In 2011, Israel released a large number of captured terrorists in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier being held hostage by Hamas. Around the same time, Hamas closed its offices in Syria due to tensions with the regime in Damascus. Turkey thus became an increasingly important base of operations for the terrorist group, as Nadav Shragai explains:

Besides hosting Hamas offices and senior officials who planned terror attacks, Turkey has also become a safe haven for Hamas’s financial affairs, including the funding of terror organizations in the West Bank. In a report published by the U.S. Treasury Department on September 10, 2019, the United States announced that it had “designated fifteen leaders, individuals, and entities affiliated with terror groups.” . . . The report revealed that Hamas operatives and collaborators in Turkey engage in fundraising, transferring money to the military wing in Gaza, funding terror organizations in the West Bank, and running money-changing and fund-transferring companies in Turkey through which terror funds are laundered.

The information published by the Treasury Department shows that the main source of financial support to Hamas via Turkey (and sometimes via Lebanon) is Iran.

After a half-decade of ups and downs in Israel-Turkey relations, a further attempt at reconciliation is now on the agenda. This time the initiative comes from the Turkish side. According to assessments, Turkey is trying to break out of the international isolation that has befallen it, improve its standing with the Biden administration, and ameliorate the difficult economic situation within Turkey.

Turkey’s courtship of Israel in an attempt to repair relations gives Israel a golden opportunity to act effectively against Turkey-Hamas collaboration.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.