T. Belman. Glick argues that Iran/Hamas didn’t trust the Raam leader as he seemed to embrace the Abrahamic Accords rather than his Muslim Brotherhood goals. They wanted to scuttle both the impending coalition with the support of Ra’am and the Abrahamic Accords.
So for her, the litmus test is two fold. 1) will the SC side with the Jewish landlords in Sheikh Jerrah and 2) will the AA continue to strengthen and bear more fruit.
One day we might learn that Iran prompted Hamas to launch the most recent offensive against Israel in an attempt to block Ra’am leader MK Mansour Abbas from making good on his offer to provide parliamentary support for the next government of Israel.
By Caroline B. Glick, ISRAEL HAYOM
Maybe one day, we will discover that the impetus for Hamas’s newest onslaught against Israel wasn’t the pending Supreme Court decision about whether or not to respect the property rights of Jewish landlords in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem. Maybe we’ll discover that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ efforts to deflect Palestinian public opinion away from his decision to cancel the elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council and chairmanship had little to do with Hamas’s missile offensive against Israel or the Arab Israeli pogroms against their Jewish neighbors in cities and on roads throughout the country.
It’s possible that in the fullness of time, we will learn that, acting with Iranian guidance and permission, Hamas chose to open its new campaign against Israel now because its leaders and their Iranian bosses were desperate to block MK Mansour Abbas from making good on his offer to provide parliamentary support for the next government of Israel – whatever form it takes.
Mansour Abbas, the leader of the four-man Ra’am Islamist Knesset faction is a riddle. Is he playing Israeli Jews for fools, speaking of Jewish-Muslim cooperation from one side of his mouth while staying true to the Muslim Brotherhood’s jihadist creed from the other side? Or is he the real deal; the domestic Arab Israeli expression of the Abraham Accords, predicated on a willingness to make lasting peace between Arabs and Jews?
The truth, at this point, is unknowable.
In the face of the violent Arab Israeli onslaught against Jews countrywide, now is no time for Israelis to base a governing coalition on a riddle like Abbas. But while for Israelis he is a source of confusion, for Hamas, Abbas is a nightmare. Whatever Abbas’s actual intentions are, it is self-evident that Hamas and its partners and supporters think he is acting in good faith and consequently, they view him as the gravest threat their longstanding political war against Israel has ever faced.
In a speech in Doha, Qatar on May 15, translated by MEMRI, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh discussed the meaning of Hamas’s new war. Although he didn’t mention Mansour Abbas, the text of his speech demonstrated that Abbas was living rent-free in Haniyeh’s head. Haniyeh declared that obliterating the very notion of true peace between Arabs and Jews in Israel was Hamas’s chief goal in this war.
In his words, “Jerusalem unites us. Today the geographical barriers within historic Palestine have been removed. Today Palestine is waging an Intifada from Rosh Hanikra to Eilat.
“They have thought that 70 years or more could kill the spirit of belonging of our people within the occupied land in 1948 [sovereign Israel, CBG]. They thought our people there would lose their identity and would assimilate in the Zionist entity…
“But today our people within the 1948 borders are the ones defending the Al-Aqsa mosque. They are the ones waging an intifada against the occupier and the settlers. Today brothers and sisters, some theories collapse and some are being rebuilt. The theory of coexistence between two peoples within the 1948 borders, a theory they have been cultivating for 70 years, is being trampled underfoot today by our sons and our people in Lod, Ramle, Baka al-Gharbiyeh, the Galilee, the Negev, Rahat, Beersheba and Safed. Safed is ours!”
The axis that supports Hamas begins in Iran continues through Qatar and Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. It then moves to the west – to the European Union and to progressive activists and lawmakers in the Democrat Party in the US.
Azmi Bishara, a former Knesset member who fled to Qatar just before he was arrested for treason for spying for Hezbollah in the 2006 war in Lebanon, serves today as senior advisor to the Emir of Qatar. In an interview with Al Araby network last week, Bishara discussed the expanding ties between the American left and the Hamas-Iran axis. The interview was translated by MEMRI.
Bishara argued that US President Joe Biden’s ostensible support for Israel is a relic of his 40 years in Congress. Bishara claimed that during Biden’s long tenure on Capitol Hill, Congress was controlled by “the Zionist lobby,” so Biden had no choice but to hold the line.
Bishara mocked what he presented as Biden’s slavish devotion to the “Zionist lobby,” scoffing, “Biden’s the one who said you don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist. It was Biden who made this strange statement!”
Today, Bishara maintained, the situation in Washington has changed.
“In the long run,” he maintained, “we should rely on the grassroots of the Democrat Party. There are more Arabs and Muslims among these activists now. There are more African-Americans and leftists there…. These people constitute the pressure group within the Democrat Party and elsewhere. We should put our trust in them for the long run.”
