This article appeared in the Jerusalem Post on 18 May 2021
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh meets Ayatollah Khamenei, Feb 2017
Prime among them is the
violent opposition to the Abraham Accords within the loose Islamist alliance of
Iran, Turkey, Hamas and Hezbollah. Sensible
and pragmatic working relations between Muslim states and Israel, the
aspiration behind the Accords, are the diametric opposite of what hard-line
Islamists want. As the agreements were
announced Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, expressed outrage and threatened
to cut diplomatic ties with the Emirates. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, denounced the Accords as a “humiliation” for Muslim nations. Since then, the Islamist axis has calculated
that the best way to shatter, or at least shake, Israel’s newly forged
relationships with Gulf states and Morocco would be to renew the Hamas-Israel
conflict, making sure that the precipitating cause was connected to sensitive
Muslim interests.
An equally important precipitating
factor in the current conflict is the determined effort by leaders of Hamas and
its Islamist backers to seize control of the Palestinian cause, to become the
undisputed champions of Palestinianism. This they regard as a vital step
towards their ultimate aim – the destruction of Israel. All the evidence suggests that the barrage of
rockets fired at Israel’s heartlands is part of a long-standing campaign to wrest
the leadership of the Palestinian people from Fatah. All that the Palestinian militants, together
with their Islamist backers, had been waiting for was an excuse, or a series of
excuses, to provoke a fresh confrontation.
Fomenting provocation on the Temple Mount and indignation over the
Sheikh Jarrah affair provided the convenient smokescreen.
As part of their
campaign to wreck the Accords, Turkey and Iran, as well as other
Islamist-supporting governments like Qatar, are keen that Hamas, committed to
the destruction of Israel, becomes the dominant voice in Palestinian politics
in place of Mahmoud Abbas, the current, and largely ineffectual, Palestinian
leader. Turkish and Iranian leaders had
been hoping that Hamas would emerge victorious in the Palestinian elections
that were due to be held on May 22.
Under intense pressure
from US and world opinion to restore some degree of democratic credibility to
the Palestinian Authority, which last held parliamentary and presidential
elections back in 2005/6, PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced that polling
would take place in May and July 2021. However
he was only too well aware that the outcome of free and fair elections under neutral
observation would probably result in an even greater Hamas victory than
occurred in 2006. That probability would
not have escaped Israeli attention either.
When the question arose of arrangements for eligible Palestinian
residents of East Jerusalem to vote, Israel, to quote the Jerome Kern song,
“didn’t say yes, and she didn’t say no”.
Abbas seized on the issue, and cancelled the elections.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, grasping the opportunity to parade himself as the Palestinian people’s defender, urged Abbas to defy Israel and go ahead with the polls. Hamas further strengthened its position in Palestinian eyes over the Temple Mount issue. Demanding that Israel remove the police from there by a given deadline, Hamas launched rockets against Jerusalem when its ultimatum went unheeded. The barrage of missiles it subsequently rained down on Israel, while testing the Iron Dome defensive system to the limit, was intended to consolidate the status of Hamas as the Palestinians’ champion. But the conflict is as much a battle for control of the Palestinian cause as it is an opportunity to attack Israel.
For months Israeli security
officials have warned that Hamas has been building stockpiles of missiles in
Gaza in anticipation of renewed hostilities. The most sophisticated,
manufactured locally, are based on medium-range Iranian systems, enabling Hamas
to strike targets in major Israeli population centers and even as far as Eilat.
This latest upsurge in Palestinian-Israeli violence is also due in no small measure to the obscure messages emanating from Washington about the US administration’s stance on the Middle East. President Joe Biden certainly wants an end to the conflict, but he has been anything but clear about where he stands on the achievement of his predecessor, Donald Trump, in fostering Arab-Israeli peace. Biden has so far shown little interest in maintaining the momentum of the Abraham Accords. On the contrary, he has shown considerable enthusiasm for reopening dialogue with Iran and reviving the controversial nuclear deal. The Abraham Accords are founded in part on a common Arab-Israeli desire to counter Iranian attempts to dominate the Middle East and overthrow both Sunni Muslim states and Israel.
Biden’s present position
gives comfort to Israel’s enemies.
Middle East players interested in peace rather than eternal conflict
need a display of strong US leadership, unequivocally opposed both to violence
and to those states that foster it in pursuit of long-term goals of their
own. Is Biden prepared to provide this?
These are the factors
that have come together to provide the fuel for the current conflagration. A desire to attack Israel in pursuit of a
long-term aim of overthrowing the state is certainly among them, although by
itself it is usually insufficient to spark conflict. On this occasion it is strengthened by Islamist
opposition to the recent Arab-Israeli reconciliation in the Abraham Accords, by
the opportunity to seize control of the Palestinian cause from a clearly
weakened PA leader, by the frustration of Hamas’s political ambitions because
of the cancellation of the Palestinian elections, by ambiguous signals from the
Biden administration tied to its desire to reopen the nuclear deal with Iran, and
by convenient opportunities to whip up Palestinian anger provided by Israeli
attempts to control protests on the Temple Mount and Sheikh Jarrah.
In addition the Islamist
axis has gained two unsought-for bonuses: the Arab-Jewish riots in Lod and
elsewhere between extremist hotheads, and the collapse of the possibility of
the United Arab List (Ra’am) joining a coalition Israeli government.
Can diplomacy and reason
succeed in damping down the flames before they burst into all-out war?
Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 May 2021, and in the Jerusalem Post on-line under the title: "Temple Mount, Sheikh Jarrah only smoke screens for Hamas's real incentive":
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hamas-why-now-668355
Published in the Eurasia Review, 15 May 2014:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/14052021-hamas-why-now-oped/
https://mpc-journal.org/hamas-why-now/
Published in the Jewish Business News, 14 May 2021:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/05/14/hamas-why-now/
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