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Mahmud Zahar

Mahmud Zahar

Hamas

Israel-Palestine

20040325

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas official calls on Palestinians to 'take up arms'

2015-10-04

Of course he does. It's a day of the week that ends in -day. [ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A senior Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, official Saturday called on Paleostinians to take up arms to "defend" the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem after a rise in Jewish visitors to the flashpoint site. "The only solution to defend the Al-Aqsa mosque and to prevent Israelis from carrying out their plans there is for West Bank and Jerusalem residents to take up arms," Mahmud Zahar said in an interview posted on the Islamist movement's website. Tensions have been high in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem recently, with Paleostinians and Israeli police clashing at the site, which is holy to both Muslims and Jews. Zahar's call comes after numerous attacks on Paleostinians were reported in the West Bank Friday as Israeli troops searched for the suspected Paleostinian killers of a Jewish settler couple shot in front of their young children. "Until now weapons have only served to protect the settlers and the occupiers," added Zahar, whose movement rules the Gazoo Strip. "But we should not forget the West Bank has great human resources that can be mobilized at any moment." "The image of Paleostinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem throwing stones and Molotov cocktails has dealt a blow to the occupier," he said. Something like that. The Times of Israel adds: Ma'an quoted Paleostinian security forces as saying that the IDF raided the home of a man named Noud ad-Din Abu Hashya in the Askar refugee camp in Nablus. Hashya is believed to have been involved in the attack that killed the Henkins, Paleostinian security sources told the agency. According to the report, IDF troops gave Hashya's family a notice for a demolition order on their home, which is expected to be carried out next week. Consequences are often no fun at all. The detainees are all thought to be linked to Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,, Ma'an said. Hamas praised the attack but did not claim responsibility. A Fatah group claimed to have carried out the killing.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas MPs Meet, Slam Abbas in Sign of Palestinian Rifts

2015-01-15

[An Nahar] Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, MPs in Gazoo held an exclusive meeting on Wednesday apparently defying the Paleostinian Authority and criticized president the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... , in a further sign of a failing unity pact. They were meeting for the first time since the April unity deal, which ostensibly put an end to years of infighting between Gazoo rulers Hamas and Abbas's Fatah party. Even months after Hamas and the Fatah-dominated PLO -- which in turn dominates the PA -- appointed a mutually-agreed central government, disputes that emerged shortly after the deal appear to be worsening. "Neither the president nor anyone else can forbid parliament from meeting," Hamas MP Salah al-Bardaweel said in a symbolic statement. Hamas holds 78 of the Paleostinian parliament's 132 seats, and 25 of its MPs live in the Gazoo Strip. Another 20 non-Hamas MPs live in Gazoo, but did not attend the meeting. Last year's reconciliation pact was meant to pave the way for Paleostinian general elections by the end of 2014, and to hand over control of Gazoo in the interim from Hamas to the unity government, which took oath early June. But there have been no sign of elections or a real transfer of power, despite Hamas' stated willingness to relinquish its authority. Senior Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar, also present, said the new government was a "failure". "We send a clear message: either the government must take up its responsibilities or resign," he said.

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Africa North

Egypt to open Gaza border crossing

2011-04-30

[Al Jazeera] Egypt is to permanently open the Rafah border crossing to ease the Israeli blockade on Gazoo, Nabil al-Arabi, the country's foreign minister, has said. Golly, that's a surprise. How soon until Gaza is the tip of the Egyptian spear again, d'you suppose? Arabi said Egypt would take "important steps to help ease the blockade on Gazoo in the few days to come". Then the Gaza flotilla really is unnecessary. Speaking to Al Jizz on Friday, the minister said Egypt would no longer accept that the Rafah border, Gazoo's only crossing that bypasses Israel, remain blocked, describing the decision to seal it off as "shameful". The announcement came days after Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,, which controls Gazoo, and their secular West Bank rivals Fatah, which controls the Paleostinian Authority (PA), agreed to end their rift and form an interim government to prepare for elections. In talks before the deal, the two sides had discussed reopening the crossing after positioning PA representatives at the border, a condition in a US-brokered 2005 border crossing agreement between Israel and the PA. Mahmud Zahar, a senior Hamas official, told the AFP news agency that it was understood that the crossing, which under the 2005 agreement was to be monitored by European Union delegates, would be opened after a unity deal. Still monitored by the fair-minded EU, is it? Israeli concerns A bigwig in Jerusalem said Israel was "very concerned" about the implications of the Rafah crossing being open. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said Hamas had already built up a "dangerous military machine" in northern Sinai which could be further strengthened by opening Rafah. "What power could they amass if Egypt was no longer acting to prevent that build-up?" the official said. Earlier this week, unknown assailants in northern Sinai blew up a gas pipeline supplying Israel and Jordan, the second time it has been sabotaged in 10 weeks. "We are troubled by the developments in Egypt, by the voices calling to annul the peace treaty, by the rapprochement between Egypt and Iran, and by the upgrading of relations between Egypt and Hamas," the Israeli source said. "These developments potentially have strategic implications for Israel's national security." Paleostinian officials welcomed the Egyptian move, with Saeb Erakat, the PA's chief negotiator, saying it was one step towards loosening the siege on the Gazoo Strip. "We welcome this step by Egypt. We have been pressing them all the time to end the suffering of the people in Gazoo, but the real siege is caused by Israel because there are many border crossing with Israel but only one with Egypt," he said. "We ask Israel to open all the borders to end this crime against the Paleostinian people in the Gazoo Strip," he said. Hatem Ewidah, the Hamas official in charge of border crossings in Gazoo, also welcomed the move, but stressed it was "important to open the commercial crossing with Egypt" to reduce the impact of the blockade.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas official: Party will accept Abbas initiative to end division

2011-03-31

[Ma'an] Hamas head of the Palestinian legislature Aziz Dweik ...Dweik has been associated with The Mohammedan Brotherhood and Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, since as early as 1992.... said Tuesday that the party would respond positively to President Mahmoud Abbas' initiative to visit Gaza and end the national division. Dweik told Ma'an Radio that Abbas' proposed visit would be a practical step toward resolving the split between the Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Dweik headed a delegation of Hamas leaders who held landmark talks with Abbas in Ramallah on Saturday, the president's first meeting with Hamas in over two years. In the midst of mass youth protests demanding an end to the national division, Gaza premier Ismail Haniyeh invited Abbas to Gaza for emergency talks. The president accepted the invitation on March 16, but said he would go to the coastal enclave to make a unity deal, not to discuss one. He proposed forming a unity government to prepare for presidential, legislative and Palestinian National Council elections within six months. Fatah officials said a date would be set for Abbas' visit once Hamas accepted the initiative. Dweik said he expected Hamas officials to respond positively within the next week. In Cairo, Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar said the party would hold another meeting in Gaza "in the coming two days" with Fatah members. Zahar's comments were made after a meeting with Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa, who said the league was willing to host Palestinian unity meetings. "There is no justification whatsoever for the continued Palestinian division," Mussa said, stressing the need to "unify Palestinian ranks ahead the current challenges." Israel slams initiative Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned the PA not to reconcile with Hamas, saying it would prohibit peace with Israel. "We hear in recent days that the Palestinian Authority is thinking of uniting with Hamas," Netanyahu told Jewish fundraisers in a speech distributed on Tuesday by the Israeli Government Press Office. "It's thinking of effecting peace, not with Israel, but with Hamas," he said. "Well, I say to them something very simple: you can't have peace with Israel and Hamas. It's one or the other, but not both." Fatah and Hamas split in 2007 when the Islamist movement kicked its secular rivals out of Gaza amid clashes which neared civil war. Since then, Gaza has been effectively cut off from the West Bank, which is under the control of Fatah, and repeated attempts at reconciliation have led nowhere. The split has badly damaged Palestinian efforts to end Israel's illegal military occupation. A growing Palestinian youth movement is demanding national unity, and elections for the Palestinian National Council. Abbas' proposed visit was immediately welcomed by UN envoy Robert Serry, who noted that unity was "overdue and vital for Palestinian legitimate aspirations."

