Tag Archives: Hamas

Hamas not seeking a war with Israel, says top official

GAZA (Reuters) – A senior leader of the Islamist group Hamas said the Palestinian movement was not seeking a new war with Israel and insisted a network of tunnels it is digging, some of which have reached into Israel in the past, was “defensive”.

Speaking to members of the Foreign Press Association in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a medical doctor seen by many as a hardliner, suggested the prospects of reconciliation with the rival Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas were slim, despite years of international efforts to forge unity.

“I think nobody here in the region is looking for a war,” said Zahar, 71, who has survived two Israeli assassination attempts, one of which, in 2003, killed his son.

“We are not looking for any confrontation with Israel, but if they are going to launch an aggression we have to defend ourselves,” he told reporters late on Wednesday.

Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief civil war with Abbas’s forces. It maintains strict security over the coastal territory, where more than 1.9 million people live. Zahar is one of Hamas’s founders and one of its most senior figures in Gaza, regarded as close to the military wing.

The movement has, since its founding in 1987, advocated the destruction of Israel, seeing all of historic Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, as its land.

However, some of its leaders have indicated in recent years that they would accept a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in a 1967 war, in return for a long-term truce with their neighbor.

Israel regards the truce idea as a ploy and will not negotiate with Hamas, which the EU and United States list as a terrorist group.

Asked why Hamas was building tunnels, Zahar said they were defensive and suggested they were nothing against the might of the U.S.-supplied Israeli military.

“You are speaking about tunnels? You are not speaking about F-35 (fighter planes)? You are not speaking about the nuclear bomb in Israel… The tunnels are a matter of self-defense,” he said.

Hamas’s armed wing has lost 10 fighters this year in tunnel collapses. In strongly worded speeches, the group’s leaders have pledged to pursue the tunnel building, prompting alarm in Israel, which has stepped up efforts to find the tunnels and stop them reaching its territory.

The heightened tension on both sides has fueled fears of another war, which would be the fifth since Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006. The last war, in July-August 2014, left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead, most of them civilians, while 73 Israelis, nearly all soldiers, were killed.

INTERNAL SPLIT

With an Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza making it difficult for goods and people to move in and out of the territory, Hamas and Fatah have made efforts to reconcile their differences and form a functioning unity government.

Yet the latest round of discussions in the Qatar capital Doha has become bogged down, despite early signs of progress, and Zahar gave the impression that a deal was some way off.

He said Abbas and Fatah were not sincere about achieving reconciliation, a charge Fatah threw back. He also vowed that his group would never recognize the state of Israel, which Abbas and Fatah have done and want Hamas to do.

“They (Fatah) have no will to achieve an agreement. There is no intention,” he said.

The blockade on Gaza and the breakdown of relations with Fatah have created huge strains on the economy in Gaza. Since Fatah controls the budget from the West Bank, it has so far resisted making payments to security forces and other state employees in Gaza who were hired by Hamas since 2007.

As a result, Hamas is heavily dependent on support from abroad, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran. While Saudi and Iran are at odds, Zahar said Hamas was not taking sides.

“We are looking to have good relations with everybody,” he said. “We will not play any factor or element in the internal or external confrontation between these countries.”

(Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Israelis near Gaza fear Hamas is tunneling beneath them

PRI GAN, Israel/GAZA (Reuters) – Nissim Hakmon and his neighbors say they hear banging and clattering at night. They are convinced it can only mean one thing: Hamas is tunneling under their homes from Gaza and will one day emerge, guns blazing, to attack or kidnap them.

The Israeli government says its investigations have not come up with any evidence the night-time noises reported by villagers living near Gaza emanate from tunnels, but assertions by Hamas of extensive cross-border digging has only fueled concern.

“The fear among everyone here is constant,” Hakmon told Reuters in his village of Pri Gan, near the Gaza Strip. “I’ve heard the sound of a hammer and chisel and my neighbor says she can hear them digging under the cement. We’re stressed out.”

The Palestinian Islamist group which runs Gaza used tunnels running out of the strip to give its heavily outgunned fighters the advantage of surprise during its 2014 war with Israel.

