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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Gaza terror groups plan large military drill

2020-12-29

[Jpost] The main groups expected to participate in the drill belong to Hamas, a regional Iranian catspaw,, Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... , Popular Front for the Liberation of Paleostine and Fatah. Paleostinian terrorist groups are expected to carry out a large-scale military drill in the Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip on Tuesday. Twelve gangs will participate in the joint drill, which "comes in the context of enhancing cooperation and joint action between the resistance groups to raise their combat readiness permanently and continuously," according to a statement by the Gaza-based Joint Operations Room, a group consisting of various terrorist factions. The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior on Monday said the drill would begin at 10 a.m. and that the sea would be closed to all residents of the Gaza Strip, including fishermen, for its duration. In addition, several security and police headquarters will be evacuated for 24 hours. The main groups expected to participate in the drill belong to Hamas, Paleostinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Paleostine and Fatah. According to the groups, the drill aims to send a "message of deterrence" to Israel. "The main message is that the Paleostinian resistance groups are ready to respond to any Israeli aggression," a Hamas official in the Gaza Strip told news hounds. Abu Mujahed, a front man for the Popular Resistance® Committees, one of the groups scheduled to participate in the drill, said it would "carry new surprises and messages to the Zionist enemy." The Paleostinians will see how the performance of the "resistance groups has developed their capabilities," he said. The drill "confirms that the resistance has an army that believes in unity in confronting the Zionist enemy and carries a message to the enemy that any aggression against our people will be met with a unified response," Abu Mujahed said.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Barak to AG: Limit Hamas prisoner visits as pressure for Shalit release

2008-10-23

Defense Minister Ehud Barak is seeking to widen a ban on family visits to Hamas prisoners held in Israel in a bid to pressure the Islamist group to release captured soldier Gilad Shalit, according to a document released on Wednesday. In a letter to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, Barak requested that he examine the legal aspects of preventing families of Hamas prisoners from the West Bank from visiting them in jail. Israel has already cut off family visits to Hamas inmates from the Gaza Strip as part of an overall tightening of border restrictions since the group seized the territory from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction in 2007. Barak, citing in the letter his reasons for wanting to widen the visiting ban, said that in the absence of an Israeli military operation, "all other possibilities must be explored" in securing Shalit's release. Shalit was captured by Gaza militants, including Hamas fighters, two years ago. In exchange for his release, Hamas has demanded that Israel set free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners it holds. Barak, in the letter, described Hamas's demands as "extortion" and accused it of foot-dragging in indirect negotiations, mediated by Egypt, on a prisoner exchange. Abu Mujahed, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, one of the groups that took part in the cross-border raid that captured Shalit, said Barak's move "would not force the factions holding him to drop any of their demands." Some 11,000 Palestinians are incarcerated in Israeli prisons and securing their release is a highly emotive issue in Palestinian society, which regards them as symbols of resistance to occupation.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Dogmush: Gilad Shalit is living in paradise

2008-09-15

Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Gaza militants in 2006, is "living in paradise," the British newspaper Sunday Times quoted a leader of the Gaza Strip Doghmush clan as saying. In an interview with the Sunday Times reporter Christine Toomey, who embarked on a journey in search of the captive soldier in the Gaza Strip, clan elder Abu Khatab Doghmush said that the Army of Islam, the militant group affiliated with the clan, is not currently holding Shalit, despite the fact that the group is believed to have taken part in the abduction. "The only faction that controls his life now is the Qassam Brigades," Abu Khatab told Toomey, referring to the Hamas-affiliated militant group. "But I can tell you that Shalit is living in a paradise. Our religion of Islam demands that we look after prisoners even more than we do our own people," the newspaper quoted him as saying. Abu Khatab added specific details regarding Shalit's treatment, saying "He's not being kept in a closed room all the time - this would not be healthy. He can go out and take fresh air," rejecting speculations that the Israeli soldier is being held underground, booby trapped with explosives. "Every year a party is held to celebrate his birthday. Yes, there is a cake and candles, music, everything," Abu Khatab added. Toomey also spoke with senior Hamas official and former foreign minister Mahmoud Zahar, who is quoted as saying that he doesn't know anything about how Shalit is being treated by his captors, but his conditions are certain to be better than those of the Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. "Nobody from the political or military wing of Hamas knows where Shalit is," Zahar is quoted as saying. "Only the small group who kidnapped him know. They are very secretive." The reported interviewed the spokesman of the Palestinian group the Popular Resistance Committees, which took part in the planning of the abduction. The spokesman, Abu Mujahed, described how the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas should transpire, saying "after the Israelis free the first 100 Palestinian prisoners, Shalit would be moved to Egypt. Once he?s in Egypt, the Israelis would have to free 1,000 more of our brothers and sisters before he is released. We were very close to agreeing a deal a year ago, then the Israelis stopped negotiations. We were amazed that they were prepared to go back to zero. It is the Israelis who are putting obstacles in the way of an agreement." "If we do not see some results soon, we will be forced to close the file," he added.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

