Why Hamas attacked now – and how it weakens both Israel and hopes for peace

Bernard Haykel

There are two immediate reasons why these attacks took place. First, Hamas has been vying with the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the leadership of the Palestinian cause and the success of these attacks is one way to achieve this. The PA is the official government of the Palestinians that signed the Oslo Peace Accords with Israel, which never resulted in the promised Palestinian state. Furthermore, the PA is riddled with corruption and misgovernance, and because it has restricted Palestinian resistance to occupation it is seen as being complicit with Israel and therefore has lost much of its legitimacy. Whatever the fate of Hamas in Gaza, there is no question now that it leads the Palestinian effort at liberation and self-determination. The second reason is the effort by Hamas, and with Iran’s support and guidance, to end the process of normalisation between Israel and the Gulf Arab states, especially with Saudi Arabia….

Saudi Arabia, under the late King Abdullah, made an offer to Israel in 2002 in the name of all Arab states, which is called the Arab Peace Initiative. This offer can be the only basis for a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and will require the creation of a Palestinian state on the lands Israel occupied in the Six-Day War of 1967. In return, Israel would be fully recognised and accepted. It is the rejection by Israel of this offer, especially by its present right-wing government with its annexationist aims over all the land, that has aggravated the situation and prevented a resolution of this conflict.

This Gaza war didn’t come out of nowhere

While understandable, the violent retaliation by Israel against Hamas in Gaza will not help resolve matters but only aggravate the situation and play into the hands of the spoilers on all sides of this conflict. Cooler heads must prevail and think of the longer term. …

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/why-hamas-attacked-now-and-how-it-weakens-both-israel-and-hopes-for-peace-8975064/

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The ideological obsessions of Israel’s far-right have put ordinary Israelis in terrible danger https://vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history