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Thread: Hamas in Gaza (merged thread)

  1. #1
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    Default Hamas IO Campaign

    Reported in multiple news outlets and dsicussed on various blogs...

    Here is the 14 June article from the Australian - Hamas 'Mined Gaza Beach'.

    An Israeli army investigation into the explosion on a Gaza beach last Friday that killed seven members of a Palestinian family has concluded it was almost certainly caused by a Palestinian mine, not an Israeli shell, according to the Israeli media yesterday.

    The military wing of Hamas had seized on the deaths to declare an end to its ceasefire with Israel, and a resumption of large-scale hostilities between Palestinian militants and Israel seemed possible.

    However, it was unclear whether the Israeli findings on the beach blast would be credible to the Palestinians.

    Israel, which expressed regret for the deaths, was initially inclined to accept an artillery shell was responsible, because Israeli warships fired six shells in the area. The impact of five was observed hundreds of metres from the beach, but the sixth shell was unaccounted for.

    However, suspicions of a possible other cause were aroused when it was learned Hamas operatives had scoured the area and taken away pieces of shrapnel. Shrapnel was also removed from the bodies of the wounded brought to Israeli hospitals.

    Israel's Channel Two television said shrapnel was found in a wounded child brought to Israel, and it was not the metal used in artillery shells.

    The Haaretz daily reported that photographs of the crater on the beach suggested it was caused by an explosion from below, not a hit from above...

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    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
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    Default Addition from BBC

    The BBC story is here.

    They included a comment from Human Rights Watch that is interesting:
    An expert working for the Human Rights Watch said the Palestinians' injuries were not consistent with a blast taking place beneath them.

    "It has been suggested by some that the family was killed by a land mine, and this is patently not the case," Mark Garlasco said.

    "All of the evidence is pointing to a 155mm shell as having killed and injured the Palestinians here on the beach," he said.

    "My assessment [is] that it's likely that this was incoming artillery fire that landed on the beach and was fired by the Israelis from the north of Gaza."
    If this is a Hamas IO, it's already turning out brilliantly.

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    Default Jerusalem Post Latest

    IDF Says it's Not Responsible for Gaza Beach Blast.

    "The IDF is innocent," was the bottom line that came out of a press conference Tuesday night, during which Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and other top officers presented the findings of an internal military investigation into Friday's explosion that killed seven Palestinians as they picnicked on a Gaza beach.

    In a press conference at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, Peretz told reporters that following an extensive three-day investigation the IDF had collected sufficient evidence to prove that Friday's explosion was not caused by Israel. The evidence was being presented first and foremost to the Israeli people, Peretz emphasized, saying, "We owe it to ourselves to know that we did not cause these deaths."

    "We have sufficient evidence which confirms our suspicion that the attempts to portray this incident as caused by Israel were wrong," Peretz said. "I know it is difficult to explain this, but the facts that have accumulated prove that Israel was not behind the incident."

    In contrast to daily Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel, Peretz added, the IDF made great efforts to avoid harming innocent Palestinians. "In all IDF operations one of the issues that is taken into consideration and sometimes adds risk to ourselves is the need to not cause harm to innocent civilians," the defense minister said...

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    Default Hamas 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades - Training and Ideology

    MERMI - TV (H/T Little Green Footballs) - Hamas 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades - Training and Ideology (video) and transcript.

    Here’s a look at the war preparations of Hamas that aired on Al Jazeera on July 4th, 2006, boasting about the capabilities of Hamas’s hardcore terrorist unit, the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades. JihadTV shows us the terrorists building tunnels, making grenades, launching Qassam rockets, mixing explosives, and manufacturing RPGs, and there are interviews with various soldiers and commanders including Muhammad Al-Deif (recently injured in an IAF airstrike), “General Commander” and Ahmad Al-Ja’bari, “Most Prominent Al-Qassam Brigades commander.” (Courtesy of MEMRI TV.)

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    Default

    I would also recommend researching one of their former commanders and head bomber maker - Yehiya Ayyash for further insights.

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    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    Default Palestine Civil War: Eye for an Eye in Gaza

    al-Jazeera interviews both Fatah and Hamas fighters. Interesting look at the motivations behind the growing civil war in Palestine between the factions. I see wine glasses clinking in Tel Aviv and Washington, D.C., especially in the light of this, though I think in the end this will come back to bite us all in the end. Have we forgotten the origins of Hizbullah?

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    The Economist, 3 Feb 07: The Gazafication of the West Bank
    ...As the PA crumbles under fratricidal conflict and the pressure of foreign economic sanctions, the lawlessness has prompted the powerful Palestinian clans (which are not generally loyal to any one party) to see to their own security. Nablus's Dweikat clan recently posted flyers warning that it will retaliate for any attacks on members of the extended family, and has drawn up a list of young armed men that it can call on.

