Israel & Palestinian

[Shammu]

Palestinians: Hamas, Hezbollah cooperated on Jerusalem terror attack
By Avi Issacharoff, Amos Harel, Jonathan Lis and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondents and AP
12:29 09/03/2008

The gunman who murdered eight students at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem last Thursday was acting on instructions from Hamas leaders in Damascus, in coordination with Hezbollah, Palestinian defense sources said.

Over the weekend, eight East Jerusalem residents were arrested in connection with gunman Ala Abu Dhaim's shooting attack. Abu Dhaim's father, two of his brothers and two cousins are among those detained.

The father also removed Hamas and Hezbollah flags from a mourners' tent the family had erected, after being instructed to do so by police. According to the Palestinian news agency Maan, Abu Dhaim's father had in the past been a member of Hamas.

Abu Dhaim, 25, was killed at the scene of the attack by an off-duty Israel Defense Forces officer who lives near the seminary.

So far no Palestinian or Arab organization has claimed responsibility for the attack, although Palestinian sources have said that the attack had been planned by a Hamas network in the West Bank acting on orders from its leaders in Damascus. Hamas' leadership in Gaza was not privy to the plan, which was drawn up in coordination with Hezbollah, the sources said.

The Palestinian Authority believes this was the first of a number of planned attacks by both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, independent of each other.

The Shin Bet security service said the gunman was not known to them. Major General Ilan Franco, the commander of Jerusalem's district police, told Channel 2 that the attacker was "not known to the security forces."

An initial police investigation has revealed that the shooting was not a spontaneous attack, but had been planned in advance. Police also learnt that Abu Dhaim had personally chosen the location and time for the shooting. To this end, he carried out extensive reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering work on the yeshiva.

The gunman had also stockpiled weapons and ammunition, only some of which he took to perpetrate the attack - an AK-47 assault rifle, two pistols and a few magazines.

Since Abu Dhaim, an East Jerusalem resident, had a blue identity card, and since he transported people in the area, he was able to move freely in the city's western part, too, and seems to have been well-acquainted with the attack site. The key question is where he obtained his AK-47 assault rifle, which he used to attack the yeshiva.

Investigators were seeking to establish whether Abu Dhaim had acted alone or was connected to any militant group, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Abu Dhaim never worked in the yeshiva and the police dismissed the assumption that he had planned to stage a standoff inside the yeshiva, while taking students hostage.

In a television interview in Lebanon, a Hezbollah man on Saturday denied any connection to the attack. Hamas spokespeople in the Gaza Strip said they were checking whether their organization was connected to the attack.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Saturday that just as Israel has managed to stop Hezbollah from "firing a single missile for the past year and a half," so it will stop the terror organizations, too.

Palestinians: Hamas, Hezbollah cooperated on Jerusalem terror attack

[Shammu]

Hamas leader says hundreds of militants trained in Iran, Syria
By Ruth Margalit, Haaretz Service
17:51 09/03/2008

Hamas has sent hundreds of militants to train in Iran and Syria in the past two years, a commander in the Iz al-Din al-Qassam military wing of Hamas said in a rare interview with The Sunday Times of London.

Speaking on the record but on condition of anonymity, the Hamas commander, already a senior figure in his late twenties, told the British newspaper that Hamas had been sending militants to Iran for training in both field tactics and weapons technology since Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005. Others, he said, go to Syria for more basic training.

We have sent seven 'courses' of our fighters to Iran," he said in the interview. "During each course, the group is trained to increase our capacity to fight."

The most promising members of each group stay longer for an advanced course and return as trainers themselves, he said, adding "We send our best brains to Tehran. It would be a waste of money to send them and then have them come back with nothing."

The report confirms assessments made by Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin last week in a speech in front of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

"Hundreds of Hamas members have been sent to Iran for training, and not training periods of a week, two weeks or a month, but for long-term, high-quality training," committee member MK Zvi Hendel (National Union) quoted Diskin as saying last Tuesday.

The Sunday Times' report suggests that these assessments were right and that so far, 150 members of Hamas' military wing have completed training in Tehran, where they study for between 45 days and six months at a closed military base under the command of the elite Revolutionary Guard force.

An additional 150 are currently undergoing training in Tehran, the commander said.

Conditions at the base are strict, he said, adding that a further 650 Hamas militants have trained in Syria under instructors who were themselves trained in Iran. Sixty-two Hamas militants are currently in Syria, he said.

The commander continued to praise the Iranian and Syrian training systems, saying the militants "come home with more abilities that we need, such as high-tech capabilities, knowledge about land mines and rockets, sniping, and fighting tactics like the ones used by Hezbollah [during the Second Lebanon War], when they were able to come out of tunnels from behind the Israelis and attack them successfully."

He further told his interviewers that Hamas was modeling itself on Hezbollah. "We don't have tanks. We don't have planes. We are street fighters and we will use our own ways," he said.

Hamas leader says hundreds of militants trained in Iran, Syria

[Shammu]

Hamas wages Iran’s proxy war on Israel
A Hamas leader admits hundreds of his fighters have travelled to Tehran
A Palestinian Hamas militant runs to avoid sniper fire during clashes between Fatah militants and Palestinian security members in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City
Marie Colvin in Gaza City

The Hamas commander was in a hurry. Hunched forward in a navy-blue parka, with the wind-chapped skin and drawn eyes of someone who had been outdoors all night, he had just returned from the front line with Israel. The whine of drones overhead signalled that his enemy was hunting for blood.

