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For Israel, Egypt’s Attempt to Reconcile Rival Palestinian Leaders Changes Nothing

Sept. 26 2017

Officials from Hamas (which rules the Gaza Strip) and Fatah (which controls the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank) traveled to Cairo earlier this month for Egyptian-brokered talks aimed at diffusing tensions between the two rival groups. As a result, Hamas made some important concessions, which Fatah seems poised to reciprocate. But as Gilead Sher, Kobi Michael, and Liran Ofek point out, the failure of several Hamas-Fatah agreements in past years suggests that the most recent understanding is unlikely to hold. They also explain the repercussions of this latest attempt:

Fatah is already celebrating a victory (one senior official referred to Hamas as having “its tail between its legs”), because the agreement is perceived as the outgrowth of its intensified sanctions against the Gaza Strip and Hamas in recent months. However, implementation of the reconciliation process and the restoration of the Palestinian Authority (PA) government’s effective control of the Gaza Strip is very unlikely.

Hamas will not readily cede its most important strategic assets—its independent military power and its security control of the Gaza Strip—and the PA government will be subject to the good will of Hamas. Under these conditions, Hamas is disavowing civil responsibility for residents of the Gaza Strip and putting the entire burden on the PA, without the PA being able to fulfill this responsibility. The result [will likely] be a decline in Mahmoud Abbas’s status and the legitimacy of his government; the acceptance of Hamas’s demands also constitutes recognition of the organization’s enhanced status as a full, albeit junior, partner of Fatah in the Palestinian government. . . .

Israel has no substantive influence on the current maneuvers for reconciliation in the Palestinian arena, and should not intervene in them at this stage. Israel is seeking to maintain its deterrence against Hamas and to prevent the next round of violent conflict, or at least delay it for as long as possible. In addition to defense measures, such as building a new barrier along the Gaza border, it is important and morally correct that Israel reduce as much as possible the humanitarian distress in the Strip, and help improve the population’s welfare and quality of life.

At this stage, there is no change in Hamas’s political views: it refuses to recognize Israel, put aside its “weapon of resistance,” and be a full partner in a settlement based on the two-state principle. It is therefore desirable for Israel to demand that measures for more comprehensive reconstruction in the Gaza Strip, in which it will be a partner, be made contingent on a prolonged security lull and a halt to Hamas’s military buildup.

Read more at Institute for National Security Studies

More about: Egypt, Gaza Strip, Hamas, Israel & Zionism, Palestinian Authority

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic