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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Israeli planes whack Gazoo

2015-06-08

Jerusalem -- The Israeli air force hit the Gaza Strip early on Sunday for the second time in three days after new rocket fire from the territory hit southern Israel, the military said. Ummm... We seen dis movie. Is it reruns already? It was the third time Israel had staged retaliatory air strikes in Gaza in the past fortnight, with each raid following rocket fire on the Israeli south, raising fears of a new confrontation with Palestinian terrorists militants. Aircraft hit “terrorist militant infrastructure” in northern Gaza, a military statement said. The Israeli government also ordered the closure until further notice of the Erez crossing for people and the Kerem Shalom crossing for goods. Only medical cases and humanitarian aid will be allowed through, it said. Palestinian security sources and witnesses said the air force targeted a training site belonging to Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, in the northern Beit Lahiya area. The rocket fire on Saturday evening struck open ground near the southern Israeli port of Ashkelon, causing no casualties. The same area was targeted by three rockets on Wednesday night, which also prompted retaliatory air strikes. After that attack, the military deployed batteries of its Iron Dome air defence system around Ashkelon as a precaution, Israeli media reported on Friday. The latest attack was claimed by a relatively-new group of terrorists extremists called the Supporters of the Daesh in Jerusalem, which has claimed responsibility for all three instances of rocket fire in the past two weeks. The first attack was on May 26. The terrorist group is locked in death power struggle with Hamas which is the de facto power in Gaza, with the terrorist movement’s security forces mounting a harsh crackdown on such fringe terrorist groups. Last week, Hamas police shot dead a local terrorist militant leader during an arrest operation in Gaza City. Since last summer, when Israel and Hamas fought a deadly 50-day war in and around Gaza, there have been growing signs of internal unrest in the territory with a spate of bomb attacks targeting public buildings and officials as well as international organisations. Although few have been claimed, they are believed to be the work of terrorists radical Salafists unafraid to challenge Hamas. In Gaza, they have made no secret of their disdain for Hamas over its observance of a tacit ceasefire with Israel and its failure to implement Shariah.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Israel puts jailed Hamas commander in isolation cell

2015-06-01

Jerusalem -- An imprisoned commander of Hamas’s armed wing who is serving 67 life terms has been placed in solitary confinement for speaking to a radio station, Israel’s prisons authority said on Sunday. Commander of that prison is about to be reassigned... Abdallah Barghouti gave an interview to Hamas radio using a mobile telephone “smuggled into the prison where he is being held, and has been placed in an isolation cell,” said spokeswoman Sivan Weizman. The duration of his stay in solitary confinement has yet to be determined, she added. Barghouti is a leading commander of the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement which is the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip. Arrested in 2003 by Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency, Barghouti was sentenced to 67 life terms by a military court the following year over attacks in the Jewish state that killed 66 and wounded hundreds more.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Israel raids Gaza Strip after rocket death

2006-11-16

GAZA CITY - Israeli warplanes raided the Gaza Strip overnight hours after an Israeli woman was killed by Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza, with the Jewish state vowing to retaliate against militants who would “pay a heavy price”. Israeli warplanes carried out five raids on the Gaza Strip late Wednesday and early Thursday, Palestinian security officials said, adding that two Palestinians were wounded when the Israelis targeted a house in Shatti refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip where an official of the Palestinian militant umbrella group the Popular Resistance Committees lived. A second Israeli air raid took place on the Jabaliya refugee camp, also in the north of the Gaza Strip. That attack targeted the home of a leader of the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas which heads the current Palestinian government, the sources said. They gave no further details. An army spokesman confirmed that aircraft had carried out two attacks “aimed at buildings used to store weapons.” Three later raids were aimed at houses belonging to Hamas militants at Rafah in the south of the Strip and in Jabaliya, the officials said.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Fatah-led security forces wary after Hamas win