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Arab leaders warn Gaza jihadis not to fire missles at Israel

2011-01-12

Hamas held "urgent" talks with other jihadi groups to pass a warning from Arab leaders not to fire rockets at Israel at a Gaza City hotel on Wednesday. "Or what?" Members of Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other splitters groups in the resistance committee were among those invited. "Hamas asked us to this meeting at the Al-Quds Hotel in Gaza; they said it was urgent," a source said, adding that it was called by senior Hamas officials Mahmud Zahar, Khalil al-Haya and Ayman Taha. "Hamas received a message from Egypt and other parties, some of them Arab, telling them that the situation along the Gaza border is very dangerous, and that Israel might start another war if the firing of rockets continues, especially Grads," he said.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Warty Nose sez Nazi genocide was a lie

2011-01-08

[Asharq al-Aswat] A senior Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, leader on Thursday accused Israel of carrying out "countless holocausts" against the Paleostinians while saying the Nazi genocide was a "lie." Mahmud Zahar made the remarks during a memorial ceremony for 43 Paleostinians who were killed at a UN school in the Jabaliya refugee camp during Israel's 22-day war on Gazoo that began in December 2008. "The lie according to which they were a victim of a holocaust and the (Jewish) people are a victim -- this lie has crumbled with the holocaust of Beit Hanun, the holocaust of Al-Fakhura and the other countless holocausts ... committed by the Zionist enemy," he said. Zahar was speaking on the second anniversary of an Israeli air strike on the United Nations, aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society' Al-Fakhura school in the northern Gazoo Strip. The incident was one of the deadliest in Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" offensive, which left 1,400 Paleostinians dead, most of them civilians, along with 13 Israelis, 10 of them soldiers. Before an audience that included members of the Hamas leadership in Gazoo, Zahar paid tribute to those who died in the school where they had taken refuge from the heavy fighting. ... as opposed to the more usual light or sporadic fighting... "The blood that was shed in Al-Fakhura and in every inch of Paleostine will not be in vain," he said.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas warns Israel after airstrikes

2010-12-26

[Pak Daily Times] The Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, is observing a truce with Israel but is also ready for a resumption of hostilities, a front man for the group's armed wing warned on Saturday. "There is a truce in effect in the field. It is real if Israel stops its aggression and ends it's siege. But if there is any Israeli aggression on the Gazoo Strip we will respond strongly," said a masked front man for Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades who identified himself as Abu Obeideh. Speaking at a presser with three guards, who were all masked and armed, he said the group was ready to repel any future Israeli invasion and hinted at a secret weapon. "We are completely ready to answer any Israeli aggression," he said. "Our weapons are few compared to those of the Israeli occupation, but we have something that will worry the occupation," he said without giving details. Israel's military said this week that one of its tanks patrolling the Gazoo border had been hit by a Russian-made Kornet anti-tank rocket, the first time such a weapon had been encountered there. However, The infamous However... Ahmed al Jabari, the head of the Al Qassam Brigades, had a much more bad turban message for Israel, saying Hamas would not rest until Israel was ousted from all Paleostinian lands and Israelis face two choices: "death or departing Paleostinian lands." "Our resistance will continue as long as the Zionists remain," said a letter signed by Jabari, published in a Hamas magazine. Their comments come a day after a senior political leader of the group, Mahmud Zahar, also said Hamas was committed to the truce in effect since the January 2009 end of the 22-day Israeli offensive on the strip aimed at halting rocket fire by Paleostinian bad turbans. But it also comes amid rising tension along Israel's border with the tiny coastal enclave. Overnight Saturday, Israeli warplanes hit four targets in the Gazoo Strip, wounding at least two people and knocking out power in a large swathe of the strip. One of the strikes in central Gazoo targeted a car as it was pulling up near a site used by Hamas' military wing. Two of the occupants were maimed and taken to hospital, medics said. Adham Abu Selmiya, a front man for the Hamas-run medical services said the two men were civilians. However, The infamous However... witnesses said they appeared to be bad turbans. The blast also damaged a nearby power station, knocking out electricity in much of the area. The other three air raids hit smuggling tunnels along the border with Egypt without causing any casualties. The strikes came after gunnies fired a mortar and rocket into Israel on Friday, according to the army, which called the target a 'terror centre'. A total of 23 mortars and four rockets have been launched at Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gazoo Strip since Sunday, the army said. One of the rockets struck near a kindergarten in a southern Israeli kibbutz, wounding a teenage girl. On December 18, Israeli warplanes hit central Gazoo, killing five gunnies as they were about to launch a rocket attack, according to the army and witnesses. While most of the rockets fired have been by other groups, Israel still says it holds Hamas, which rules the strip, responsible for maintaining calm there.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Arafat Urged Attacks when Talks Faltered: Hamas

