Free Republic

Gulf emirate is branded the villain behind Hamas belligerence, with PM’s former security adviser saying it funds tunnel diggers and rocket launchers. President Shimon Peres accused Qatar on Wednesday of becoming “the world’s largest funder of terror” due to its financial support for Hamas in Gaza. “Qatar does not have the right to send money for rockets and tunnels which are fired at innocent civilians,” the outgoing statesman told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Jerusalem. “Their funding of terror must stop. If they want to build then they should, but they must not be allowed to destroy.” Qatar’s recently...

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Wednesday told United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that Israel would not stand by while Qatar, which paid for the UN official’s private flight to the Middle East, continued to finance Hamas militants, and took Ban to task for the two UN-run schools found to be housing Hamas rockets in Gaza. In his last full day in office, Peres, a historically dovish leader, struck a defiant tone in a statement delivered to the media after meeting Ban at the President’s Residence, in Jerusalem. “Qatar does not have the right to send money for rockets and...

Israeli forces shelled a U.N.-run school sheltering Palestinians in the northern Gaza strip, the Gaza health ministry said on Thursday, killing at least 15 people and raising the conflict's death toll to nearly 750. Israel Radio said, without citing a source, that most of those killed at the United Nations school were children. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the incident reported as a truce between the Jewish state and Hamas-led Islamist guerrillas remained elusive, despite intensive attempts at mediation.

What follows is testimony delivered on Wednesday by UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer, at the UN Human Rights Council Emergency Session on Gaza, in Geneva. The Palestinian ambassador to the UNHRC, together with Iran, Syria, Egypt, Cuba and Venezuela had tried but failed to silence Mr. Neuer. As expected, the council voted 29 to 1 (USA), with 17 abstaining (EU & others), to condemn Israel for “gross violations of international human rights,” and it created a new commission of inquiry. ... An entire nation—towns, villages and cities, from the Negev Desert up to the Galilee, from the Judean hills...

(GRAPHIC-AT-LINK)The Los Angeles Times leads Thursday with a story entitled: "Gaza's dilemma: Deadly war or suffocating Israeli embargo." According to the story, Palestinians in Gaza are left with no choice but to wage war, because if they do not fire rockets at Israeli civilians, they must accept an Israeli [sic] "embargo." The article omits the obvious point that if Hamas would stop trying to kill Israelis, neither the embargo nor the war itself would be necessary. The authors, Alexandra Zavis and Batsheva Sobelman, accept that Hamas started the war--and even suggest that most Palestinians in Gaza support it, though there...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues to trumpet the so-called 2009 “reset” of the U.S.-Russian relationship despite all evidence to the contrary that it worked. With relations over the past two years dwindling to lows not seen since the Cold War, Clinton still told National Public Radio Thursday that it was a success. She told BBC last month that it was a “brilliant stroke.” “The reset worked,” she said. “It was an effort to try to obtain Russian cooperation on key objectives while Medvedev was president, and of course Putin still pulled the strings but he gave Medvedev a...

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated on Wednesday that the only solution for the region is the destruction of Israel, and that the armed confrontation must expand beyond Gaza. Meanwhile, revolutionary guards announced new missiles which could destroy Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Fars News Agency, a media outlet run by the Iranian state, reported today that Khamenei addressed the conflict in Gaza in a meeting with Iranian college students. “These crimes which are beyond imagination and show the true nature of the wolfish and child killer regime, which the only solution is its destruction,” the ayatollah declared...

An Iranian judge sentenced a Christian man to have his lips burnt with a cigarette for eating during the day in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, The Daily Mail reported. The barbaric punishment was carried out in public in a square in the city of Kermanshah. Five other Muslim men were also flogged in public with 70 lashes for not fasting during Ramadan, the city’s deputy governor Ali Ashraf Karami said. […] At least 49 Christians were among 307 religious minorities being held in Iranian jails as of January 2014, noted the UN, which also criticized the regime for...

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged Palestinian Arabs on Wednesday to keep fighting Israel, according to AFP. “The only way to deal with this savage regime is to continue resistance and armed struggle and extend it to the West Bank (Judea and Samaria -ed.),” the official IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei as saying. Iran, which does not recognize Israel, is a supporter of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups that have been at the forefront of the fighting in Gaza. …

Hamas continues to be uncompromising in its position regarding an international cease-fire, AFP reports Wednesday. "We reject today and will reject in the future," Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal insisted, in a public speech in Qatar. Meshaal insisted that Israel must accept his list of unprecedented conditions for a cease-fire - which included lifting several security measures, such as the naval blockade and border control, designed to prevent terrorists entering into Israel, as well as re-releasing terrorists arrested earlier this month - and only then will Hamas deliberate with Israel on a date for a cease-fire. Meshaal claimed that the terms...

FULL TITLE: Ted Cruz: The facts suggest President Obama has just used the FAA to launch an ECONOMIC BOYCOTT on Israel…//// Sen. Ted Cruz ripped the president today for using a federal agency, the FAA, to launch an economic boycott on Israel in order to force them to comply with his demands. He pointed out that this economic boycott aids Hamas while simultaneously hurting Israel. What Cruz is calling for is the Obama administration to answer the following questions: Was this decision a political decision driven by the White House? If the FAA’s decision was based on airline safety, why...

Qatar hosts three major US military bases on its territory. And it is becoming one of the most important clients for US military contractors. Earlier this year Qatar signed an $11.4 billion dollar arms agreement with the US. At the same time, according to the Calacalist report, Qatar is the major bankroller of ISIS and al Nusra in Syria and Iraq. It gives $50 million a month to jihadists in Libya. It gives Hamas $100m. in annual aid. And in the past two years Doha has provided Hamas with an additional $620m. dollars, including $250m. it transferred to Hamas leader...

A State Department official who just returned from a seven-week trip to Iraq, said the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—or the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL)—is no longer just a terrorist group. “ISIL is no longer simply a terrorist organization,” Brett McGurk, deputy assistant secretary for Iraq and Iran at the U.S. Department of State, said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday. “It is now a full-blown army seeking to establish a self-governing state through the Tigress (sic) and Euphrates Valley in what is now Syria and Iraq.” …

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, addressing the annual Washington conference of Christians United for Israel, July 21, 2014.With sharp jabs at the Obama administration, Christians United for Israel launched its annual Washington rally with appeals to Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran and cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority. David Brog, the group’s executive director, said CUFI regarded the Iran nuclear talks as a failure and would back legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would impose new sanctions immediately. The Cruz measure is tougher than legislation already under consideration that would trigger sanctions...

As of Tuesday night, despite the efforts of international intermediaries here in the region, there was no sign of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire. Visiting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had failed to achieve the long-term humanitarian truce he planned. This despite signs Monday that Hamas might want to halt the fighting. The Al-Mayadeen satellite station, which has good contacts in the office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, claimed late Monday that Abbas and Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal had reached a ceasefire deal, based on Egypt’s proposal for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Abbas’s intelligence chief Majid Faraj set...

The European Union on Tuesday called upon terrorist groups in Gaza to disarm, and to end and renounce violence. The official statement read: "The EU strongly condemns the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas and militant groups in the Gaza Strip, directly harming civilians. These are criminal and unjustifiable acts. The EU calls on Hamas to immediately put an end to these acts and to renounce violence. All terrorist groups in Gaza must disarm. The EU strongly condemns calls on the civilian population of Gaza to provide themselves as human shields."

The Islamic State-- formerly Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)-- has previously used water as a destructive tool to destroy crops and dams in Shi'ite territory. Now, ISIS is attempting to deprive major Christian strongholds of water through their control of pipe systems. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the city most affected by ISIS's new campaign to deny water to as many Christians and Shi'ites in Iraq as possible is the city of Qaraqosh, currently under control of Kurdish Peshmerga forces and, thus, impenetrable to the terrorist jihadist group. Their only current connection to Qaraqosh is a water pipeline from...

