June 16, 2014
The Times of Israel reports: “The timing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s condemnation Monday morning of the kidnapping of three Israeli youths is no coincidence; nor is the timing of his telephone conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Over the preceding 48 hours, it seems, something has shifted in the upper echelons of the PA and Abbas’s Fatah party. Essentially, Abbas has come to realize that the recently inked unity pact with Hamas ended at the moment of the abduction.
In off-the-record conversations, confidants of Abbas’s say that Hamas will pay a steep price for the kidnapping — beyond the massive Israeli operation to recover the abductees, Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar and Naftali Frenkel — in the form of punitive steps with which the PA plans to target Hamas in Gaza…”Partner With Us: