The Middle East has a terrorist club - opinion

• Author: KENNETH BANDLER
• Published date: 28 September 2021

Welcoming "the defeat of the American occupation on all Afghan land," Hamas praised the Taliban's "courageous leadership on this victory, which was the culmination of its long struggle over the past 20 years." The Taliban, in turn, declared that Israel is the only country it would not establish relations with.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who moved to Qatar from Gaza in 2019, and Taliban leaders, who opened a Doha office in 2013, reportedly met in May, soon after the last Hamas-Israel conflict. "The end of the US occupation of Afghanistan is a prelude to the end of the Israeli occupation of the land of Palestine," Haniyeh told the Taliban's Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who today is Afghanistan's deputy prime minister.

cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });

>

Does Hamas, which has sought for more than 34 years Israel's eradication, have a new sense of confidence in fulfilling its founding Charter, to establish an Islamic state on what is now Israel, including Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza?

Hamas's governance of Gaza is not an existential threat to Israel, but it is the roadblock to advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace, and particularly to resolving the quandary of the Palestinian coastal enclave that Israel left in 2005. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, there has been an uptick in Hamas violence – rockets, incendiary balloons, an IDF soldier shot dead, and protests along the border – that undermines the May ceasefire ending the 11-day Hamas-initiated battle that involved firing 4,000 rockets and missiles into Israel. Not even a fresh delivery of Qatari cash to aid Gazans has quieted Hamas for a moment.

The United States and several European countries that have long recognized Hamas as a terrorist organization, have been struggling, as they have following previous Hamas-Israel clashes, to figure out how to deliver humanitarian relief and other aid to Palestinians in Gaza without dealing with Hamas. Meanwhile, American and many other media continue to refer to Hamas and its terrorist allies as "militants," not "terrorists."

From his Doha perch, Haniyeh has more freedom to travel than during his time as Gaza prime minister following the Hamas coup in June 2007 that ousted the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.

Haniyeh met in Tehran with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on August 6. The previous day, Haniyeh, along with representatives of Hezbollah and...