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has called for an end to the fighting and bombing in Gaza. “Both sides must distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, and Israel must ensure that its use of force is proportionate in accordance with international humanitarian law. More immediately, all combat operations must stop, and Israeli troops should withdraw from Gaza,” Carter said in a statement released Tuesday. So far, more than 600 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the fighting, according to reports. The Israeli death toll is estimated at 29, including two civilians. Humantarian groups have also called for an end to...

EU countries have defended Israel’s use of force in Gaza, but blamed it for harming peace prospects in the longer term. Foreign ministers in a joint statement on Tuesday (22 July) said they are “appalled by the human cost” of some parts of “the Israeli military operation”, which has killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians. But they “recognized Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself”, while blaming Hamas, the militant group which rules Gaza, for “indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel”, in what they described as “criminal and unjustifiable acts”. They also gave credence to Israeli claims that Hamas is urging civilians...

IRAQI special forces secured full control of a crucial former US military base on the outskirts of Tikrit, officials said yesterday. Camp Speicher, the headquarters for US forces in northern Iraq during the 2003 invasion and subsequent war, has become a focal point in the fight between Iraqi forces and Islamist militants.

Asserting that India's policy on Palestine issue remains unchanged, government on Monday refused to take sides over the Gaza conflict as it said Israel and Palestine should have peace talks and forestalled a resolution in Rajya Sabha which was demanded by the opposition. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said the House should not be divided but send out a joint message that wherever there is violence, it is condemnable and both Israel and Palestine should accept Egypt's offer of peace talks. She was replying to a short-duration debate on Gaza situation during which opposition condemned the violence in Gaza, pressed...

Elhanan Miller, The Times Of Israel July 21, 2014A large explosion in a Sudanese ammunition warehouse last Friday was the result of an Israeli attack targeting weapons intended for Hamas, and not a fire, as claimed by the government, an Arab daily reported on Monday. Sudanese Intelligence had claimed that the explosion, which took place in a military training camp in Al-Gaili, north of the capital Khartoum, early Friday morning, was caused by “a local fire.” A Sudanese army spokesman, A-Sawarmi Khaled Sa’ad, said the explosion had no connection to “external hands, or a domestic act of sabotage.” But unnamed...

More than 700 people were killed in Syria over the course of Thursday and Friday, in what activists say were the bloodiest 48 hours of fighting in the conflict to date. ... Abdul Rahman said the death toll of Thursday’s clashes was 396 people, while Friday’s total reached 314, adding that 90 more people were still unaccounted for, although they were also expected to have been killed.

A report in London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Arab Monday said that Israeli planes over the weekend destroyed a warehouse in Sudan that was holding a large number of long-range Iranian missiles. The missiles belonged to Hamas, and were to be used against Israel after they were smuggled into Gaza. According to the report, eyewitnesses said they saw a "huge explosion" after planes flew over the building. Six people were injured in the attack, witnesses said. The resulting blaze required the services of large numbers of firefighters, they added. Sudanese officials confirmed that there was an explosion, but denied any connection...

Kerry Angrily Spars With Fox’s Chris Wallace: ‘You Like To Ask Questions, But You Don’t Like To Get Answers!’ 07/20/2014 After months of shutting Fox News out of his Sunday show appearances, a downed airliner in Ukraine and an ongoing Israeli invasion of Gaza compelled Secretary of State John Kerry to finally appear on “Fox News Sunday” A frustrated Kerry relentlessly castigated Fox’s Chris Wallace for continuing to ask questions while the Secretary of State was in the middle of answering. “You like to ask questions, but you don’t like to get answers!” he charged petulantly, before refusing to address...

