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Why Did Hamas Provoke a War?

(Council on Foreign Relations) Elliott Abrams - The current battles between Israel and Hamas were provoked by Hamas. Why? First, consider Hamas's situation a week ago. The economic situation in Gaza is dire, due both the reduced Iranian support and to the closure of the border with Egypt by the Egyptian Army. Hamas needed a way out of its increasingly difficult situation. John Kerry's peace negotiations might have delivered some shake-up in the overall Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they failed. Hamas then tried a political maneuver: a deal with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority to form a non-party government in Ramallah. Teen-age boys and young men do not join Hamas in order to police Gaza's borders and prevent Islamic Jihad from attacking Israel; they join in order to attack Israel. Hamas was risking the charge from other terrorists that it was an auxiliary police force for Israel, and risking that young men would drift away to those other terrorist groups. So, the Hamas leadership decided it had to shake things up. It is a very big gamble for Hamas, and the size of the gamble is the measure of Hamas's desperation. For so far, Hamas has not done much damage to Israel. Israel's apparent assessment: keep increasing the pressure until Hamas, which started this war because it saw too many threats to its survival and dominance in Gaza, comes to see continued war as the key threat. Those who want the violence to end must realize that the larger is the Israeli effort now, the sooner Hamas will conclude this round must be ended.
2014-07-10 00:00:00
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