You have to hand it to the Palestinian leadership. Whether the PA or their brothers in Gaza, it's not hard to argue that they haven't delivered a whole lot for their people over these last thirty or forty years.
Except in one area. When it comes to blood-curdling rhetoric, the Palestinian leadership is second to none. Thus, after the dispatching of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari by an IDF missile on Wednesday, Hamas spokesmen were quick to proclaim that the Israeli's had "opened the gates of hell".
Alas, opening the gates of hell is a little more difficult than opening one's mouth to announce it, and that is where the Hamas leadership is playing directly into Netanyahu's election campaign. There is utterly no objective reason whatsoever for the recent escalation other than Netanyahu's obsession with being perceived as the strongman who will stand up to terror when the voters head to the polling stations in January.
How much more fruitful it would have been for Hamas to rein in the rocketeers in the run-up to this election. Keep their mouths shut and their powder dry even in the face of the inevitable provocations that Netanyahu was assured to send their way. Maybe even take the initiative in reaching out to peace-minded Israelis.
But no, they did the predictable thing that Netanyahu was counting on. And now he has a chance to strut about as the heroic savior of the Holy Land, just in time for the election.
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