Israel-Hamas talks isolate Abbas

In the 25 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, Israel stuck tenaciously to a single, clear policy. It would engage in negotiations with the PLO (and later with Palestinian Authority [PA] leadership) and wage a relentless war against Hamas terrorism, which was seen as being the greatest foe of the two-state solution.

For the first time ever, Israeli policy is changing right before our eyes and becoming the exact opposite of what it once was. The current government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett may be the most right-wing government in Israeli history, but now it is isolating the PA and conducting negotiations with Hamas. Israel is punishing the entity with which it signed a long list of agreements and “rewarding” Hamas — even though it still does not recognize Israel and remains committed to its underlying goal of destroying the Jewish state and expelling its Jewish population to “wherever they came from.”