2010-09-30

[Asharq al-Aswat] The late Paleostinian leader Yasser Arafat urged Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, to carry out attacks inside Israel when he felt peace talks had failed, a Hamas big turban said in remarks published on Wednesday. "Arafat signalled to the Hamas movement to carry out a number of military operations in the heart of the Jewish state when he felt that the negotiations with the occupation government had failed," Mahmud Zahar said during a meeting with Hamas MPs on Tuesday, according to the Hamas-linked Falasteen newspaper. He spoke on the 10th anniversary of the outbreak of the second Paleostinian intifada, or uprising, which engulfed the occupied territories months after the collapse of the 2000 Camp David peace talks. His comments come as renewed peace talks between Israel and the Paleostinians again appear to be on the verge of collapse in the face of a dispute over Israeli settlements. Hamas opposes the new talks. At the height of the uprising in 2002 Paleostinian forces of Evil launched scores of suicide kabooms in Israeli cities as Israel frequently carried out large-scale military incursions across the West Bank and the Gazoo Strip. Arafat had always insisted that the uprising was a spontaneous reaction to the Israeli occupation and that he had no control over Hamas, the long-time rivals of his secular Fatah movement. Arafat had always lied. He lied to the world in English, he lied to the Israelis in English and Hebrew, and he lied to his own people in Arabic. Being the creative man that he was, each set of lies was different. He publicly condemned attacks targeting civilians inside Israel, including those carried out by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah. Arafat died of mysterious causes in a Paris hospital in November 2004 after having been besieged in his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah for nearly three years. His successor, Paleostinian president Mahmud Abbas, always opposed the militarisation of the uprising and moved to end it when he assumed power. An Israeli-Paleostinian summit in February 2005 was widely seen as signalling the end of the uprising, although the violence continued. Some 4,700 people had been killed by then, around 80 percent of them Paleostinians.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas marks 22nd birthday with Gaza mass rally

2009-12-15

[Al Arabiya Latest] Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters waving green banners gathered in Gaza City on Monday to mark the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the Islamist group that rules the isolated coastal strip. Black-clad Hamas police had earlier sealed off roads leading to the rally, as thousands of supporters were bused in from around the territory before making their way to Gaza's Al-Kutaiba Square on foot. Many carried portraits of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound cleric who founded and led the group until he was killed in an Israeli air strike in 2004. "In the 22 years since its founding, Hamas has been able to realize a large part of its goals and to overcome every obstacle it has faced, from prison, exile, assassinations and elections," senior Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar said. "Our understanding of the resistance is total, and is not limited to armed conflict," he added in an interview with a news website close to the smaller and more radical Islamic Jihad faction. Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas's armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, which was responsible for scores of deadly attacks and suicide bombings in Israel, praised the group's military evolution. "We have been able to build an army for resistance and to haunt the Zionist enemy," he said in a statement on a Qassam-linked website. "(The Qassam Brigades) has manufactured its weapons with its bare hands... including the Qassam rocket, which terrifies the Zionist enemy," he added, referring to the makeshift and rarely lethal rockets the group fired at Israel before declaring a ceasefire after last winter's Gaza war. The group was founded in 1987 shortly after the beginning of the first intifada, or uprising, against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It remains pledged to the eventual destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state on the pre-1948 borders of the British Palestine Mandate. Hamas won a landslide victory in Palestinian elections in 2006, routing the long-dominant secular Fatah party led by the Western-backed president Mahmud Abbas, and took over Gaza in June 2007 after months of factional unrest. It has since tightened its grip on the territory despite harsh Israeli sanctions imposed after the takeover and the devastating Gaza war at the turn of the year, in which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas to prosecute Fatah travel ban violators