Twelve soldiers were killed by Hamas tunnel raiders and one was kidnapped. No civilians have been targeted by the fighters, who describe the tunnels as a defensive tool in case of future conflict. But that is little reassurance to the villagers.

Underground infiltration by gunmen from Gaza “is something we know deep inside is just a matter of time, even though we tell the kids everything is okay,” Hakmon said.

POLITICAL PRESSURE

Hakmon’s worry is being echoed by some others who live on the Gaza periphery, putting extra political pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his handling of the standoff with the Palestinian territory since the war in 2014.

Beset by a months-long surge of street attacks by Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Israel has little desire to see a fresh flare-up in Gaza, where Hamas has mostly held its fire in the past 18 months.

The movement announced last week it had rehabilitated cross-border tunnels destroyed during the war – a muscle-flexing message to Israel, its security partner Egypt and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Islamists’ U.S.-backed rival.

“The resistance factions are in a state of ongoing preparation underground, above ground, on land and sea,” Hamas deputy leader Ismail Haniyeh said at a rally called to honor seven tunnelers who were killed in a cave-in on Tuesday.

Hamas has twice the number of tunnels as those used in the Vietnam war against U.S. forces, Haniyeh said – a tall order, but bold enough a claim to shore up the worries voiced in Pri Gan, 4 km (2 miles) away from the Gaza border, and elsewhere.

The residents’ alarm, amplified by local media, and calls for preemptive military action by opposition politicians, roused Netanyahu to warn Hamas on Sunday.

“Should we be attacked through Gaza Strip tunnels, we will take forceful action against Hamas, with far greater force than was used in Protective Edge,” he said, referring to the 2014 war, which killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, most civilians.

“We are working systematically and level-headedly against all threats, including the Hamas threat, through both defensive and offensive measures.”

Israel lost six civilians in the war as well as 67 soldiers.

Military engineers unearthed and destroyed 32 tunnels, Israeli officials say, and have since, with U.S. help, been developing a half-dozen technologies for detecting digs along the sandy, 65-km (40 mile) frontier with Gaza.

When those counter-measures might be ready is a closely guarded secret. Hamas, for its part, may be hoping to lay down as many new tunnels as possible before the system is in place.

“We are not asking for war, but getting ready for one should Israel launch it,” Hamas military spokesman Abu Ubaida said.

“GUNS DRAWN”

Israel’s refusal to elaborate on its anti-tunnel efforts has fanned fears in the 30-odd villages near the Gaza frontier.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon told Israel Radio on Monday that military experts “rush anywhere that someone claims to hear noises (but) those tests have not shown that the noise is from the digging of tunnels”.

The conservative government has found itself in the unfamiliar situation of preaching restraint after center-left opposition leader Isaac Herzog demanded any tunnels be bombed.

“What are the prime minister and defense minister waiting for? For terrorists to surface with guns drawn?” Herzog said.

Yaalon shot back that such discussions should be held behind closed doors, and argued that the passive build-up of an enemy’s capabilities did not necessarily warrant initiating hostilities.

“It might also be proposed that we go and attack (Lebanese guerrilla group) Hezbollah’s 100,000 rockets in the north or the hundreds of missiles that Iran has aimed at us,” Yaalon said.

Hakmon does not share the government’s equanimity, and says he and other Pri Gan residents are going around armed, locking their doors and shuttering their windows as a precaution.

“We are waiting for the army, or, God forbid, for the worst to happen,” he said.

(Writing by Dan Williams; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Palestinian President Says His People No Longer Bound By Peacekeeping Oslo Accord

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced at the United Nations General Assembly that Palestinians are no longer bound by the 1995 Oslo accord that established the foundation for a two-state solution because Israel did not implement it. This announcement has risen even more between Palestine and Israel and has sent Middle Eastern negotiations into uncharted territory.

The Oslo Accord was a peacekeeping agreement between Israel and Palestine that stated Palestine would be independent and free of Israeli occupation by 1999. Since then, Israel set up three areas in the West Bank for transitional governance.

