About three months ago we reported here on the victory of Hamas at Bir Zeit University, a victory that is the second starting point for the battle for Jenin that is now taking place between the Palestinians. The first starting point for this battle is the victories of Hamas in Hebron and Tulkarm in the local elections that took place six months ago. These two events caused deep concern among the Fatah leadership that it might be losing its decisive role in Palestinian public life to Hamas. Among the second circle of the Fatah leadership, the recognition then spread that it was necessary to go out into the land like Hamas is doing, and to become Jenin again as they called this going out into the streets and win recognition again that Fatah is the leading liberation movement of the Palestinians. This trend among the leadership of the Fatah movement increased the power of Marwan Barghouti, and Palestinian President Abbas was quick to respond and appointed his associate Hussein A. Sheikh as Secretary General of the PLO's working committee. As we reported here about a month ago, he appointed Muhammad Al Madani, also a close associate of the president, as head of the Tanzim. We will get to this story in a moment.
The victory of Hamas at Bir Zeit University continued to make waves in Fatah, and about a month ago we reported here about the Tanzim's rally against the head of the movement, who is also President Abbas; The heads of the Tanzim threatened to resign, and the head of the Tanzim in Ramallah carried out the threat and resigned. The Tanzim leadership's claim was that Abu Mazen does not respond to the victories of Hamas, which could end in the defeat of Fatah and the Tanzim and in Hamas's takeover of the Palestinian Authority and the entry of the extreme Islamic movement into the shoes of the PLO as the official representative of the Palestinian people. As a result of this incident, Abu Mazen appointed Muhammad al-Madani as the head of the Tanzim. And Al Madani did calm the streets.
The ending in the battle for Jenin and the northern West Bank started about two weeks ago when Hamas and Fatah clashed at Najah University in Nablus. Fatah then tried to narrow the steps of Hamas in the important university.

In this collision, a Fatah activist who lives in Kfar Kalil near Nablus was injured; The head of Hamas in the West Bank, Dr. Nasser Aladdin Al-Sha'ar, decided to travel to the activist's home and participate in the reconciliation, and to reconcile with Fatah in order not to escalate the Fatah-Hamas conflict into an all-out war, as happened in the Gaza Strip in 2007. But Al-Sha'ar apparently did not realize that a trap was being laid for him, and on the way to Kilil he was assassinated by Fatah operatives, Tanzim (see a comprehensive report on the affair in previous issues) and he was injured in his legs. From here Pandora's box opened between the three Palestinian organizations Tanzim, Hamas and Jihad. Our assessment is that the organizations tried to settle accounts with each other, and they informed Israel about the activists of the other organizations. Our assessment is that this is also how the head of the jihad in the West Bank was captured, after his colleagues tipped him off. His arrest escalated the tension between Israel and Jihad, and according to the IDF, the Jihad intended to carry out a terrorist attack in southern Israel, as revenge for the arrest of its important leader, the IDF attacked the terrorists on their way to carry out the attack. This is how Operation ALOT HASHACHAR began.
One of the interesting things about this chain of events, most of the details of which we reported here exclusively, is that Hamas did not respond with fire against Fatah in retaliation for the assassination attempt on its leader Al Sha'ar in the hallways of Kfar Kalil, and our questions about Al Sha'ar's whereabouts after the assassination were also ignored. We do not know then where al-Sha'ar was treated, and where he is now. We know that a war between Fatah and Hamas did not break out after the assassination. Since Al-Sha'ar was on his way to reconciliation with Fatah, and since there is no evidence of clashes between Fatah and Hamas, it is very possible that this reconciliation that was supposed to begin, was renewed after the assassination of Al-Sha'ar and perhaps even increased in the level of participants, and it is now taking place directly between Muhammad al-Madani and Nasr al-Din al-Sha'ar. If this reconciliation was indeed renewed, this explains Hamas's avoidance of participating in the war in Gaza. And if the reconciliation is renewed and there is an agreement between Al Madani and Al Sha'er in the future, the plans of Iran and its ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, will suffer a severe blow. As we reported here, Iran relied in its regional plans on Hamas as an important part of the axis it established against Israel, and it even transferred a lot of money to it (see the route of funds in a previous report). And if Hamas withdraws from Iran's axis, at least some of the wind in Hezbollah's sails will disappear.