PRC: Gaza truce may end in 3 weeks if no progress on crossings

2008-08-08

The Popular Resistance Committees Palestinian militant group on Thursday warned Israel that the truce between Hamas and Israel in Gaza could end in three weeks time if no progress is made on the crossings and the release of prisoners. The truce between Israel and Hamas went into effect on June 19. "The Zionist occupation (Israel) has not yet agreed to the demand to release our prisoners so our fighters are preparing for the next round in which we will try to abduct more Israeli soldiers to swap them for our hero prisoners," Abu Attaya, spokesman of the PRC's armed wing, told Reuters. Advertisement On Thursday, the PRC allowed Reuters and other news organizations to film a live ammunition training exercise. Gunmen detonated bombs and opened fire while storming a mock Israeli army base built on the ruins of a former Jewish settlement in the southern Gaza Strip. Abu Mujahed, one of the group's leaders, told dozens of guerillas undergoing military training that Hamas, the PRC and other factions were disappointed at Israel's slow progress in opening Gaza's border crossings and prisoner release talks. "[Israel] has until the end of the tenth week [since the declaration of the ceasefire] and if they do not abide by the obligations of calm, politicians will stop talking and military men will act," Abu Mujahed said.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

PRC: Shalit won't see the light of day unless Israel agrees to swap terms

2008-08-05

The spokesman of the militant Palestinian group the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) said Monday that Gilad Shalit would not see the light of day unless Israel agrees to a prisoner exchange in accordance with all the demands of the Palestinian organizations. Shalit, an Israel Defense Forces soldier, was captured by Gaza militants in a cross border raid in June 2006. Talks are currently underway between Israel and Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers over the terms of a deal that would see Shalit returned to Israel in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. PRC spokesman Abu Mujahed said that the IDF had failed in all its attempts to obtain information regarding the captive soldier. The militant group was responding to remarks made earlier by IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who said that Israel knew that Shalit was alive and where he was being held. Abu Mujahed said that "Israel has tried to obtain information in more than one path. Ashkenazi knows very well that Shalit will see the light of day only within the framework of a respectable prisoner exchange."

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Sderot Residents Burn Tires as Leaders Mull Reaction Options

