SUNDAY'S murderous bus in Jerusalem and Ashkelon, claimed by Hamas, terminated a six month truce between it and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and led to the arrest of scores of Ham as activists.
The fact that the bombings took place on the second anniversary of the massacre of 29 Palestinians by an Israeli settler in the mosque at Hebron and 50 days after Israel assassinated the Hamas bomb maker, Yehya Ayash, demonstrated that Hamas was only biding its time in order to strike at a moment which would most impress Palestinian public opinion.
The bombings exploded the expectation that Hamas would suspend its violent operations against Israel in order to secure political concessions from the PNA.
A Palestinian from a leading Gaza family told The Irish Times that Hamas was prepared to risk confrontation with the PNA at this time because 800,000 of the 850,000 people living in Gaza have nothing to gain from good relations with the Palestinian Authority or from the peace process. Only the 50,000 who do business and have enough to eat stand to lose... The bombings are popular because they give the majority of poor people self respect."
The prompt imposition of a prolonged "closure" of Gaza and the West Bank by Israel would seem to serve the interests of the Islamists because sealing off these areas can only increase Palestinian suffering.
Today there are only some 30,000 Palestinians working part time in Israel, not enough to give Palestinian society an incentive to curb the Islamist militants. As a comprehensive collective punishment, "closure" antagonises the entire society. And unless there are social constraints on the militants, the PNA's practice of "rounding up the usual suspects" could simply spur the Islamists to launch more attacks and further alienate the majority of Palestinians.
Palestinians were outraged yesterday when the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, dismissed Palestinian militants as "mosquitoes" and Palestinian society as the "swamp" harbouring the "mosquitoes".
