Despite numerous efforts, backed by Egypt and other regional powers, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs parts of the West Bank, and Hamas, which governs Gaza, have been unable to come to any sort of mutual understanding. Meanwhile, writes Ehud Yaari, Jerusalem seems close to arriving at a long-term cease-fire with Hamas, even as the PA president Mahmoud Abbas is making ever-more-persistent threats to end relations with Israel. Yaari explains Hamas’s motivations:

For three decades, Saeb Erekat—now secretary general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—has served as the public face of the Palestinian cause and as Yasir Arafat’s chief negotiator. His frequent attempts to libel Israel, most notably with the canard that a pitched battle between the IDF and Palestinian soldiers in Jenin was a massacre of civilians, have had a particular staying power. Now he is being kept alive by an Israeli medical team. David Horovitz writes: