Mahmoud Abbas’s Efforts to Exacerbate the Conflict in Gaza

Aug. 23 2018

When reports of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas emerged last week, officials from Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party immediately denounced it as a “betrayal of the Palestinian people” by Hamas. Bassam Tawil explains that not only is Abbas undisposed to the resumption of peace on the Israel-Gaza border but he bears some responsibility for the latest outbreak of fighting. In fact, the “march of return” in Gaza, which quickly evolved into escalating violence, followed on the heels of failed reconciliation negotiations between the two groups:

In March 2018, Abbas and his government decided to impose a series of punitive measures against his own people: the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The measures include, among other things, halting payments to thousands of civil servants and forcing thousands of others into early retirement. He also decided to stop paying Israel for the electricity it supplies to the Gaza Strip and limited the amount of medicine shipments to the coastal enclave.

Abbas has defended his sanctions against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by arguing that Hamas was refusing to hand control over the coastal Gaza enclave to his government in accordance with previous “reconciliation” agreements signed between his ruling Fatah faction and Hamas.

The violence of the past few months along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel could have been avoided had Abbas agreed to lift the sanctions he himself imposed on the two-million residents of the Gaza Strip. He chose, however, to continue these measures so that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would continue to direct their anger toward Israel. Abbas has no headquarters or offices in the Gaza Strip where the Palestinians there can protest against him. So he had nothing to worry about when he decided to punish his own people. He also had nothing to worry about regarding the international community because he knows that, as usual, it will blame only Israel for the crisis in the Gaza Strip. . . .

Equally disingenuous is that Abbas, who is responsible for the current wave of violence along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, is now demanding that the international community, specifically the UN, provide “international protection” for the Palestinians against Israeli measures, . . . while he is doing everything he can to wreak havoc on his people in the Gaza Strip. He does not want a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, he does not want to lift the sanctions he imposed on the Gaza Strip, and he does not want the international community directly to fund economic and humanitarian projects that would improve the living conditions of his people. So what exactly does Abbas want? He wants the people of the Gaza Strip to continue protesting so that he will be able to continue to demonize Israel.

Read more at Gatestone

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

A Bill to Combat Anti-Semitism Has Bipartisan Support, but Congress Won’t Bring It to a Vote

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.

Read more at New York Post

More about: Anti-Semitism, Congress, IHRA