For someone who had survived the fiercest fighting between Israelis and Palestinians since 2000 and the deaths of scores of his fellow fighters, the commander, already a senior figure in his late twenties, appeared remarkably composed.

He is in the vanguard of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas which is growing into a disciplined army, trained to fight for victory rather than be consigned to the “martyr’s death” of the suicide bomber.

Israel has long insisted that Iran is behind this training. Last week Yuval Diskin, the head of the Israeli internal security service Shin Bet, said as much when he claimed that Hamas had “started to dispatch people to Iran, tens and a promise of hundreds”. He provided no evidence.

The Hamas commander, however, confirmed for the first time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been training its men in Tehran for more than two years and is currently honing the skills of 150 fighters.

The details he gave suggested that, if anything, Shin Bet has underestimated the extent of Iran’s influence on Hamas’s increasingly sophisticated tactics and weaponry.

Speaking on the record but withholding his identity as a target of Israeli forces, the commander, who has a sparse moustache and oiled black hair, said Hamas had been sending fighters to Iran for training in both field tactics and weapons technology since Israeli troops pulled out of the Gaza strip of Palestinian territory in 2005. Others go to Syria for more basic training.

“We have sent seven ‘courses’ of our fighters to Iran,” he said. “During each course, the group receives training that he will use to increase our capacity to fight.”

The most promising members of each group stay longer for an advanced course and return as trainers themselves, he said.

So far, 150 members of Qassam have passed through training in Tehran, where they study for between 45 days and six months at a closed military base under the command of the elite Revolutionary Guard force.

Of the additional 150 who are in Tehran now, some will go into Hamas’s research unit if they are not deemed strong enough for fighting.

Conditions at the base are strict, the commander said. The Palestinians are allowed out only one day a week. Even then, they may leave the base only in a group and with Iranian security. They shop and “always come back with really good boots”.

According to the commander, a further 650 Hamas fighters have trained in Syria under instructors who learnt their techniques in Iran. Sixty-two are in Syria now.

But what Hamas values most is the knowledge that comes directly from Iran. Some of it was used to devastating effect by the militant group Hezbollah against Israeli forces in Lebanon in 2006.

“They come home with more abilities that we need,” said the Hamas commander, “such as high-tech capabilities, knowledge about land mines and rockets, sniping, and fighting tactics like the ones used by Hezbollah, when they were able to come out of tunnels from behind the Israelis and attack them successfully.

“Those who go to Iran have to swear on the Koran not to reveal details, even to their mothers.”

He said the Hamas military, which numbers about 15,000 fighters, was modelling itself on Hezbollah. “We don’t have tanks. We don’t have planes. We are street fighters and we will use our own ways,” he said.

Nodding in agreement was his companion, another senior Qassam fighter, from Hamas’s manufacturing wing. Dressed in a new, olive-green uniform, he said his job entailed “cooking” – putting together the explosive mixture that Hamas inserts into Qassam rockets.

Everyone was working overtime, he added. He too had been out all night. He said he had launched five mortars and faced heavy machinegun fire in return from Israeli lines.

The commander was particularly impressed with advances made using Iranian technology. “One of the things that has been helpful is that they have taught us how to use the most ordinary things we have here and make them into explosives,” he said.

Such technology had been most useful of all in developing the Qassam rocket and mines deployed against Israeli tanks.

Hamas had just developed the Shawas 4, a new generation of mine, with Iranian expertise, he added.

“We send our best brains to Tehran. It would be a waste of money to send them and then have them come back with nothing.”

They travelled to Egypt, flew to Syria and, on arrival and departure from Tehran, were allowed through without a stamp for security reasons.

“Anything they think will be useful, our guys there e-mail it to us right away,” the military technician said. THE latest spiral of violence, which has killed 130 Palestinians and 12 Israelis, including eight students massacred at their seminary in Jerusalem last Thursday, was triggered 10 days ago by a chance event.

For weeks, Hamas had been launching rockets into Israel to little effect. But then a rocket aimed at Sderot, a town in the western Negev desert, killed Roni Yichia, a 47-year-old mature student, as he stood in his college car park. The next day, Israel launched the fierce ground and air assault on Gaza dubbed Operation Hot Winter.

Its targets, as Hamas intensified the rocket attacks, ranged from Qassam launchers in the northern Gaza Strip to the interior ministry in the centre of Gaza City. Last week, as the blasts and counter-blasts subsided, it was not only Hamas that was counting its losses. As many civilians as fighters had died.

Ra’ad Abu Seif, a 40-year-old lorry driver, had herded his family into an interior room as their street exploded. His 12-year-old daughter Safa ran to an upstairs flat to fetch her uncle. An Israeli sniper shot her just below the heart, he said.

Abu Seif heard screams and ran to find her lying on the floor. “I didn’t see the bullet hole so I picked her up and then I felt the blood on her back,” he said. “We put her by the water tank and opened her clothes and found the bullet holes.

“We tried to close the holes by holding them and putting cotton on them,” he said. Safa lived for two more hours. “Then her head went back, and her eyes rolled,” he said, covering his face with his hands. “The one who shot her, I just want to ask him, how can you be a human being and shoot a little kid?”