The same Arab, Muslim, Black and leftist activists Bishara was referring to that are now sitting in Congress came through for him and his fellow members of the Hamas-Iran axis this week. Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar were joined by a dozen or so other lawmakers as they collectively came out of the closet as anti-Semites.
The Democrat lawmakers adopted classic anti-Semitic language when they condemned Israel as an “apartheid state,” rejecting its very right to exist. They also mounted a pressure campaign on Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, demanding that he place a hold on an approved sale of $735 million worth of precision guided missiles to Israel.
It took an even more powerful pressure campaign on Meeks from Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) to cancel the effort. And while Hoyer was able to avoid a direct assault on US military sales to Israel, the very fact that the progressive anti-Semites in the Democrat caucus put the issue on the agenda – where it still remains – is a testament to the fact that today, they are dictating the terms of debate on Israel in the Democrat Party, and their terms begin with the assumption that Israel is evil. So great is the Democrats’ fear of their anti-Semitic members that this week every single Democrat voted against supplemental aid to Israel and every single Democrat voted against sanctioning Hamas.
Hamas/Iran felt that Mansour Abbas was a threat worth going to war to destroy because they perceive him as the Israeli expression of the Abraham Accords. And in the minds of the Iranian leadership and those of their Hamas proxies, the Abraham Accords represent the single greatest military and political threat to Iran’s nuclear and hegemonic ambitions. Destroying them is their strategic goal.
The Abraham Accords provide a formal framework for the operational partnership that developed since 2006 between Israel and the Sunni Arab states that, like Israel, are threatened by Iran. In formalizing those ties, the Abraham Accords split the Arab/Islamic world into two camps. The first camp includes Iran and the states and terror groups Iran supports, controls and is allied with. Political forces hostile to Israel in the West support this camp. Members of the Iran camp and its supporters in the West insist the Jewish state is the greatest source of instability and the primary obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
The second camp is comprised of Israel and the Arab states that understand that Iran is the greatest threat to peace and security in the Middle East. Arab members of this camp include Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Sudan and Morocco. These Arab states believe that in alliance with Israel they will be able to contain and eventually defeat the Iranian regime.
Until the Abraham Accords were formalized, only the Iranian camp had an international presence. The anti-Israel, pro-Iran narrative, which claims that Israel is the greatest threat to regional and world peace, had the stage to itself from Tehran to California. Since the Abraham Accords were signed last September, the Iranian camp has been on the defensive.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki indicated that the administration is just as unhappy with the Abraham Accords as the Iranians and Palestinians are. In response to a reporter’s question about the Trump administration’s peace efforts, Psaki pretended that the Abraham Accords don’t exist.
“Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival,” she said derisively, “we don’t think they did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.”
This asinine statement put paid the notion that Biden will ever opt for an alliance with the Abraham Accords member nations over the Iran/Hamas axis. Just as the administration refuses to even utter the term “Abraham Accords,” so it insists on ignoring their political significance for the states of the region and their military capacity to contain Iran.
Despite the massive pressure that has been exerted against Abraham Accords member states to disavow their ties with Israel since Hamas opened its offensive last week, so far they have not wavered. The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco have put out mild statements on the Hamas war. Morocco sent humanitarian aid to Gaza. There have been no anti-Israel demonstrations in the streets of any of the Abraham Accords member states.
Sudan’s leader, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan discussed the issue in an interview with France 24 in Arabic earlier this week. The interview was translated by MEMRI.
In his words, “The normalization [of relations between Sudan and Israel] has nothing to do with the Palestinians’ right to establish their own state. The normalization is reconciliation with the international community, and with Israel as part of the international community.”
Making clear that Sudan would not be bullied into ending its relations with Israel, Al-Burhan added that the decision to maintain relations with Israel is a sovereign Sudanese decision. It is “the prerogative of the state institutions,” said.
Since it is clear that Israel made clear from the outset that it had no interest in conquering Gaza, Hamas will declare victory no matter how much damage it sustained from Israeli airstrikes. So too, after the Biden administration placed the threat of condemning Israel at the UN Security Council on the table in the first days of the conflict, it was clear that Israel wouldn’t dare defy Biden for long once he publicly demanded a ceasefire. So Israel stood down without ever stating outright what it would view as a victory in this confrontation.
Despite the deliberate lack of clarity, Israel may well emerge the victor. Two parameters will determine who has won this round of war. First, if the Supreme Court sides with the law and respects the property rights of the Jewish land owners in Sheikh Jarrah, their ruling will deliver a stinging defeat to the Iranian/Hamas axis and their American and European supporters who insist that Jews have no property rights in the neighborhood because they are Jews.
