Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apology to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave credence to Hamas’ contention that Israel can only be dealt with through force. That is exactly the path Turkey has followed in the past three years.
At the same time, Hamas did not rejoice when Erdogan hastily accepted Netanyahu’s apology, which only means that the ties between Ankara and Tel Aviv will be re-established. In other words, Hamas has feared that rifts in the strong relationship between the movement and Erdogan — whom it considered for the past years to be its staunch ally — would start to appear, since these relationships are inversely proportional: when Ankara distances itself from Israel, the relationship between the former and Hamas draws closer and vice versa.
