Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is being called to account by Israel for damages from kite bombs launched by Hamas while he seeks to contain the spread of protests from the Gaza Strip and Jordan to the West Bank. 

Shlomi Eldar writes that Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman “reported to his party’s lawmakers that since the mass protests against Israel began along the border fence on March 30, the Palestinians had launched some 600 firebombs into Israeli territory. Israel intercepted about 400 using various technological means, while the rest landed and blackened 9,000 dunams (2,224 acres) of land, including crops and forests.”

Ben Caspit writes that the costs and panic caused by the kite bombs have seemed to neutralize developments involving Israel’s technological dominance and success against mortar attacks. “For the first time ever, Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system successfully shot down barrages of short-range mortar shells fired extensively by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas at Israeli settlements adjacent to the border fence,” Caspit reports. “This significant achievement has flown under the radar because of the incendiary kites being launched from Gaza. For the past few weeks, Israel has been left helpless in dealing with the new Palestinian ‘weapon,’ which sets its fields and settlements on fire on a daily basis. … It doesn’t know what to do about kites flown from the Gaza Strip with flaming torches attached to their tails.”

Abu Mazen, as Abbas is known, can’t seem to win. While his people support the Gaza protests, his economic policies to pressure Hamas have made hardships there even more unbearable. His security cooperation with Israel is often perceived as a sign of weakness rather than strength. The quiet mediation efforts to de-escalate Israel-Hamas violence are also out of his control, another indicator of his limited leverage. Ahmad Melhem writes, “The desire of the parties to refrain from military escalation indicate that the word that circulated in Arab and Hebrew media circles in May about Egyptian and Qatari mediation attempts to conclude a long-term truce between Hamas and Israel to ease the siege on Gaza — which Al-Monitor reported on — is likely true.”