Posted on 04/30/2006 5:31:23 PM PDT by Sabramerican
Shin Bet: Hamas funded last week's foiled attack at Karni YAAKOV KATZ and HERB KEINON, THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 30, 2006
Senior Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed on Sunday, funded and trained Palestinian terrorists who last week launched a thwarted terror strike on the Karni Crossing into the Gaza Strip. This was the first time since winning the Palestinian elections in January that Hamas was directly connected to anti-Israel terror activity.
A cell consisting of operatives from the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC), the Shin Bet revealed, arrived at the Palestinian side of Karni last Wednesday in three cars, one of which was filled with explosive canisters. The plan was to blow a hole in a wall dividing the PA side of the terminal from the Israeli side, which the gunmen would then use to infiltrate the crossing. The attack was however thwarted by PA policemen who stopped the cars at a roadblock leading into the crossing.
Security officials said that while Hamas has been putting on appearances that it had ceased its terror activity, in reality the group was funding and training PRC cells, which regularly fired Kassam rockets at Israeli targets from the northern Gaza Strip. Head of PRC in Gaza, Mumtaz Dugmash, officials said, regularly participated in Hamas meetings during which terror attacks were planned. Hamas, the officials said, not only funded PRC activities but also supplied the group with weaponry and additional professional assistance.
"At no point since agreeing to a hudna (cease-fire) with Israel in 2005, has Hamas ceased its terror activity," a Shin Bet official said Sunday. "They provide money and training to PRC operatives who perpetrate the attacks like the attempt on Karni last week."
The Shin Bet said it received intelligence indicating the involvement of four senior Hamas officials in the attempted attack on Karni last week including: Ahmed Andor, head of Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip and Ahmed Jabri, head of the Hamas military wing in Gaza. The same Hamas officials, the Shin Bet said, also directed and gave logistic support to a PRC cell, which assassinated Musa Arafat - Yasser Arafat's nephew and a security advisor to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas - in September.
Government officials noted the irony that while Hamas was warning of a humanitarian disaster inside the Gaza Strip, and while the Palestinian Authority was lobbying the world to pressure Israel to keep the Karni crossing open, Hamas was involved in an attack aimed at blowing up the crossing. Due to numerous terror specific warnings, Karni has been repeatedly opened and closed by Israel since the disengagement from Gaza last year. The closures are often depicted by the PA as collective punishment on the Palestinian people, which relies on the goods transferred through the crossing.
"Hamas spokespeople who have continuously complained to the western media of a so-called Israeli policy to starve the Palestinian people are now exposed as cynical hypocrites whose real agenda is nihilism. They have no scruples about bringing suffering on their own people to advance their own extreme political agenda," one government official in Jerusalem said.
A senior official in the Prime Minister's Office said that he was not surprised that Hamas' fingerprints were all over the attempted attack on Karni because Hamas has been using the Poplar Resistance Committees in Gaza as their front for involvement in terrorist operations.
"Hamas has never ceased its involvement," the official said, "they just did not take credit."
Israeli officials have said continuously since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative elections in January that Israel would continue to target Hamas officials if they were found to be involved in terrorist activities.
I'm no longer shocked that an Israel on the road to destruction will do nothing about the terrorist government next door except kill one or two terrorists every now and then.
I would be really shocked if any media in the World, or the UN, or the EU, or the State Dept, stops pretending that Hamas is holding to some truce.
Sorry, confused the articles. This one, a followup, is an opinion piece.
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The Region: Hamas can't even fake moderation
barry rubin, THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 30, 2006
At last, the ideal slogan for the Hamas government has been given us by one of the group's main leaders, Mahmoud Zahar, buried in a speech he gave at a rally in Damascus.
"Palestine in its entirety is our land," he explained. Not much new there.
But then he continued with a marvelous turn of phrase that explains the Hamas government and strategy, as well as the limits of its phantom "moderation": "This does not mean that if they [Israel] withdraw from any inch of land, we will refrain from spreading our rule over it. 'Every inch of land, without relinquishing an inch.' This is our goal and our motto. We will never give it up."
Those who don't get the point might consider the pristine irony of the following transposition.
In late April, Palestinian police near the Israel-Gaza Strip border got into a battle with gunmen in two cars trying to cross the border for a terrorist operation. Three police and two gunmen were wounded and thee terrorists arrested.
