Opinion | Ben Cohen: Gaza's winter misery is Hamas's playbook, not Israel's doing

In a JNS column, Ben Cohen argues that the flooding now battering Gaza's tent camps is being turned into a weapon against Israel by the same group making it worse: Hamas.

Cohen points to a Nov. 9 statement from Fatah, the main faction in the Palestinian Authority, holding Hamas "responsible for negligence and failure to intervene to save citizens and alleviate their suffering," while aid workers are "summoned and forced to sign pledges" that keep them from doing their jobs. He cites Palestinian observer Ahmad Fouad Alkhatib, who says P.A. staff were threatened with "field justice" if they ran aid projects without Hamas's approval.

Meanwhile, Cohen writes, Israel's COGAT says more than 90,000 tents and over 8,000 trucks of winter supplies have reached Gaza, and more than 800 aid group requests have been approved. Hamas still blames Israel, and he expects Europe, the U.N. and the activist crowd to repeat that line.

He recalls Yahya Sinwar's own words, "We are ready to sacrifice twenty thousand, thirty thousand, a hundred thousand," and says the coming images of torn tents and crowds at aid trucks are "in perfect sync with the Sinwar playbook."

Cohen faults the Trump-created Board of Peace for calling Israel's winter response "insufficient" without acknowledging the dual-use problem: cement becomes bunkers, tent poles become weapons, water pipes become rockets. And he warns that sending foreign stabilization troops in while Hamas still rules by the gun would be "an act of madness," recalling U.N. peacekeepers who became hostages to Serb forces in 1990s Bosnia.

His bottom line: "Hamas remains in power. Hamas remains armed." Until that changes, there is no real fix for Gaza.