On Thursday, Jibral Rajoub—a senior figure in the Fatah faction that has controlled the Palestinian Authority (PA) since its inception—and Saleh al-Arouri, the head of the Hamas military, gave an unprecedent joint press conference. The two pledged unity in countering the Trump administration’s peace proposal and Israeli plans for extending its sovereignty into areas of the West Bank. David Horovitz comments:

Here . . . was one of President Mahmoud Abbas’s most senior colleagues . . . and potential successor, who once worked in close coordination with Israeli security forces, grandly declaring that Fatah was henceforth partnering with Hamas: an Islamist terror organization . . . that thirteen years ago brutally forced Abbas’s Fatah out of the Gaza Strip, and would have long since finished him off in the West Bank too, were he not protected by Israel’s ongoing security presence there.

It was . . . a stinging blow to the lingering hopes of those on the Zionist left who, in the face of years of contrary evidence, still insistently regard Abbas as a potential peace partner with whom Israel might be able to reach a dependable peace agreement. It was bitter confirmation for the consensus view in Israel, hardened in the course of Abbas’s intransigent stewardship of the PA after the death of Yasir Arafat, that Israel dare not risk relinquishing adjacent territory to the Palestinians under his rule.

Plainly, the Trump administration can put aside any thought of the Palestinian leadership engaging with its Peace to Prosperity vision, notwithstanding U.S. officials’ intermittent assurances that the proposal’s terms are not final, and that the goal is for the Palestinians to come back to the table, where they could propose changes.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.