The terrorists shooting at Palestinian police and trying to murder Israeli civilians were members of the Popular Resistance Committees.
WHAT A coincidence. For that organization is headed by Jamal Abu Samhadana, who is also the man chosen by the Hamas government to run all the Palestinian security forces. In other words, the terrorists and police firing at each other - the regime supposedly maintaining a cease-fire and the terrorists breaking it - are all part of one big happy family.
And even there it does not end.
For the same Popular Resistance Committees are the group that three years ago deliberately attacked a US diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip (which was there to interview Palestinians for scholarships) killing three American security officers. The US government demanded that the Palestinian Authority arrest and punish those responsible for the terrorist attack, but it never even tried. Here's a crime solver's‚ tip for Palestinian Authority detectives. If you want to track down the main culprit, take a look in the Ministry of Interior office.
Finally, after an April 18 terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, in which nine people were killed and about 60 wounded, Hamas and PA officials publicly endorsed the murders. The situation makes the PA the only open and direct terrorism-sponsoring regime in the world.
BY SHOWING its true face Hamas is sabotaging its own public relations campaign. For example, the Washington Post and New York Times, which have tried desperately at times in editorials to find some way to declare Hamas moderate, condemned it.
In the Post's words, "Hamas chose to side with the suicide bombers" and "put [itself] on record as an outlaw." The only way the Times could salvage its world view was to call the behavior of Hamas "not just immoral, but stupid as well," because it delayed the creation of a Palestinian state.
It has to be understood, however, that Hamas's goal is not to raise Palestinian living standards or create an independent state, but to fulfill the kind of program presented by Zahar. Even the Europeans have had to acknowledge this reality far more than might have been expected.
With the exception of a small grant promised by Russia, no European state is funding the PA. Japan has also cut off aid.
While Hamas has been trying to raise money, the effort has been a miserable failure so far. Only about $100 million has been pledged by Qatar and Iran. That's not $100 million a month, mind you, but the total, enough to fund only about three weeks' payroll for the PA.
Undoubtedly there will be more money, raised with official support in Saudi Arabia, for example, but the international Muslim support for the Hamas regime has not been impressive and Arab banks are said to be reluctant to handle PA business lest they face American retaliation.
IN TERMS of domestic Palestinian politics, tensions between Hamas and Fatah are rising. The Hamas regime can avoid problems pretty easily on this front, but the price will be doing very little. For instance, it cannot fire any of the estimated 60,000 employees of the security forces since they are virtually all Fatah supporters. The same applies to the media and all other institutions the PA controls, which in some cases have been grabbed by Fatah and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas despite the complaints of the Hamas-dominated parliament.
This is part of the logic of Abu Samhadana's appointment. His group seems to be a coalition of Hamas and Fatah gunmen, and it is no doubt hoped that he will persuade the latter to accept Hamas leadership. That ploy will not work, though.
In addition, Hamas can pretend to be a non-terrorist group observing a cease-fire while financing and helping both the Committees and Islamic Jihad to carry out terrorist attacks.
It would be nice to say no one would be stupid enough to fall for this type of transparent trick. There are still plenty of Western politicians and intellectuals who belie that hope, but far less - and certainly far fewer national leaders - than there might be had Hamas taken lessons from Yasser Arafat on the cultivation of useful idiots.
We already knew there was little likelihood of Hamas changing its ways. Now we know it is not very good at even appearing to moderate.
Interesting that the word "hudna" is used. That's a ceasefire which Muslims use to buy time until they can reattack their enemy.
Ceasefire and calls for peace by Muslims is just a stall for time for reinforcements.
Hamas must go. No more trying to shake hands with the devil.
Why is there that crossing? It should have been bricked up long ago.
The action side happens when an air-to-ground rockets are fired.
Every time a jihadi goes 'boom' the borders get shoved back a kilometer closer to Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Just keep pushing until these people are back in those three countries where they belong.
Then sow the ground with salt and minefields.
L
That'll work great, or, in the real world, just PROLONG the situation.
Killing of a couple of known leaders that can be replaced in a nanosecond is of no importance as long as their base is still intact. Now, with the newly "elected" ham-ass gov still intent on killing everyone who is of infidel origin, they continue the cycle of violence that will lead to Isreals desruction.
Go get 'em, boys, BUT don't kill too many...they of good use..or so I'm told...anyway..
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