Second, if the Abraham Accords survive the war and ties between Israel and its Arab partners expand and deepen, then Hamas and its partners will be the losing side. As for Mansour Abbas, time will tell if he is a friend or an enemy. But in the meantime, his political survival is a national interest.
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Full article at https://www.timesofisrael.com/__trashed-35/
The one and only analysis (C.Glick ) that dig the roots of this short Hamas attack . 1) Iran-Turkey wanted to avoid a new Bibi government, and feared Mansour Abbas support to Bibi. 2) the many leftists and anti-israel nominated by the Biden administration were interpreted by Iran-Hamas as if the USA were shifting alliance against Israel . Also the feeling is that Biden’s team is ready to destroy what achieved Trump-Kushner ( Abraham agreements ) . 3) The pretext used by Hamas was a ludicrous dispossession of the Al Aqsa espalanade 4) the deep fears of Iran are that the Emiratis , are now in good terms with Israel ( as a result of the Abraham agreements ) .This new reality ( the Emirati sovereign fund has bought a 20% stake in Israel gas field ) has changed the balance of the Middle East. 5) Hamas achieved really nothing and accepted Egypt cease-fire .
@ adamdalgliesh:
I thought the district court confirmed that the squatters should be evicted. The Supreme delayed their case before the war started was my understanding. Do you have link to an article to document your statement. I have also heard nothing about it on Israeli TV.
The Israel Supreme Court has already sided with the squatters by rescinding its earlier permission to the propery owners to evict these Arab squatters.
@ Bear Klein:
I agree entirely with your assessment Bear, but I would add a correlation to your point #2 which I found to be even more disturbing than the riots. Of all the strategic issues that came from, or may come from, this most recent conflict, as I see it, the most disturbing is that Israel seemed to be caught unaware of the Arab Israeli riots. I do not believe that these acts of violence coordinated with Hamas on chance. Perhaps, the intelligence services knew of the riots and, due to intelligence requirements. chose to act as if they were unaware. If this is not the case, this was a huge failing and much more concerning than even the riots themselves.
Being Conflated are different subjects:
1. Who won the war militarily. Hands Down Israel, the IDF and SHin Bet. Destroyed Tunnels, destroyed Hamas military industries, shot down all their drones, destroyed 10 drone submarines that were going to attach strategic Israeli facilities such as the Gas Depots, killed a few 100 terrorists and 25 or 35 commanders. Destroyed much above their above ground infrastructure in the high rises. Perhaps over 1000 buildings damaged or destroyed
Hamas killed one IDF medic and wounded an IDF bus driver. They hit zero military targets. They did kill 11 civilians and wound many more and wrecked some apartments. They did scare the Israeli civilian population in many parts of the country.
2. Exposed as a bigger problem is the rift between Israeli Jews and those Muslim Arabs inside Israel who identify as Palestinians and are Israeli citizens or Arab residents of Jerusalem. This is a serious problem with no easy or likely solution.
3. What will happen in Gaza next will Israel allow as in the past cash and building materials into Gaza which will help facilitate the next round of rockets and missiles being shot into and out of Gaza? Will Hamas firepower keep improving so that the IDF will have to go in on the ground and stay?
Will Israel be able to get the USA, EU and friendly Arab countries to back it say nothing but food and medicine into Gaza until Hamas steps down in Gaza and turns over its weapons to the Egyptians?
Will Israel be able to mount effective Habara to get the USA and EU to see that Hamas and Iran are the problem and not Israel.
A typical example of MSM reporting of the 11-day war.
Some bastard is maliciously blocking my access to the comments section. Evidence points to the hacker being a hacker being a reader of Israpundit, since my access to comments on other web sites is unaffected. I have a pretty good idea who the hacker is, but I won’t make any accusations towards anyone without hard evidence. Ted, you have a duty to get to the bottom of this and stop the malicious hacking of your site.
Israel has lost the propaganda war in the United States, due to the MSM’s siding with Hamas against Israel. See this poll conducted by a reliable conservative polling organization, the Trafalgar Group, Reported in the May 19 Washington Examiner:
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/hamas-digging-out-dozens-of-terrorist-bodies/2021/05/21/
I think it’s safe to say that Israel won. Israel always wins. World-wide hatred? Same thing happened in 2014 and in 2000. I remember arguing with liberal Jews who said Sharon caused the Oslo War because he visited the Temple Mount accompanied by security.
This is why Israel was founded!!!!
“In every generation, they rise up to destroy us.”
And concessions get made to avert Arab anger all the time by the liberal Supreme Court.
Only thing different is the Abraham Accords.
The war will be won when the other side sees that there is no hope (permanently) of ever defeating Israel and is totally demoralised