Turning to domestic Israeli politics, the Supreme Court has given the government and the attorney-general until Sunday to resolve the dispute between them over the cabinet’s decision to fire Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet. The passions surrounding this ongoing clash reflect perceptions of the personalities and conduct of Bar and of Benjamin Netanyahu, partisan divides, and questions of who is most responsible for failing to prevent the October 7 attacks. But also at stake are much broader constitutional questions: should security institutions like the Shin Bet, the IDF, and Mossad—not to mention other government bureaucracies—be accountable to parliament and the cabinet? Does the executive branch need the permission of the Supreme Court to make hiring and firing decisions?

In conversation with Aylana Meisel, Ran Baratz discusses these underlying issues and what they say about the meaning of democracy and the nature of Israel’s political system—as well as his reasons for optimism. For more on these subjects, and some alternative perspectives, see this essay on the Israeli bureaucracy and this on the judiciary, and the respective responses. (Video, 61 minutes. Also available on podcast platforms.)

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.