Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan announced that he intends to encourage Israeli citizens to carry weapons for their personal safety, stressing that the move is necessary in light of the recent Palestinian reconciliation agreement between the West Bank-based Fatah faction and the Gaza-based Hamas. Minister Erdan, who inaugurated a new firearms licensing bureau in central Israel, went on to underline that the Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been inciting to violence by paying the families of Palestinians who commit acts of terror against Israelis, has now shown his true face by seeking unity with an outright and armed terrorist group that openly calls for Israel’s destruction. With regard to the Israeli security cabinet’s decision not to negotiate with the Palestinian unity government, which Hamas is a part of, Minister Erdan declared that so long as the Islamist Hamas organization continues to promote terror against Israel, the Jewish state cannot, and will not, negotiate with a terrorist government.
A senior Palestinian official rejected the decision by Israel’s security cabinet, accusing Prime Minister Netanyahu of seeking “new excuses meant to lead negotiations to a deadlock, since Israel has never wanted the West Bank to reconnect with Gaza.” That said, while the Israeli security cabinet announced its decision about practically boycotting the Palestinian unity government, the Palestinian official stressed that all political negotiations and signed agreements were always conducted with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which the official stressed was “the Palestinian people’s only recognized and legitimate representative.” That is why, the Palestinian official declared the Israeli security cabinet’s decision as “populist by nature, which does not have any basis for delaying the US-brokered peace process,” aimed at ending the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.