'Israel's is reconstructing an enemy state under a Hamas-Fatah government'
Photo: AFP
Elyakim Haetzni
Photo: GNET
Why has Israel changed its policy on Gaza?
Op-ed: After comparing Hamas to ISIS and asking Abbas to choose between reconciliation with Hamas or peace with Israel, why is Netanyahu cooperating with Fatah-Hamas 'unity government'?
Israel is being nice to Gaza. The coordinator of the activities agreed with the "head of the Palestinian reconciliation government" that construction material and a lot of mechanical equipment would be allowed into Gaza.
The Likud government agreed that the (Fatah-Hamas) "reconciliation government"
would convene in Gaza. Soon, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's blessing, 3,000 members of the Ramallah government's "presidential guard" will be deployed in the border crossings, despite Hamas' announcement that it will be in charge of these "inspectors," and the advance payments for the Hamas employees' wages are also being transferred.
For the first time, Israel let 1,000 Gazans to visit the Temple Mount. Five-hundred people will be allowed to enter Israel a day. Agricultural exports are permitted, and laborers from Gaza will be allowed to work in Israel.
Conflict Management
Ron Ben-Yishai
Analysis: Israel now admits that the almost-airtight blockade of Gaza has done more harm than good; on eve of Cairo truce talks, Israel shifts its focus to easing the lives of Palestinians in return for greater oversight over Hamas. This is how Israel hopes to restore calm to its south.
They say that Hamas started the war because of the salary crisis and in order to "break through the siege," and there is a dispute over who won. Looking at these results, is there any question about it?
In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu compared Hamas to ISIS and invited Mahmoud Abbas to choose between reconciliation with Hamas or peace with Israel. And look, he has just returned to Israel and he is already cooperating with a government called a "reconciliation" or "unity government." Reconciliation and unity with who? With Hamas.
All the while, the al-Qassam Brigades are announcing a mass enlistment to their "popular brigades," shooting exercises for the next round, and even a reconstruction of tunnels. (Their response: So what? The IDF is training too).
If there was such a radical change in the policy towards Hamas, why didn't we hear about this decision? Who made the decision? And what are the reasons for the change? There is also a change in the attitude towards the "reconciliation partner," Abbas.
Just a reminder: Ramallah violated the Oslo Agreement, attained the UN's recognition as a non-member observer sate and joined international treaties. To add insult to injury, it brought the Hamas terror organization under the blanket of the "state" as part of the "reconciliation government," and spat in our faces by accusing us at the International Criminal Court in The Hague of committing war crimes in Operation Cast Lead. It reached the pinnacle of audacity in that speech which presented Israel as a racist apartheid state which is committing "genocide."
Netanyahu's response in his speech was right to the point: The denier of the Jews' Holocaust is spreading a holocaust libel about the Jewish state.
Abbas reached the height of the provocation in his demand that the Security Council set an ultimatum to Israel with a force arrangement: A full withdrawal by November 2016 and an end to the false pretense of negotiations. And so Gaza's murderous terror and Ramallah's political terror lent a hand to each other – in a unity of grasping Israel's neck and suffocating it.
Here's a question: Who decided to forget all of Ramallah's crimes, cooperate with the "prime minister of the reconciliation government," Rami Hamdallah, and ignore the fact that he is including Hamas in the Palestinian "elite" in Judea and Samaria? And what are the reasons for the decision?
And if all these fatal decisions were made by some "limited forum" rather than by a national binding forum, why are the media and politicians keeping silent? And why isn't anyone wondering how Netanyahu can trust the UN to supervise every bag of cement entering the Strip – that same UN which received from us rockets stored by Hamas in its school and handed them back to Hamas? And who are the "Europeans" who are supposed to supervise? The same ones who escaped in the previous round?
And how can we guarantee that the billion-dollar project, which is allegedly intended for Gaza's reconstruction, will not be used to create international established facts against Israel? The world hasn’t contributed in any way to the reconstruction of the destruction created by other wars. So why Gaza of all places? Is it possible that they are not volunteering in favor of the Palestinians but actually against us? And how can we cooperate? Why we are reconstructing an enemy state under a Hamas-Fatah government.
The decision makers may have good answers to all these questions. We have yet to hear them, although in a democracy the public has the right to know. They should come out and explain.
