The blame for this month's bloodshed lies solely at the feet of Hamas.
Those who wish to divert attention from Hamas's war crimes would like to blame the latest conflict on a complicated legal dispute in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. But this a private matter between Jews who have a property deed from the 1800s and the residents who have refused to pay rent. This cannot be framed as "ethnic cleansing". It is little more than a landlord-tenant squabble. It should have been a matter for the local courts, but instead this small-time event wound up in an appeal at the supreme court, and hit the press. Hamas quickly saw an opportunity.
Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Fatah party, is at his weakest point in many years. He had just cancelled parliamentary elections because he knew he would lose. Hamas saw Sheikh Jarrah as an opportunity to show Palestinians in Jerusalem and elsewhere that they could "do something" while Fatah could not. They spread lies and propaganda on social media, deliberately inciting violence among Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Hamas then "responded" to the riots by firing rockets indiscriminately towards Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, guaranteeing an Israeli military response.
Hamas does not care where these missiles land: as many as one in seven, in fact, have crashed down within Gaza during this latest round of fighting. Hamas sees a lopsided body count as a positive development, as it allows them to claim that Israel is the aggressive party in the conflict they started.
