In the past few days, the IDF and Shin Bet have conducted a series of successful raids in Nablus against the terrorist group known as the Lions’ Den, killing one of its leaders and destroying a bomb factory. A relatively new organization, based in Samaria and opposed to the Palestinian Authority, the Lions’ Den is responsible for numerous attacks in recent weeks. Residents of Nablus are now reportedly frustrated that leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad haven’t intervened on their behalf, as Yoni Ben Menachem writes:

It is Hamas that in recent months has pushed the residents of the West Bank and east Jerusalem towards a new armed intifada against Israel while promising that it would actually support such an intifada and assist it by firing rockets from the Gaza Strip. Hamas also leads a large support campaign for Lions’ Den via social media and even transferred more than a million dollars to finance its activities. However, despite this support, no rockets were fired from the Strip towards Israel.

Senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials threatened yesterday that the Gaza Strip “will join the conflict in the event of an imminent escalation in the West Bank,” as if there had been no escalation until now. Why has the Gaza Strip remained silent so far?

There are several reasons: a) pragmatism on the part of the Hamas that wants to keep receiving monthly Qatari financial aid to the Gaza Strip, the continued entry of thousands of workers from the Gaza Strip to work in Israel, and the humanitarian relief and rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip from the damage done in recent wars; b) Hamas has still not restored the tunnel system and rocket production that was severely damaged in the war of May 2021; c) Israel learned the lessons from its military operation in May 2021 and formulated a new strategy of . . . severing the connection between the Gaza Strip, on the one hand, and east Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Israeli Arabs, on the other.

The big question is whether the deterrence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will continue even if Israel conducts a large military operation in Nablus and Jenin to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure.

For the past 36 hours, I’ve been reading and listening to analyses of the terms and implications of the recent hostage deal. More will appear in the coming days, and I’ll try to put the best of them in this newsletter. But today I want to share a comment made on Tuesday by the Palestinian analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. While he and I would probably disagree on numerous points about the current conflict, this analysis is spot on, and goes entirely against most arguments made by those who consider themselves pro-Palestinian, and certainly those chanting for a cease-fire at all costs:

When a cease-fire in Gaza is announced, Hamas’s fascists will do everything they can to frame this as the ultimate victory; they will wear their military uniforms, emerge from their tunnels, stop hiding in schools and displacement centers, and very quickly reassert their control over the coastal enclave. They’ll even get a few Gazans to celebrate and dance for them.

This, I should note, is exactly what has happened. Alkhatib continues:

The reality is that the Islamist terrorism of Hamas, masquerading as “resistance,” has achieved nothing for the Palestinian people except for billions of dollars in wasted resources and tens of thousands of needless deaths, with Gaza in ruins after twenty years following the withdrawal of settlements in 2005. . . . Hamas’s propaganda machine, run by Qatari state media, Al Jazeera Arabic, will work overtime to help the terror group turn a catastrophic disaster into a victory akin to the battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad.

Hamas will also start punishing anyone who criticized or worked against it, and preparing for its next attack. Perhaps Palestinians would have been better off if, instead of granting them a temporary reprieve, the IDF kept fighting until Hamas was utterly defeated.