Abu Seif blames not only Israel but Hamas as well. “They have been firing these rockets for seven years, and look what happens,” he said. “Hamas should admit it has made a mistake and try another path.”

cont'd next post

[Shammu]

A short distance away, Mohamed Abu Shabak was mourning his daughter Jacqueline, 17, and son Iyad, 16. He sat gaping at a hole in a second-floor window that he said had been made by an Israeli sniper. His hand shook and he could not speak for a while.

Iyad was the first to die. He had got up at about 1am to go to the lavatory and was hit in the chest by a single shot through the window. Jacqueline came running in and was shot in the head.

Their father was in the West Bank city of Ramallah, having fled Gaza because he was an official in the Fatah administration deposed by Hamas last year, and was on the militants’ wanted list.

The last time he spoke to Jacqueline, who wanted to be a doctor, she had minutes to live. “She called to tell me, father I am so scared, there is shooting everywhere. She was worried about her 12-year-old brother, Mohamed,” he said.

When the Israelis withdrew last Monday, Hamas claimed victory, but it did not seem like one to many in Gaza. Attacks continued from both sides last week.

One of them would claim the youngest victim of the conflict.

Mohamed Abu Asser, a 37-year-old taxi driver, and his wife, Nadia, 30, took their two youngest daughters, two-year-old Nadine and 20-day-old Amira, to visit a sick friend of the family last Tuesday.

This weekend, however, Nadia lay in a hospital bed. Large tears spilled from her eyes as she described how Amira had died.

“We heard fierce shooting,” Nadia recalled. “The Israelis called over the microphone to evacuate the house. But when I went out, holding up my baby, a small red light came on me and they shot me. They didn’t let the ambulance come for three hours.”

Her husband told the same story. “We decided Nadia should go out first, with the baby – they would be less likely to shoot her,” he said. “Now my first photo of my smiley baby is when she is dead.”

Tragedy came to Israel as well. At 8.30pm on Thursday, Alaa Abu Dheim, a 25-year-old driver from largely Palestinian east Jerusalem, arrived at the entrance to Mercaz Harav seminary, carrying a big television box. He took an AK47 out of the box and shot his way in, carrying magazines as well as two hand guns.

While a student whispered for help to emergency services over his mobile, Abu Dheim was calmly replacing his AK47 magazines, one after another, and killing students trapped in the library with shots to the head.

He was eventually killed by David Shapira, an Israeli para-troop captain on leave, who had been reading a bedtime story to his children when he heard the shots and ran to the seminary.

Yehuda Hillel Shulman, 19, was one of the nine wounded who were still in hospital this weekend. His mother Miriam said that when the first shots were heard, a rabbi had turned off the lights and told his students to jump from a balcony.

“They all jumped out of the second floor and that’s how they saved their lives, before Abu Dheim reached their room. The rabbi was the last to jump,” she said.

Gaza’s gunmen poured into the streets on hearing the news, shooting into the air in celebration of the massacre. CAN anything be done to stem the bloodshed? Tortuous negotiations in which Egypt acted as an intermediary produced a truce that was still in place yesterday. But any further incident could result in another Israeli incursion.

Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, also persuaded Fatah’s Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to resume talks with Israel, but he has not said when.

Hamas, which is pledged to destroy Israel, remains excluded from any negotiations. But it emerged this weekend that senior members of the Israeli security establishment were urging the government of Ehud Olmert to talk to Hamas. They believe any agreement made without Hamas would fail.

Fundamentally, however, the real problem may be that much of Hamas seems willing to fight on for “liberation”, no matter how hopeless the cause.

The conflict is further complicated by the role of Iran which, by supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, has created two potential fronts for Israel. If Israel’s military is occupied with an internal threat, its reasoning goes, Olmert will be loath to mount the attack Tehran fears on its nuclear programme.

As for the Hamas commander, he is focused on making sure his forces are equipped and trained for the next Israeli incursion. “They are occupying us, we are not occupying them,” he said. “We will never stop resisting.”

Reformers banned from poll

A record low turnout is expected in Iran’s parliamentary elections this week after the ruling hardliners banned the majority of reformist candidates from standing.

Despite a faltering economy, runaway inflation, falling living standards and international isolation, the elections pose little threat to the deeply conservative regime led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Council of Guardians, which decides the legitimacy of candidates, barred reformers including Ali Eshraghi, 39, the grandson of Iran’s late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

The conservatives, known as the principalists, backed by Ahmadinejad are virtually assured of 70% of the 290 parliamentary seats because of the guardians’ decisions.

Hamas wages Iran’s proxy war on Israel

[Shammu]

Hamas exploitation of civilians as human shields: Photographic evidence
6 Mar 2008

Deliberate use of civilians as human shields

In its fight to defend itself against Hamas attacks against its civilians, Israel is faced with moral challenges unprecedented in their complexity. Hamas, as a basic element of its strategy, exploits the Palestinian population as shields for its terrorist operations and infrastructure. This cynical strategy include the following tactics:

- The deliberate launching of rocket from populated areas
- The deliberate use of civilian homes to shield Hamas arms and explosives manufacturing facilities
- The deliberate use of civilians as human shields against anticipated airstrikes


Deliberate use of civilians as human shields against anticipated air-strikes

In order to avoid civilian casualties, Israel sends warning messages before attacking terrorist targets advising civilians to leave. Israel prefers to attack empty buildings used to manufacture rockets, even taking into consideration that the terrorists too will be warned and their lives spared.

Hamas, on the other hand, calls on civilians to come and to protect with their bodies the precise locations they expect Israel to attack. Since they know that Israel will usually strike from the air, they send the children to the roofs to prevent the air force from targeting that building.

During the course of the Israeli operation against terrorists in the Gaza Strip (March 2008), Hamas repeatedly called upon Palestinian civilians to gather near buildings where they feared that the IDF was about to launch air-strikes against Hamas targets hidden within. The purpose of the civilian presence was to have them serve as human shields, exploiting the fact that the IDF avoids harming Palestinian civilians, even if it means aborting attacks on crucial terrorist infrastructure targets.

The following are but a few of the documented examples of calls in the Hamas controlled Gaza media for Palestinians civilians to serve as human shields:

1) Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV called upon children to form a human shield at the home of Abu al-Hatal of the a-Shouqaf quarter of Sajaiyeh in order to protect the building from an anticipated IDF airstrike (March 1).
2) Al-Aqsa TV News broadcast a story about how a crowd of civilians gathered on the roof of Abu Bilal al-Ja’abeer in the Northern Gaza strip, in order cause the IDF to abort a threatened airstrike against the structure.
3) Al-Aqsa TV called upon the Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to go to the house of Othman al-Ruziana in order to protect it against an anticipated IDF strike (February 29).

4) Al-Aqsa TV called upon the residents of Khan Yunis to gather at the house of Ma’amoun Abu ‘Amer due to an anticipated airstrike. (February 28). An hour later dozens of Palestinians from Khan Yunis were reported to have gathered on the roof of Abu ‘Amer’s house to serve as human shields to prevent the house from being hit (Pal-today Website, February 28).

The deliberate launching of rockets from populated areas

It is a common practice for the Hamas to launch their rockets, aimed at Israeli cities, from within built-up areas, in order to make it difficult for Israel to take preventative action against Hamas rocket salvos, without endangering the Palestinian population. These photos and video clips give evidence of this practice.

When launching rockets against Israel, Hamas terrorists usually do not stay nearby, but rather use timers, radio frequency and other ways to remotely control the launchings. In order to protect the rockets from counter-attack until they are launched, they send children to play near the launchers, or place the launchers near playgrounds.

The deliberate use of civilian homes to shield Hamas arms and explosives manufacturing facilities

Hamas frequently uses civilian homes in the Gaza Strip for the manufacture of rockets, explosives, antitank missiles and other arms being used against Israel. Rockets, explosives and other arms were also found in the mosque in Jabalya.

I will not post the link because of pictures of dead bodies in them.

[nChrist]

Rice: Sides not showing commitment
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that not enough has been done by the Israelis or the Palestinians to demonstrate their commitment to peace.

"I have not hidden the fact that I think that there is a lot of room for improvement on both sides concerning both their obligations," Rice said.

"Frankly, not nearly enough has happened to demonstrate that the Israelis and Palestinians fully understand or are somehow fully acting" on what needs to be done, she added.

"Without following 'road map' obligations and without improvements on the ground, it's very hard to sustain this process," Rice said.

Rice was speaking to reporters traveling with her during a two-day visit to Latin America.

Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have fulfilled their obligations under the "road map" peace plan promoted by US President George W. Bush, who called a regional summit in Annapolis, Md. in November with the goal of seeing a deal struck by the time he leaves office.

In the plan's first stage, the Palestinians were to dismantle armed groups. The Israelis were to freeze construction in West Bank settlements and remove some of the more than 100 unauthorized outposts set up by settlers since the 1990s.

________________________________________

[Soldier4Christ]

Hamas using U.S. weapons
Spokesman: 'We will continue to balance the equilibrium of terror with the Zionists'

JERUSALEM – The Hamas terrorist group used U.S. weapons against the Israel Defense Forces this weekend, a Hamas official told WND.
 
The weapons were seized when Hamas last June took complete control of the Gaza Strip, overtaking all U.S.-backed security compounds in the territory associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party.
 
"We fired at incoming Israeli helicopters using the seized weapons. We will continue to balance the equilibrium of terror with the Zionists," said Hamas spokesman Abu Oubeida.
 
On Friday, Hamas gunmen used mounted heavy machine guns to fire at Israeli helicopters that were attacking a cell of terrorists attempting to launch Qassam rockets into Israel. Hamas claimed they struck one helicopter.
 
The IDF confirmed a helicopter on Friday was fired at and returned to its base outside the Gaza Strip but the army would not state whether or not the chopper was hit or sustained any damaged.
 
According to Oubeida and to Abu Abdullah, a senior member of Hamas' so-called military wing, the terror group's purported use of U.S. weapons against the helicopter on Friday was not the first such incident.
 
Abdullah said Hamas has been firing at Israeli helicopters the past few weeks and said he noticed many of the IDF's recent aerial operations in Gaza were carried out by F-16's, a contention denied by IDF officials.
 
"They are afraid to use the helicopters," said Abdullah.
 
The terrorist warned Hamas also possesses a number of U.S. anti-aircraft missiles he said can strike F-16's.
 
A senior Israel Air Force officer told Israel's Ynet news website the threats against Israeli aircraft are "increasing with each passing day,",adding the "terror organizations are highly motivated to hit our aircraft, and helicopters are naturally targeted because they fly at a relatively low altitude."
 
