RUTHFULLY YOURS

On November 2, 2017, we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. Sent by British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour in a letter to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, it read:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The Importance of the Balfour Declaration for the Jewish People

For the Jews, this meant the British were supporting their dream of reestablishing a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel. At the San Remo Conference in San Remo, Italy in April 1920, the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers delineated the exact boundaries of the countries they had conquered at the end of World War I, and resolved that the Balfour Declaration would be incorporated in The Treaty of Peace with Turkey.

When the League of Nations formally confirmed the Mandate for Palestine in July 24, 1922, this acknowledged a pre-existing historical right of the Jews to the land of Israel that they had never relinquished as former Israeli ambassador Dore Gold noted. The Jewish people had been sovereign in the land for a thousand years until many were driven into exile. When the Muslims invaded Palestine in 634, ending four centuries of conflict between Persia and Rome, Israeli diplomat Yaacov Herzog noted, they found direct descendants of Jews who had lived in the country since the time of Joshua bin Nun, the man who led the Israelites into the Land of Canaan. This means that for 2,000 years Jews and Christians constituted the majority of the indigenous population of Palestine, while the Bedouin’s were the ruling class under the Damascene caliphate.

Arab Response to the Balfour Declaration

The Arabs viewed the Balfour Declaration as a betrayal. The Balfour Declaration did not mention the Arab rights or Arab right to the land, only that the “civil and religious” rights of the inhabitants of Palestine are to be protected.

Reverend James Parkes, a pioneer in the study of antisemitism and the history of the Jewish people, countered that the British “did not ‘give away what belonged to the Arab people;’ for it had already refused to recognize… on historical grounds, that the Arab claim to be exclusive owners of the country was justified.”

Furthermore, the British were quite clear that Palestine was not a state, but the name of a geographical area asserts Eli Hertz. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to select Palestinian Arab representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, they adopted the following resolution: “We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.” There is no mention of the national rights of the Arab people.

Hertz adds that prior to Jews referring to themselves as Israelis in 1948, the term Palestine applied almost entirely to institutions established by Jews: The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called The Palestine Post; Bank Leumi L’Israel, incorporated in 1902, was called the Anglo Palestine Company until 1948; Israel Electric Corporation, founded in 1923 was initially called The Palestine Electric Company; and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936, was originally called the Palestine Symphony Orchestra.

Zuhair Mushin, the head of the PLO Military Operations Department, described how the Arabs adopted the ruse of a Palestinian people to destroy the Jewish state: “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political reasons do we carefully underline our Palestinian identity. For it is of national interest for the Arabs to encourage the existence of the Palestinians against Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new expedient to continue the fight against Zionism and for Arab unity.”

Yet, the Arabs argued that the British promised Palestine to them, as a result of the correspondence between Sir Arthur Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, and Husain Ibn Ali, the Sharif of Mecca beginning in 1915. In return for leading a revolt against the Turks, the Sharif would receive significant areas of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire.

A “Twice Promised Land?”

Asked whether Palestine was part of this agreement and thus a “twice promised” land, historian Efraim Karsh emphatically said no. “In his correspondence with Sharif Hussein of Mecca, which led to the Great Arab Revolt during World War I, Sir Henry McMahon…specifically excluded Palestine from the prospective Arab empire promised to Hussein. This was acknowledged by the Sharif in their exchanges and also by his son Faisal, the future founding monarch of Iraq, shortly after the war.”

Karsh added, this has not precluded “successive generations of pan-Arabists and their Western champions from charging Britain with a shameless betrayal of its wartime pledge.”

The Arab Revolt?

