A hero cut down in crossfire of Hamas power struggle - The Jewish Chronicle

Barely two days after Home Secretary Priti Patel accounced the UK government’s intention to designate the political wing of Hamas as a terror organisation, 26 year-old Eliyahu David Kay was murdered by Fadi Abu Shkaydem, a member of the group’s political wing.

The two events are only tangentially connected. Security services believe Abu Shkhaydem, a 42-year-old Islamic preacher and teacher, was working alone without any organisational support. His decision to shoot a group of Israelis, killing Mr Kay, a tour guide at the nearby Western Wall, and wounding four others, was motivated by his anger at the entry of Jews to the Al Aqsa mosque compound on Temple Mount.

The British government’s decision was not motivated specifically by Hamas’ terrorist activities but rather the result of an ongoing, quiet campaign of persuasion by the Israeli government, backed up by the US, emphasising both Hamas’s connections with Iran and how it has used London for decades as the hub of fundraising operations in the West.

But the two events are signs of the crossroads that faces the Palestinian-Islamist movement. There are other such signs: the arrests in recent days of dozens of Hamas operatives in the West Bank by Israeli security forces and the seizure of weapons and explosives which were to be used for devices to be detonated against Israeli citizens; and reports of a possible breakthrough in talks with Hamas leaders in Egypt on a proposed prisoner exchange.

Hamas in Gaza was quick to endorse Abu Shkhadem’s attack and congratulate his family on his “martyrdom.” Its operations chief, Saleh al-Arouri, has been shuttling between Turkey and Lebanon and is in charge of the military build-up in the West Bank that was exposed this week by the Shin Bet. But other Hamas leaders, chiefly former chairman of the political wing and current “diaspora director” Khaled Mashal, have been calling both for a change of strategy and some distance from Iran’s Shia axis.

Mashal used to count among his allies Hamas Gaza chief, Yihya Sinwar, who has pushed for a long-term truce in Israel to end the blockade of Gaza and prepare for Palestinian elections originally scheduled for summer. But ever since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas postponed elections indefinitely, Sinwar joined the pro-Iran faction, led by current political wing chairman Ismail Haniyeh. Some say that it was only temporary.

This shift in the power struggle within Hamas’ leadership led to the decision in May to launch rockets against Israel, triggering 12 days of warfare between Israel and Gaza. The ceasefire with Gaza has held now for six months, except for a few rockets. Hamas is back negotiating in Cairo. But still it tries to have it both ways by keeping up the pressure of terror attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The proscribing of its political wing in Britain will only deepen its dilemma over its future strategy. Even if its leaders choose diplomacy for now, many members like Abu Shkhaydem will refuse to accept that.

Court in the act

Seven-and-a-half months since the evidence stage of Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial for bribery and fraud began in the Jerusalem District Court, this week was the most dramatic chapter yet. Nir Hefetz, who spent two spells as communications chief for the former prime minister, the first of three former aides who turned state-witness against him, took the stand on Monday, at the start of long weeks of testimony.

Mr Hefetz is a key link to the prosecution’s case that the allegedly favourable coverage Mr Netanyahu received from the Walla website was reciprocated by regulatory decisions worth hundreds of millions of shekels to Walla’s owners. He began by describing Mr Netanyahu’s “control-freak” obsession with media reporting on him and detailed how he had been directed by Mr Netanyahu, wife Sara and son Yair, to pressure Walla to change its coverage. Shaul Elovich, the owner didn’t need pressuring. “Don’t they know Walla is theirs?” he was quoted as saying.

Mr Hefetz was in charge of relaying the demands to Walla at the time of the 2015 Knesset election. On Tuesday, he testified at length on those weeks in which he had been media director of the Likud campaign, in addition to his duties to the Netanyahu family. Likud trailed Labour throughout much of the campaign.

He was there when Mr Netanyahu decided on the spur of the moment on election day to produce a 28-second video warning Likud voters: “The right is in danger of losing power. The Arab voters are moving in droves to the polling-stations. The left-wing NGOs are transporting them.” It’s worth reading this part of the testimony verbatim: “Around 9am on election day, it becomes the central issue for Netanyahu. He gets data from the Likud HQ run by Shlomo Filber that turnout in the Arab sector is higher at that hour than previous elections. Meanwhile, in places with traditionally high voting for Likud, turnout is lower.

“In those hours there are many phone calls between Netanyahu and Shlomo Filber, they go town by town… Increasing concern. His mood becomes bad and anxious. He breaks off the election tour. Very worried about this. It becomes our entire world. We return to Balfour (the prime minister’s residence) with the prime minister in a very bad mood. He’s worried. At some point around noon, he, I and the head of the [online] campaign go into his room.”

“Topaz (the online director) films with his iPhone three takes of the video. It was in Benjamin Netanyahu’s eyes the most dramatic moment of the election campaign. I made sure no-one would disturb. Benjamin Netanyahu chooses the best take and Shlomo Filber who wasn’t with us takes care of it. They had prepared the technological devices in advance… Twenty minutes from the moment I sent the video, [Filber] reported that 700,000 mobile-phones had received it, all in [Likud] areas. After another 25 minutes, it was 1.4 million. The video was running and at polling-stations in Likud areas, there were queues. [The video] got people running.”

Switching channels

At 10pm that night, as the voting ended, the television channels revealed their exit polls. Likud had received the same number of seats as Labour, and the Netanyahu-supporting bloc would have a majority to form a government. They had closed the gap in the polls, but that was only part of the story.

Since the initial exit polls were published on the basis of data collected from the polling stations until about 8pm, they failed to detect the last-minute surge of Likud voters that came in the final hours. As actual results began arriving in the early hours next day, it transpired that Likud hadn’t only won but received 25 per cent more votes than Labour. The “Arabs are moving” video had scored an incredible victory.

This detail alone won’t have much of an impact on the trial. Hefetz was asked about it in court to show one of many examples of how the Walla website, owned by Shaul and Iris Elovich, had allegedly been put at Netanyahu’s disposal, in return for lucrative regulatory favours. In this case, Walla was just one of a number of websites that prominently screened the video on election day and the video was also distributed widely through text messages and WhatsApp groups. But the prosecution was using that anecdote to demonstrate how the Netanyahu media machine worked with the help of a compliant news organisation.

It doesn’t prove the bribery charge, but it paints a highly problematic picture of collusion In Mr Hefetz, the prosecution has a talented storyteller who brought the Netanyahu-Elovich relationship to life in the courtroom.

The next state witness to take the stand will be Shlomo Filber, another advisor and election campaigner of Mr Netanyahu and the former director-general of the communications ministry, who is expected to furnish the details of how media regulations were manipulated in favour of Elovich’s companies.

Whether the judges will be convinced by the prosecution’s extrapolation that the favours from either side did constitute the quid pro quo of bribery remains to be seen.

But the account of those fateful hours on election day in 2015 which ensured Netanyahu would remain in power for another six years will go down in Israeli political history.