Hamas has played no small part in encouraging and planning the recent wave of attacks in Israel, some of which are carried out by Hamas fighters in the West Bank. But at the same time it has refrained from initiating any operations from its base in Gaza itself. Jonathan Schanzer explains why:
The group’s leader [in Gaza], Ismail Haniyeh, has called for an intifada, or uprising. Yet he hasn’t unleashed Hamas’s huge arsenal of rockets or its trained fighting forces from the Gaza Strip, the territory he controls. Hamas has one foot in the uprising and one foot out. . . .
Though Hamas is surely tempted to join the unrest, it is restrained by the memory of last summer’s devastating conflict and the certain knowledge that a new war would only compound Gazans’ misery. And they also know how difficult it has been to negotiate reconstruction after last summer’s war. . . .
Aware of its limitations in Gaza, Hamas has mobilized its fighters in the West Bank. With this arms-length strategy, Hamas can both strike out at Israel and also undermine its political rival, the Palestinian Authority, which it has for more than a decade tried to unseat. This poses little risk to Hamas’s grip on Gaza.
Read more on Wall Street Journal: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/10/26/why-hamas-has-incited-but-not-joined-the-palestinian-unrest/