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Eric R. Mandel – July 10, 2021<\/p>\n
As President Biden<\/a><\/span> and Secretary of State Antony Blinken<\/a><\/span> ponder how to entice the Palestinian Authority (PA) to negotiate with Israel, a far more significant problem is being ignored. The Biden team marched along, facilitating a transfer of money<\/a> to the PA and reopening the U.S. Consulate<\/a> in East Jerusalem, another Palestinian demand, without tangible reciprocity. But this will not reveal the elephant in the room: an inevitable, coming uprising by Hamas in the West Bank.<\/p>\n Hamas instigated the Gaza war in May<\/a> as part of a strategy to weaken Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas<\/a> and his Fatah party and increase Hamas\u2019s popularity among Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank. As Amos Harel writes in Haaretz<\/a>, the rule of Abbas \u201cis less stable.\u00a0… The succession battles among his subordinates are being waged openly and, above all, Hamas is continuing to gain popularity against the backdrop of what is perceived as its success in standing up to Israel during the fighting in May.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. evidently thinks it can strengthen the PA\u2019s standing with the Palestinian people by insisting any rebuilding of Gaza be coordinated through the PA and not Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror organization<\/a>. But covering over the rot of the PA with increased foreign aid is a Band-Aid at best. Hamas may allow some money to flow through the PA to Gaza, but Abbas won\u2019t control it for long.<\/p>\n Are Israel, America and their Middle Eastern allies planning a strategy for the likely possibility of a civil war in the West Bank? Do they believe that funneling humanitarian aid to Gaza through the PA will lead to a long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas or inhibit Hamas from setting the West Bank on fire once sufficient arms, material and money get into their hands?<\/p>\n The attention of the international community is focused on Gaza, but Hamas apparently is one step ahead, strategizing with\u00a0its Islamist patrons to find opportunities to move closer to taking over the West Bank. Then\u00a0it could impose Muslim Brotherhood control on the rest of the Palestinian State. Funding from Iran, Qatar and Turkey<\/a> is in place to help make this happen.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s next war with Hamas may be not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank, centered in Judea and Samaria, as happened during the Second Intifada<\/a> of the early 2000s. This time, Israel may be fighting on three fronts simultaneously. Add to that Iranian-controlled militia embedded in Syria and Iraq, ready to transfer arms and troops to tip the balance in favor of Hamas.<\/p>\n https:\/\/thehill.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric R. Mandel – July 10, 2021 As President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken ponder how to entice the Palestinian Authority (PA) to negotiate with Israel, a far more significant problem is being ignored. The Biden team marched along, facilitating a transfer of money to the PA and reopening the U.S. Consulate in … Continue reading Is Israel preparing for the inevitable civil war in the West Bank?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[15979,15721,13547,465,55,48,1241,15720,8,3602],"class_list":["post-19960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-red-horse","tag-amos-harel","tag-antony-blinken","tag-gaza-war","tag-hamas","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-palestinian-authority","tag-president-biden","tag-war","tag-west-bank"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fAkI-5bW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19962,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19960\/revisions\/19962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}