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A “New History” and Old Facts By Uri Bar-Joseph | Summer 2017 Fifty years after the conflict, Guy Laron’s The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East attempts to upend our understanding of the hostilities.

By on July 7th, 2017

In his new history of the 1967 conflict, Guy Laron claims to upend previous scholarship by arguing that the conflict was precipitated by war-mongering generals in Egypt, Syria, and Israel; in the last case, these militarists were in cahoots with “settlers” with whom they shared an obsession with territorial expansion. Meanwhile, the pressure of economic problems in Egypt and Israel left President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol without the political clout to rein in their respective generals. Reviewing the book, Uri Bar-Joseph finds it disorganized, crammed with “too much information about too many irrelevant issues,” and “filled with factual errors,” some of which “show an alarming lack of expertise.” But the book’s real problem lies elsewhere:

Laron’s principal contribution is to advance a narrative so poorly substantiated as to border on conspiracy theory. . . . [It] is based on a biased selection of previously published sources, mostly in Hebrew and thus beyond the independent assessment of most American and European scholars. Anyone familiar with the documentary evidence will instantly recognize his account as groundless. . . .

After Israel was compelled to withdraw from the Sinai in 1957, there was a consensus within the military that acquiring territory was no longer a viable option. . . . [T]he IDF’s goal was simply to compel Syria to stop providing a base for Palestinian terrorists. . . .

But if Israel had no plans to occupy and annex the Golan Heights, why did the IDF prepare only offensive plans for a possible war against Syria? . . . [T]he answer has far less to do with territorial expansion than with Israel’s military doctrine. Due to the country’s small size and severe lack of strategic depth before the 1967 war, this doctrine called for preemptive strikes and, whenever possible, immediately taking the fight into enemy territory. . . .

[Meanwhile], Egyptian accounts reveal that Nasser’s generals also believed that they were not ready for war and objected to [his decision] to close the Straits of Tiran.

In short, what led to war was not the aims of Israeli and Egyptian generals but the Egyptian president’s decision to close the straits and remilitarize the Sinai.

In May 15, 1967, Israel’s long-simmering border conflict with Syria and its PLO clients came to a boil when the Soviet Union falsely warned Syria and Egypt that Israel was about to carry out a large-scale attack on the Golan Heights. In response, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt advanced his army into the Sinai, which had been de facto demilitarized since the end of the 1956 Sinai-Suez War. A few days later, emboldened by waves of popular indignation across the Arab world, Nasser expelled the UN Emergency Force from the Sinai and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, thus blocking Israel’s maritime access to the Indian Ocean through its southern port of Eilat. Taken together, Nasser’s actions created the sense of an imminent, existential threat to the State of Israel. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s government regarded the actions as cause for war.

American attempts to defuse the crisis led nowhere, and, once Syria and Jordan (with the material support of other Arab states) joined Nasser, Israel had no choice but to strike first. Its surprise air attack against Egypt’s air force on the morning of June 5 lasted three hours and destroyed most of it, giving Israel air dominance as the IDF launched its ground forces into the Sinai—an offensive that lasted four days and ended with the devastation of the Egyptian army and the occupation of the entire peninsula. At the same time, and in response to shelling by Jordanian artillery, the IDF launched an attack that ended in three days with the occupation of the West Bank, including east Jerusalem. Finally, Israel took the Golan Heights, in a battle that ended six days after the war began.

This, at least, is the story that has been told and retold by the authors of both older and more recent accounts, and it is this story that Guy Laron attempts to upend by placing it in the larger context of Israel’s military plans in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence in the region. The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East, which Yale University Press brought out shortly before the recent 50th anniversary of the war, is an attempt to thoroughly revise our historical understanding of the conflict.

