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Palestinian prime minister delivers speech on internal issues, accuses Abbas of isolating government. However, he also conveys message to Israel: If Palestinian state is established within 1967 borders, Hamas will aggress to long-term hudna. Meanwhile, Abbas calls for end to Gaza fighting Ali Waked Latest Update: 12.19.06, 19:12 Hamas is ready for a ceasefire with Israel if a Palestinian state is established, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said in a speech delivered Tuesday afternoon. Haniyeh's speech dealt mainly with internal issues. He responded to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' call for elections in the Palestinian Authority and called for unity in...

US envoy attacks British truce with Taliban By Tom Coghlan in Kabul and Damien McElroy in Washington Last Updated: 2:10am BST 25/10/2006 America's ambassador to Afghanistan yesterday expres-sed deep unease over the British military's ceasefire with the Taliban and subsequent withdrawal from a flashpoint town. British troops on operations in Helmand British troops moved out of the town of Musa Qala in north Helmand last week after a truce negotiated by tribal elders acting as intermediaries with the militia. After months of heavy fighting in which eight British soldiers and hundreds of Taliban fighters died, they handed over to an...

Palestinian militants have carried out nine suicide attacks in Israel and the West Bank since a Feb. 8, 2005, truce declaration. All but one attack have been carried out by Islamic Jihad, a violent group with close ties to Iran: • April 17, 2006: A bomber blows himself up at a Tel Aviv restaurant targeted previously, killing eight other people. • March 30, 2006: A bomber disguised as a Jewish hitchhiker blows himself up in a car outside a West Bank settlement, killing four Israelis who stopped to pick him up. The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of...

Making a symbolic appeal to Israelis ahead of Tuesday's elections, incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Sunday that the Islamic group wanted to end the crisis with Israel. "We don't seek a whirlpool of blood in this region," Haniyeh said. "We want rights and dignity for [the Palestinian] people, and to put an end to this decades-long complicated situation." Hamas' victory in January 25 Palestinian elections further strained Israeli-Palestinian relations that were already in tatters after more than five years of violence. Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide attacks, calls for the destruction of Israel. Israel...

An interview with Hamas's new prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh: "Do you accept the Oslo agreement signed by Yasser Arafat? Israel has stopped completely committing itself to Oslo. ... So you will not abide by past agreements made by the Palestinians and Israel? I have not said that. I have said that Israel . . . But you are not the prime minister of Israel. Will you abide by past agreements made by the Palestinian governments and Israel? We will review all agreements and abide by those that are in the interest of the Palestinian people. What agreements will you honor?...

Bin Laden Offers Truce in Purported Tape Terrorist Leader Threatens New Attacks Against U.S. By Yara Bayoumy, Reuters DUBAI (Jan. 19) -- Osama bin Laden warned that al-Qaida was preparing new attacks inside the United States, but said the group was open to a conditional truce with Americans, according to an audiotape attributed to him on Thursday. Al Jazeera television, which aired the tape, said it was recorded in the Muslim month that corresponded to December. "The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your houses as soon as they are complete, God willing," said the speaker...

As Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and Fatah's Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades announced an end to their self-declared truce of January 2005, under which they pledged to refrain from attacking Israeli targets, an annual summary of terror activities for 2005 released by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) on Sunday revealed that a total of 2,990 attacks were launched against Israeli targets. The attacks occurred after the truce was announced the report stated. According to the report, motivation among all the terror groups to attack Israel remains high with the number of monthly terror alerts averaging 57. There was a...

Many people have written many books, treatises and articles for the purpose of defining the role jihad is supposed to play in the lives of the Muslims. Most writers have tried, in their own ways, to come up with the [true] meaning of the Arabic word [Jihad,] others took circuitous routes to emphasize on what they believed was the purpose for which Allah has purportedly made the launching of jihad by Muslims an integral part of their lives. Until recently, my mind had remained in a state of dichotomy; it being the result of the inadequate attention, I admit, I...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers killed at least 29 guerrillas in western Iraq, the military said on Friday, after U.S. President George W. Bush vowed not to waver in his campaign against global Islamic extremism. Many Sunni leaders share the goals of some insurgents -- ending U.S. occupation and curbing the power of Shi'ite majority rule -- one prominent Sunni on Friday said U.S. forces and the militants should agree a ceasefire during Ramadan, which started this week, as a prelude to direct talks. "The fighting should stop," Saleh al-Mutlak, who represents the National Dialogue movement, told Reuters. "We have...

Qassam rockets meant for Sderot rally slam into Palestinian house Aaron Lerner Date: 2 August 2005 Ynet reports that two of three Qassam rockets fired by Hamas in Beit Hannoun towards Sderot shortly before the start of the anti-disengagement rally held in the Israeli border town slammed into a Palestinian home in Beit Hannoun killing a 3 year old boy and wounding six other Palestinians. The third rocket fell near Sderot, causing no Israeli injuries.

