Egyptian General in Gaza to Oversee Palestinian Reconciliation

Israelis have watched with growing interest in recent days as prominent opinion makers in the Arab world continue to say nice things about the Jewish State in a radical shift from decades which have been characterized by cold indifference at best and naked hostility at worst. Hamza AlSalem, assistant professor at the College of Business Administration at Prince Sultan University in Riyadh, recently tweeted that following a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, Saudi tourists would happily flock to the Jewish State. He then called it “one of God’s most beautiful countries.

“It has combined the spirit of the beauty of the east and west, old and new civilizations,” he continued. “When we have made peace with Israel, exploitation of it will become nonexistent. The government will not accept inciting against it.”
Other Saudi journalists and even public officials have made a point of declaring in recent weeks that Iran and jihadist groups like Al Qaeda are a much greater threat to Saudi Arabia than Israel.

In related news, reports out of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip indicate that a senior official from Egypt’s Intelligence Service has arrived to provide oversight to the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Under an agreement signed by the factions in October, the PA is supposed to take over administrative control of the Strip by 1 December, but bickering and accusations have gone back and forth between officials from both sides, casting doubt on the timetable.

In the latest example of this phenomenon, Hamas deputy chief in Gaza Khalil al-Hayya held a press conference on Monday in which he declared that he plans to send weapons previously aimed at Israel from the Gaza Strip into the West Bank to use in terror operations there.

“These weapons will be moved to the West Bank to battle the occupation,” he said. “We want to fight the occupation in the West Bank. It is our right to resist the occupation until it ends.”

He added that demands from the PA that Hamas disarm as part of the reconciliation agreement signed in October were totally unacceptable to him.

“These weapons are our honor, our strength, our dignity and the existence of the Palestinian people in all its force… We do not accept putting these weapons on the table or talking about them,” Hayya said.

Several other terrorist groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have also said they will not surrender their weapons in response to repeated demands by the PA that “there will only be one weapon, one authority and one law” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.