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A whole new ballgame : Amb. David Friedman’s momentous address by Ruthie Blum

By on July 7th, 2017

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman delivered a speech this week that made the ‎unbearably hot and humid weather feel like a breath of fresh air. At the annual Fourth of July ‎celebration, held Monday evening at his official residence in Herzliya, Friedman not only ‎reiterated his personal faith in Judaism and the Jewish people, but stressed America’s ‎‎”unbreakable bond” with the Jewish state.‎

The bond Friedman was referring to had become so fragile during former U.S. President Barack ‎Obama’s two terms in office that it became the punchline of a joke made in 2014 by comedian ‎Jay Leno. Obama, Leno quipped, knows just how unbreakable the U.S.-Israel bond is, “since ‎he’s been trying to break it for years.”‎

It was not only Friedman’s address that was crafted to convey the loud and clear message that ‎the new administration in Washington is going to behave differently — that it is and will continue ‎to be unequivocally and unflinchingly on Israel’s side. The fact that he was the first U.S. ‎ambassador to invite settler leaders to the event, and proudly pose for photographs with them, ‎already spoke volumes.‎

Friedman began by recounting that the first time he hosted a party in Israel was at the Western ‎Wall in Jerusalem, when he was 13. “As the son of a rabbi of modest means, I can assure you that ‎my bar mitzvah party bore absolutely no resemblance to the party that we are attending here ‎tonight,” he said. “But the spirit … is exactly the same. It is the spirit of patriotic Americans ‎committed to increasing the ties and enhancing the relationship between the United States and ‎the State of Israel. That’s what my family stood for 45 years ago, and that’s still who we are ‎today.” ‎

That right off the bat he boasted of his Jewish connection to the Western Wall in the context of ‎U.S.-Israel relations was highly significant. It signaled to those supporters of President Donald ‎Trump who became disillusioned by what appeared to be a backtracking of his vow to move the ‎U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that this is not a case of yet another administration ‎reneging on its promises in an attempt to appease the Palestinians and impose a peace deal on ‎Israel. It also indicated to Israel’s enemies that America recognizes Israeli sovereignty over its ‎capital city. ‎

Friedman went on to say, “It was just two months ago that I had the honor … to be the master of ‎ceremonies at the very first party ever hosted by the White House to commemorate Israel’s ‎Independence Day, [where] I had the privilege to proclaim, ‘yom haatzmaut sameach l’medinat ‎yisrael’ — ‘Happy Independence Day to the State of Israel.’ Today, it is my great pleasure to return ‎the favor from 6,000 miles away. And so let me proclaim, ‘yom haatzmaut sameach l’artzot ‎habrit,’ ‘Happy Independence Day to the United States.'” ‎

And then he quoted, in Hebrew, a line from Psalm 118 — “This is a day that the Lord has made; ‎let us [be glad and] rejoice in it” — to make a point about Israel’s being “the source of many of the ‎Judeo-Christian values that spawned the American enterprise.” He invoked the famous Puritan Pilgrim John Winthrop, who in 1963 “implored his followers to be faithful to the teachings of ‎the Jewish prophet, Micah, to ‘do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with thy God,'” and told ‎new immigrants to America that if they did so, they would “find that the God of Israel is among ‎us.” ‎

He said that when Winthrop “referred to New England as a ‘city upon a hill with the eyes of all ‎people upon us,” he was also referring to Jerusalem. Indeed, Friedman added, “So much of who ‎we are derives from the teachings of ancient Israel. And, perhaps for that reason, it is no surprise ‎that the United States and Israel have the most special of special relationships.”‎

Here, again, Friedman purposely spoke of Jerusalem, emphasizing that the success and mutual ‎admiration that America and the Jewish state enjoy emanate from “ancient Israel.”‎

‎”We have, of course, common enemies that unite us,” he said — as well as military, trade, culture ‎and cybersecurity cooperation. “But our collective core, what fundamentally unites us, is that we ‎are the two shining cities on a hill, drawn together by a shared history, shared values and … a ‎shared destiny of continued greatness.”‎

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Artists against Theater BDS activists try to shut down a play by a playwright because he’s Israeli. Lincoln Center is not caving to them. By Kyle Smith

By on July 7th, 2017

In New York City today a strange spectacle is being staged: Theater artists are taking a stand against theater.

When the Lincoln Center Festival announced it was staging a four-night production this month that is subsidized by the state of Israel, dozens of big-name professionals from New York’s theater world, including highly regarded actors, writers, and directors, demanded the play be scrapped.

