opinion
It Is Always About Iran
BY SHOSHANA BRYEN
ohaiyoo / AdoberStock
I srael Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi
has approved Israeli drone strikes in the West
Bank. Lest you think Israel is waging war on the
Palestinian people or the Palestinian Authority
— the nominal government of the West Bank terri-
tory — it is not. The P.A. is under siege by Iranian-
supported Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas,
and P.A. strongman Mahmoud Abbas is thor-
oughly incapable of defending the government or
the people. He is looking to Israel to save him and
his regime. And Israel, to the extent it can, will try.

To call the relationship complicated is a severe
understatement, but it always, always goes back
to Iran.

On the one hand, the P.A. is corrupt to its eye-
balls, and increasingly, its own people have been
protesting the regime’s failures; it is hugely repres-
sive — it jailed people for their Facebook posts
and killed regime critic and journalist Nizar Banat;
and it incites violence against Israel and Jews as a
way to maintain its revolutionary credentials.

At the U.N. General Assembly, Abbas lauded
“the righteous martyrs of the Palestinian people
who enlightened the path of freedom and inde-
pendence with their pure blood.” The Fatah web-
site has been calling for violence against Israelis,
and more than once Abbas has announced he is
abrogating all the P.A. agreements with Israel —
including those regarding security cooperation.

But that’s only until he needs security cooperation
with the IDF to survive.

Which is the other hand for him and for Israel.

In the midst of rumbling unrest among West
Bank Palestinians, Abbas is facing the latest round
of the Hamas-Fatah civil war that began after
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and ended with
the expulsion of the P.A. from Gaza in 2007. With
no Israel and no Fatah inside Gaza, Hamas won
security control of the area — which should be a
warning against a precipitous Israeli withdrawal
from the West Bank. With Iran as a patron, Hamas
has since determined the level of aggression that
would be used against Israel — and against Fatah.

Hamas presents itself to Palestinians as younger,
stronger and purer than the P.A., and the better
guardian of Palestinian interests and holy places.

Its claims are well-received by many, and Abbas
plays “catch up,” diverting from his troubles by
inciting his people to violence against Israelis,
continuing to pay “salaries” to terrorists, and rely-
ing on the IDF at the end.

That may not be enough now.

The May 2021 Hamas rocket war against Israel
ended in a ceasefire after Israel exacted a serious
price. Following the ceasefire announcement,
The Associated Press reported that thousands of
Hamas supporters demonstrated against Abbas in
the West Bank, chanting, “Dogs of the Palestinian
Authority, out, out.” Hamas members were also
seen victory dancing in Gaza. This April, Hamas
flags flew above the Al-Aqsa Mosque during
Ramadan. For months, Israeli intelligence sources have
been watching and reporting on Palestinian vio-
lence both in the West Bank and in Israel as a
result of civilian frustration with the repressive
and corrupt P.A., stoked by Hamas. And Iran.

According to the authoritative Long War Journal,
Hezbollah — Iran’s proxy in Lebanon — has been
smuggling weapons into the West Bank. Those
weapons benefit Hamas and can also be smug-
gled into the hands of disaffected Israeli Arab
citizens. (Side note: Almost 20 years ago, I traveled in
Jordan with a group of retired American military
officers. In Amman, Jordanian security forces
took pains to explain to us that Jordan’s weapons
“point inward.” To our blank looks, he added, “Our
job is to interdict Hezbollah weapons coming
through Syria, into Jordan, and then into the West
Bank. We have to stop them. We don’t want Iran
on the West Bank any more than Israel does.” The
principle remains the same today — Iran threatens
Jordan — but the interdiction capability appears
to have eroded.)
Israel has only a few choices. It can try to
save the corrupt, repressive, but non-Iranian-sup-
ported P.A., with the downside of abandoning
the Palestinian people who have been protesting
their rotten government, but with the upside of
protecting Jordan. It can let the war on the West
Bank continue and see where it goes, which
could result in Iranian proxies to Israel’s north (in
Lebanon and Syria), south (in Gaza) and east (in
the West Bank), and the collapse of the Jordanian
kingdom. That would be the result of Israel’s dis-
association from the West Bank territories — the
so-called “two state solution.”
Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid did, in fact, call
for “two states for two people” at the U.N., but the
two people did not include Hamas, Islamic Jihad
or Iran. Any agreement, Lapid said, would be
conditioned on a “peaceful Palestinian state that
would not threaten Israel.”
That strongly suggests that Israel will remain
unhappily between Hamas/Islamic Jihad and
Fatah; between Fatah and Iran; between Jordan
and Iran. Between a rock and a hard place, where
Iran is both the rock and the hard place. JE
Shoshana Bryen is senior director of the Jewish
Policy Center and editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

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