Hamas Is Maintaining Quiet in Gaza, While Preparing for War

Last week, the Iran-backed, Gaza Strip-based terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) marked the 25th anniversary of the assassination of its erstwhile leader. This week marks a year since the IDF eliminated one of its top officials, Baha Abu al-Ata. Meanwhile, thanks to the coronavirus, the economic situation in Gaza is extremely dire and Hamas, which governs the territory, seems to have no interest in provoking a confrontation with Israel. Yoav Limor takes stock:

[PIJ’s] leaders in Damascus are prodding their people in Gaza to fall in line with Hamas, and prioritize calm over escalation with Israel. This moderate line isn’t accepted by all the group’s members, chief among them Ata loyalists. . . . In Israel, of course, officials prefer the peace and quiet, but there are those would view a PIJ attack as a window of opportunity: if the recalcitrant operatives on the ground do something, it will be possible to act against the group, even if it means several days of hostilities.

It’s also safe to assume that Hamas would want Israel to neutralize, on its behalf, those seeking to undermine stability in Gaza; by not responding to Ata’s assassination last year, Hamas showed it doesn’t particularly grieve over the removal of its adversaries from the chessboard, and certainly isn’t willing to risk its own critical interests for them.

For now, Hamas . . . prefers calm and non-escalation. But we mustn’t extrapolate from this that Hamas has become a peaceful organization. The recently detected attack tunnel in Gaza indicates that Hamas is continuing to prepare for war and is examining ways to bypass the underground barrier Israel has built around Gaza.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Gaza Strip, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Israeli Security

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society