Palestine is “only an instrument that Muslims use as a weapon against Israel”, declares Mosab Hassan Yousef, “son of Hamas”.

Mosab Hassan Yousef spoke at the Jerusalem Post's annual conference on Tuesday, where he addressed the issue of Palestinian statehood and called for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Mosab Yousef, son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef and a former Hamas member, has expressed strong opposition to a two-state solution led by the Palestinian Authority, as many in the West are suggesting.

“Palestine is not existential. It’s just a device that Muslims use as a weapon against Israel and as a weapon against the Jewish people,” Yousef told conference attendees. “Palestine depends on the destruction of Israel. If there is a definition of Palestine, it means the absence of Israel,” he said.

I recently spoke at @Jerusalem_Post conference in New York. There I said that Palestine is an instrument that Muslims use as a weapon against Israel and against the Jewish people. pic.twitter.com/mUg1DgPDI7

– Mosab Hassan Yousef (@MosabHasanYOSEF) June 6, 2024

Those calling for a two-state solution “either want Israel to cease to exist or they are unaware of this existential threat,” Yousef added.

The former Hamas member said he considers the Palestinian Authority (PA) a greater threat than the Hamas terrorist organization because it “defends the global cause through its embassies” which “fight against Israel and its legitimacy.

Yousef also said it was not true that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was about land, as many claim.

“The massacre of Jews at the hands of Muslims has been going on for about fourteen centuries,” Yousef said.

“The Jewish people are in denial,” he continued. “I understand why. Because if the Jewish people admit it, they will then have to face a majority of Muslims.”

However, he declared from the start of the war, and even before, “I realized that the ideological dimension of this war could not be ignored.”

“I’m not calling for a religious war, there was a religious war and it’s time to wake up.”

Yousef added: “Hamas is not only acting on its own, it belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim Brotherhood belongs to a religion, and that religion has a scripture, and it is time to open the books to the rest of the world. »

Later in his speech, Yousef said the PA also had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood through its founder Yasser Arafat.

“I didn't intend to talk so much about Islam, but in my opinion, Palestine, the Palestinian Authority, the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, are all inspired by Islam. same cult of death,” he warned.

“Yasser Arafat was the Muslim Brotherhood, Abdullah Azzam was the Muslim Brotherhood, Osama bin Laden was the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas was the Muslim Brotherhood. All belong to the Muslim Brotherhood. So we have a big problem and we need to wake up.

Yousef challenged the idea that relinquishing control of land to a Palestinian state would lead to Israel's security.

“No one can afford a Palestinian state hostile to Israel. What happened on October 7 cannot be ignored,” he said. “You can't give them Judea and Samaria, you can't give them the mountains, you can't sacrifice the Jordan Valley, it's a line of defense. I’m speaking from a security point of view,” he said, before joking that he looked “like a right-wing Jewish extremist.”

He said the Palestinian Authority could not be trusted because it sponsored and encouraged terrorism.

“Yasser Arafat was a terrorist,” Yousef stressed. “I was at his meeting when he gave my father the authority to blow up buses, markets and beaches during the second Palestinian Intifada. »

Yousef said he agreed with his interviewer, Dr. Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Foreign Affairs Center, that Israel needed to move from defense to offense to counter the Palestinian narrative. “Palestine is not a country,” he noted, “it is only an ideology.”

Yousef believes there are solutions and said the world must “anchor itself in the truth and face reality, face things as they are. As long as we try to escape from it, we cannot We are unable to provide a good solution to this problem.

While noting several policy solutions, he said the fundamental problems in trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are economic problems caused by poor investment strategies, nepotism and corruption by the Palestinian Authority, as well as lack of education.

“I would start by educating West Bank Arabs about the Holocaust. It should be an obligation for every Arab to learn from the Jewish experience,” Yousef argued.

He said Jewish resilience after the Holocaust inspired him. The idea of ​​“never being a victim, of rising above pleasure, above pain. This is the model that inspired me.”

While he briefly discussed several options for political leadership in the Palestinian territories, including recruiting Israeli Arabs to leadership and police positions, Yousef ended his speech by issuing a challenge to the audience.

“We really need to take a deep look at the situation and be honest with ourselves. Does this serve the Arabs? Does this serve the Jews? Does this guarantee the future of the generation or not? Then we make our decisions.”