“Hamas comes to remind us that it is in command” says ELIAMEP researcher and resident of Jerusalem

Gavriel Haritos, a resident of Jerusalem and a researcher at ELIAMEP, gave his own assessment of the war in Israel, who spoke to ERT.

“Those that happened within one day, in one 24-hour period with 600 dead for the Israelis and over 2,000 wounded it is a number that we do not meet and have not met, at least in all these years that I have been dealing with the area. Israel has never experienced this occasion before. So today it has been broadcast by the government, by the state television, that last night the Council of Ministers or KYSEA of Israel decided to give the government the possibility to decide to take measures that could lead to war. Mind you, the declaration of war has not been decided. Those provisions have been approved and activated allow the government to declare warto compel the State to pay compensation, war reparations and all these are steps that lead to something we already know,” he said and emphasized that this is a special situation because there are Israeli hostages.

“There are Israeli citizens hostage inside Gaza. We are not sure how many there are. Hamas says it is 100. Here it was initially known that it is 35. I think it is somewhere in between. And the Wall Street Journal last night reported that the Israeli government had been in contact with the Egyptian government to make known the scheme that is always done, that is when Gaza doesn’t go well, an Egypt comes and then fixes them or mediates. But this morning came this murder of two Israeli tourists in Cairo. The bus was carrying tourists from Israel and the Egyptian government has not confirmed that the attacker was a police officer. This means that if Israel could get in touch with Cairo, so that Cairo would step in and start a process of talks that would last a week or two for a release of the hostages, which might be accompanied by with the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. This incident it leaves no room for Sisi’s Egypt, the government to get in the wayto start talking with the Israelis because after this event Sisi will be afraid that if he does something that is heard, either sympathetic or convenient for the Israeli government, he may trigger Islamist reactions inside Egypt.”

Why did Hamas strike now?

G. Charitos explains that “Hamas has been acting as a regime for 1.5 years […] A year ago in the cycle of violence between Israel and Gaza, Hamas did not react when it saw the goals of Islamic Jihad being imposed by the Israelis. Now, with the possibility of Israel normalizing relations with the Saudi side and because Riyadh says that I can only normalize relations with Israel if there is progress on the Palestinian side, opened the channel of communication with the Ramallah governmentthat is, with the Palestinian Authority, that is, with Fatah and not with Hamas. Hamas comes to remind us that I’m in command, that I’m here and I’m rebelling againbecause I became an establishment force you do not take me into account, so I will go back to the old days and show you who I am”.

Finally he states: “Israel is in dire straits. He will have to decide what answer to give to a question that has existed since 2006, that is, since Hamas took control of Gaza and so we have a cycle of violence the question is: to recapture the Gaza Strip? Israel can do it, but it will open a three-decade wound. At this moment with the hostages the decisions are very difficult, hence we see that the results of the KYSEA meeting yesterday were not officially announced”.