With regard to the Arab Revolt, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, the chief British political officer for Palestine, remarked that the “Arabs of Palestine, far from contributing anything towards the ultimate victory [during WWI] actively opposed us and deserve no better treatment than others…”

Philip Graves, The London Times Middle East correspondent who served in the British Army from 1915-1919, declared, “Most annoying to anyone who has served with the British forces or the Sherifian Arab forces in the Palestine campaign…are the pretentions of the Arabs in Palestine to have rendered important services to the Allies…”

“His Majesty’s Government,” British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour wrote a century ago in a 67-word paragraph that changed the course of history, “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

The 100-year anniversary of the “Balfour Declaration” on Nov. 2, 1917, which paved the way for Israel’s creation, should be a time of unbridled celebration, an occasion to honor the region’s lone democracy and most dynamic economy. Instead, it has also become an opportunity for critics of Israel to relaunch their misguided, often dishonest, attacks that seek to undermine the country’s global legitimacy.

It is, then, important that Israel’s supporters not only celebrate this anniversary proudly but also remind the world of how the Balfour Declaration – enunciated in a letter from Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leading British Jew – came to be, what it represented and what followed in its wake.

Already, Thursday’s anniversary has stoked controversy. British Prime Minister Theresa May said her country should celebrate it “with pride,” invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to London to mark the occasion at a formal dinner and rejected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ requests that London apologize for the declaration that, he suggests, fueled Palestinian suffering.

On the other hand, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – who calls leaders of the Jew-hating terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas his “friends” – turned down an invitation to attend that dinner. At the same time, Gwyneth Daniel, a great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George, Britain’s prime minister at the time of the declaration, calls May’s decision to celebrate “completely outrageous” and plans to protest outside that event.

The anniversary also comes at a time of rising global anti-Semitism as well as mounting attacks on Israel from global bodies and governments, universities and other nonprofits and grassroots movements.

The United Nations and its entities condemn Israel for alleged “crimes against humanity” while ignoring the actual horror perpetrated by Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Riyadh and many other governments. Meanwhile, public and private bodies ban Israeli products and shun its intellectuals, athletes, entertainers and other citizens.

The rebuilding of the Jewish National Home in Palestine is a project “which merits the sympathy and moral encouragement of everyone,” President Herbert Hoover declared on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration yesterday, in a message addressed to the Zionist Organization of America and made public today by Morris Rothenberg, President of the Zionist Organization.

A similar message lauding the achievements of reconstruction in Palestine as a “tribute to the creative powers of the Jewish people” was received from Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pointed out that the establishment of the Jewish National Home in Palestine was close to the wish of President Wilson, who helped write the terms of the Balfour Declaration into the peace treaty.

The messages of President Hoover and Governor Roosevelt were issued in connection with the celebration by the Zionist Organization of the fifteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

The message from the President reads as follows:

“On the occasion of your celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which received the unanimous approval of both houses of Congress by the adoption of the Lodge-Fish Resolution in 1922, I wish to express the hope that the ideal of the establishment of the National Jewish

Home in Palestine, as embodied in that Declaration, will continue to prosper for the good of all the people inhabiting the Holy Land.

“I have watched with genuine admiration the steady and unmistakable progress made in the rehabilitation of Palestine which, desolate for centuries, is now renewing its youth and vitality through the enthusiasm, hard work and self-sacrifice of the Jewish pioneers who toil there in a spirit of peace and social justice. It is very gratifying to note that many American Jews, Zionists as well as non-Zionists, have rendered such splendid service to this cause which merits the sympathy and moral encouragement of everyone.”

“Jewish achievement in Palestine since the Balfour Declaration vindicates the high hope which lay behind the sponsorship of the Homeland,” Governor Roosevelt said. “The Jewish development in Palestine since the Balfour Declaration is not only a tribute to the creative powers of the Jewish people but by bringing great advancement into the sacred land has promoted the well-being of all the inhabitants thereof.

“I shall personally watch with deep sympathy the progress of Palestine. I extend to your Organization my sincerest wishes for continued success and achievement.”

In the living room of our daughter’s home hangs a 4-by-6-foot Jewish flag designed by her paternal great-grandfather, hastily sewn from blue and white material in his Montreal dry-goods store. In November 1917, on receiving news that the British government had just given its support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, Nathan Black strung the flag across his storefront and closed for the day. “Haynt iz a yontev,” he told his workers: “Today is a holiday.”