Now that the U.S.-Russia relationship has broken down, Moscow could throw a wrench into the teetering nuclear negotiations with Iran. The escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow, brought to fever by the MH17 airliner disaster, are finally to the point where they threaten to spoil the number one item on President Obama’s foreign policy agenda: the nuclear talks with Iran. The man doing the threatening is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier this week, Putin promised to retaliate against the United States for new sanctions targeting his friends and business associates, as well as large Russian defense, energy, and financial firms....

A fantastic photo-essay demonstrating the psychoses of the American left and its allies in the Islamo-fascist, "pro-Palestinian" movement.

Jews are SCARED. In the first three months of 2014 more Jews left France for Israel than at any other time since the Jewish state was created in 1948. The hundreds of rockets raining down on Israel are considered acceptable. Retaliation (with phone-call warnings , "knocking" to prevent civilian casualties,) is "massacre by the Jews." And the White House, of course, is silent. Europe is ablaze with Jew hatred, and North America is, too. The "Palestinians" own the streets, the schools, the colleges, the immigration process, the White House. If you want to help, you can do these things: LIGHT...

Imagine being killed because of your religion. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a radical Islamic group, says this will start happening in Iraq by Saturday and the threat is sending shockwaves through the community of more than 50,000 Chaldeans in the San Diego area. At St. Michael Chaldean Church in El Cajon, locals are hoping for peace. Chaldeans visit the church in east San Diego by the thousands to pray for the thousands of victims killed in Iraq and people being persecuted because of their religion. One of the women praying there is Sister Francois. Though she’s...

Israel on Friday ordered some of its diplomatic staff in Turkey to leave the country for security reasons, after protesters angered by its assault on Gaza sought to storm Israeli embassy buildings. Turkish protesters overnight tried to break into the ambassador's residence in Ankara as well as the consulate in Istanbul, with the diplomatic controversy over the Gaza assault risking a new crisis in relations between Turkey and the Jewish state. "Foreign Minister (Avigdor) Lieberman issued a statement... following the demonstrations and instructed the Israeli consulate and embassy to reduce their diplomatic staff in Turkey," an Israeli embassy spokesman told...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed that Qatar – the chief financier of Hamas – could play a key role in mediating peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Clinton, during an interview with Charlie Rose, touted Qatar as a country that could play a constructive role in arbitrating peace between Hamas and Israel, which recently launched a full-scale ground incursion into Gaza in an attempt to cut off the terror group’s access to sophisticated weaponry. Qatar, which has served as Hamas’ chief financial lifeline, keeping the group afloat and facilitating its arms buildup, could convince Hamas to stop trying...

Dan Shapiro: ‘We’ll seek to help moderate Palestinians become stronger in Gaza,’ since they’d run it better than ‘Hamas, a terrorist group’ The US wants to see Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority restored to ruling Gaza after the current conflict is over, and will make efforts to bring this about, American Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro indicated Saturday night. In an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 news, Shapiro was asked about the unity government formed last month by Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas. He did not reply directly and instead noted that Abbas was currently in close contact with Egypt, trying...

Cairo (AFP) - Egypt's military said militants firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades attacked a border guards checkpoint Saturday, killing 21 soldiers in one of the biggest assaults since Islamist president Mohamed Morsi's ouster. The attack in a desert area 630 kilometres (390 miles) west of Cairo left four soldiers wounded, the military said in a statement, blaming "terrorists". It said a rocket propelled grenade fired by the militants set off an explosion in an ammunition depot at the El-Farafrah post, killing the soldiers. Militants have stepped up attacks on the security forces since Morsi was toppled in July 2013...

The last Christian families still present in Mosul are leaving the city and are heading towards Iraqi Kurdistan. The exodus was caused by the proclamation on Thursday by the self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate that Christians must pay a special tax or be killed. Islamists have for the past two days been marking the doors of homes belonging to Christians and Shia Muslims living in the city. “For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians,” said Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako in an interview with the AFP news agency. The Patriarch said as late as last...