Immediately after Hamas staged their coup and took over Gaza, WND quoted Hamas officials stating they seized "enormous" stockpiles of foreign weapons, including U.S. arms, that had been stored in Fatah security compounds.
 
The U.S. in recent years reportedly transferred large quantities of weaponry to build up Fatah forces against rival Hamas. Hamas officials told WND in multiple interviews prior to last June they would seize the American weapons.
 
Hamas last summer provided WND with a partial list of what the terror group said were seized weapons,  The list included:

    * "Dozens" of mounted machine guns that can fire at Israeli helicopters
    * Approximately 7,400 American M-16 assault rifles
    * About 800,000 rounds of bullets.
    * Eighteen armored personnel carriers
    * Seven armored military jeeps
    * "Tens" of armored civilian cars, including pickup trucks and magnums.
    * Eight massive trucks equipped with water cannons for dispersing protests
    * Fourteen military-sized bulldozers

Hamas officials said the list they provided didn't include what they said were large quantities of U.S.-provided, rocket-propelled grenades, grenade launchers, explosives, and military equipment, such as boots and tents.

Abu Abdullah told WND Hamas estimates they obtained at least $400 million worth of American weapons and equipment. That number couldn't  be verified.

Meanwhile, President Bush last week pushed Congress to remove a hold on two-thirds of a $150 million aid package to be transferred to Abbas' PA. The $100 million is scheduled to be transferred directly to Abbas.

Bush said the PA was in economic trouble and needed the money at a time it is "threatened" by extremists and negotiating with Israel.  The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittee earlier halted the aid fearing it would be used to fund terrorism.

[nChrist]

Hamas using U.S. weapons
Spokesman: 'We will continue to balance the equilibrium of terror with the Zionists'

JERUSALEM – The Hamas terrorist group used U.S. weapons against the Israel Defense Forces this weekend, a Hamas official told WND.
 
The weapons were seized when Hamas last June took complete control of the Gaza Strip, overtaking all U.S.-backed security compounds in the territory associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party.
 
"We fired at incoming Israeli helicopters using the seized weapons. We will continue to balance the equilibrium of terror with the Zionists," said Hamas spokesman Abu Oubeida.
 
On Friday, Hamas gunmen used mounted heavy machine guns to fire at Israeli helicopters that were attacking a cell of terrorists attempting to launch Qassam rockets into Israel. Hamas claimed they struck one helicopter.
 
The IDF confirmed a helicopter on Friday was fired at and returned to its base outside the Gaza Strip but the army would not state whether or not the chopper was hit or sustained any damaged.
 
According to Oubeida and to Abu Abdullah, a senior member of Hamas' so-called military wing, the terror group's purported use of U.S. weapons against the helicopter on Friday was not the first such incident.
 
Abdullah said Hamas has been firing at Israeli helicopters the past few weeks and said he noticed many of the IDF's recent aerial operations in Gaza were carried out by F-16's, a contention denied by IDF officials.
 
"They are afraid to use the helicopters," said Abdullah.
 
The terrorist warned Hamas also possesses a number of U.S. anti-aircraft missiles he said can strike F-16's.
 
A senior Israel Air Force officer told Israel's Ynet news website the threats against Israeli aircraft are "increasing with each passing day,",adding the "terror organizations are highly motivated to hit our aircraft, and helicopters are naturally targeted because they fly at a relatively low altitude."
 
Immediately after Hamas staged their coup and took over Gaza, WND quoted Hamas officials stating they seized "enormous" stockpiles of foreign weapons, including U.S. arms, that had been stored in Fatah security compounds.
 
The U.S. in recent years reportedly transferred large quantities of weaponry to build up Fatah forces against rival Hamas. Hamas officials told WND in multiple interviews prior to last June they would seize the American weapons.
 
Hamas last summer provided WND with a partial list of what the terror group said were seized weapons,  The list included:

    * "Dozens" of mounted machine guns that can fire at Israeli helicopters
    * Approximately 7,400 American M-16 assault rifles
    * About 800,000 rounds of bullets.
    * Eighteen armored personnel carriers
    * Seven armored military jeeps
    * "Tens" of armored civilian cars, including pickup trucks and magnums.
    * Eight massive trucks equipped with water cannons for dispersing protests
    * Fourteen military-sized bulldozers

Hamas officials said the list they provided didn't include what they said were large quantities of U.S.-provided, rocket-propelled grenades, grenade launchers, explosives, and military equipment, such as boots and tents.

Abu Abdullah told WND Hamas estimates they obtained at least $400 million worth of American weapons and equipment. That number couldn't  be verified.

Meanwhile, President Bush last week pushed Congress to remove a hold on two-thirds of a $150 million aid package to be transferred to Abbas' PA. The $100 million is scheduled to be transferred directly to Abbas.

Bush said the PA was in economic trouble and needed the money at a time it is "threatened" by extremists and negotiating with Israel.  The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittee earlier halted the aid fearing it would be used to fund terrorism.

Brilliant of US!

(not!)

[Shammu]

Hamas popularity on the rise: poll

Mon Mar 17, 9:30 AM ET

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) - The popularity of Hamas has risen in recent months since the Gaza Strip's border breach with Egypt, deadly Israeli strikes and the lack of progress in renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, according to an opinion poll released on Monday.

"A major shift in Hamas's favour occurred during the last three months with about 10 percent of the population shifting their attitudes and perceptions," said the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research in a statement accompanying the results.