One hundred years ago on Nov. 2, Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary, sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild : “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Known as the Balfour Declaration, it represented a diplomatic high point in the history of the Zionist movement founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. Herzl realized that Zionism would have trouble achieving its political objective of establishing “a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law” without support from one or more of the empires laying claim to the Jewish homeland. His attempt to win that support, cut short by his death in 1904, was taken over by others, such as Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow. The latter’s role in securing the Balfour Declaration was recently brought to light by historian Martin Kramer. Other countries, including France and the U.S., were involved in the discussions over the disposition of Palestine, but the credit for this document was Britain’s. At least on that score credit is deserved.

The Balfour Declaration was a landmark in the political life of Britain no less than in the self-determination of the Jews. Brutally expelled from England in 1290 and formally readmitted in 1656, Jews remained the barometer of toleration in the country’s political and private life.

English literature served up sinister characters like Shylock and Fagin that testify to powerful anti-Jewish prejudice. Then, in 1876, the British novelist George Eliot created the title character Daniel Deronda, an Englishman and Jew who determines to make the Jews a landed nation again, “giving them a national center, such as the English have, though they too are scattered over the face of the globe.” The threat to the Jews in Eliot’s novel comes not from violent aggressors but from Englishmen who cannot understand why Jews should remain a nation. Anticipating Zionism and the Balfour Declaration, Eliot interprets the ability of the English to accept Jewish national rights as the touchstone of their political maturity.

Yet Britain went back on its word. Attempting to appease Arab rulers, it rewarded Arab violence in Palestine in the 1930s by preventing Jews from entering land promised to them by the Bible and the British. While the British betrayal did not directly abet Hitler’s war against the Jews of Europe, it signaled a readiness to abandon the Jews to their fate. It certainly spurred the Arab war against Israel, which began where Germany’s war against the Jews left off. Churchill reminded Parliament in 1939 that the pledge of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been made not only to the Jews but to the world and that its repudiation was a confession of British weakness.

The Jews would have returned to Zion with or without the consent of Europe. This is the people that, despite the murder of millions of potential Jewish citizens, and within Herzl’s predicted timeline of 50 years, recovered and defended its national sovereignty in the Land of Israel that had been under foreign domination for almost two millennia. But most of the Arab world rejected the very principle of coexistence and consequently spiraled into ever-escalating intramural conflicts. For Arab nations, too, acceptance of an autonomous Jewish presence, if and when it occurs, will be the gauge of their political maturity.

Meantime, in Britain’s Daily Mail, a “proud Jewish woman and patriotic Briton” wrote last month that “many of this country’s 270,000-strong Jewish community no longer feel we have a home here.” The immediate cause of her anguish is the emboldened anti-Semitism of the Labour Party, which traditionally included many Jews. This coalition of grievance endangers the democratic future of the country.

Our family’s flag celebrated a landmark in the restoration of Zion but also another great nation’s readiness to coexist with the Jews on an equal footing. That in itself will not bring peace to the world—but world peace cannot come without it.

Ms. Wisse, a former professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, is the author of “Jews and Power” (Schocken, 2007).

