Responsibility

The JPost is reporting an interesting statement by the IDF today:

In a statement issued, the IDF spokesman said that it "holds the Hamas terrorist organization solely responsible for maintaining the calm in the Gaza Strip and for any terrorist activity emanating from it."

This is, I believe, a new and unique position for the IDF and Israeli government.

Throughout Oslo, until today, the IDF and government treated each claim of terror originating from a different organization at face value - that it represented a different organization.

Even as it knew it wasn't, and that the PA funded, permitted and even directed the activities of all the "splinter" terror groups. Even after the (PA's) Muqata was raided and documentation proving the connection of the PA to terror was unquestionable, it continued with this fiction for political reasons.

Even today, the Israeli government knows that the Palestinian Authority is behind much of the delegitimization attacks against Israel (including by so-called "grass-roots" organizations), using the same misdirection tactics. But for political reasons Israel ignores this connection.

So, this statement by the IDF, placing all responsibility on Hamas, regardless of who claims to be responsible for the terror attack is a significant change in policy, or at least in stated policy. Perhaps it will change in policy on the ground too.

Perhaps we can hope that it will change how Israel relates to our other enemy, the Palestinian Authority. (And using the same policy, are they really a separate entity/enemy, or should their internal squabbles with Hamas not really concern us?)

Food for thought.

Shabbat Shalom.

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