An analysis published Tuesday by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy identifies last month’s Fatah-Hamas unity agreement as a factor that enabled the abductions and murders of Gil-ad Shaar, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach.
After noting that Hamas publicly took credit for the kidnappings despite doubts expressed in some quarters of their involvement, David Pollock, the Kaufman Fellow at The Washington Institute, observed that the unity agreement emboldened Hamas.
A second misconception is that this violence is somehow unrelated to the new Fatah-Hamas “unity” government established in early June. Again, the connection is actually crystal clear. Part of the agreement was that Hamas would be allowed to operate in the West Bank — the kidnapping is an indirect consequence of that provision. To be sure, there were numerous kidnapping attempts even before the unity deal, but the newfound license for Hamas enshrined in the deal is almost certainly what made this latest plot so tragically “successful.” Of course, the formal agreement did not explicitly condone kidnapping or murder, but Hamas officially interpreted it as an opening for militant activities of all kinds, openly contradicting PA president Mahmoud Abbas’s position. The group’s West Bank sympathizers were newly encouraged to provide local cover, and mid-level PA security officials suddenly became uncertain about where to draw the line in preempting or thwarting Hamas operations.
Additionally, Pollock writes that the unity government makes Fatah responsible for the rocket fire coming from Gaza, and its failure do stop it “is a new and blatant violation of the very Quartet conditions under which the United States, the European Union, and others continue to support the PA.”
Finally, Pollock asserts, President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas has a popular mandate to act against terror (as evidenced by a recent study) and thus “Washington would actually be on very firm ground in insisting that, as a condition for continued U.S. aid and support, the PA must either act unambiguously to end Hamas violence or dissolve its partnership with that U.S.-designated terrorist organization.”
Hamas’s military capabilities in the West Bank have been improving over the past two years. Despite its agreement with the Fatah movement, Hamas last week announced an agreement with Palestinian Islamic Jihad to “unify weapons of resistance.” The kidnappings seemed to confirm former Ambassador Michael Oren’s assessment that the unity government is akin to “a ribbon on a package that includes a terrorist organization.”
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