Exactly one hundred years ago, this November 2nd, a public statement issued by the British government during World War I announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman Empire region, reads as follows:
“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
This was the Balfour Declaration which was supposed to have created a Jewish state. Of course this was done during the war when England wanted to secure the support of Jews in Russia, Germany and the United States. But promises to Jews are often as long lasting as ice immersed in a boiling glass of coffee. In 1921, with the war over and Jewish influence, whatever it was, no longer needed, the League of Nations and England took away 80% of that land and created Trans-Jordan, now known merely as Jordan. It was not until 41 years after the Balfour fake-out that the Jewish state of Israel was created.
And no thanks to the British, whose troops led the Jordanian army in its attacks meant to destroy Israel in the 1948 war of extermination. We suggest (with little hope it would be done) that Israel demands the return to it, of its original “national home.” Bear in mind, as well, that in the final creation of Israel out of the remaining 20% of its original promised homeland, half of that area was carved out by the U.N. to become another Muslim state led by the likes of Yasser Arafat, the PLO and Hamas. Talk about getting 10 cents on the dollar.
Please note that although Britain stated clearly in its original text to the Jews in 1917 that they would not infringe at all the civil religious rights of non-Jews within its proposed borders, the country of Trans-Jordan was created with no such demands on the Muslims. Today, no Jews are permitted to live in that country. Only foolish Jews who visit Jordan to vacation and sight-see are permitted to spend their money and then board their planes back to wherever.
If there is any celebration of the Balfour Declaration, let those ecstatic, euphoric souls who whoop it up as a day for rejoicing, finally come to the realization that it was nothing more than a fake-out to Jews. Think back to the refusal of Britain during the 1930’s to permit Jews to find safe haven in that land they were promised way back in 1917. How many Jewish lives would have been saved if the promise of the Balfour Declaration had been kept?

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 elicited euphoria among world Zionists. It was to be short lived as a chain of betrayals truncated the land promised to the Jews and limited their immigration.

The 1922 White Paper (also known as the Churchill White Paper) averred that Jews were in Palestine by right, but bowing to Arab pressure, ceded 76 percent –all the land East of the Jordan River–to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah. It was renamed Transjordan, and closed to Jewish settlement. In explanation the British stated:

“England…does not want Palestine to become ‘as Jewish as England is English’, but, rather, should become ‘a center in which Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride.’” (Ironically today Israel is poised to become more Jewish than England is English given the very real prospect that Muslims will become a majority in that nation.)

The Jews of Palestine had no choice but to accept the partition of 1922, but Arab thirst for all of Palestine resulted in murders and terrorist attacks, the Hebron massacre of 1929 and later the 1936-39 “Arab Revolt.”

The British responded with the White Paper of 1939 all but eliminating Jewish immigration to Palestine. This occurred after the infamous Evian conference of July 1938. With the exception of the Dominican Republic, all the participants refused to alter their immigration policies, thereby trapping Europe’s Jews. The Nazis were to kill one of every three Jews in the world.

In 1982, Sir Harold Wilson, who had been a member of Clement Attlee’s Cabinet when Israel became independent in 1948 and served as Prime Minister during the Six-Day War, wrote The Chariot of Israel-Britain, America and the State of Israel in which he described the British actions in 1939 as shameful and inexcusable.

After World War II the British continued their appalling anti-Jewish immigration policies, seizing and firing upon the vessels taking traumatized Holocaust survivors to Palestine.

However, the Jews of Palestine began a sustained effort to push the British out of Palestine and in February 1947 Britain announced its intent to terminate the Mandate, referring the matter of Palestine to the United Nations.

In May of that year the United Nations Special Committee On Palestine (UNSCOP) began deliberations on a “solution” to the Palestine “problem.”

These deliberations included an UNSCOP mission to examine the state of surviving Jews in displaced persons camps in Europe. The members were horrified by the conditions, but cynical enough to exploit the desperation of the refugees by deciding on a further partition of Palestine.

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted 33 to 13 (with ten abstentions) to implement the new partition as Resolution 181. Absent in all the media hailing of the “compromise” was any mention that the Jews of Palestine had already relinquished 75 percent of the area promised in the Balfour Declaration. Media and diplomats alike would declare that the Jews were gaining 53% of “Palestine” when in fact they were left with roughly 12 percent.

Thus, the 25 percent of Palestine left to the Jews for a homeland in 1922 was now to be divided as follows:

There would be an Arab State, a Jewish State and the City of Jerusalem, linked by zigzagging corridors. The Arab state would comprise the central and western Galilee, the town of Acre, the hills of Judea and Samaria, a large enclave in Jaffa, and the southern coast from what is now Ashdod, the Gaza Strip, and a section of desert along the Egyptian border which included Beersheba. The Jews were to have the Eastern Galilee, the coastal plain between Haifa and Rehovoth, most of the Negev and a strip to what is now Eilat.