An open letter published by the activist group “Adalah-NY, the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel” was signed by, among others, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwrights Tracy Letts, Lynn Nottage, and Annie Baker; the acclaimed director Sam Gold; actress Greta Gerwig; rock star Roger Waters; and the playwright-actor Wallace Shawn and his My Dinner with Andre costar Andre Gregory. They claim that the scheduled performances of David Grossman’s play To the End of the Land will help “the Israeli Government to implement its systematic ‘Brand Israel’ strategy of employing arts and culture to divert attention from the state’s decades of violent colonization, brutal military occupation and denial of basic rights to the Palestinian people.”

In other words: How dare Israel back a play that isn’t about how horrible Israel is to the Palestinians. And Lincoln Center must steer clear of this moral atrocity by canceling the play. Baker, who is herself Jewish, added, nonsensically, “I think the phrase ‘cultural boycott’ scares people, and it’s important to remember that a) it’s not a boycott against individual artists or nationalities, and b) it has historical precedent as an extremely effective way to call attention to apartheid (yes, Israel is an apartheid state) and influence policy.”

This is straight-up balderdash from the BDS playbook. Boycott? The letter says, “We call on Lincoln Center to avoid complicity with Brand Israel by cancelling these performances.” These artists are free to avoid any play sponsored by any entity they don’t like, but now they are trying to prevent everyone else in New York from seeing this play. This is very much more sinister than a mere boycott.

The point these artists are making is ludicrous on two levels. First, though the play is sponsored by Israel’s Office of Cultural Affairs, it’s an anti-war piece, not simple-minded cheerleading for the state of Israel. David Grossman, the author of the novel from which the play is adapted, lost his son Uri to fighting on the last day of Israel’s offensive in Lebanon in 2006. Since then, writes Judith Miller in Tablet magazine in her review of the play, “Grossman has become among the most outspoken Jewish Israeli voices against war and occupation. He has frequently protested the demolitions of houses in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.” Miller calls the piece “deeply pessimistic,” citing a disquieting image of a mother who stays constantly in motion because she fears that her son will be killed at war and she reasons that if military notifiers can’t find her to tell her of his passing, he can’t be dead. In one scene, Miller adds, the play makes it clear that it’s an act of “supreme insensitivity” toward a Palestinian taxi driver to tell him to drive an Israeli to a military registration, causing the driver to erupt in an “impassioned outburst” about his people’s plight.

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Will El País Stop Its “Spanish Inquisition”? by Masha Gabriel

By on July 6th, 2017

The paper’s opinion section has grown increasingly slanted, with more and more pieces penned by members of blatantly anti-Israel organizations, falsely presented as neutral observers of the conflict.

In spite of numerous pleas to El País, it is only on rare occasions that it has issued corrections to its repeated factual errors and lack of historical context. This indicates that it is not oversight at work, but rather a purposeful effort to defame and delegitimize the Jewish state — in other words, anti-Semitism.

Over the past year, Spain’s flagship newspaper, El País, has reemerged as the anti-Israel publication that it used to be. Until 2009, when it changed its approach to coverage of the Middle East, El País was so openly hostile to the Jewish state that 14 members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to then-Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to express concern over the systematic publication of “articles and cartoons conveying crude anti-Semitic canards and stereotypes” in the pages of El País.

That year, the paper began to present a more balanced view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and even ceased the practice of referring to Tel Aviv — rather than Jerusalem — as the Israeli capital. It continued in this vein for the next seven years.

In 2016, however, El País reverted to its old ways, as the following three examples illustrate:

Leila Khaled, a member of the terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – notorious for taking part in the August 29, 1969 hijacking of TWA Flight 840 on its way from Rome to Tel Aviv, and in the September 6, 1970 attempted hijacking of El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York – was described by El País as someone who came from “a traumatic life experience: the occupation, which, when she was a child in 1948 [the establishment of the state of Israel], expelled her and her family from Haifa,” along with “millions of refugees who were forced to leave their homes.”

Ismail Haniyeh, a senior official of Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, was referred to by El País as “moderate” and “pragmatic,” while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was described by the paper as the leader of a “radical” and “extremist” government.

It also claimed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “derives from the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank” and “subsequent blockade of the Gaza Strip,” and that since the Six-Day War in 1967, “Israel hasn’t stopped colonizing.”

