Hamas signed a unity deal with the Palestinian Authority (PA), and glorified the murder of IDF soldiers on its official TV station, all on the very same day. As the deal was being inked, Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV showed actors playing IDF soldiers enter Gaza with on-screen text warning "you will end up in Hell." The pseudo-soldiers were then shot one-by-one by a Hamas sniper, who collected their dog tags as a text read "our harvest is your heads." PMW notes that last Wednesday, a week before the unity deal, the official PA daily reported that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was poised to sign an unprecedented reconciliation agreement with the PA. In the article, Haniyeh was quoted as saying "the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers is part of the agenda of the Palestinian resistance and of the Hamas movement, and will continue as long as there are Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prisons."
In declaring the suspension of peace talks in response on Thursday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stated that the PA "instead of choosing peace...formed an alliance with a murderous terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel." The PA, in response to the suspension, threatened that "all options" were being weighed, even while saying the Hamas unity deal is "the priority now." For it's part, the European Union (EU) welcomed the PA deal with Hamas, with one spokesperson saying the EU "welcomes the prospect of genuine democratic elections" as outlined by the deal. It is worth noting that Hamas is on the EU's list of terrorist organizations. That listing specifically includes both "Hamas" and "Hamas-Izz al-Din al-Qassem," meaning that both the military and diplomatic branches of Hamas are recognized as terror groups by the EU.
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