Jerusalem was to be “international”, a Corpus Separatum which included Bethlehem, with access assured to persons of all faiths.

That was a major betrayal, but the Jews, desperate to have a state, agreed to it.

Israeli athletes and performers, professors, students and tourists in countries throughout the world are regularly discriminated against for being Israeli Jews.

This week Israel’s judo team was harassed and discriminated against by UAE officials when they tried to board a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul, en route to Abu Dhabi to participate in the Judo Grand Slam competition.

Apropos of nothing, UAE told the Israelis they would only be permitted to enter the UAE from Amman. And once they finally arrived at the competition, they were prohibited from competing under their national flag. Lowlights of the UAE’s shameful bigotry included forcing Tal Flicker to receive his gold medal under the International Judo Association’s flag with the association’s theme song, rather than Israel’s national anthem playing in the background and the sight of a Moroccan female judoka literally running away from her Israeli opponent rather than shake hands with her.

The discrimination that Israel’s judokas suffered is newsworthy because it’s appalling, not because it is rare. It isn’t rare. Israeli athletes and performers, professors, students and tourists in countries throughout the world are regularly discriminated against for being Israeli Jews. Concerts are picketed or canceled. Israelis are denied educational opportunities and teaching positions.

Israeli brands are boycotted and Israeli shops are picketed from Montreal to Brooklyn to Johannesburg.

The simple act of purchasing Israeli cucumbers has become a political statement in countries around the world.

And of course, there is the world of diplomacy, where the nations of the world seem to have flushed the news of Israel’s establishment 70 years ago down the memory hole. The near-consensus view of UN institutions and to a growing degree, of EU institutions, not to mention the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, is that the Jewish exile should never have ended. The Jews should have remained scattered and at the mercy of the nations of the world, forever.

In the face of the growing discrimination Israelis suffer and rejection Israel endures, how are we to look at the centennial of the Balfour Declaration, which we will mark next Thursday? One hundred years ago, on November 2, 1917, Arthur Balfour, foreign secretary of Great Britain, detonated a bomb whose aftershocks are still being felt in Britain and worldwide.

That day, Balfour issued a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, the leader of the British Jewish community.

The letter, which quickly became known as the Balfour Declaration, effectively announced the British Empire supported an end of the Jewish people’s 1,800-year exile and its return to history, as a free nation in its homeland – the Land of Israel.

On November 2, 2017, it will be 100 years since Lord Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, issued the famous Balfour Declaration. Balfour was a Christian Zionist and looked with great sympathy upon Jewish aspirations and Zionism, which simply put is the Jewish people’s national liberation movement. Put in Biblical terms, it is the return from exile of the Jews to Zion – to that very special land promised by God to the first Jew, Abraham, and through his descendants, Isaac and Jacob, to the Jewish people forever.

The Hebrew Scriptures equate Zion with the holiest city in Judaism, Israel’s capital of Jerusalem. You can read numerous references in the Bible and the Psalms to the word Zion, such as in Psalm 135:21, II Samuel 5:7 and Isaiah 24:23. The Biblical yearning of the Jews to return to their ancestral homeland is mirrored in the modern political usage of the term Zionism, first employed in 1890 by the Jewish author and poet, Nathan Birnbaum.

Theodore Herzl, an assimilated Jewish journalist from Vienna, became the father of modern Zionism in the late nineteenth century. He had been so moved by the hopelessness of the lives of the Jews in Europe, that he helped create the political movement calling for the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland, which resulted finally in the rebirth and reconstitution of Israel in 1948. Herzl himself wrote in 1898. “One thing is to me certain, high above any doubt: the movement will continue. I know not when I shall die, but Zionism will never die.”

Herzl died young, his heart unable to withstand his feverish restlessness and the enormous strain he placed upon it. But this article deals with the Christians who found within their faith the Biblical signposts, which showed them the imperative need to support the return of the Jews to ancient Zion and the Land of Israel. Who were some of these Christians and what did they find in the Scriptures that moved them so profoundly?