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Palestinian Authority: Minor inconvenience ‘inhuman,’ terrorism no big deal By Camie Davis

By on July 6th, 2017

Last week marked one year since 13-year-old Hallel Ariel was stabbed to death by an Arab terrorist while she slept in her bedroom. Hallel’s parents, Amichai and Rina, marked the date of their daughter’s murder by ascending the Temple Mount, along with many other Jews, including two Knesset members (who accompanied the family to the Temple Mount entrance but were prohibited by the Israeli government from entering due to the Arabs considering Jewish Knesset members on the Temple Mount as incitement.)

Besides being a beautiful memorial to Hallel, the Jewish gathering on the Temple Mount was momentous for other reasons. According to The Temple Institute, an activist group for non-Muslim rights on the Temple Mount, the Israeli police, who accompanied the Ariels and posed for pictures with them, showed great respect to the Jewish group and even allowed members of the group to pray quietly, to make blessings, and to use a microphone. This was a break from the police’s modus operandi. For the past several years, such actions, including Jews moving their lips in what appeared to be prayer, have resulted in the arrest of Jews due to Arabs considering such acts provocative.

Also, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, who accompanied the group, was not only allowed to ascend the Temple Mount, but also to speak to the group. Rabbi Ariel was one of the paratroopers who liberated the Mount during the Six-Day War. On a previous visit to the Temple Mount, he was arrested and temporarily banned for allegedly bowing down and for saying a prayer and blessing out loud commemorating his fallen comrades.

While many consider it a positive advancement of inclusion that the Jews were allowed to congregate, pray, and speak blessings while on the Temple Mount, the Palestinian Authority did not. Because the Israeli police closed the Temple Mount to Muslims during the memorial for Hallel, the P.A. responded by stating that the closure was “an inhuman and immoral act … incompatible with human and moral values.” The P.A. also complained that the closure was in violation of international law. Never mind that the Temple Mount was closed to Jews for nine days recently during Ramadan and that Jews have limited access to the Temple Mount or have no access at all on a regular basis.

The P.A. implored the international community to “take immediate action and deterrent measures to stop the occupation regime and prevent them from continuing to commit further crimes against our people and to harm the holy sites of Islam and Christianity.”

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Modi and Netanyahu Begin a Beautiful Friendship The Indian premier’s visit marks a diplomatic coming of age for India and Israel. By Tunku Varadarajan

By on July 6th, 2017

When you hear the prime minister of one country tell his counterpart from another that their nations’ friendship is “a marriage made in heaven, but we are implementing it here on earth,” your first reaction is likely to be: Get this man a new speechwriter! Yet, had you been following Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Israel visit, which concludes Thursday, you’d understand that those words, spoken by Benjamin Netanyahu, were euphoric and not cloying.

Mr. Modi’s visit to Israel is the first by an Indian prime minister in the 70 years since India’s independence. The countries have had diplomatic relations for a quarter-century, but no Indian premier considered visiting Israel for fear of upsetting India’s Arab allies—and thereby, its supply of oil—as well as its sizable Muslim population, for whose political leaders Israel has always been anathema. India also turned its back on Israel as a result of its commitment to a dishonest “anticolonial” foreign policy—that of nonalignment—under which it was kosher to berate the Israelis for being colonial interlopers on Palestinian land.

In truth, India and Israel have long done clandestine business. Israel helped India with weapons in its war with Pakistan in 1965. India returned the favor in 1967 when it gave Israel spare parts for its Ouragan and Mystere fighter planes. Mossad and RAW—the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s intelligence agency—worked closely for many years before diplomatic relations began in 1992. Israel played a key role in helping India win its war with Pakistan in 1999, with its supply of Searcher-1 drones. These enabled India to detect, and destroy by air, Pakistani troops entrenched in mountain fastnesses.

India has reciprocated diplomatically, particularly since the election of Mr. Modi’s nationalist BJP government in 2014. New Delhi has abstained in recent United Nations resolutions critical of Israel, remarkable for a nation that has had a near-perfect record of anti-Israeli voting at the U.N. There is every indication, now, that these abstentions will turn into votes in Israel’s favor.

