In Cairo, representatives of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) met last week to discuss an arrangement for sharing governing responsibilities in a post-war Gaza Strip. Little has come of many similar previous negotiations. And even if they were successful, they would only empower Hamas, writes Khaled Abu Toameh:

By negotiating with Hamas about the future of the Gaza Strip, [the PA president Mahmoud] Abbas is legitimizing the Iran-backed terror group and sending a message to the Palestinians and the rest of the world that he sees no problem with dealing with murderers and terrorists who committed the most horrific crimes against Jews since the Holocaust. . . . Abbas should, instead, be condemning Hamas and distancing himself from the terror group rather than sending his officials to hug and kiss its representatives in Cairo.

He should be holding Hamas fully responsible for the destruction of the Gaza Strip as a result of the war the terror group started when it sent thousands of its terrorists to attack Israeli civilians in their homes on October 7, 2023.

The assumption that Hamas would voluntarily give up its control of the Gaza Strip because of any unity agreement with Abbas is just laughable. Abbas’s efforts to reach a deal with Hamas will only embolden and reconstitute the terror group and incentivize it to pursue its jihad (holy war) to destroy Israel.

The Biden administration chose to turn a blind eye to Abbas’s efforts to legitimize Hamas.

In a recent article, the New York Times Magazine asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu “prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power.” Niranjan Shankar takes the argument apart piece by piece, showing that for all its careful research, it fails to back up its basic claims. For instance: the article implies that Netanyahu torpedoed a three-point cease-fire proposal supported by the Biden administration in the spring of last year:

First of all, it’s crucial to note that Biden’s supposed “three-point plan” announced in May 2024 was originally an Israeli proposal. Of course, there was some back-and-forth and disagreement over how the Biden administration presented this initially, as Biden failed to emphasize that according to the three-point framework, a permanent cease-fire was conditional on Hamas releasing all of the hostages and stepping down. Regardless, the piece fails to mention that it was Hamas in June 2024 that rejected this framework!

It wasn’t until July 2024 that Hamas made its major concession—dropping its demand that Israel commit up front to a full end to the war, as opposed to doing so at a later stage of cease-fire/negotiations. Even then, U.S. negotiators admitted that both sides were still far from agreeing on a deal.

Even when the Times raises more credible criticisms of Israel—like when it brings up the IDF’s strategy of conducting raids rather than holding territory in the first stage of the war—it offers them in what seems like bad faith:

[W]ould the New York Times prefer that Israel instead started with a massive ground campaign with a “clear-hold-build” strategy from the get-go? Of course, if Israel had done this, there would have been endless criticism, especially under the Biden administration. But when Israel instead tried the “raid-and-clear” strategy, it gets blamed for deliberately dragging the war on.