Hamas rockets from the Gaza Strip rained on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for the second day, prompting Israeli Defense Forces to conduct air strikes of Hamas and Islamic Jihad headquarters, in a mounting escalation designed to let 85-year-old Ramallah-based Palestine Authority [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas know he now irrelevant. While attacks were coordinated in the past, the latest mini-war sends the loudest message possible that Hamas leaders 59-year-old Ismail Haniyeh and 64-year-old Khaled Meshaal are calling the shots from Gaza, isolating Abbas in Ramallah. Gaza’s residents have been itching for another war with Israel, the exact reason Arab Gulf State have given up on Hamas and the PA. Abbas’s PA had the backing of past U.S., U.N. and European Union {EU] to negotiate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas has not abandoned its goal to destroy Israel.
Hamas, while a Sunni Islamic faction, gets its military support in the way of rockets and guided missiles from Shiite Iran, who’s stated goal of “wiping Israel off the map,” has been well known. Battling Israel during Ramadan could not be a more spiritual pursuit to once-and-for-all conquer the Jewish State. Hamas, which was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Nassim in 1987, became the de facto military wing of the late Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO]. Once Israel was handed the British Mandate of Palestine in 1948, the war of independence began, with several Arab states trying to beat back Israel’s independence. When Arab resistance failed in 1949, the movement to take back the British Mandate began. Arafat founded the PLO in 1964, working feverishly for three years with six Arab States to oust Jews from the Holy Land in the 1967 Six Day War.
Six Arab states, led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, including Iraq, Syria, Jordan Lebanon, joined Arafat’s PLO, tried to destroy Israel. After one week of fighting, Israel had vanquished the militaries of sex Arab states, leaving Israel in sole possession of the Holy Land. For 600 years the Ottoman Turks controlled the Holy Land, with no objections from Sunni Arabs living in the region. So-called Palestinians were branded by Arafat’s PLO in 1964, claiming a sovereign right to the territory once controlled by Ottoman Turkey. When the Ottoman Empire was carved up in 1920 with the Treaty of Sevres, the British received the area now considered the State of Israel. After the Six Day War, Israel annexed Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s West Bank and East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. Hamas considers all of Israel and annexed land as their sovereign territory.
No matter what the damage to Gaza and the loss of infrastructure and life, Hamas periodically goes to war against Israel winning plaudits from Istanbul and other Arab states. Using the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine, as a rally cry during Ramadan has symbolic value for Hamas. No matter what the damage and loss of life, Gaza residents, not Hamas leadership, are prepared to martyr themselves for Al-Aqsa. In reality, since 1967, Israel has been a faithful steward of Al-Aqsa and other historic sites like the Western Wall on Temple Mount, known as the holy sanctuary. When Hamas started a war with Israel in the past, it was because they had run out of cash needed to pay civil servants. This time around, it’s more related to Hamas serving notice that Abbas no longer represents the Palestinians people, vying to take over the Ramallah-based PA government.
Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from Abbas and the PA June 10, 2007, less than two years after Israel turned over Gaza to the PA Sept .22, 2005. Hamas has run Gaza into the ground four times in the last 15 years, waging war about every four years. Firing hundreds of rockets into Israel, Hamas knows the predicable result, unrelenting air-strikes. Today, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate ceasefire, something ignored by Hamas and Israel, until they’ve satisfied their public relations objectives to make them look victorious to their people and the Arab world. Guterres and other world leaders have been to this rodeo before and know how it ends. Whatever brokered ceasefire, Hamas will need loan guarantees from Arab Gulf State, jaded by the endless cycles of destruction. Hamas knows, if nothing else, they have Iran supplying them cash and rockets.
Gaza’s latest war with Israel can only be seen as (a) an assertion of power by Hamas over the PA and (b) a continuation of Iran’s proxy war against Israel. No matter how much it looks like Hamas acts alone, they have no cash or armaments unless supplied by Iran. Whether it’s Iran’s proxy war against Saudi Arabia using Yemen’s Houthi rebels or its proxy war with Israel using Hamas or Beirut-based Hezbollah terror group, Iran’s continues its state-sponsored terrorism. However long the current battle goes on, Hamas will beg its Arab Gulf states for more cash to rebuild. Exploiting Al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan is the best way for Hamas to gain a PR advantage in the present conflict. Israel has only a short window to continue pounding Hamas before international pressure for a ceasefire mounts in coming days, demanding that the latest skirmish stop.