2006-02-02

The big bowl of popcorn please, salt, extra butter, and lots of beverages. Goddamn! $3.75 for Milk Duds? ABBASSAN, Gaza Strip -The bomb only singed the wall of his home, but Fatah loyalist and former security heavyweight Suleiman Abu Mutleq says the message is crystal clear: Hamas wants a fight. The one-time senior officer in the preventive security force, one of those services created by the late Yasser Arafat and made up of Fatah members, was heavily defeated by the Islamic Resistance Movement in last week’s election. Abu Mutleq was rudely awakened from a peaceful night’s sleep on Wednesday by an explosion outside his front door in the central Gaza Strip. “Three kilos of explosives, detonated by a mobile phone. It broke the door, shattered the windows.” Yup, sounds like an IED (Islamic explosive device) allright. I don't think they really care about a "Paleostinian state." I think they just like bombs. Around him, mope dozens of glum-looking men, some of them armed, most of them in civilian clothes. Their moping around gives me a warm glow. Mope Factor 9.8, is it? Relatives, friends and political allies turned up to commiserate with the unfortunate Fatah candidate, swept aside like so many others by the tidal wave that accorded Hamas an absolute majority in the Palestinian parliament. “We are certain it was the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas). They’re in a hurry to take our place. They think anything’s allowed after their victory.” To the victor belong the spoils, or in the case of Gaza, spoiled. In Gaza City, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri denied that the faction had anything to do with the blast, dismissing “baseless accusations”. "Lies! All lies!" "Nope. Nope. Wudn't us." Instead, he charged that an Ezzedine Al Qassam leader was subject to a failed assassination attempt on the same morning. "Yeah! It wudn't us! It wuz them!" Yet to degenerate into serious clashes, friction between Fatah—all powerful in the Palestinian security forces—and Ezzedine Al Qassam has increased since the election, provoking fears that worse lies round the corner. In a string of gunfights, assassination attemps and the seizure of government and party offices, so far only a handful of people have been wounded. Because Paleos have never learned to shoot straight. At work in the neighbouring town of Khan Yunis, the local preventive security chief said Abu Mutleq’s attack was not the first. “The day before yesterday, they threw a grenade at my home in Rafah. My wife and children were inside,” saud Yussef Siam. “Hamas looks at us like enemies ... It’s true that in 1996 we made decisions against them, but we were on orders from Yasser Arafat.” "It was just business, Michael!" Under heavy international pressure, the late Palestinian Authority president at the time ordered hundreds of Hamas militants to be arrested. One senior Hamas leader, Mahmud Zahar, likes to recall how he was released with several broken ribs after a testing interrogation. "Testing, testing, 1 .. 2 .. 3 broken ribs, testing, testing." "Yer cockin' yer elbow, Mahmoud! Y'need a nice, straight swing, like this!" "Ooooowwww!" Aware of the sensitive nature of the subject and strained relations, Hamas top brass have recently stepped up assurances that they would not go ahead with any purge of the Fatah-dominated security apparatus. “We intend to reform these organisations, but nobody will lose his salary or his position ... Anyone who serves will remain in his job,” Ismail Haniya told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in a recent interview. Typical Arab world 'reform': everyone remains employed, just with a new layer of bosses. Some officials suggest that Hamas be ultimately incorporated into a Palestinian army, although most believe any such merger and acquisition will figure low on the new government’s list of priorities. Like Hamas wants to be saddled with the Paleo army. The entire security apparatus, around 58,000 men, is directly answerable to Arafat’s successor and Fatah yes-man, Mahmud Abbas. For Siam, the mechanics are clear. “The future interior minister can propose things to the president, but he can refuse. We we are answerable to him.” "At least until something unfortunate happens to him and we get our guy in." Outside Abu Mutleq’s house in Abbassan, 33-year-old Ahmed Awadallah, pistol on hip, lets rip. Shouldn't have had the chili... “Hamas can certainly appoint officers ... but no one will obey their orders!” Sure, Mr. Bigshot, until the day an IED goes off under your bed.

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Israel-Palestine

Israel to wrap up Gaza exit

2005-08-21

JERUSALEM - Israel was to resume its historic operation to remove the last remaining Jews from the Gaza Strip Sunday and give the final seal of approval for the first ever evacuation from the occupied West Bank. The dramatic progress made by the army and police in the first three days of forcible evacuations meant that only three Gaza settlements had any sizeable population still remaining before the operation was suspended on Friday afternoon for the start of the Jewish sabbath. Troops were expected Sunday to move into the southern settlements of Katif and Atsmona, leaving only the isolated settlement of Netzarim to be tackled on Monday. The pullout from Gaza after a 38-year occupation had been initially scheduled to take some three weeks, after which the security forces were then to have turned their attention to the northern West Bank. But with the Gaza withdrawal nearing completion, military sources have said the operation in the northern West Bank is likely to begin now in mid-week. Hundreds of activists, many of whom took part in the “defence” of the Gaza Strip settlements, have flocked to the northern West Bank communities of Sanur and Homesh to take part in the final showdown. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose disengagement plan has earned him the enmity of his former allies on the Israeli right and within the settler movement, was to convene his cabinet Sunday where ministers were to give final approval for the evacuation of Homesh and Sanur. Having packed his cabinet with supporters of disengagement, the outcome of the vote is in no doubt. Israel began its occupation of the West Bank after the 1967 war with its Arab neighbours, slowly but surely building settlements across the territory, which should form the bulk of the Palestinians’ promised future state. Sharon has made no apologies about the West Bank settlement programme, saying in a speech last week that it will “continue and develop”. But Sunday’s cabinet vote should seal his place in the history books as the first Israeli leader to sanction the pullout from any part of an area known by Jews as Judea and Samaria, the heart of Biblical Israel. Disengagement has raised hopes of a genuine revival of the moribund roadkill peace process. But both moderate Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and the radical Islamist movement Hamas made clear on Saturday that it was not about to usher in a new era of peace for a region torn by five years of conflict. Hailing the withdrawal from Gaza as a “first step”, Abbas confirmed that his Palestinian Authority would take control over all vacated land and planned to build 3,000 new homes on one of the settlements, Morag. 'cause we all know what builders the Paleos are. But he added it was vital that Israel pulls out of all areas reoccupied since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000 in the West Bank. “After that it must stop the settlements and its judaising of Jerusalem,” he said in a speech in Gaza City. “Those who continue with these measures show they do not want peace.” And we all know how fervent the desire for peace is in Paleos. While Abbas, a frequent critic of the armed uprising, is seen incorrectly as the moderate voice among Palestinians, he is facing a severe test of his popularity from the hardliners of Hamas who are portraying the Israeli departure from Gaza as a “victory for the resistance.” A ballot box showdown between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah movement is now on the cards after Abbas announced that only the second ever legislative elections would take place on January 25. Just as the Palestinian leader was delivering his speech in Gaza City, militants of the armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, were delivering their own verdict on the implications of the pullout. In a statement handed to reporters, they reiterated that they would not disarm after the pullout from Hamas’s Gaza stronghold or end their campaign against Israel “until the defeat of the occupation from all our land”. By which they mean Israel as well.

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