At a bombshell joint press conference Thursday, Fatah Secretary-General Jibril Rajoub and Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri announced that their organizations would “unify their efforts” and collaborate “on the ground” to confront the threat of Israel’s annexation of parts of the West Bank.
If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proceeds with his promised unilateral annexation, Rajoub said in Ramallah, “all options are open.” Speaking from Beirut on a screen set up next to him, al-Arouri vowed that “all forms of struggle” could be pursued after annexation.
The joint declaration by the two main Palestinian factions raised the specter of a return to the Palestinian terror waves of the Second Intifada, when attackers linked to both Fatah and Hamas carried out numerous deadly suicide bombings and other attacks targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers.
The joint declaration by the two main Palestinian factions raised the specter of a return to the Palestinian terror waves of the Second Intifada, when attackers linked to both Fatah and Hamas carried out numerous deadly suicide bombings and other attacks targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Bringing Hamas leader al-Arouri on stage, literally and figuratively, gave Rajoub’s bitter criticisms of Israel’s annexation plans — and his vows to resist them, which he has issued several times in the recent past — a sharper edge: Al-Arouri has a $5 million US State Department bounty on his head for orchestrating multiple acts of terrorism. Responsible from exile for Hamas’s West Bank terrorist infrastructure, he is most notorious as the mastermind behind the 2014 murders of three Israeli teenagers, kidnapped and killed outside the Etzion Bloc settlement of Alon Shvut as they headed home from their yeshiva high schools.
A return to the “armed struggle” could prove popular for Fatah with the Palestinian public. In a recent opinion poll by the Palestinian Center for Survey and Policy Research, 52 percent of Palestinians supported “armed struggle” in response to annexation; 45% said it was the best way forward.
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