RUTHFULLY YOURS

As Hamas’s power increases, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its security services are gradually losing their control of the West Bank.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians know that if the PA falls, the best case scenario is that Hamas will take over the West Bank. The worst case scenario is a welcome mat for ISIS.

After Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas threatened yet again that he would end security coordination with Israel, not only has he not ended it, but — luckily for him, as it turned out — it is now stronger than ever. The Israelis, it seems, exposed two separate Hamas networks in the West Bank, both of them planning a mass-casualty attack on Israel and the destruction of the rule of Mahmoud Abbas.

Mahmoud Abbas’s other threat, that he will dissolve the Palestinian Authority (PA), and force Israel to fill the resulting vacuum and incorporate its residents and territories into Israel, also turned out to be cow plop.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians know that if the Palestinian Authority falls, the best case scenario is that Hamas will take over the West Bank, and the worst case scenario is a welcome mat for ISIS. The West Bank will either turn into an Islamic emirate, like the Gaza Strip, or another ISIS province. In both cases, whatever “achievements” the Palestinian Authority has made will be gone forever. The entire Palestinian national consensus government, including Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies, will be executed before the day is out and all the property they have amassed over the years will be distributed as spoils to the victor.

Mahmoud Abbas is fully aware that the last thing the West wants is yet another Islamic emirate. Many inhabitants of the West Bank are also fearful of falling victim to the Islamic religious fanatics who will set them fourteen hundred years back.

Sheltering “refugees” (and invaders) from the Middle East will cost Europe dearly. Not only will the Continent’s beautiful cultures be fundamentally transformed by the newcomers who don’t share our values, they will also cost us tens of billions of dollars.

In Germany alone, the “immigration” crisis will cost German taxpayers $55 billion in the coming two years, the Institute for the German Institute for Economic Research has calculated. According to the institute, total costs for this year will be $25 billion. That’s shocking all right, but it’ll get even worse: Berlin will have to spend as much as $30 billion on the immigrants in 2017.

That’s $55 billion in total and we’re not even taking the years afterwards into consideration.

The most terrifying aspect of this news is that the German government did not take these extra costs into account for its budget. Berlin would have a surplus of $18 billion this year (which would be a one-time godsend), but that surplus will now change into a $7 billion deficit. Add to that the $30 billion refugee costs in 2017, and the Germans have a massive budget gap of $37 billion. The institute projects that Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble will have to take out billions of dollars in loans — loans future generations will have to pay off.

ABUJA, Nigeria—The death toll climbed from Boko Haram’s Saturday night rampage through a refugee camp in northeast Nigeria, as residents buried bodies and terrified survivors ferried wounded to nearby towns for treatment and refuge from another assault.

Government authorities on Monday said the number of dead in the town of Dalori had risen to 65. Another 136 wounded were taken to local hospitals, said Sani Gatti, spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency.

The attack, which targeted those fleeing Boko Haram’s violence, was a gruesome reminder of how indiscriminately violent the Islamist insurgency has become in the two years since vigilantes helped push the jihadists from urban centers like Dalori, a suburb of Maiduguri, the largest city in northeast Nigeria. Witnesses described the militants burning down houses as children screamed inside.

Aisami Modu, a local resident who lost his wife and daughter in the attack, which involved suicide bombers and gunmen on motorcycles, said authorities recovered the remains of his 6-year-old daughter, which he immediately buried in accordance with Islamic rites.

“My daughter was found burned to death today.…I have lost my wife,” Mr. Modu said over the phone from Maiduguri, where he fled with other survivors.

Baba Kaka, a 45-year-old fish trader, escaped to join his wife and two daughters, who were attending a wedding in Maiduguri. “I was just running toward the outskirts of the town while gunshots cracked in the air. Before the military came to our rescue, I thought I would be killed.”

RIYADH—A Saudi court on Tuesday overturned a death sentence against a Palestinian poet convicted of apostasy and imposed an eight-year prison term and 800 lashes instead.

A court in the southwestern city of Abha also ordered the poet, Ashraf Fayadh, to repent and renounce his poetry on official state media, his lawyer Abdulrahman al-Lahim said.

Mr. Lahim said his client, 35 years old, was innocent of the charges against him and would appeal the latest sentence. He also said he had asked the court to release Mr. Fayadh from jail on bail, pending the outcome of his appeal.

This was the latest Saudi freedom-of-expression case in recent months to be met with a harsh sentence. It has become a flashpoint for criticism from international free-speech and human-rights groups, which have called on the Gulf kingdom to free Mr. Fayadh since his detention in January 2014.

President Obama on Wednesday will visit a U.S. mosque for the first time in his presidency. According to the White House, during this visit he will “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.” Over the past two years, in the president’s efforts to counter violent extremism, he has emphasized the responsibility of Muslim “scholars and clerics” to help ensure that mosques are not used as a platform to preach Islamist extremism.

Such extremism isn’t limited to out-of-the-way mosques where radical clerics operate in the shadows. It is occurring in mainstream and leading mosques world-wide, including at one of the most important religious institutions in Islam, the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Consider a Jan. 16 sermon at Al Aqsa by Sheikh Abu Taqi Al-Din Al-Dari, a Palestinian cleric who called for jihad against the West and Europe, and for the burgeoning Islamic State to “conquer Rome, Washington and Paris.”