Ben Caspit writes this week that although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to restrain his more hard-line Cabinet ministers advocating a wide-scale military operation against Hamas, he also considers the latest crisis over the murder of three Israeli youths an opportunity to break the Palestinian unity agreement. 

According to Caspit, Netanyahu has “… tried leveraging the event as much as he could to apply heavy pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to end the reconciliation. Netanyahu’s motive is not entirely clear. After all, he entered the negotiations with the Palestinians about a year ago very reluctantly — as if forced to. The reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah provided him with international justification and a great pretext to freeze the diplomatic talks until further notice. If the reconciliation is indeed annulled, the international community will renew its call for the resumption of the negotiations, thereby renewing the pressure. And yet Bibi (Netanyahu) is pressing on at full throttle.”

Geoffrey Aronson speculates that the pressure on Hamas could include a broader threat to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) itself. Abbas’ credibility took a hit among some Palestinians this month following a June 18 speech in which he made the case for security cooperation with Israel over the abductions.

Asmaa Al-Ghoul reports that Hamas made gains in popularity at Abbas’ expense during the abductions, as some Palestinians considered him too willing to cooperate with Israel.