Expert: Biden Administration Wants to Legitimize Hamas
An expert in Arab0-Israel relations recently published a paper in which he claimed the Biden administration has been guiding the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in order to fast-track the creation of a terrorist state inside Israel.
Hints of a Bigger Plan
From the moment Biden took office, there have been indications that he intends to re-establish close ties with the “Palestinians” and further their claims over Israeli territory. Just a few hours after he took the oath on January 20, the Twitter profile of the US ambassador to Israel was switched to say ‘Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.’ Though this was quickly changed back, it sent shock waves among Jews around the world.
The post was also blatantly inaccurate. The United States does not officially maintain any diplomatic office in the Palestinian territories nor provide consular services to Palestinians, and since the closure of the PLO mission in Washington D.C. in October 2018, the Palestinians have had no diplomatic representation in the United States. Additionally, there have never been diplomatic relations with Gaza since it is run by Hamas which is classified by the US State Department as a terrorist organization.
Biden: Assisted by Israeli Leftists
Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a senior lecturer in Arabic studies at Bar Ilan University and a lieutenant colonel (reserves) in the IDF, recently wrote about this in a paper for the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), stating his opinion that the Biden administration is being “assisted by Israeli leftists who want to bring a Palestinian state into existence as quickly as possible.”
“Today the Biden administration wants to return the Palestinian issue to the diplomatic center stage,” Dr. Kedar wrote. “From the administration’s standpoint, the problem is not Israel, which is caught in its deep dependency on the US. The problem is the Palestinian Authority…The administration sees the PA as harder than Israel to tempt to return to the “peace” process and is therefore investing much more time and effort in luring it back.”
PA Elections: Establishing Palestinian Legitimacy in Jerusalem
In an interesting twist, Dr. Kedar sees the Israeli elections as being weaponized against Israel.
“[The Biden administration] is pressuring PM Netanyahu to enable Palestinian elections not only in the West Bank and Gaza but also in East Jerusalem, which would prove to the world that Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is no longer valid,” Dr. Kedar wrote.
Arabs living in Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem do not vote in Israeli elections because Oslo established that they are citizens of the Palestinian Authority that were established by those accords in 1993 and, as such, would vote for their own leaders. In January, President Mahmoud Abbas announced that the PA would be holding elections sometime within seven months. The last time elections were held in the PA was 2006. If Dr. Kedar’s theory is true, the tactic, intended to establish a PA hold in Jerusalem, could prove dangerous for Abbas. In those elections to determine rule over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria, Hamas won 74 seats out of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council which led to the PA and Abbas being ejected from Gaza.
It seems clear that the PA is content at not holding elections. “The idea to use the elections to produce legitimacy probably came from Washington,” Dr. Kedar noted.
Repackaging Hamas to Make it Look Good
Dr. Kedar also noted that along with the PA, Hamas is also establishing itself in the White House via their proxy, the Muslim Brotherhood who “want to make Hamas look kosher.”
“Portraying the group as a civic organization and a legitimate political party rather than the genocidal terrorist group that it is constitutes the best way to legitimize it in the US media and in international politics,” Dr. Kedar wrote, referring to a letter the Palestinian Authority reportedly sent to Washington. In the letter, the PA claims that all Palestinian factions, including Hamas, were committed to a bilateral agreement with Israel that would create a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem. The letter claimed that all factions were committed to limiting themselves to non-violent resistance against Israel.
Dr. Kedar suggested that just as the elections were conceived by the PA under the tutelage of the Biden administration, so too the letter.
“Undoubtedly this letter was jointly drafted by the administration and the PA before its sending was publicized, just as there is no doubt that Hamas announced its willingness to participate in the elections, and feigned agreement to accept Israel’s existence within the 1967 borders, after contacts between its leaders, its Muslim Brotherhood counterparts in the US, and the administration,” Dr. Kedar wrote.
It should be noted that Hamas has in its “Covenant”, formally known in English as the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement originally issued in 1988 an unwavering and unequivocal call for a violent end to the Jewish presence in the region. Article 13 of the covenant states that “there is no negotiated settlement possible. Jihad is the only answer.” The charter cites sources from the Koran and anti-Semitic tropes to call for violence against Jews everywhere. Hamas has never changed that position.
Dr. Kedar suggested that this repackaging of Hamas in order to make it palatable to the public was being orchestrated from within the Biden staff by a pro-Palestinian staffer. One candidate might be Maher Bitar, an anti-Israel Palestinian who currently serves as Biden’s senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council.
Israeli Leftists
Dr. Kedar, known for being direct and outspoken, placed the blame for this dangerous development on Israeli leftists who are using nefarious tactics to sidestep Israeli democracy, an arena in which they are quickly losing relevance.
“If US officials are guiding the PA on its path to a US-supported state, Israeli leftists are likely taking part in the effort and advising the Americans and the Palestinians on how to foist a Palestinian state on Israel,” Dr. Kedar wrote. “This will be despite the opposition of the Israeli majority, which fears that such a state will turn into a much more dangerous terror entity than the one that exists in Gaza.”
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