in UAE Diplomacy and External Affairs at the Emirates Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi
Hobbies: I love fencing, I used to fence at the MK Fencing Academy but I want to start again. I also love reading and writing
Lifelong goal: My dream is to be a state minister
