Let us start in the usual trivial manner, toying with the neoteric facts of the moment. Whether Hamas ordered the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens has been curiously clouded by BBC reporter Jon Donnison, He alleges that Mickey Rosenfeld, head of Israel’s national police, told him that the West Bank cell responsible for the crimes does not receive direct orders from Hamas.
In an unguarded moment, Rosenfeld may have extrapolated from what he knows to what he doesn’t. In the absence of a solved crime, the statement, if made at all, is based on intelligence, and possibly extrapolation. Intelligence is seldom equivalent to fact, and extrapolation distances it further.
From the moment to the hour…
With the explosion of the ISIS in Iraq and Syria and the kick of the murders, Hamas saw what it hasn’t seen in a long time: motion, and fluidity, like the soil liquefaction that accompanies an earthquake. The Hamas leadership apparently realize that their 10,000 rockets and miles of tunnels are, at best a blasting cap. But even with liquefaction, there have to be some explosives lying around, in the form of a mobilizable pan-Arab proclivity toward violence.
Unfortunately for Hamas, this is absent. News organizations are reporting the “deafening silence” of Arab nations with respect to the Israeli incursion, and even more-than tacit support. The origins of of this attitude might be expected to be opaque, but this time, they are quite traceable, possibly to their origins. In January Egypt articulated the intent to destroy Hamas (Reuters).
Now the open source intelligence hound picks up another scent. El-Sisi intends to modernize Egypt. The parallels with Ataturk are striking. He asks, rhetorically, (NY Times) “You want to be a first-class nation?” he asked of Egyptians, in a leaked recording of an off-the-record conversation with a journalist-confidant. “Will you bear it if I make you walk on your own feet? When I wake you up at 5 in the morning every day? Will you bear cutting back on food, cutting back on air-conditioners?”…“People think I’m a soft man,” he added. “Sisi is torture and suffering.”
El-Sisi is talking the talk and walking (or bicycling) the walk. Like Ataturk, he is taking on the religious establishment, with the military watching his back. The rest of the Arab World finds little alternative. When you’re caught between the ISIS, Iran and Al-Sisi, who do you choose?
Proceeding from the hour to the day…
Modernity is the word of the day. Egypt resumes leadership of the Arab World. Hamas, aware of the tick of the clock, gambles. But one wonders: Do they see the mortality of their cause, or must they perish with it?