In the 25 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, Israel stuck tenaciously to a single, clear policy. It would engage in negotiations with the PLO (and later with Palestinian Authority [PA] leadership) and wage a relentless war against Hamas terrorism, which was seen as being the greatest foe of the two-state solution.
For the first time ever, Israeli policy is changing right before our eyes and becoming the exact opposite of what it once was. The current government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett may be the most right-wing government in Israeli history, but now it is isolating the PA and conducting negotiations with Hamas. Israel is punishing the entity with which it signed a long list of agreements and “rewarding” Hamas — even though it still does not recognize Israel and remains committed to its underlying goal of destroying the Jewish state and expelling its Jewish population to “wherever they came from.”
The consequences of this move are almost impossible to imagine. Sitting in Ramallah is an aging Palestinian leader — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — who is committed to the war against terrorism and keeping Palestinian agreements with Israel. His security forces cooperate with Israel in wiping out terrorism, since they regard Hamas as an existential threat no less than Israel does. And yet despite all this, today, in 2018, Abbas is isolated, irrelevant and under siege. He is being thrown under a bus being driven by Netanyahu, Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar, Liberman and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
All of this is happening despite the unequivocal recommendations and warnings of the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet. They claim that Abbas must not be kept out of the picture, and that any agreement reached between Israel and Hamas that does not involve the PA and does not make Ramallah responsible for moneys flowing into Gaza poses a threat to the stability of the PA if not the entire region.
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