2008-02-10

Dozens of furious Sderot residents took to the streets Saturday night following the Kassam attack that seriously injured two brothers, aged 8 and 19. Doctors were fighting to save the younger boy's leg, reportedly partially severed in the explosion which sent 11 others into emotional shock, including the boys’ 15-year-old brother and their mother. Demonstrators in Sderot burned tires, called upon Ehud Olmert to resign and demanded an IDF operation in Gaza. They then proceeded to block Sderot junction, causing a traffic slowdown in the adjoining roads. Public Security Minister Avi Dichter visited Sderot Saturday, before the brothers' injury, and said: "I found a battered town, 20 percent of whose residents have simply gotten up and left. The residents live in distress, because they say they do not see the end to the Kassams." Dichter said after the visit that residents told him that they live "from miracle to miracle" and that there was a larger presence than usual in the town's synagogues. "When I entered Sderot I saw barren streets, empty of people, and people holed up in their homes," he added. Dichter plans to tell the government what he saw in Sunday's cabinet session. A senior Gaza terrorist named "Abu Mujahed" used Dichter's statements to score psychological warfare points. The terrorist said "we did not need Dichter's announcement, because this is not the first time the Israelis admit this and Sderot has been almost completely empty for several months. This proves that the rockets we fire are effective and that they cause a balance of terror and deterrence with the Zionist enemy.” Government spokesman David Baker said after Saturday night's Kassam attack that the government will not allow the current situation in Sderot to continue. “Israel will respond with determination to protect its citizens.” The Islamic Jihad’s Al-Aqsa Brigades terrorist gang took responsibility for the attack. MK Effie Eitam (NRP-NU) placed responsibility for the injuries in the Kassam attack Saturday night on the government. “The fact that an entire city in Israel is in critical condition is testimony to the poor performance of the government and defense minister,” he said. "Only a stable policy of tightening the economic siege of Gaza and wide-scale attacks on all of Hamas' leadership will reduce the number of Kassams and make it possible to prepare a large scale assault on Gaza, in order to crush the terror infrastructures in Gaza and bring peace and security back into the lives of the residents of Sderot and the Gaza perimeter,” he added. NRP chairman MK Zevulun Orlev called for a military operation in Gaza Saturday night. Orlev said: "The reality in Sderot proves that it is time to stop playing with the on/off switch and let the IDF fight the terror in Gaza as it is doing in Judea and Samaria. The government is avoiding a large-scale assault on Gaza so it doesn't have to admit failure in the Disengagement, but there is no choice but to mount Operation Defensive Shield II in Gaza." MK Miki Eitan (Likud) said it was time to "change course and take the gloves off" as far as Gaza was concerned. He warned, however, against a ground operation. "The Israeli government's ministers say there is a state of war with the Hamas government. But what kind of war is this, in which enemy military commanders receive immunity? Every time a "color red" siren goes off in Sderot, electricity to Gaza should be cut off at that very second. Whenever a home is hit, the house of one of the Hamas leaders should be bombed." "What we must not do," he added, "is to send our soldiers to a ground operation in Gaza, and play the game according to the rules which are convenient for the terrorists. The limitations which the High Court puts on IDF responses could lead us to respond by a ground assault. That kind of operation could lead to a bloodbath, in which many Israeli soldiers might get hurt, as well as many of the Palestinians which the court cares so much about." MK Gidon Sa'ar (Likud) demanded that the Prime Minister and Defense Minister cancel their plans to go abroad this week and act immediately to stop the Kassam attacks. "Olmert and Barak's answers are not needed in Berlin and Ankara, but in Sderot, where the residents' security has gone with the wind," he said. Minister for Religious Services Yitzchak Cohen (Shas) said that "as long as Sderot is burning, we must strangle Gaza's infrastructures, until all of the Kassam launchers lay down their weapons in broad daylight." Cohen said there was no difference between the international reaction to a 1% cut of Gaza's electricity and a 100% cut. "It seems in Gaza they do not understand warnings, and only completely cutting off Gaza will bring results," he added.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas: One false move and Shalit gets it

2007-12-15

Hamas is threatening to harm kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit if Israel Defense Forces carry out a planned large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Army Radio reported Friday. The Saudi newspaper Al-Jarida reports that Hamas' Syrian-based leader Khaled Mashaal also threatened increased violence against Israel. According to the report, Hamas is threatening to carry out suicide bombings deep inside Israeli territory as well as kidnap additional Israeli troops. Hamas spokesman Abu Mujahed told Nazareth-based newspaper A-Sinara that if Israel were to invade Gaza, the group would begin rocket attacks on Israeli cities. The threat came as four Gaza Strip Palestinians were killed in an explosion during the funeral for an Islamic Jihad militant who died in an Israeli air strike, according to local medical officials and the police agency run by Hamas. The blast wounded 35 others, four critically, according to the emergency chief at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, Bloomberg News reported. An Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman said the air strike followed the firing of a rocket barrage on Israel by Palestinian militants. The homemade Qassam rockets hit a house in the Israeli town of Sderot, injuring a woman, the IDF said.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Israeli Strike Kills 5 Militants in Gaza

