A week and a few days after the shooting in and from Gaza stopped, a large murky cloud still hovers over the area. Egypt is spearheading the effort to mediate details of a quasi-formal truce between Israel and Hamas. But as of this writing, there is little progress to report. Hamas is preoccupied with other, more compelling priorities.
First, it continued with its viciously violent campaign against Fatah sympathizers, beating, torturing and executing scores of individuals whom they accused of having collaborated with the Israelis. It was a convenient pretext for simply removing their potential opposition.
Second, it mobilized the full force of its considerable propaganda apparatus to wage a two-front war against the Jewish state in the image-rich battleground of public relations: Hamas led a tour of mostly western journalists to some tunnels still operating under the Egyptian border. The photo-op enabled the terrorist leaders to boast that they had not been defeated by the Israelis. It also allowed them to publicly embarrass, if not deride, Egypt, the European Union and the United States, which have all pledged to help bring about an end to arms smuggling there.
Hamas also let loose its barrage of war crimes allegations against Israel. In this effort, ironically and sadly, the terrorist organization is aided by a large cadre of international accusers who enthusiastically and obsessively join in hurling this particularly odious invective at the Jewish state.
Hamas apparently also refused to allow Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority to man the checkpoint at the Rafah border crossing, one of the key conditions sought both by the Egyptians and the United States. Moreover, and far more telling, Osama Hamdan, Hamas’ representative in Lebanon said on Sunday that the Fatah movement must end its talks with Israel if it wishes to reconcile with Hamas.
According to Ha’aretz, Hamdan, a close ally of Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal, said that the group welcomed dialogue the Abbas-led Fatah, but any reconciliation should be based on a resistance program to “liberate territory and regain rights.” He also demanded that the PA end security co-ordination with Israel, since, he maintained, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has ended.
Hamdan reportedly said that Fatah must issue “a clear and frank declaration to stop security co-ordination with the [Israeli] occupation, release [Hamas] prisoners and later end negotiations [with Israel], because the peace process is irreversibly over. It’s time for us to talk about a reconciliation based on a resistance program to liberate the [occupied] territory and regain rights,” he added.
The blunt speaking by Hamas leaders is a deeply piercing provocation to the western countries that are scrambling to bring some sense of order, some sense of peace to the Hamas-driven chaos of Gaza. But Hamdan’s thrust cuts deepest into Abbas. The Fatah leader is clearly at a crossroads. He must choose – finally, definitively and unambiguously – between permanent Palestinian statelessness alongside Hamas’ hateful national program, or the possibility of Palestinian statehood and a prosperous future without them.