The same number of people would vote for moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas as for senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in any presidential election and the Islamists would get more votes than Fatah in legislative polls, it said.

Abbas, who succeeded legendary leader Yasser Arafat at the head of the Palestinian Authority in January 2005, would receive 46 percent of votes, compared with 47 percent for Haniya.

It is the first poll in which an Islamist candidate has garnered more support than the secular leader.

Haniya served as prime minister in the Hamas-led unity government that Abbas fired in June 2007 after the Islamists routed his forces in the Gaza Strip following a week of deadly clashes.

The Hamas leader would not fare as well against Marwan Barghuti, the popular West Bank leader of Abbas's Fatah party and architect of the 2000 uprising who is imprisoned by Israel for his involvement in suicide attacks.

Barghuti would receive 57 percent of the vote, while Haniya would get 38 percent, the poll said.

In legislative elections, Hamas would receive 42 percent of the vote, compared with 35 percent for Fatah -- a near mirror reversal of the figures from a December poll, in which 31 percent would have voted for Hamas and 49 percent for Fatah.

The rise in Hamas's popularity is partly due to the recent breach of Gaza's border with Egypt and the high number of Palestinian casualties in Israeli strikes on the coastal strip, the poll said.

Abbas meanwhile has been hurt by the lack of an improvement in Palestinians' daily lives amid the renewed peace talks with Israelis, it said.

"These developments managed to present Hamas as successful in breaking the siege (on Gaza) and as a victim of Israeli attacks," it said.

"These also presented Palestinian president Abbas and his Fatah faction as impotent, unable to change the bitter reality in the West Bank or ending Israeli occupation through diplomacy," it said.

Fifty-six percent of those questioned said they were "unsatisfied" with Abbas, compared with 41 percent who said they were satisfied.

The survey questioned 1,270 people in the West Bank and Gaza between March 13 and 15 and had a three-percent margin of error.

Hamas popularity on the rise: poll

[Shammu]

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks renewed on sour note
03-17-2008, 16h47
JERUSALEM (AFP)

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks resumed on a sour note on Monday with the Palestinian negotiator blasting Israel for vowing to continue settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

"There was a meeting to resume the negotiations but after what the Israeli prime minister said about settlements, the meeting was an unofficial not an official meeting," former Palestinian premier Ahmed Qorei said after his two-hour meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in Jerusalem.

Just hours before the talks, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated Israel would continue to build Jewish settlements in annexed east Jerusalem -- despite international concern that the action could hamper peace talks.

"I expressed our strong anger and complete rejection of this position which was declared by the Israeli prime minister," Qorei said in a statement, adding that it violated Israel's commitment to the international roadmap peace plan.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said Livni and Qorei "restarted their dialogue and met face-to-face for two hours", but he gave no further details.

The last time the two met was on February 19 when Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas chaired a session of the Middle East peace talks that were relaunched in late November to great fanfare under US stewardship.

Abbas had suspended the talks on March 2 amid Israeli army operations in Hamas-run Gaza in response to increased rocket fire, a massive assault that killed more than 130 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians.

Five Israelis were killed during the fighting.

On a subsequent visit to the region, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the two sides had agreed to resume negotiations, but new Israeli settlement projects in the occupied West Bank have since heightened tensions.

Contacts between the two sides officially restarted on Friday, when Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad and a senior Israeli defence ministry official met Lieutenant General William Fraser, a US envoy charged with overseeing the implementation of the 2003 roadmap peace blueprint.

The internationally-drafted document calls on Israel to freeze settlement activity and the Palestinians to improve security in the territories, but on Friday both sides accused the other of shirking their obligations.

Israeli settlement projects and continuing violence in the Gaza Strip, where Abbas's government was driven out by the rival Hamas movement in June, have repeatedly threatened to derail the peace negotiations.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks renewed on sour note

[Shammu]

Palestinians Unite in Anger Against Israeli Attack
By ISABEL KERSHNER

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — It was a display of Palestinian unity rarely seen since the militant Islamic group Hamas seized power in Gaza last summer and left the rival pro-Fatah Palestinian Authority struggling to hold on to the West Bank.

As thousands of men and women crowded into Manger Square on Thursday to attend prayers and the funerals for four local militants killed by Israeli undercover forces in a raid the day before, a general strike was observed throughout this Muslim-Christian city of 30,000 people.

In the square, youths held flags representing the mainstream Fatah, Hamas, the smaller, more extreme Islamic Jihad and the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The body of one of the victims, a local Islamic Jihad leader, Muhammad Shehada, was draped with the increasingly popular emblem of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.

More than creating a temporary fusion of political and ideological divisions, though, the killings enraged Fatah advocates of negotiations with Israel, who posed questions about its commitment to peacemaking.

“The crime committed by Israel against our people aims to blow up the peace process,” said Muhammad Khalil al-Laham, a Fatah legislator who came to the square, and whose voice rose in fury as row upon row of Muslim mourners bowed down on the paving stones in silent prayer.

“Bethlehem was the calmest and most committed city,” Mr. Laham said, noting that Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority prime minister, had planned an international investors’ conference to be held in the city in May under the slogan, “You can do business in Palestine.”

Israel strongly defended the killings on Thursday as a legitimate response to terrorist acts. “Yesterday, in Bethlehem, we again proved that the state of Israel will continue to hunt and to strike any murderer who has Jewish blood on his hands, and those who send him,” said the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak. “It is unimportant how much time has elapsed. Israel’s long arm will reach him.”

