NO 1:
You linked to an Arutz Sheva story, not me, so the critique stands. Walla! is closely tied to the Netenyahus through strong but informal links through its board of directors to the Likud establishment, so there is allegedly more grounds for skepticism there too.
That Hamas has a role in these protests is not denied. But the important point being ignored or deflected about the Great March of Return movement is that many other non-militant grass-root groups in Gaza have organised and are backing this movement too and thus challenging Hamas' traditional near-monopoly on dissent in Gaza since their ascendency to power in 2006. That scares Hamas and that also scares parts of the Israeli establishment too, because it is a lot easier to vilify, demonise, dehumanise and thus violently oppress a Gaza led by a militant organisation like Hamas than it would be to oppress a widespread resistance movement rooted in non-violent but fully confrontational civil society. The only way Israel can prevent or hinder an effective civil society based protest movement in Gaza from emerging is to use draconian measures and lethal force to provoke more Gazans into the arms of Hamas by radicalising them so that they can be demonised and thus crushed and kept in check by force. If protests and protesters become too legitimate looking to the wider world, Israel will become effectively disarmed and far more toothless in combating Palestinian resistance. Israel fears a Mahatma Gandhi emerging among the Palestinians far more than a modern day Nur al-Din or a Baybars.
But Gazan youth are waking up to the failure of their grandfathers' and fathers' generation of violent resistance and are beginning to understand that cameras, cell phones, drones, flash-mobs, non-centralized command structures, social media, meme culture and peer-to-peer communication with the rest of the world, coupled with obstinate, forceful but non-violent/minimally-violent resistance will threaten Israeli interests far more than sling stones or rockets ever could. Israel has realised this too and is now beginning to target non-violent dissent and resistance as if it was violence through judicial and military "thwarting" of non-violent resistance organisers. A civil and electronic intifada is a far more threatening prospect to Israel than a violent one could ever be.
Thus Israel, in a perverse way, needs Hamas (and Hamas needs Israel) in order to maintain the visceral hate, the cycle of violence and the resultant radicalisation of Gazans so as to marginalise non-violent/less-violent resistance from developing and to prevent the emergence of a legitimate civil society devoted to such resistance. Both Hamas and Israel need to justify the mutual violence which keeps both Gaza and Israel polarised and thus capable of socially acceptable oppression and slaughter, so there can be no room allowed for a third way by each powerful pole in the dispute.
Cheers.
Evilroddy.