“As long as Israel refuses to commit to the agreements signed with us, which render us an authority without real powers, and as long as Israel refuses to cease settlement activities and to release of the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners in accordance with our agreements, they leave us no choice but to insist that we will not remain the only ones committed to the implementation of these agreements, while Israel continuously violates them,” Abbas said.

Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, says one of the implications could be for countries to implement legally bound sanctions against Israel for not meeting its commitments.

“The EU would have to take a much further stand in labeling products that emerge from settlements. They could have to ban settlement products altogether and be even legally inclined to sanction Israel,” she said.

Other analysts believe that Abbas’ announcement would not change anything. Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert and scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Institute in Washington, stated that the announcement was “an expression of frustration and an effort to create a new point of political departure for his international drive for recognition.”

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel stated that Abbas’ declaration was “deceitful.” The director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, stated in an interview with the New York Times that “Israel does uphold its agreements.”

Palestinians Attack Israelis on “Day of Rage”

Palestinians attacked Israelis with Molotov cocktails, rocks and other projectiles after Islamic terrorist group Hamas called for a “day of rage.”

The terrorist group was capitalizing on days of tension around the Al-Aqsa mosque during the Jewish new year.

Israeli officials had prepared in advance for the terrorist-initiated violence by adding 800 extra police to patrols in the middle of Jerusalem and surrounding Arab areas.

“The Israeli police have heightened security in and around Jerusalem and the Old City in order to prevent and respond to any incidents that could take place,” said spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, adding that undercover units had been deployed.

Three people were wounded by a firebomb according to police officials.  Five Palestinians have been arrested for the attack.

Palestinian leaders had been claiming that Israel was attemping to change the status quo at the site, where Jews can visit under police guard but are not allowed to stop and pray.

Captured Hamas Terrorist Gives Up Tunnel Locations

Israel’s Shin Bet General Security Service announced Tuesday they had captured a Hamas terrorist who has given up a trove of information on the terrorist group’s tunnel system into Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has confirmed much of the terrorist’s information including a tunnel in the area of the Kerem Shalom border crossing.  The IDF says they are working “around the clock” to take care of the threat from the newly discovered tunnels.

The terrorist, Ibraheem Adel Shehadeh Shaer, was a tunnel digger for the terror group.  In addition to the locations of new parts to the Hamas tunnel system, Shaer provided information emergency procedures and how they plan to use the tunnels to attack Israel.

Shaer told Shin Bet that Iran provided cash to Hamas along with advanced weapons and electronic equipment.  Some of the advanced equipment is designed to interfere with the control signals for Israeli drone aircraft.

The fighter detailed the advanced units of Hamas along with the group’s anti-tank and anti-aircraft capabilities.  He also gave up the location of observation posts and photographic capabilities into Israel.

Shaer also confirmed that Hamas commanders keep weapons and explosives in their homes around their families because of fear of Israeli airstrikes.

Hamas Strikes Israel; IDF Responds with Air Strikes

Two terrorist attacks were carried out against Israel in the last 24 hours, resulting in a stern response from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

The first was a car attack against Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. Three soldiers were standing along a road in the northern West Bank when the Palestinian driver drove straight into them.  Two of the soldiers were seriously wounded with the third suffering slight injuries.

“We welcome the brave attack that was carried out against the Zionists,” a Hamas spokesperson said, according to the Hebrew-language Maariv website.

“We demand from our people in the West Bank to carry out more attacks, in order to teach the occupation a lesson,” the Hamas statement continued.

Then Friday two rockets were fired by Hamas toward Israel that landed in the Gaza Strip.  The rockets never made it across the Israeli border and no reports of damage or injuries were reported by Hamas.

However, the Israeli Defense Forces struck against Hamas, continuing the policy that Israel will retaliate for any attempted attack upon them by the terrorist group.

“The IDF, by means of Israeli air force aircraft, attacked the Hamas terror organization’s infrastructure in the central Gaza Strip a short time ago,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced in a press release.

“The attack was executed in response to the rocket fire at Israeli territory earlier in the afternoon,” the military said. “Hamas is the party responsible for what takes place in the Gaza Strip.”

