A just-announced unity deal between the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas factions risks permanently undermining peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, according to Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Hamas has been at odds with Fatah at least since the Iran-backed terror group violently expelled Fatah officials from the Gaza Strip in a bloody 2007 coup. Efforts at reconciliation have been complicated by lingering tensions dating back to the coup, which saw Hamas commit atrocities including shooting out the kneecaps of Fatah officers and throwing them off rooftops, and by Hamas’s commitment to the eradication of Israel. Hamas’s stance is difficult to reconcile with the Palestinian Authority’s official position as a peace partner to the Jewish state, and the Palestinians have had difficulty crafting a government platform that mediates between the two. The degree to which those obstacles have been overcome under the current unity deal, which implements a 2011 agreement that was agreed upon but never implemented, remains unclear.

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