Hamas

The series of blows the US administration has dealt to the Palestinian Authority over the past year, from the announcement of the “Deal of the Century” to the normalization accords between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan, has led to an attempted reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. The Istanbul Agreement signed on September 24 reflects a rare commonality of interests between the two organizations, which understand the mood of the Palestinian public and are again trying to achieve unity even at the possible cost of Hamas taking over the PA and the PLO.
In civilized societies action should be taken against anyone who expresses the desire to commit murder. The Iranian government, Hamas, Hezbollah, various clerics, and other influential figures within the Muslim world, as well as neo-Nazis and other extreme rightists, openly proclaim their desire to commit murder or even genocide against Jews and Israel. Many in the Western world either refuse to heed these statements or actively support them. Many others relentlessly criticize Israel and remain completely silent about Palestinian promotion of the killing of Jews.
While most of the world is focused on combating the coronavirus, Israel is fighting both the virus and terrorism. Israel’s enemies are exploiting the instability caused by the pandemic in a variety of ways. In the past week alone, Gaza-based terrorist organization Hamas fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah infiltrated Israel’s airspace with a drone from the Golan Heights. Part of the efforts of terrorist organizations bent on Israel’s destruction is the recruitment of Israeli Arab spies.
Hamas is probably getting the lion’s share of the 268 million shekels provided by Qatar to Gaza, according to a senior Hamas official. Israel allows the transfer of this “protection” money—but instead of giving Israel “protection”, the devastating trickle of missiles from the pre-2014 period is back augmented by daily batches of incendiary balloons. Only another massive round of fighting will bring quiet to Israel’s southern front.
The wedge between Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the recent Gaza conflagration is a clear sign that Israel is deepening divisions between the two terror groups. Nevertheless, the payoffs to Hamas enhance its firepower in possible future rounds, meaning that Israel has to reduce the payoffs as much as possible rather than as the center-left suggests, show largess towards Gaza.

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