Hamas clearly has no interest in peace

THERE IS NOTHING PEACEFUL ABOUT THESE GATHERINGS. — VIVIAN BERCOVICI

Each Sunday morning at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invites the press for a brief photoop, when he also makes clear the issue and message that he intends to dominate the news cycle that week.

Two days ago, Netanyahu left no doubt that Israel will move militarily, and soon, against Hamas should current hostilities continue.

For the past seven months, Hamas has organized riots at the border with Israel on Fridays after mosque prayers. Many among the international press have accepted the Hamas rendering of these gatherings as being “peaceful,” even though photos and video clearly show an overwhelmingly young, male crowd, many of whom are armed with Molotov cocktails, knives and grenades. They participate in what Hamas calls “The March of Return,” in which they aspire to overrun the Israeli border, murder and maim civilians, and then carry on to liberate all of Palestine and, especially, Jerusalem, from Israeli rule. There is nothing peaceful about these gatherings.

Hamas and its army of rioters, some weeks numbering more than 10,000, does not pose an existential challenge to Israel, but any one of these knife-wielding warriors absolutely does so to Israelis living in small farming communities near the border.

Compounding the immediate dangers posed by the riots is the Hamas launching of arson weapons: kites attached to oil-soaked rags and other incendiary devices that have directly caused the incineration of more than 4,000 hectares of Israeli farmland and nature preserve.

In recent weeks, encouraged by Hamas leadership, the riots have become nighttime occurrences, every night, presenting greater challenges for Israeli troops to detect border breaches and other violent activity.

Hamas justifies the violence as a direct result of the appalling humanitarian conditions of the Gaza population, for which it lays sole blame on the Israeli “blockade” of the Strip.

Prior to Hamas assuming power in the coastal enclave in 2007 there was virtually no restriction on goods entering Gaza from Israel. With the entrenchment of a virulently hostile “government,” things changed.

Israel nevertheless has continued to allow tons of all manner of goods to pass through two industrial checkpoints into Gaza, daily. Even during previous wars, when Hamas required gasoline to power its mobile rocket launchers, Israel allowed fuel to pass. Surely, that is the definition of insanity.

Egypt, on the other hand, has imposed an exceedingly harsh border blockade on Gaza, allowing infrequent passage for individuals with humanitarian issues. They are often detained at the border in deplorable conditions for extended periods.

Then, several weeks ago, the United States announced that it would immediately halt all funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in an effort to force more responsible political and economic conduct on the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. This unanticipated development, in spite of repeated American warnings that it was considering such measures, plunged the Strip into further chaos. UNRWA is the foundation of the Gaza economy.

And so, additional riots ensued, this time in Gaza. Serious threats against UNRWA staff were reported. Fearing for their lives, they were spirited out of the territory, sneaking out the back door of their hotel and into Israel.

Curiously, there never seem to be riots in Gaza protesting the diversion of tens of millions of dollars of aid intended for civilian use to the advanced military infrastructure developed by Hamas, as well as weapon production and acquisition. Buildings crumble. People live desperate lives. Yet, still, Hamas embraces violence.

In the midst of this chaos, Hamas’s political chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, gave audience over a period of five days recently to Italian freelance journalist Francesca Borri. Excerpts of her extensive interviews with Sinwar in various locations in Gaza were published in an Israeli newspaper.

It’s an embarrassingly amateurish PR ploy on the part of Sinwar, who explains his willingness to submit to such interviews as a lastditch attempt to reach the Israeli public with his message of peace. In the course of doing so he couldn’t bring himself to utter the name of “Israel” or, even, “Zionist entity,” referring euphemistically, as is the linguistic tendency of his Iranian masters, to “Netanyahu” and “Tel Aviv.”

Sinwar mocks the deployment of arson kites as mere “messages” that do no actual harm and are easily managed with fire extinguishers. And, he dismisses Borri’s questions regarding the Hamas political charter, which continues to pledge to annihilate Israel and Jews, as a mere historical curiosity from the founding days of the terrorist group in 1988.

Sinwar and his colleagues have no interest in peace with Israel. There will surely be dead Palestinians, as Sinwar noted in his interview: “We make headlines only with blood.”

Last Saturday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that the riots at the Gaza border will continue until the “siege on Jerusalem, AlAqsa and all the lands of Palestine is lifted.”

There is zero ambiguity here. Consistent with the Hamas charter, its leaders are pledging allegiance to their raison d’être: the destruction of all of Israel, even within the 1967 borders.

War has long been the “go-to” strategy for Hamas; which does not hesitate to use civilians as collateral to retain power.

This tragic cycle, it seems, is about to repeat.