Perhaps the first Christians to reject the belief – found among the majority of Catholics and Protestants – that the Church is the “new Israel” and that Christians are the “new Jews” occurred some 500 years ago as a result of the printing of the King James Version of the Bible. They realized that such an old and pernicious belief held by the Church was the fuel that fed the fires of the Catholic Inquisition and of the massacres of Jewish populations throughout much of Europe during the Crusades. That idea is known today primarily as “Replacement Theology” and is employed chiefly as a weapon against the reconstitution of the Jewish State of Israel in its ancestral and Biblical homeland.

In about 1560, Henry Finch, an Englishman who was a jurist, legal writer, member of the British Parliament and Hebraist, encouraged the Jews in Europe to assert their claim to the Promised Land. He spoke and wrote in Hebrew but could not speak to Jews directly for they had been driven out of England in 1290 by Edward I, after the barons and the kings had repeatedly exploited, impoverished and massacred them. It was not until 1657 that they were to return during the time of Oliver Cromwell, who himself was moved to support the rights of the Jews to live again in England and to return to Zion.

Finch was moved by the words of the Jewish prophet Isaiah, and particularly by Chapter 43:4-7 in which the Lord God of Israel declares that he will “bring back His people from the East, the West, the North and the South.” Henry Finch was thus one of the early Christian Zionists. Many Christians have been moved to embrace the return of the Jews to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, by what the Jewish prophet Jeremiah wrote in chapter 31:10-12. “Hear the Word of the Lord, O ye nations. Declare it and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him: therefore, they shall come and sing again in the heights of Zion.”

In 1910, a young British Army officer with the unlikely name, Richard Meinertzhagen, was dining with the British Consul in Odessa when a pogrom broke out in the streets outside. Meinertzhagen watched with growing but impotent rage as Jewish shops and businesses erupted in flames and Jewish men, women and children were hunted down, beaten, murdered and left to lie in the gutter while the police stood by and watched. He wrote in his journal, “I am deeply moved by these terrible deeds and have resolved that whenever or where I can help the Jews, I shall do so to the best of my ability.”

Young Richard Meinertzhagen became a lifelong Zionist and, though a nominal Christian, wrote that he was much influenced by the “Divine Promise that the Holy Land will forever remain Israel’s inheritance.” Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen went on to become a great fighter for the Zionist cause at a time when senior members of the British Government, such as Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, and Prime Minister, Lloyd George, were devoted Christian Zionists.

Hamas is doing its utmost to conceal the truth about ISIS in the Gaza Strip, while the Palestinian Authority (PA) is continuing to pretend as if Hamas is headed toward moderation as a result of the “reconciliation” accord.

Hamas presents itself as the sole and legitimate ruler of the Gaza Strip and as if it is in full control of the Gaza Strip.

If the “reconciliation” agreement is implemented, Majed Faraj, commander of the PA General Intelligence, and considered a strong candidate to succeed Abbas in the West Bank, will soon find himself working with his Gaza Strip counterpart — a convicted terrorist who serves as a “general,” named Tawfik Abu Na’im.

Hamas claims that Israel was behind the attempt on the life of Tawfik Abu Na’im, a top Hamas security official in the Gaza Strip. There is good reason to believe, however, that ISIS was behind the assassination attempt, which took place in the Gaza Strip on October 27.

Abu Na’im, commander of Hamas’s security apparatus, was lightly injured when an explosive device hidden beneath his car exploded after Friday prayers in a local mosque. Even before Abu Na’im was rushed to hospital, several Hamas officials and spokesmen publicly held Israel responsible. This claim, of course, came without any evidence to support their charge.

Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas political bureau, visits top Hamas security official Tawfik Abu Na’im at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on October 27, 2017. (Image source: Mohammad Austaz, Hamas Media Office)

Abu Na’im, who was released from an Israeli prison in 2011 after 23 years behind bars for terror-related offenses, is one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, Ezaddin Al-Qassam.

Since his release and return to the Gaza Strip, Abu Na’im, who holds the rank of “general,” has been dubbed the “man of difficult missions.”