US Secretary of State John Kerry apologized this week for using the term ‘Apartheid’ in describing Israel’s status following the collapse of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Nonetheless, it appears that the Obama administration is convinced that Israel is by large responsible for the impasse in the peace process and therefore slated to pay the price for it in the near future. “The Jewish people are supposed to be smart. You’re supposed to know how to read the map: In the 21st century, the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation,” a US official told Yediot Ahronot....

Jihadists have killed 270 Syrian regime fighters, civilian security guards and employees since seizing a gas field in Homs province, a monitoring group said Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described Thursday's takeover of the Shaar field as "the biggest" anti-regime operation by the Islamic State (IS) since it emerged in the Syrian conflict last year. The watchdog, updating an earlier toll of 115, said it had documented "the death of 270 people killed in the fighting or executed" since Thursday. "A large majority of the men killed were executed at gunpoint after being taken prisoner following the takeover...

Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri says Cairo's offer 'provides the needs of all sides.' Egypt does not have any plans to revise its ceasefire proposal to end the fighting in Gaza, Foreign Minister Sameh Shukrisaid in a joint press conference with his French counterpart Laurent Fabius in Cairo. "It provides the needs of all sides and we will continue to offer it, hoping to get their support as soon as possible," said Shukri, referring to the initiative rejected by Hamas. On Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked France to use its influence on Hamas allies such as Turkey and Qatar to...

Analysis: Israel's intelligence community sees Cairo as only real platform capable of influencing Hamas. With all the chatter incessantly coming out of the mouths of experts sitting in air-conditioned television studios and offering their different solutions to the Hamas problem, it's really hard to understand what is going on behind the scenes. But there is one thing we can all agree on: The news about a ceasefire will come from one place only – Cairo. The common estimate among the decision makers is that the Egyptians are the only ones who can end the fighting. The Egyptian capital serves as...

Palestinian and other Arab commentators are blasting Egypt's cease-fire offer this week in the Israeli-Gazan fighting, saying it was a gift to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accepted it, and a trap for Hamas, which rejected it. Azmi Bishara, the fugitive former Knesset member who now heads the Arab Center for Research and Policy in Doha, Qatar, wrote in the pan-Arab alaraby.co.uk that the offer gave no relief to Gaza, nor freedom for the Hamas members recently returned to Israeli prisons. "This Egyptian declaration represents a stab in the back to the resistance and the people of Gaza. … [T]his...

Kenneth Timmerman has reported from the Middle East for 35 years. He was one of the first journalists on the scene after Iranian terrorists bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983. When the 2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi left four Americans dead, Timmerman recognized the pathetically inadequate coverage. “Iranians have been killing us for the past 30 plus years and the U.S. government has never done a thing,” Timmerman told Townhall. “I think it’s about time we stood up to the Islamic fascist government in Iran and made it clear that their continued murder...

Iran and six world powers on Friday agreed to a four-month extension of negotiations on a long-term nuclear deal that would gradually end sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, diplomats close to the talks said. Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China had set a July 20 deadline to complete a long-term agreement that would resolve the decade-old dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. But diplomats said they were unable to overcome significant differences on major sticking points

When it comes to an agreement with Iran about its nuclear program, no deal is better than a bad deal. Secretary of State John Kerry delivered the news to President Obama this week that a deal was unlikely by the July 20th deadline agreed to at the beginning of talks last September -- which no doubt disappointed his boss, who is desperate for some foreign policy success to point to. But unless Iran is willing to give up its program -- and dismantle the uranium-enriching centrifuges it currently operates and destroy its existing stockpile of heavily enriched uranium --...

