The killing has gone too far
Now, this is a very dangerous moment. The killing and fighting has escalated to the brink of a major conflict — one that all sides have said they want to avoid. But, the momentum is there.
And, tonight, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — who last spring said that Hamas in Gaza were terrorist murderers — called the senior Hamas leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, to offer his condolences on the death of his son. It was the second of Zahar’s sons to be killed by the Israeli military.
Reuters reported this evening that “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called a leader of rival Hamas on Wednesday to commiserate on the killing of his son by Israeli forces, Hamas said, the first such contact since a Palestinian factional schism last year. Hamas routed Abbas’s secular Fatah to take over the Gaza Strip in June, prompting the Palestinian president to shun the Islamist group and step up Western-sponsored peace efforts with Israel. Hamas refuses to give up fighting the Jewish state. Hamas said Abbas suspended his boycott by phoning Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official whose son, a gunman, was among 18 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on Tuesday. ‘In the first call since June, President Mahmoud telephoned Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar … and paid his condolences at the killing of Zahar’s son, said Taher al-Nono, spokesman for the Hamas administration in Gaza. ‘The telephone conversation was very friendly and the two leaders spoke at length about the current political situation and they both stressed the unity of the Palestinian people regardless of the differences’ … Israeli officials have said rapprochement between Abbas and Hamas could scupper peace talks”. The Reuters report of the Abbas condolence call to Zahar is published here.
Tags: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Palestinians