Only a handful of Hamas officials know the nature of the “difficult missions” Abu Na’im is said to have carried out on behalf of the terrorist movement. What is certain, is that these missions were anything but humanitarian in nature.

Those who are familiar with Hamas’s “missions” cannot but conclude that the “general” was involved in terrorist activities such as the digging of tunnels and the smuggling of weapons. It is also likely that he was involved in planning terror attacks and preparing Hamas for another war against Israel.

Hamas is now claiming that Abu Na’im was targeted by Israel precisely because of his involvement with Hamas’s terrorist activities. Hamas is also claiming that by targeting its “general,” Israel is seeking to sabotage the recent “reconciliation” agreement between Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA).

Ma’mun Abu Amer, a Palestinian expert on Israeli affairs, argues that Israel is the only beneficiary of the assassination of a senior Hamas official. “Israel is trying to sabotage the reconciliation and create chaos in the Gaza Strip,” he alleged. He even went as far as claiming that Israel is behind a number of ISIS-inspired terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

At least seven Palestinian terrorists were killed and 12 injured hours ago after the Israeli Army discovered a terror tunnel that extended from Gaza into Israeli territory. According to Israel’s Channel 2, eleven terrorists were killed. Most of the terrorists belonged to the Islamic Jihad group but some were affiliated with Hamas.

According to Palestinian sources, the tunnel was destroyed with an airstrike. Israeli sources, which are generally more reliable, claim that it was destroyed with a controlled explosion. Israel’s combat engineering units train incessantly for such scenarios and have played a key role in detecting and destroying terror tunnels. In the past two years, several Palestinian-constructed tunnels have mysteriously and inexplicably collapsed, killing dozens of terror operatives trapped inside. Palestinians have accused Israel of deploying a new weapon and the Israelis have not denied the existence of such a top-secret device.

Israel believes that the tunnel was constructed after Operation Protective Edge, which took place in 2014. Palestinians have attempted to employ tunnels as an offensive strategic weapon for the purpose of infiltrating Israeli territory and perpetrating mass killings and kidnappings. However, at least three dozen of these tunnels were destroyed during Operation Protective Edge, thwarting Hamas’s ghoulish designs. Hamas terrorists have invested substantial sums in creating a network of tunnels that crisscross the Gaza Strip. They have also diverted cement and steel, designated for civilian use, to construct tunnels.

According to Israeli officials, the tunnel ran from the Gazan city of Khan Younis, crossed under the border for several dozen feet, and approached the Israeli Kibbutz of Kissufim. An Israeli military spokesperson noted that none of the Kibbutz residents were in danger as the tunnel was destroyed approximately 1 and ¼ miles from the kibbutz. Officials added that construction of the tunnel was being monitored for a period of time prior to its destruction.

According to Palestinian sources, at least five of the dead were identified as Islamic Jihad members while two were affiliated with Hamas. The discovery of the tunnel, its destruction and the deaths of so many terrorists has significantly raised tensions near the Gaza periphery.

The Israel Defense Forces declared the area near the Gaza Strip a closed military zone. In addition, Israel readied its Iron Dome batteries in anticipation of retaliatory rocket fire. Iron Dome proved its mettle during Operation Pillar of Defense, which occurred in 2012 and then again during Operation Protective Edge. In 2012, the system scored an 85% success rate and in 2014, Iron Dome boasted an even greater success rate, shooting down more than 700 Hamas rockets. Iron Dome calculates the rocket’s trajectory and is only fired if it is determined that the rocket will land in populated areas.

Predictably, Islamic Jihad called for retaliation. An Islamic Jihad spokesman posted the following combative comment on twitter: “The Zionist terror government must realize that we will not hesitate to protect our people and our land.” Hamas issued similar militant comments.

The question that everyone is asking now is whether this incident will spiral into a full-scale conflagration. In 2014, a Hamas kidnapping of three hitchhiking Israeli youths provoked a series of escalations that resulted in full-scale war.