Getting Back To The Attack On Eilat...

With all the focus on Lebanon, Monday's missile attack on Eilat has taken a back seat.

Assuming that the terrorists who fired the rockets had a goal in mind--what is it.
The standard response is that the attacks are geared towards derailing the peace process (though that would seem to be redundant).

Evelyn Gordon speculates that the goal is something else:

that the recent spate of attacks on Israel’s south are meant not to keep Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “from pursuing genuine give-and-take bargaining with Israel,” as Jager put it, but to help him in wringing concessions from Israel.

That Abbas has no interest in direct talks with Israel is impossible to miss. He himself has said so repeatedly, as have other senior PA officials: he begged the Arab League (unsuccessfully) to back him in refusing direct talks just last week, and PA officials have complained bitterly of the pressure they are under to begin the talks. So if Hamas’s recent escalation — and whether or not the Eilat/Aqaba strike came from Hamas-controlled Gaza, as Egypt claims, the weekend’s Grad and Qassam rocket strikes on southern Israel definitely did — provoked an Israeli retaliation that Abbas could paint as an “atrocity” and use as an excuse for nixing talks, nobody would be happier than Abbas.

In response to question as to why Hamas would want to help Abbas wring more concessions from Israel, Gordon demonstrates that Hamas has shown that it is able to control the attacks on Israel--both rocket attacks and suicide bombers--when it considers it to be to its benefit.

While it may help to get the West to realize this is the game that is being played, it is not clear whether the West would have the wherewithal to put an end to the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens.

Technorati Tag: Terrorism and Eilat and Hamas.