The Israeli raid came at a delicate time for the authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. Egyptian mediators are trying to broker a truce that would calm the hostilities between Israel and Hamas in and around Gaza, a truce that Mr. Abbas called for after violence spiraled there earlier this month.

Mr. Abbas’s office issued an unusually strong statement after the Bethlehem raid. “These barbaric crimes reveal the true face of Israel, which speaks loudly about peace and security all the while committing murders and executions against our people,” it said.

In a response, Islamic Jihad fired more than 20 rockets from Gaza at Israel on Thursday, after refraining from launching any for nearly a week. Only a small number of them fell inside Israel and they caused no casualties, the Israeli military said. Before dawn the Israeli Air Force carried out a strike in Gaza, also the first in nearly a week, hitting a rocket launcher, the military said.

To Israel, the four men were dangerous fugitives with long records in terrorism; two had been on Israel’s most wanted list for years. For the thousands who attended their funerals they were local heroes of the Palestinian resistance who had managed to survive this long. Mr. Shehada ran in the Palestinian elections as an independent candidate in 2006 and won 7,000 votes. One of the companions he was killed with, Issa Marzuk, 36, was voted onto the Bethlehem city council on an Islamic Jihad ticket in 2005.

The four, including Ahmed Balboul, a local commander of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, were shot while riding together in a car. Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, is a militia affiliated with Fatah.

Palestinians say that all four had been hoping to be included in an amnesty agreement with Israel, but that Israel had refused. The 178 militants Israel did offer amnesty to last summer, under certain conditions, were all from Fatah.

Mr. Balboul, 48, had spoken in recent months about his support for a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Shehada, 45, had used “the language of resistance up to the last minute,” said Ata Manaa, a journalist for a local Bethlehem television station who interviewed the fugitive earlier this week.

But many here believe that Mr. Shehada and his companions had not been engaged in violence against Israelis in recent years. “Though they opposed the Palestinian Authority’s position,” said Hassan Abed Rabbo, a spokesman for Fatah, “there was a clear commitment to the authority’s decision to maintain calm.”

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said it was true that the West Bank had been relatively quiet, “but that,” he added, “is largely because the Israeli Army is conducting these ongoing operations.” The Authority’s own security forces are in a process of capacity building, said Mr. Regev, “but we have no doubt they could do much more than they have done. They’ve been extremely reticent to take on the terrorist infrastructure,” he said.

There were no gunmen visible in Manger Square on Thursday, and only a couple of traffic policemen in uniform. Other members of the security services joined the mourners in civilian clothes. There was one burst of gunfire in the air as the funeral procession set off for the cemetery; otherwise, order prevailed.

“The Palestinian Authority doesn’t control an inch of the West Bank,” said Shawqi Issa, the director of the Ensan Center for Human Rights in Bethlehem. “Israel is everywhere.” Nor, he said, does Israel want peace. “Their strategy is to put obstacles in the way every day.”

Mr. Issa was a classmate of Mr. Shehada’s 30 years ago. The two happened to meet in an elevator about 40 minutes before Mr. Shehada was killed. Mr. Shehada, who was with Mr. Balboul, knew he was being pursued. “He said, ‘They don’t want to arrest me, they want to kill me,’ ” Mr. Issa recalled.

Israeli Attacks Condemned

DAKAR, Senegal (Agence France-Presse) — The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, sharply condemned the Israeli attacks in a speech here on Thursday at the start of a meeting of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference.

“Israel’s disproportionate and excessive use of force has killed and injured many civilians, including children. I condemn these actions and call on Israel to cease such attacks,” Mr. Ban told an audience that included the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. “At the same time,” he added, “I also condemn the rocket attacks directed against Israel and call for the immediate cessation of such acts.”

Palestinians Unite in Anger Against Israeli Attack

[Shammu]

Rabbi stabbed at Damascus Gate
ETGAR LEFKOVITS and Matthew Wagner
THE JERUSALEM POST
Mar. 18, 2008

A 49-year-old rabbi was stabbed and moderately wounded by an Arab assailant Tuesday near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, police and rescue officials said.

Rabbi Yehezkel Greenwald of the West Bank settlement of Beit El was stabbed in the neck from behind, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said. The attacker then fled the scene.

Greenwald had been on his way to the Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva, where he teaches, police and rescue officials said.

Despite his wounds, Greenwald managed remove the knife from his neck and walk a few meters before finding police, who summoned Magen David Adom paramedics to the scene, the police said. He was given first aid and then rushed to Hadassah-University Hospital at Ein Kerem.

The Damascus Gate is primarily used by Arab residents of the city, and has been the scene of previous stabbings in the past. The entryway is frequently used by teachers at the yeshiva.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the yeshiva - which is located in the Old City's Muslim Quarter and is also known as Ateret Yerushalayim - rebuffed claims Tuesday that the location of his institution was a provocation to local Arabs.

"I've been asked by several reporters whether I think it is right for us to be located in the Muslim Quarter, as if we are to blame for the attack," said Aviner, a leading religious Zionist spiritual leader and rabbi of Beit El.

