The other
day I listened as a friend with a passion for history recalled his college
days. It took him a while, he recounted, to figure out the point of studying
history at all — but eventually he got it: To avoid repeating past mistakes.
“So why,” he asked rhetorically, “do we insist on repeating them?”
Good
question, especially pertinent now, as the drama unfolds over three kidnapped
Israeli teenagers and the group we believe is responsible for their abduction,
Hamas.
Reality
check: Remember Yasser Arafat? The one who led the Palestinian people from one
disaster to the next, who tried in 2000 — and before that in 1996 (and numerous
other times) — to exploit Palestinian violence to strengthen his own reigns of
control and create a “balance of terror” vis-à-vis Israel.
Full of
hubris and inflated self-confidence, Arafat was sure that by encouraging
organized Hamas terrorism — and not less-organized “street” violence — he would
neutralize his rivals, whether Israeli or Palestinian. After these had served
his purposes, he thought, they could be dispensed with.
They were
not. Ironically, one person who apparently understood this better than most was
Mahmoud Abbas. Now head of the Palestinian Authority, he called in 2004 the
Palestinian violence of the second intifada “a complete destruction of
everything we built.”
At the
time, Abbas seemed to comprehend that Arafat was “riding the tiger,” and that
the tiger would turn its head for a chunk of flesh before it could be quelled.
Unfortunately for the political process with Israel, Abbas circa 2014 forgot
that lesson of history. Now it is he who is riding the Hamas tiger, which has
already reared its much more potent head.
Not much
time was required between the signing of the Palestinian unity government
agreement and the open West Bank reappearance of the Hamas and its symbols.
Israel has been through this before, and knows all too well how it ends.
With chaos.
Even in the
best of times, the Middle East teeters on the brink of uncertainty and
instability. With Syria (and Iraq) imploding, with Jordan being tested to the
limits, with Egypt emerging from one of its most challenging periods — the last
thing the region needed was for the PA to roll out a welcome mat to Hamas. But
that’s precisely what it did.
The
kidnapping of the teenagers occurred against this background, and could very
well be a harbinger of worse things to come. We pray that the teens will be
found safe and sound. While we have no choice but to be optimistic on that
front, the future of a PA riding the Hamas tiger promises to be much bleaker.
Abbas has
repeated the historical blunder of his predecessor. Stability and hope in our
region will be the worse for it.
Yehuda
Yaakov is Israel’s Consul General to New England.