One small step?

Why is this happening now? Is it to do with Ramadan, land rights, Bibi, Yom Yerushalayim and so on?

I may be wrong, but I think those are all more minor "hooks" to hang a new round of conflict on, but I don't think they are what is motivating Hamas. I'm going to put the issue of PA elections on one side, though I think that is also relevant, and look at the Israeli elections, or should I say, electoral chaos?

It seems to me that the Hamas response is due to the change in the Israeli Islamist party which has broken ranks with the main anti-Zionist Israeli Arab political parties and said that it wants to put the national conflict aside for now and focus on domestic issues it has in common with Israeli Jews in order to better provide for the needs of the Israeli Muslim community.

It's maybe one of the biggest impacts of this covid year which has put so much focus on local policy from the economy to public health to the balancing of protecting public health while protecting freedom of worship and so many related issues.

In April 2020 the leader of the Islamist Party, Mansour Abbas, also addressed the Knesset on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, to express his solidarity with the Jewish people's suffering during the Holocaust, emphasising that this was a day to put aside the national conflict between Jews and Arabs. 

Abbas has been meeting with rabbis from across the spectrum, from Hareidi to religious Zionist. Recently the head of Israel's Islamic Party has been going to the home of Israel's most senior religious Zionist rabbi, Rav Druckman, senior in the Bnei Akiva yeshiva system, and meeting there with him and other senior religious Zionist rabbis, having interfaith dialogue, talking about issues they can cooperate on.

Yes, so far the actual politicians haven't agreed on a coaltion, Smoterich remains resolutely opposed to working with Islamists, but the rabbis, the spiritual leaders are trying to build bridges to the Muslim community. This is a huge step forward in reconciliation and one can only hope more grassroots understanding and good relations. Yes, it is motivated by political expediency on both sides, but also a realisation that covid and Israel's electoral stalemate have brought, that different communities have to work together or the political system will remain permanently gridlocked.

Hamas is livid about what it sees as "betrayal" and "normalisation" between Muslims and Jews in Israel. It needs to incite a new round of conflict to stay relevant, and to block this attempt at building better Muslim-Jewish relations in Israel, and maybe healing some of the animosity, because any kind of normalisation or interfaith understanding makes Hamas irrelevant.

To be clear, I don't think brotherly love has broken out between Israel's Islamists and religious Zionists, but interfaith dialogue and intercommunity cooperation is a start, a way for people to get to know each other better and maybe through that come to make a real peace with each other. Even if not coalition comes of their talks, a door has been opened, contact made. One can only hope and pray that this will be a building block toward better relations between different communities and a way forward to real peace one day. That is what has Hamas spooked and anxious to ignite another war.