Amid threats for more than a decade that Israel would destroy Hamas and rebuild Israel’s deterrence, in reality, the policy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his governments have been to keep a weakened Hamas in power. The primary reason for this policy is to ensure that in the eyes of the Israeli public there is no Palestinian partner for peace.
Israel says that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas doesn’t speak on behalf of all of the Palestinians, so there’s no reason to deal with him, and Hamas rules Gaza and wants to destroy Israel, so Israel cannot deal with them; a perfect strategy that has worked for years. Abbas is discredited and Hamas continues to make fiery speeches that convince the world to designate them as a terrorist entity. Meanwhile, the occupation continues and deepens, and more than two million people in Gaza continue to live in squalor and in the walls of a huge prison.
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