2007-12-02

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Gaza militants threatened Saturday to fire longer-range rockets and target larger Israeli communities, after five Hamas members are killed in an Israeli airstrike. Early Saturday, an Israeli airstrike killed five Hamas militants near the southern town of Khan Younis. Eight others were wounded, one critically, medical officials said. Hamas said the men were on a night patrol east of Khan Younis. The army said it carried out the strike after identifying armed men near its border with Gaza. A spokesman for the Islamic Jihad group said its engineers are trying to produce local copies of Russian-made 122mm Katyusha rockets, which have a reach of up to 19 miles, or halfway from Gaza to Tel Aviv. A senior Hamas official said his group was developing a more lethal type of warhead for the rockets it regularly lobs into Israel, and Abu Mujahed, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, a group allied with Hamas, said his organization had plans to fire longer-range rockets. ``The real barrage of rockets has not yet begun,'' said Abu Mujahed, whose brother was killed in Saturday's airstrike, adding that ``22 kilometers is not the ceiling.'' His brother's ceiling now is about two meters. It was an apparent reference to 122mm Katyusha rockets that can hit targets 12 to 19 miles away, about twice the range of the thousands of homemade Qassam projectiles that Gaza militants have fired at Israel communities in recent years. Katyushas are deadlier than the homemade rockets and put larger Israeli communities near Gaza into rocket range. Netivot, a town of 25,000, is 10 miles northeast of Gaza, and Ashkelon, a port city where 115,000 Israelis live, is about 8 miles away. Katyusha fire from Gaza has been rare. The Islamic Jihad militant group claims to have fired three Russian-made rockets at Israel since March 2006, and to have ``many'' in their possession. Israel estimates that a dozen Katyushas were smuggled into Gaza since it left the strip in September 2005.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

PRC threatens life of PM Fayad

2007-07-29

The government of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad came under heavy criticism over the weekend from Hamas and other radical groups for failing to mention the "armed resistance" in its platform. One group threatened to kill the "traitor" Fayad and his colleagues in Ramallah, while another said it would step up its efforts to bring down his government. The threats against Fayad are the worst since he was appointed as prime minister last month. PA security officials here told The Jerusalem Post that they were taking the threats very seriously and that measures had already been implemented to protect Fayad and other top figures. Hamas, in another act of defiance against Fayad's West Bank government, on Saturday started paying salaries to some 10,000 PA civil servants in the Gaza Strip who did not receive their payments because of their affiliation with Hamas. On Friday, Fayad's government published its platform, which does not include any reference to the mukawama (a term generally associated with armed struggle) against Israel. Instead, the government reiterated its commitment to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's call for a "popular resistance against the Israeli occupation." The new manifesto stated that any peace agreement with Israel must be designed along the pre-1967 borders and that Jerusalem should be the capital of both Israel and any future Palestinian state. "We were not surprised by the Fayad government's decision to drop the armed resistance from its platform, because this is a government that works according to an American and Israeli agenda," said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip. "If Fayad thinks that he can erase the word mukawama with ink he's mistaken. This word was written with the blood of our martyrs." Abu Zuhri expressed "astonishment" that Fatah had agreed to the platform. "We urge Fatah to take a clear and brave stance toward the policy of the Fayad government, which is acting against the national aspirations of our people." Abu Mujahed, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, an alliance of various armed groups in the Gaza Strip, accused Fayad of "legitimizing the occupation and of surrendering Jerusalem and the rest of the territories to the enemy." Dubbing Fayad a "traitor," Abu Mujahed said the armed resistance had succeeded in "blocking the Zionist project for many years." Fayad, he added, may drop anything he wants from his platform, "but the Palestinians and their resistance movements and thousands of prisoners will always have their own platform. No one will be able to spoil our real platform. The Israeli enemy has failed over the past decades to end the armed struggle, and Fayad won't succeed in doing so." Abu Abir, a notorious warlord in the Gaza Strip, threatened that his men would target Fayad and "his treacherous gang" in the West Bank. "We will target them in the field the same way we attack Israel," he said in response to the government's failure to endorse the armed struggle. "We promise to put an end to all the American-backed Palestinian personalities in the near future because of their decision to side with the Israeli enemy." The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Islamic Jihad also condemned the Fayad government, vowing to continue terror attacks on Israel. "Who does this government represent," asked Khaled al-Batsh, a senior Islamic Jihad leader in the Gaza Strip. "If Salaam Fayad continues to ignore the desire of the Palestinians and insists on dropping the armed struggle from his platform, then he should search for another people to govern."

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Israel seizes top Palestinian militant in W. Bank

2006-12-26

JENIN, West Bank - Israel seized a top commander from a Palestinian militant group in the occupied West Bank on Monday, a local security source said. Israeli forces raided the West Bank town of Qabatiya, near the city of Jenin, and detained nine Palestinians, including Yasser Nazzal, head of the Popular Resistance Committees in the West Bank, the security source and witnesses said. They also seized two Islamic Jihad militants, they added. Another splinter group. ‘The leader (Nazzal) will be replaced by a thousand leaders and resistance will continue,’ PRC spokesman in Gaza, Abu Mujahed, said. ‘We tell the Zionist enemy that your message has been received and now you should await the response.’ We shall have Dire Revenge™!"