The Israelis see Mr. Modi’s BJP as an Indian version of the Likud Party, and they are not wrong. The parties and their leaders share a determination to yield nothing to Islamist terrorism. The uninhibited warmth between the two prime ministers has been on full display on Mr. Modi’s visit—as of this writing, the two men have embraced each other five times in 24 hours. A new fast-growing breed of chrysanthemum was unveiled by Israeli agronomists. Its name? The Modi.

The florid stuff aside, this visit marks a diplomatic coming of age for India and Israel: India because it has now shed the last of its dead skin of nonalignment. Remarkably, India is the only major power that can claim to have excellent relations with every country in the Middle East. CONTINUE AT SITE

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FIFA Supporting Terrorism? by A. Z. Mohamed

By on July 5th, 2017

At least five highly regarded non-governmental organizations — Palestinian Media Watch, NGO Monitor, the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, UK Lawyers for Israel and the New York-based Lawfare Project – have enumerated the many and varied ways in which [Jibril] Rajoub – the secretary-general of the central committee of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, the chairman of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and the head of the Supreme Council for Sport and Youth — has violated FIFA’s own Code of Ethics, “by promoting and glorifying terrorism; inciting hatred and violence; promoting racism; and preventing the use of the game of football in order to build a bridge for peace.”

In July 2012, while addressing the launch of the first Forum for Arab women sports journalists, Rajoub referred to Jews and Israelis as “Satans” and “Zionist sons of bitches,” adding, “Normalization with the occupation is impossible, impossible, impossible, with no exceptions…”

Rajoub is a serial violator and must be expelled from the organization. Swift action needs to be taken to oust Rajoub, and pressure should be put on the PA to replace him with a chairman whose passion for sports and sportsmanship is greater than his thirst for blood.

In an ongoing effort to “kick terrorism out of football,” various research organizations have submitted joint and separate complaints to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) about the behavior of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) and its president, Jibril Rajoub.

At least five highly regarded non-governmental organizations — Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), NGO Monitor, the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, UK Lawyers for Israel and the New York-based Lawfare Project — have enumerated the many and varied ways in which Rajoub — the secretary-general of the central committee of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, the chairman of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and the head of the Supreme Council for Sport and Youth — has violated FIFA’s own Code of Ethics, “by promoting and glorifying terrorism; inciting hatred and violence; promoting racism; and preventing the use of the game of football in order to build a bridge for peace.”

An extensive PMW report highlights Rajoub’s exploitation of his various roles in the world of sports to cultivate a terrorist mind-frame among Palestinian youth and incite to murder of Jews and Israelis. A stark example — particularly for the head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee — was Rajoub’s attendance at, and stamp of approval for, a boxing tournament honoring the terrorist who planned the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, headlined the August 9, 2010 report: In the presence of [Jibril] Rajoub – successful conclusion to the Second Palestine Boxing Tournament for youth and men in Hebron.” The item itself read:

“The tournament [was] held at the Shari’ah School for Boys in Hebron, and was named by the Palestinian Boxing Association after Martyr (Shahid) Ali Hassan Salameh, the ‘Red Prince.'”

In July 2012, while addressing the launch of the first Forum for Arab women sports journalists, Rajoub referred to Jews and Israelis as “Satans” and “Zionist sons of bitches,” adding, “Normalization with the occupation is impossible, impossible, impossible, with no exceptions…”

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Rescue at Entebbe — the continuing lesson By Abraham H. Miller

By on July 5th, 2017

On July 4, 1976, Israeli commandos launched one of the most daring hostage rescue missions of all time, the raid on Entebbe. Its military audacity and tactical details have become a textbook case of the use of special forces and the element of surprise to gain advantage over a superior force. Its success awed military leaders across the globe. ­

On June 27, 1976, an Air France Air Bus took off from Tel Aviv for Paris with a stop in Athens. Among the passengers that boarded the plane in Athens were four hijackers, two members of the loosely organized Revolutionary Cells, a German terrorist group, and two members of a faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Shortly after takeoff, they commandeered the plane and forced it to fly to Benghazi Airport.