The IDF reported a direct hit against their target.

Rocket Shot Into Israel From Gaza

A rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip toward Israel on Tuesday night.

Residents scattered for shelter as alarms pierced through the quiet night.  The IDF said the sirens sounded in Zikim, Karmia, Netiv Ha’asara and Yad Mordechai.  All of those towns border the northern Gaza Strip.

Radio Israel reported the rocket landed in an open area between two towns although the IDF would not confirm that report.

The rocket attack was the latest in a string of launches at Israel over the last month due to in-fighting among groups in the Gaza Strip.  A salafi group has been fighting against the Hamas leaders in the Strip and their clashes seem to end with rockets being fired into Israel.

Israeli officials say that Hamas is responsible any time a rocket is fired into their nation from the Gaza Strip.

The attack comes on the heels of the United Nations claiming that Israel could be found liable for war crimes from last summer’s rocket attacks by Palestinian groups.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon earlier this month warned Israel would not allow the conflicts between Hamas and the salafi organization to disrupt Israeli life.

“In recent days we received another reminder about the complexity of the situation in the Gaza Strip, a hostile entity controlled by a murderous terrorist organization, Hamas, which is also challenged by terror gangs affiliated to the global jihad,” he said.

Hamas Begins Using Heavy Machinery To Build Tunnels

Hamas is using heavy equipment and engineering equipment to quickly build a system of attack tunnels into Israel according to sources of the Times of Israel.

The terrorists are using small bulldozers that can be used to negotiate tight spaces.  Larger tractors are being used on the Israeli side of the tunnel.

The tunnels are being reinforced with wood because it’s difficult for Hamas to obtain all the concrete they need to build their planned tunnel network.  The terrorists routinely redirect shipments of concrete meant for rebuilding houses to tunnel construction.

Hamas is also working on a rocket system that would produce short-range missiles quickly because those are the missiles least likely to be shot down by Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense system.

Israeli security forces have said they are aware of the tunnel construction but that when they investigated the tunnels ended just before entering Israeli territory.

Wisconsin Sees Rise In Anti-Semitic Incidents

A new report from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation shows a significant increase in anti-Semitic incidents in Wisconsin in 2014.

The report shows 33 confirmed incidents of anti-Semitism in 2014 compared to 13 in the previous year.

“America is a great place to be Jewish. There is less anti-Semitism in this country than in many places across the globe,” Elana Kahn-Oren said.  “[However] hatred is hatred. And wherever it goes unchecked, it harms us all.”

The report gave examples of confirmed incidents:

  • At least nine swastikas were drawn, carved or painted at various places, including public streets, the driveway of a Jewish high school student’s home and in an elevator of a Jewish institution. Swastikas and a Star of David were carved at two golf greens, causing $5,000 in damage. Another included a reference to “1488,” a known white supremacist symbol.
  • A man entered a Jewish facility shouting “All Jews will (expletive) burn.”
  • At one business, a hairdresser told a potential client that she doesn’t cut “Jewish hair.” At another, an employee called his boss a “stingy Jew” when he refused to give him a raise.

Also a rally during the Hamas attacks on Israel this summer had protesters comparing Jews to Nazis and making anti-Semitic chants.

The group says despite the increase, it’s very likely the number of cases are under-reported as people do not want to deal with the hassle of police or the possibility of retribution for reporting the incident.

Hamas Mastermind Behind Kidnappings Sentenced To Life

A military court in Judea sentenced the mastermind of the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers to three life sentences.

Hussam Kawasameh was convicted last week for the planning and financing of the terrorist action.  He also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Hamas for his work in gathering weapons.  He was also the one who hid the bodies and destroyed the evidence.

Prosecutors for the IDF said that Kawasameh did not see the boys as human beings and killed them simply because they were Jews.

The father of one of the victims said that his son was a good student who helped his siblings.  Avraham Fraenkel said that his son Naftali wasn’t just murdered…but that he was used as an unwilling tool for terror as Kawasameh hid his body for 18 days.

Kawasameh did not speak at the hearing.