"The Russians, the Poles and the Germans also blamed the Jews for causing anti-Semitism," said Aviner. "And it is true that if there had been no Jews in Russia there would never have been pogroms, and if there had been no Jews in Germany when the Nazis came to power, the Holocaust never would have happened. Perhaps we should just set up a colony on the moon and move all the Jews there. Then we wouldn't be a Jewish problem."

Commenting on calls by right-wing activists to avenge the deaths of the eight Mercaz Harav Yeshiva students killed in a terror attack over a week ago, Aviner said that only official state bodies were authorized to take military action.

"Warfare is a commandment on the entire Jewish people," said Aviner. "It is not something individuals can take upon themselves to carry out. The state represents the Jewish people, and it must decide what actions should be taken."

Aviner's comments were indirect criticism against right-wing demonstrators who grappled with police on Sunday during attempts to destroy the house of Ala Abu Dhaim, the Arab terrorist who carried out the Mercaz Harav attack.

Since its establishment 27 years ago, the Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva has lost three of its students to terror attacks.

Currently, about 200 post-high school students study at the yeshiva. Some of the students do three years of army service; others join the five-year "hesder" program offered at other yeshivot, which combines Torah study with 18 months of army service; and some postpone army service indefinitely.

Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski denounced Tuesday's attack and called it "an attempt by radical elements to harm the fabric of coexistence in the city," according to a statement issued by his office.

Rabbi stabbed at Damascus Gate

[Shammu]

PLO urges Hamas to accept Gaza power-sharing

Tue Mar 18, 6:59 AM ET

SANAA (AFP) - A PLO delegation in Yemen for a Palestinian reconciliation bid on Tuesday urged the Islamist movement Hamas to return to power-sharing in the embattled Gaza Strip with its Fatah party rivals.

"We hope that our Hamas brothers will accept the (reconciliation) initiative as it has been presented by the Yemeni leadership," Saleh Raafat, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee, told AFP.

"Its acceptance would immediately clear the way to an inter-Palestinian national dialogue," he said in Sanaa.

Another member of the delegation, Qaid Abdelkarim, a leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that Hamas's agreement in principle would return the rival factions to the negotiating table.

All parties in the PLO, of which Hamas is not a member, support a return to the power-sharing in place in Gaza before last June's deadly battles in which the Islamists evicted the forces of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, he said.

A Hamas delegation is due in the Yemeni capital on Wednesday for separate talks with Yemeni officials on the initiative, which calls for a return to the status quo that existed before the Gaza takeover.

Abbas has welcomed the initiative while it received a cool response from Hamas which has so far rejected his demands to give up control of the impoverished territory which has been under Israeli air strikes and blockade.

PLO urges Hamas to accept Gaza power-sharing

[Shammu]

Poll shows Palestinians support rocket attacks and want peace talks to end
By Ethan Bronner
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

RAMALLAH, West Bank: A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks.

The survey also shows unprecedented support for the firing of rockets on Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and for the end of the peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

The pollster who conducted the survey, Khalil Shikaki, said he was shocked because it showed greater support for violence than any of the surveys he had conducted over the past 15 years in the Palestinian areas. Never before, he said, had a majority favored an end to negotiations or the firing of rockets at Israel.

"There is real reason to be concerned," Shikaki said in his West Bank office. His Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which conducts a survey every three months, is widely viewed as among the few independent and reliable gauges of Palestinian public opinion.

His explanation for the shift, one widely reflected in the Palestinian media, is that recent actions by Israel, especially a series of attacks on Gaza that killed nearly 130 people, an undercover operation in Bethlehem that killed four militants, and the announced expansion of several West Bank settlements, has led to despair and rage among average Palestinians who want revenge.

"The anger that this poll is registering is about equal to that at the very height of the second intifada," Shikaki said, referring to the years just after 2000 when suicide attacks on Israel and Israeli strikes on Palestinian forces reached new heights. "I am very worried about what is coming."

Shikaki's poll also showed that the militant Islamist group Hamas, which Israel and the United States have been trying to isolate, is gaining popularity in the West Bank while its American-backed rival, the more secular Fatah, is losing ground. Asked for whom they would vote for president, 46 percent chose Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, the current president, while 47 percent chose Ismail Haniya of Hamas.

Three months ago, Abbas was ahead 56 percent to 37 percent. After Hamas forces pushed Fatah forces out of Gaza last summer, Shikaki's polls showed the Palestinian public to be disillusioned with Hamas and in the subsequent months, many argued that Abbas, with the support of Washington and Israel, had a chance to win public support by easing living conditions and advancing in negotiations. That has not happened.

According to the poll, conducted last week with 1,270 Palestinians in face-to-face interviews, 84 percent supported the March 6 attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, one of the most prominent centers of religious Zionism in Israel and an ideological wellspring of the settler movement in the West Bank. Shikaki said that this was the single highest support for an act of violence in his 15 years of polling.

On negotiations between Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel, and Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, 75 percent said they were without benefit and should be terminated. Regarding the thousands of rockets that have been launched at Israeli towns like Sderot and Ashkelon, 64 percent support the attacks.

The poll did show support for a two-state solution over the long term, with 66 percent favoring normalized relations with Israel if it returned all land won in 1967 and a Palestinian state was established. But such a deal seems a long way off now.

Poll shows Palestinians support rocket attacks and want peace talks to end

[Shammu]

Palestinians can no longer make the excuse that they elected their leadership, because they didn't fully understand what it would lead to. They're still blood thirsty for Jewish blood, at any cost apparently. Need I say more??