So that's where you want the goalposts to be now? The TIMING of the thing you so confidently claimed never happened?

The cause for the split was that Fatah was viewed as corrupt. Since at least 2012, Israel has focused on strengthening the split to keep Palestinian leadership fractured while the settlements continue.

This really turned and came to a head in 2007, when Hamas, after winning democratic elections in 2006, rose to power, and the Israeli authorities, along with the U.S., attempted to initiate a regime change operation, which facilitated a civil war between Hamas and Fatah and allowed Hamas to take over the Gaza Strip. Since then, Israeli authorities have actively embraced the idea that Hamas would be accepted as a governing authority in the Gaza Strip. Now, part of the calculus in that is because of Gaza’s 2 million Palestinians. This is a demographic issue. Israel wanted to sever the Gaza Strip from the rest of historic Palestine in order to reinforce its claim that it’s a Jewish-majority state. By getting rid of 2 million Palestinians, two-thirds of whom are refugees demanding return, Israel can claim to be both a Jewish state and a democracy and restructure what is its apartheid regime.

• “Divide and Rule”: How Israel Helped Start Hamas to Weaken Palestinian Hopes for Statehood

As far back as December 2012, Netanyahu told prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Margalit, in an interview, said Netanyahu told him that having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.

Israel’s goal was “to ensure that the next confrontation between Israel and Hamas will be the final showdown”, he wrote in the memo, dated December 21st, 2016. A pre-emptive strike, he said, could remove most of the “leadership of the military wing of Hamas”.

• ‘Buying quiet’: Inside the Israeli plan that propped up Hamas - Irish Times