The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell has accused Israel of having “created” and “financed” the Palestinian group Hamas, which launched unprecedented attacks on Israel on October 7, AFP reports.

“We believe that a two-state solution must be imposed from outside to bring peace. Although, I insist, Israel is reaffirming its refusal (of this solution), and to prevent it they have gone so far as to create Hamas themselves,” Borrell said.

“Hamas has been financed by the Israeli government to try to weaken the Palestinian Authority of Fatah.

“But if we do not intervene strongly, the spiral of hate and violence will continue from generation to generation, from funeral to funeral, as the seeds of hatred that are being sown in Gaza today flourish,” he added during a speech in Spanish at the University of Valladolid in central Spain, which awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Hamas was created in December 1987 shortly after the start of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories by a group of fighters claiming to be from the Muslim Brotherhood, including the influential Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.