Cairo, 1 July (AKI) - The Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar mosque, Mohammed al-Tantawi, has made an appeal to Iraqi insurgents to halt their hostilities for a month. Only in this way, he said, can the occupying forces have the chance to withdraw from Iraq: "I tell you in all honesty and sincerity that if the killings and sabotages in Iraq were to be interrupted for a month, all the foreign forces could start to withdraw from your land and the whole world would be on your side" said al-Tantawi in a statement published in the Voice of al-Azhar newspaper....

Palestinian Official Says Militants Will Not Be Disarmed While Israeli Occupation PersistsBy Mohammed Daraghmeh Associated Press Writer Published: Jun 11, 2005 RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - The Palestinian Authority has no intention of disarming militant groups as long as the Israeli occupation continues, the foreign minister said Saturday. Israel has long demanded the Palestinians crack down on the militant groups, but Palestinian officials have chosen instead to try to co-opt the militants. "The dismantling of armed organizations is not on the table because weapons are legal as long as the occupation exists," Foreign Minister Nasser Al Kidwa told Palestinian television,...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Sunni Arab politician said Tuesday two insurgent groups were willing to negotiate with the government, possibly opening a new political front in embattled Iraq. But a string of coordinated deadly bombings signaled that militants remain fierce. The former Cabinet minister said he had established contact with the groups which account for a large part of the Sunni insurgents and were responsible for attacks against Iraqis and foreigners, including assassinations and kidnappings. It was the first public disclosure that such negotiations might be in the offing with specific groups, but independent confirmation was not possible. Al-Jaafari's government...

Security forces thwarted attempts by Islamic Jihad to launch double suicide bomb attacks in Jerusalem, including one that was to have occurred Wednesday. In recent days five cell members were arrested and two explosive belts that were to have been used in the attacks were blown up by sappers. The terrorists planned to target a coffee house, synagogue or bus in the capital's center as well as to launch an attack in the Ramot neighborhood. Some of the cell members were previously incarcerated in Israel and released in February, however security officials stressed that it was not in the framework...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Violence flared in Gaza with an Israeli airstrike on Palestinian rocket launchers just hours after Israel's Cabinet approved the release of 400 prisoners as a gesture to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. The Israeli airstrike early Monday was a rare attack since a February truce. The Israeli military said the air force targeted rocket launchers just before an attack was to be launched from northern Gaza, and two launchers were destroyed. Hospital officials said a man and two women, apparently bystanders, were wounded by shrapnel. Palestinians said unmanned aircraft fired the missiles, but the military would...

A coalition of Palestinian militants threatened on Friday to resume attacks on Israelis despite a conditional truce agreed by other armed groups in talks with the Palestinian Authority. Mohammed Abdel-Al, a spokesman for the umbrella Popular Resistance Committees, said the Palestinian Authority had not invited the PRC to the negotiations in Egypt and the deal reached there on Thursday was not binding on it. "Our patience is over and it is time the Zionist entity be called to account by our fighters after the past two months (of calm)," Abdel-Al told a news conference. Before the current lull, the PRC...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Palestinian groups say they will reach an agreement today on a formal halt to attacks on Israelis, a step President Mahmoud Abbas hopes will persuade Israel to pull back from Palestinian towns. The Palestinian Authority and Egypt, which is hosting the meeting of several Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, want them to agree to an open-ended period of "calm", an Arabic term for the lowest level of truce. "We have an agreement in our hands now from all factions on the 'calm'," Samir Mashharawi, an official from Abbas's Fatah movement, told Reuters on Thursday. Mashharawi...

In Islam, lying or omissions for the 'greater good,' according to a strict or radical Islam/Islamist philosophy is not only acceptable, it is holy and blessed work. It is called al-Takeyya (or al-Taqiyya) and is a strategy outlined in the Hadiths and supported by various interpretations of some of the Suras in the Koran. We have just seen it in action and most people never even caught the whiff of mental ether the Islamists were pouring into the airways of the already comatose and choking non-Islamist world. Al-Takeyya is a policy whereby a Muslim may lie, deceive or omit critical...

Ramallah, West Bank — It was a strange chorus of condemnation heard in the bustling shops of downtown Ramallah, the offices of civic leaders and the dens where Palestinian militants take refuge from Israeli troops. Suicide attacks, like the one last month that killed five Israelis on the Tel Aviv beachfront, are no longer in the Palestinian national interest, went the argument. The Israeli army, which has used force and closures for the past four years to convince Palestinians of just the same argument, couldn’t have scripted it better. “The suicide attack is not correct at this specific time,” said...

$390MN TO ABU MAZEN DEFIES US GLOBAL POLICY by Yoram Ettinger 1. PRESIDENT BUSH's MEMORABLE SEPT. 20, 2001 SPEECH vs. $390MN TO ABU MAZEN. "Deliver to the US all the leaders of Al-Qaeda who hide in your land...Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and hand over every terrorist...[But, Abu Mazen has stated that he would not fight, nor would he extradite, Palestinian terrorists. Palestinian terrorism - mostly masterminded by PA leaders and carried out by PA "security forces" - has evolved under the 1993-2005 Arafat-Abu Mazen regime into the largest terrorist base in the world]. "They...