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Two Kassams land in Sderot area

2006-11-28

Despite the Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, two Kassam rockets, fired from the Gaza Strip, landed in open territory in the Sderot area on Monday afternoon. No one was wounded and no damage was reported. Although the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Fatah party, claimed responsibility for the attack, many in the Palestinian Authority said that the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) were actually the ones responsible as it was one of their group who was killed by IDF forces late Sunday night. Earlier Monday, a leader of the Islamic Jihad in Jenin, Mahmoud Al Saadi, threatened that his organization would carry out suicide bombings deep inside Israeli territory in response to Israeli violations of the cease-fire in the West Bank. Al Saadi called on his counterparts in Gaza to reject the fledgling truce unless it covered all the Palestinian territories and warned that his group might launch a suicide attack on Israel. "We live in the same homeland and it is forbidden to divide our homeland, " he said in a statement. Popular Resistance Committees spokesman Abu Mujahed also warned that continued attacks in the West Bank would lead to a collapse of the cease-fire. "We warn the world that if the Zionist aggression in the West Bank doesn't stop, this truce will collapse," said Abu Mujahed. The threat came in the wake of an IDF overnight operation in in Kabatiya, south of Jenin, in which troops killed a PRC commander and a 50-year-old woman. The woman took the dead PRC commander's weapon and tried to run off, the army said, saying that troops did not immediately identify her as a woman in the pre-dawn darkness because she had been wearing trousers. Senior PRC official Yasser Maza'al said that Israel should "expect revenge in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip" in the wake of the deaths, Israel Radio reported. During IDF operations in the area, troops were fired on several times by Palestinian gunmen. No one was wounded, but an IDF vehicle was damaged. On Sunday morning, an IDF Duvdevan unit arrested Islamic Jihad fugitive Tamr Abudiyeh, 20, in Bethlehem. Abudiyeh, a weapons dealer involved in planning shooting attacks against Israelis, was part of a terror cell led by Ta'ar Hassan, an Islamic Jihad operative who attempted to detonate a car bomb on the Minharot road and who was killed while the IDF was trying to apprehend him. Abudiyeh was detained by security forces for interrogation. Meanwhile, the IDF arrested 15 Palestinian fugitives in overnight operations throughout the West Bank. In one such operation in Nablus, in which six Fatah fugitives were nabbed, Palestinian gunmen shot at IDF troops. No one was wounded, and no damage was reported.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Kassam lands in Negev despite ceasefire agreement

2006-11-26

Hmm, guess you just can't trust Palestinian terrorists. Who'd of thunk it? A Kassam rocket landed in the western Negev on Sunday morning despite the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestinian factions which became effective at 6 a.m. and was followed by the IDF's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. No one was wounded in the rocket attack and no damage was reported. The Palestinian offer was accepted by Israel on Saturday night, and was set to halt operations in Gaza in return for an end to all Palestinian violence, including rocket fire, tunneling and suicide bombers, the Prime Minister's Office announced. Saturday's dramatic announcement followed a telephone conversation between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. According to the Prime Minister's Office, Abbas phoned Olmert and told him he had received an agreement from all the different Palestinian factions to the cease-fire, and in response "requested that Israel would stop all military operations in the Gaza Strip, and withdraw all its forces from there." The statement said that after speaking to his senior ministers and top security officials, Olmert told Abbas that Israel would respond favorably "since Israel was operating in the Gaza Strip in response to the [Palestinian] violence." Olmert, according to the statement, told Abbas that "the end of the violence could bring about the end of Israeli operations, and his hope that this would bring stability to both sides." According to the statement, the two "agreed to continue the dialogue to bring about an end of violence in the West Bank, and agreed to talk again soon." No mention was made in the statement about kidnapped soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, whose abduction on June 25 led to the IDF's stepped-up actions in Gaza. The agreement, according to Israeli officials, did not apply to military actions in the West Bank. The key now, the officials said, would be to see whether indeed all the different Palestinian factions have signed on - and would honor - the cease-fire agreement. Palestinian terrorist groups announced the offer on Saturday, saying that they would stop firing rockets at Israel at 6 a.m. Sunday. "We have set 6 a.m. tomorrow morning to stop firing rockets toward Zionist towns in our occupied land in return for a mutual cessation of the aggression committed against our people," said Abu Mujahed, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees. Washington was full of praise for the cease-fire agreement. More at link.

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