The Real Reasons behind Mahmoud Abbas’s Harsh New Policy toward Hamas

In the past several weeks, the Palestinian Authority (PA) president has cut off fuel and medical supplies to the Gaza Strip, ceased contributing to Gaza’s electric bills, and instructed his officials not to issue referrals for seriously ill Gazans to be transported to Israeli or West Bank Palestinian hospitals for treatment. The last measure is reportedly responsible for the deaths of four children. Typically, the PA has blamed Israel for the human suffering involved. Abbas’s recent policies, Bassam Tawil notes, contrast sharply with nearly a decade of grudging cooperation with Hamas on administrative matters; he explains the thinking behind the abrupt shift:

[Abbas] is . . . apparently deeply worried that his political rival, [the former Fatah official] Mohamed Dahlan, and Hamas are close to forming an alliance against him. In recent days there have been reports that Hamas may allow Dahlan to return to the Gaza Strip to head a new Palestinian government that would be funded and backed by some Gulf countries and Egypt, all of which are disillusioned with Abbas.

Furthermore, Abbas reads the move as a sign of Hamas’s effort to turn the Gaza Strip into an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, leaving him as the president of a mini-state in parts of the West Bank only. Such a move would seriously undermine his claim that he is the president of all Palestinians, including the two-million residents of the Gaza Strip. He can hardly tell the world that he wants a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines when he cannot even return to his private home in Gaza. . . .

Israeli steps fly in the face of Abbas’s ruthless measures. Just this week, about 300 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were issued permits by Israel to leave Gaza while thousands of tons of equipment and goods were allowed in. . . . [But by blaming Gaza’s problems on Israel], Abbas is doing double “duty”: punishing his people in the Gaza Strip while further blackening the name of Israel. These false accusations accomplish even more: they encourage Palestinians to step up their murder sprees against Israelis and feed the campaign in the international arena to delegitimize and demonize Israel and Jews.

Read more at Gatestone

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

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF