{"id":1541,"date":"2012-11-17T11:07:02","date_gmt":"2012-11-17T09:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1541"},"modified":"2012-11-17T11:34:30","modified_gmt":"2012-11-17T09:34:30","slug":"why-is-hamas-attacking-now-its-all-about-one-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1541","title":{"rendered":"Why is Hamas Attacking Now? It’s All About One Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MapWhile there has been very little news of formal progress between the Israelis and the Palestinians, until this week there had been modest informal improvements day to day in the West Bank, at least.\u00a0 Why now, then, did Hamas decide to escalate in southern Israel?\u00a0 The answer can be found in the protests occurring in Egypt, and the new government of President Mohamed Morsi<\/a>, who is aligned through the Muslim Brotherhood<\/a> with Hamas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"PresidentBy escalating the violence, Hamas hopes to elicit a reaction from Israel that would stoke people in Egypt to press Mr. Morsi to abrogate Egypt’s treaty with Israel<\/a>.\u00a0 Mr. Morsi previously signaled that the treaty is not<\/strong> inviolate<\/a>, by stating that the Camp David Accords had envisioned a permanent solution long ago.<\/p>\n

\"PrimeThis fits a pattern that the Palestinians have been attempting for the last year: rather than come back to the table, they would prefer to see international pressure exerted on Israel, and the more the better.\u00a0 Firing rockets toward Jerusalem has therefore pushed the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu <\/a>into a corner: the Israeli response against such attacks has always been robust, if not aggressive.\u00a0 If the the rocket attacks into Gaza that demonstrate this point have caused as many Egyptians to protest, imagine what the result of a ground offensive would be.<\/p>\n

\"PalestinianIn the meantime, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has had to cut short his world tour, where he has pushed the countries to elevate the status of Palestine to observer state.\u00a0 This has many implications in both political terms and International legal terms, and would represent an attempt at an end run around a bilateral solution.\u00a0 It would provide Palestinians legal claims to sovereignty of their territory.\u00a0 Those claims would do the Palestinians little good in the short term, as Israeli tanks roll across Gaza, and all for the veiled hope that they will somehow come out better (and Israelis worse) thanks to Egypt coming into a war on their side, perhaps bringing others with them.<\/p>\n

It all hinges on how President Morsi responds to this crisis, and there is reason to be concerned that he will not respond well.\u00a0 Either the Palestinians have grossly misread his support, or he has failed to communicate his position clearly to them, or he is willing to go to war for them in the right conditions.\u00a0 The first two possibilities would seem na\u00efve.\u00a0 If Israel is perceived by enough people to have not responded proportionally, the matter will escalate beyond its borders.\u00a0 This is what Hamas is hoping for.\u00a0 It is a very high stakes game, that involves live ammo and the deaths of both Palestinians and Israelis.\u00a0 Americans who think this won’t involve our military are being equally na\u00efve.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Netanyahu now joins the ranks of prime ministers of Israel who have advocated strength and ended up seeing Israelis attacked.\u00a0 Good one, Bibi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Egyptian President Morsi is the one man that Hamas is looking toward to start a war with Israel, and that is why there are rockets flying back and forth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,30,4],"tags":[406,344,304,452,442],"class_list":["post-1541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complexity","category-humanity","category-politics","tag-egypt","tag-hamas","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1544,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions\/1544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}