2009-08-02

[Al Arabiya Latest] The Islamist movement Hamas which rules Gaza said on Saturday it will take legal action against rival Fatah faction members who defied a ban on leaving the Palestinian enclave to attend a party congress. Fatah members who defied the ban and travelled to the West Bank town of Bethlehem for Tuesday's congress will be prosecuted on their return to the Gaza Strip, the Hamas government's justice ministry said in a statement. Then they'll be shot in the feet ... According to sources close to Fatah, around 12 delegates from Gaza have managed to evade tight Hamas security checks to enter Israel and travel on to the West Bank through the Erez crossing. But several others have had their identity papers confiscated to ensure they cannot leave the territory. Mahmud Zahar, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, said earlier this week that the ban on taking part in the congress would be lifted if Fatah freed all Hamas prisoners in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The ban affects the more than 400 Fatah members who currently live in Gaza and are eligible to attend the congress, according to officials in Gaza and the West Bank. The Fatah congress will be the mainstream faction's first such meeting in 20 years, with some 2,000 delegates expected to attend from around the world. Fatah delegates living in Syria and Lebanon will be allowed to attend, an Israeli official said on Wednesday after talks in Jerusalem between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones. Hamas-Fatah tensions boiled over in June 2007 when the Islamists seized control of Gaza after a week of deadly street clashes, confining the writ of Palestinian president and Fatah leader Mahmud Abbas to the West Bank. Since then, each group has accused the other of persecuting its rivals in its respective area of control.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas Sponsors Mass 'Wedding' Of Underage Girls

2009-07-31

Hamas dignitaries including Mahmud Zahar, one of the militant group's top leaders, were on hand to congratulate 450 grooms who took part in the carefully stage-managed event. "We are saying to the world and to America that you cannot deny us joy and happiness," Zahar told the men, all of whom were dressed in identical black suits and hailed from the nearby Jabalia refugee camp. Each groom received a present of 500 dollars from Hamas, which said its workers had also contributed five percent of their monthly salaries to add to the wedding gift. The 450 brides shared none of the glamour, taking seats among the audience of around 1,000 party guests: most couples had already taken part in religious ceremonies elsewhere, with more marriages planned for the next few days. "We are presenting this wedding as a gift to our people who stood firm in the face of the siege and the war," local Hamas strongman Ibrahim Salaf said in a speech. Now I have raw video of the event, and I want you to pay close attention to the 'brides' - especially as they walk in with the 'grooms' around the 4:00 mark. There is no way that any of these little girls - half the heights of their husbands - is more than 10 years old.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas leader heads to Cairo for Palestinian talks

2009-06-09

[Al Arabiya Latest] Khaled Meshaal, leader of the Islamist movement Hamas, was set to travel to Cairo on Monday for reconciliation talks with rival Fatah faction in a bid to revive efforts to restore Palestinian unity. The Hamas delegation, which crossed into Egypt from Gaza earlier, includes former foreign minister Mahmud Zahar and is scheduled to hold talks with the head of Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, the main mediator in the Palestinian reconciliation efforts, Hamas official Fawzi Barhum said in Gaza City. Tensions between Hamas, which controls besieged Gaza, and the Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas have risen and recent clashes in the West Bank left four policemen, four Hamas fighters and a civilian dead.

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