Opinion

Hamas rules

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been up front about any Israeli rescue of the three teens — one a US citizen — kidnapped while hitchhiking last week by Palestinian terrorists : It will take time.

The kidnapping reminds us of the harsh realities of the Middle East our State Department ignored this month when it embraced the new Palestinian unity government formed when rival factions Hamas and Fatah came together.

The naïve hope seemed to be that Hamas, which the United States designates as a foreign terrorist organization, was somehow opting for reconciliation over terror when it agreed to work with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Now we have our answer: Even John Kerry acknowledges the evidence points to Hamas as being behind the kidnapping.

There’s a chilling logic to it all.

On the Palestinian street, the kidnapping is openly celebrated. Plainly, Hamas sees it as an opportunity to bolster its popular support in the West Bank, possibly even replicating the deal in which more than 1,000 terrorists were sprung from prison in exchange for a single Israeli soldier who’d been kidnapped.

Meanwhile, President Abbas condemns the kidnapping and pledges to help find the missing teens. But he knows that working too closely with Israel will undermine him among Palestinians.

Hamas knows it, too — and has already criticized Abbas for agreeing to help Israel in the search. Ironically, all this comes just as Abbas’ wife underwent secret leg surgery at a top Israeli hospital.

Even more telling, the mother-in-law of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was given cancer treatment at an Israeli facility in Jerusalem.

This, too, is the reality Washington seems to ignore. On one side, we have a Jewish state, in the midst of a war for survival, willing to lend a helping hand even to relatives of those bent on destroying it.

On the other, we have leaders talking out of both sides of their mouths, and terror as usual.