Iran! Oil prices! Rick Perry! Even if you think you know who’ll control Congress next year, the road to the November midterms will be full of big surprises.From a deal with Iran to an uptick in the employment rolls, a lot can happen to shift the political conversation between now and November. Immigration reform, for example, was supposed to help Democrats in the midterm elections. Clashes on the border between angry Texans and buses carrying immigrant children fleeing gang violence and sex trafficking highlighted the GOP’s opposition, and Democrats thought maybe this was the game changer they needed. But the...

IRBIL, Iraq — The sectarian Shiite militias that the government in Baghdad has dispatched to fill the void created by the collapse of the Iraqi army are proving ill-equipped for offensive operations intended to reverse gains by the radical Islamic State, Iraqi soldiers and military experts studying the current military situation have concluded. The inadequacy of the militias to turn the tide was demonstrated again on Wednesday six miles south of Tikrit, the central Iraqi city that Islamic State fighters seized June 11 and that Iraqi forces and Shiite fighters have been trying to reclaim for more than two weeks....

The president said the new sanctions against Russia -- which hit major Russian banks and lucrative energy and defense entities -- are in large part for allowing weapons to cross into Ukraine and other involvement in that country. Obama also said that Iran has made significant efforts to fulfill its promise to scale back its nuclear program -- including international inspections -- ahead of a July 20 deadline. But he said he will talk with Congress in the coming days about whether to extending the deadline, saying there are still “significant gaps.”

The U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 2012 losses because of personal identity theft totaled $24.7 billion. The money losses from identity theft pale in comparison with the costs of paperwork, time and inconvenience imposed on the larger society in an effort to protect ourselves. According to LifeLock, while the laws against identity theft have gotten tougher, identity theft criminal prosecution is relatively rare. Unless we develop a low tolerance and a willingness to impose harsh sentences, identity thieves will continue to impose billions of dollars of costs on society. Today's Americans tolerate what would have been...

The celebrations in Israel Tuesday morning over the Egyptian ceasefire initiative were premature. Contrary to the assessment of all manner of eminent Israeli notables, Hamas is not sufficiently weakened to accept an immediate ceasefire that meets none of its demands. Far from it. As Hamas made clear in the course of a rocket-filled Tuesday, it doesn’t give a damn about Egypt or Arab public opinion, and it is continuing on its own path, one of escalation. You can say a lot to Hamas’s detriment in its handling of this conflict: It was wrong to enter this round of hostilities and...

Military sending voice messages advising Palestinians to vacate by 8 a.m. Wednesday as part of efforts to avoid causing harm to civilians ahead of supposed strikes; Hamas urges residents against heeding IDF calls. The IDF was sending voice messages to residents of the northern Gaza Strip late on Tuesday, advising them to evacuate their homes by 8 a.m. as part of Israeli efforts to avoid causing harm to civilians ahead of supposed strikes. Hamas' Interior Ministry urged residents of Gaza not to heed to the IDF calls to leave their homes, saying the warning were part of Israel's "psychological war."

Qatar, the world’s top liquefied natural gas exporter, is using its gas money to cash in on some top-of-the-line U.S. supplied military hardware. Qatar’s defense minister, Hamad Bin Ali al-Attiyah, met with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and signed acceptance letters for $11 billion worth of Apache attack helicopters, Patriot missile defense batteries and anti-tank Javelin missiles, the Pentagon said in a statement Monday. “Today’s signing ceremony underscores the strong partnership between the United States and Qatar in the area of security and defense and will help improve our bilateral cooperation across a range of military operations,” said Rear Adm....

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday evening that despite Israel's decision to accept the Egyptian cease-fire proposal, Hamas rejected it and continued fire. Hamas will pay the price for its actions."Anyone who tries to harm Israel, will be harmed," he said. "We would have prepared to solve this diplomatically, but Hamas has left us no choice." Israel's security cabinet will meet at 9 P.M. on Tuesday, 12 hours after accepting an Egyptian cease-fire proposal. Several Hamas officials rejected the proposal, but sources said that Hamas was holding talks with Egypt on the matter and an official statement by the Hamas...