From Benghazi, the plane flew to the airport at Entebbe, Uganda, which at the time was under the control of the maniacal psychopath, Idi Amin, who was president for life of Uganda and head of the Organization of African Unity. Four more armed hijackers boarded the plane at Entebbe, with the complicity of the Ugandan dictator. Ugandan military reinforced the hijackers.

At the Entebbe Airport, the terrorists, with the help of Ugandan soldiers, separated the Jews from the rest of the passengers. Of the non-Jews, 148 were released and flown to Paris.

With the unstable Amin in charge and the terrorists refusing to receive diplomatic entreaties, even from Yasser Arafat, the lives of the Jewish hostages hung in a fragile balance.

Following hostage negotiations, the Israelis ran the clock and prepared for an assault on Entebbe. The dramatic and skillful execution of the surprise raid has been well documented elsewhere and the subject of several cinematic productions. Israeli commandos rescued some 100 hostages, losing one of their own, Yonatan Netanyahu, the brother of the current Israeli prime minister, and three hostages. The Israeli Special Forces killed all of the terrorists and more than forty of their Ugandan military accomplices.

The drama did not end there. What followed afterward in Uganda and on the world’s diplomatic stages is as important as the raid itself.

Members of Amin’s security forces, in retaliation, dragged Dora Bloch, an elderly British-Jewish woman, from a hospital bed in Kampala and shot her. They also shot Ugandan medical personnel who tried to intervene to protect her.

Because Kenya permitted the Israeli plane that transported the hostages to refuel in Nairobi, Amin’s troops massacred hundreds of innocent Kenyans who were living in Uganda.

At the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity entered a complaint against Israel for violating Ugandan sovereignty. The Soviets joined in the condemnation. Among many African nations, the principle of sovereignty of a country run by a psychopath and co-conspirator in international piracy was more important than the humanitarian consideration of saving lives — perhaps, because they were Jewish lives.

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Palestinians: Mohammad Dahlan, the New Mayor of the Gaza Strip? by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on July 3rd, 2017

Dahlan will be functioning under the watchful eye of Hamas, which will remain the real de facto and unchallenged ruler of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is willing to allow Dahlan to return to the Palestinian political scene through the Gaza Strip window. But he will be on a very short leash.

Dahlan’s presence in the Gaza Strip will not deter Hamas from continuing with its preparations for another war with Israel.

Dahlan will find himself playing the role of fundraiser for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip while Hamas hides behind his formidable political shoulders.

Mohammed Dahlan is an aspiring Palestinian with huge political ambitions. Specifically, he hopes to succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Knowing this, Abbas expelled him from the ruling Fatah faction in 2011. Since then, Dahlan has been living in the United Arab Emirates.

Hamas, the Islamist movement that has controlled the Gaza Strip for the past decade, used to consider Dahlan one of its fiercest enemies.

As commander of the notorious Preventive Security Service (PSS) in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s, Dahlan was personally responsible for the PA’s security crackdown on Hamas. On his instructions, hundreds of Hamas activists were routinely targeted and detained.

The enmity was mutual; Dahlan too considered Hamas a major threat to him and the PA regime in the Gaza Strip.

Dahlan’s contempt for Hamas knew no limits. On his orders, Hamas founder and spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin was placed under house arrest.

Two other senior Hamas officials, Mahmoud Zahar and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, were repeatedly detained and tortured by Dahlan’s agents. At one point, Dahlan ordered his interrogators to shave the two men’s beards as a way of humiliating them.

During and after its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas targeted Dahlan’s PSS and loyalists. Some were killed or incarcerated, while many others were forced to flee the Gaza Strip to Egypt and the West Bank. For many years, Dahlan was at the top of Hamas’s most wanted fugitives. No longer.

Erstwhile enemies, Dahlan and Hamas today have a common foe: Mahmoud Abbas. They seem about to join forces to repay him for the humiliation they have suffered at his hands.

Dahlan has long sought revenge for Abbas’s decision to expel him from Fatah and prosecute him on charges of murder and embezzlement. Dahlan will never forgive Abbas for dispatching security officers to raid his Ramallah residence and confiscate documents and other equipment. On that day, Dahlan slunk out of Ramallah.

