Hamas Looming

Elliot Jager
Jewish Ideas Daily
20 September '10

Mahmoud Zahhar, a senior Hamas figure, was being ever so slightly disingenuous when he told the BBC that his movement would not attempt to halt the talks between Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu because in any case they are bound to die a natural death on their own.

Hamas has in fact reacted with its habitual brutality to the latest sign, however tentative, of Palestinian willingness to reach an accommodation with Israel. And in the event that, despite the PLO's political impotence and long-standing obduracy, the talks do not peter out as predicted, Hamas knows what to do. Like every Palestinian rejectionist movement dating back to 1917, it routinely disposes of Arabs whom it accuses of "collaboration" with Zionism; and it surely has Abbas, whom it has declared "not authorized to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people," in its sights.

Historically, of course, Hamas has found it efficacious to slaughter not only moderate Arabs but civilian Israeli Jews, thereby instigating IDF retaliations that in turn engender Palestinian casualties and thus insure that no one will be in the mood to talk peace. Between the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993 and the PLO's launching of the second intifada in September 2000, Hamas carried out dozens of suicide bombings. Earlier this month, it claimed "credit" for the drive-by murders of four Israelis in the West Bank. Since the talks have gotten under way, it has subcontracted Gaza-initiated terror to the so-called Popular Resistance Committees, which have escalated the number of rockets being lobbed into Israel. To the degree that the Abbas-Netanyahu talks create a perception of optimism, the peril of Hamas terrorism will increase exponentially.

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