The Takeaway: Would Hamas complicate US plans for reset with Palestinians?
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Hot take on Hamas, elections and a possible US reset toward the Palestinians:
The world’s eyes are on the Israeli elections next week, March 23, the country’s fourth national poll in three years, and whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can extend his reign as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
But there’s another election next door that will play vitally into both Israeli politics and to the Biden administration’s plan for a reset in US policy toward the Palestinians: elections for the Palestinian legislature on May 22, and then for the presidency on July 31.
The scrum ahead of the March 31 filing deadline, a key benchmark for the elections, is dizzying, and Hamas, which the United States considers a foreign terrorist organization, is well-positioned as a spoiler.
Hamas holds unity card: The divisions and potential alliances within Palestinian politics are, as always, on full display. Yet there also is buzz that the Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which controls the Palestinian Authority and the areas under its administration in the West Bank, and Hamas, the Islamic resistance party that governs Gaza, could form a unified bloc in the elections.