Dahlan found refuge in the United Arab Emirates, a wealthy Gulf country whose rulers seem very fond of him. He receives millions of dollars from his Gulf hosts. Until today, Abbas regards Dahlan, who was once an intimate associate, as his main enemy.

Exile has been good for Dahlan. Thanks to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, Dahlan has amassed enough power and money to become a major player in the Palestinian arena.

In the past few years, he has succeeded in building bases of power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, largely with the cash that he has been providing to his loyalists and others.

More importantly, Dahlan has succeeded in building a personal relationship with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who also seems rather partial to him. While this relationship has alienated Abbas, Hamas sees it as an opportunity to rid itself of its increased isolation in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas’s predicament has been exacerbated by the continued Egyptian blockade on the Gaza Strip, specifically the closure of the Rafah border crossing, and a series of punitive measures taken by Abbas in recent weeks.

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Abbas’s Lies and Palestinian Child Victims by Bassam Tawil

By on June 30th, 2017

Hamas and human rights groups hold Abbas personally responsible for the deaths of the children and the possible deaths of other patients in need of urgent medical treatment not available in Gaza Strip hospitals. One human rights group went so far as to call for the International Criminal Court in The Hague to launch an investigation against Abbas.

In a move of mind-bending irony, we are witnessing a Palestinian president waging war not only against Hamas, but also against the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip — while Israel continues to provide the Palestinians living under Hamas with humanitarian aid.

That is the standard operating procedure of the man who lied straight to the face of President Donald Trump, by claiming that he had stopped incitement against Israel and was promoting a “culture of peace” among his people. Will the last sick Palestinian child please stand up?

Palestinian children are the latest victims of the power struggle between the two rival Palestinian factions, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has declared war on the Gaza Strip as part of his effort to prompt Palestinians living there to revolt against the ruling Hamas administration. It appears that Abbas and Hamas are determined to fight to the last ill Palestinian child.

Abbas is hoping that a series of punitive measures he has taken, which include reducing electricity and medical supplies and cutting off salaries to many Palestinians, will lead to the collapse of Hamas, paving the way for the return of his PA to the Gaza Strip. Abbas has had a grudge against Hamas ever since the Islamist movement expelled his PA and loyalists from the Gaza Strip ten years ago.

Abbas’s war on the Hamas may seem justified. Nonetheless, it smacks of hypocrisy and is accompanied by a smear campaign against Israel.

Instead of accepting responsibility for their punitive actions against Hamas and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Abbas and his PA are falsely trying to put the blame on Israel. They are telling their people and the rest of the world that Israel bears the full and sole responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. This, of course, is a wide-eyed lie as well as another blood libel against Israel.

The attempt to put the blame on Israel should be seen in the context of Abbas’s ongoing incitement against Israel. Moreover, Abbas is trying to drag Israel into his continuing conflict with Hamas, which is a purely internal Palestinian affair. Israel had nothing to do with Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007. Two years earlier, Israel had totally withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, leaving Abbas’s PA fully in control of the area. Within two years, Hamas had overthrown the PA and seized control of the Gaza Strip, including Abbas’s house.

Abbas’s loyalists in Gaza hardly resisted Hamas. Most of them simply surrendered to Hamas or fled to Israel and Egypt. It was thanks to Israel that many of Abbas’s senior officials were able to run from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. Were it not for Israel, they would have been dragged to the streets of the Gaza Strip and publicly lynched. Many PA operatives were thrown from the top floors of buildings.

What, then, is spurring this switch? Why has Abbas suddenly decided to take a series of drastic measures against Hamas and his people in the Gaza Strip, ten years after the Islamist expulsion?

According to his aides, Abbas is fuming over Hamas’s recent decision to establish an “administrative body” to run the affairs of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Abbas seems to view the move as driving a nail into the coffin of any PA-Hamas reconciliation.

He is also apparently deeply worried that his political rival, Mohamed Dahlan, and Hamas are close to forming an alliance against him. In recent days there have been reports that Hamas may allow Dahlan to return to the Gaza Strip to head a new Palestinian government that would be funded and backed by some Gulf countries and Egypt, all of which are disillusioned with Abbas.

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