How Biden should handle Israel, Hamas and Iran

05/20/2021

To the great consternation of Palestinian human rights activists and the innocent Palestinian people living under Hamas rule in Gaza, terrorists, Europeans and the media are spreading a false narrative about the current conflict between Israel and Hamas. Bassam Eid, a well-respected Palestinian activist living in Jerusalem, said as much last week in a guest column that ran in Israeli media. It’s about influence, Eid says, and Hamas started a war with Israel “to seize the narrative and increase its own influence and control over Palestinians in Jerusalem.”

Hamas always wants to increase its influence and views terror as the means to that end. So, what made Hamas believe it could get away with raining missiles down on Israeli civilians? Hamas would have you believe it was a court decision, a police action or anything that Israel has control over. And that would be a lie.

The violent confrontations between Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem that immediately preceded Hamas rocket attacks were just a convenient foil—precisely how the terrorist playbook has read for more than two decades. Just as former U.S. Senator George Mitchell (D-ME) found in his role as lead investigator for the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in 2000 did not cause the Second Intifada (as the terrorists’ narrative suggested), so too will other investigators find that litigation over property in Sheikh Jarrah did not cause this latest spasm of rocket fire.

Read More: Newsweek