Wetherhorn

This morning we woke up to the aftermath of the latest spasm of violence in Gaza.
T probably won’t be the last. To be fair, conditions for the “average” resident of the Gaza enclave are about 20% worse than appalling. But that doesn’t seem to make much difference to the Hamas rulers. Their lives are not affected by the poverty of their “subjects”. There have been cases where the people took to the streets to protest. Hamas is very aware of this. In the past they were able to redirect the complaints toward the “Zionist occupation”. That hasn’t stopped, but it has obviously lost some of its importance. The relatively poor turnout for the recent demonstrations at the fence is one of the symptoms. Hamas knows it has failed as a governing body for the people under its control. That was the main reason they asked Fatah to come back. The deal was going to be that Hamas would turn over civil administration but keep their armed militia. Fatah told them that wouldn’t work. Giving u their arms had to be part of the deal. So nothing really happened.
This time, a smaller terror group called the Islamic Jihad had lost a member to Israeli responses at the fence. They vowed retribution. Firing mortars into Israel was their chosen way of doing this. Hamas even joined in a bit later. When the Israeli Air Force reacted, Hamas called on Egypt to arrange a cease fire. What remained was how to win the media battle and make this a Hamas victory in the eyes of Gaza residents, other Arabs, and the world. It remains to be seen whether they can accomplish this.
But whatever happens, Hamas isn’t likely to redirect funding from building rockets and tunnels for terrorism and the lot of the “average” resident there is not likely to improve.