    That is a recipe for something nasty. A clan like the Dweikats, with 30,000 members, can be a militia in itself. Clan feuds now drive a lot of the seemingly political fighting in Gaza, and they seem to be intensifying in the West Bank too. Aid workers in Hebron, the main town in the southern bit of the West Bank, say that political clashes there are still rare but arms prices have rocketed, as people buy more guns to protect themselves. In December the police shooting of a teenager prompted his relatives to burn down the police station and kidnap several officers, whose own families then sent in reinforcements, leading to a stand-off that took a week and the intervention of presidential troops to end....

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    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    Default Islamist Attacks on the Rise in Gaza

    Mystery Islamists attacking Palestinian businesses. A symptom of Hamas' inability to control its factions?

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    Default Jihadist Groups Fill a Palestinian Power Vacuum

    31 May NY Times - Jihadist Groups Fill a Palestinian Power Vacuum by Steven Erlanger and Hassan Fattah.

    ... A standoff between the Lebanese Army and Islamists at a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon has focused attention on a jihadist element taking root there as well as a radicalization in the Palestinian areas themselves.

    With the fragmentation of authority in Gaza, and its isolation, said a Gazan analyst, Taysir Mhaisin, “there is an increase of fundamentalism and the birth of groups believing in violence and practicing violence as a model created by bin Ladenism.”

    Mouin Rabbani, a Jordan-based analyst of Palestinian politics for the International Crisis Group, said, “There is a security vacuum that creates space for all kinds of new grouplets and forces.”...

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    Default Impact of Hamas-Fatah War on Wider Mideast

    Interesting take on this from Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club. Claims that the "peace process" -- as well as a "Palestinian proto-state" is in the balance.

    http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/...aza-again.html

    Gaza again
    Hamas and Fatah were hard at it again today with Hamas attempting a big, decisive push that will leave them in de facto control of all the major military facilities on the strip. Hospitals have now become battlegrounds.

    In the European Hospital in the town of Khan Yunis, Hamas-affiliated security guards used the hospital's roof as a staging ground for an assault on a nearby Fatah position on Tuesday, head of nursing Atta al-Jaabari said.

    The assault caused a "state of panic" among the medical staff and threatened children at a kindergarten for employees' children on the grounds, he said. Doctors treated three of the wounded as the battle continued.

    ... Meanwhile in other news, "the European Union resumed aid to the Palestinian finance ministry yesterday, for the first time since the West launched an economic boycott of the Islamist Hamas government more than a year ago," according to Agence Presse France.

    Only a few months ago, Hamas and Fatah factions met in Riyadh and swore by all that was holy to bury the hatchet to form a unity government. No one bothered to inquire where the hatchet would be buried. Two things are at issue in the Hamas-Fatah war. The first is the future of the "peace process". The second is the future of Palestine. The viability of the "peace process" descended from the Oslo Agreement is hanging by the most slender of fictions. A Hamas victory or fight to a draw would to all intents and purposes not only smash the "peace process" but all the diplomatic schemes which view the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian process as the heart of a solution. With the prospect of a peace with Israel taken off the table the risk of resort to war increases. What is worse is that "Palestine", if it ever existed as a viable proto-state, risks becoming fragmented among terrorist groups, each with its own external patrons. It is being divided into spheres of influence presided over by terror organizations acting as proxies for rogue states.

    Of course the facts may make no difference at all. As the recent EU funds transfer underscores, the Left is already in a zombie-like trance with respect to this issue. Lips will continue to move, checks will continue to be written and limbs appear to move as if controlled by volition, but it's all on automatic. Any acknowledgement of reality will precipitate its complete collapse in certain ideologues, if that makes any sense.

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    Default Attacks Escalate as Palestinians Fight for Power

    13 June NY Times - Attacks Escalate as Palestinians Fight for Power by Steven Erlanger and Isabel Kershner.

    Gunmen of rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah sharply escalated their fight for supremacy on Tuesday, with Hamas taking over much of the northern Gaza Strip in what is beginning to look increasingly like a civil war.

    Five days of revenge attacks on individuals — including executions, kneecappings and even tossing handcuffed prisoners off tall apartment towers — on Tuesday turned into something larger and more organized: attacks on symbols of power and the deployment of military units. About 25 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 wounded, Palestinian medics said...

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    Gaza's been a dump since at least the 1980s.

    First Intifada showed them that violence as a way of life is A-OK.

    And they've been doing it ever since, because to do anything else means you're just another unemployed bum in a failed statelet rather than a holy warrior of God / military muscleman.

    Everyone should stop funding the Palestinians, and let Hamas bankrupt itself trying to fix the strip and the PLO/Fatah disintergrate from lack of patronage.

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    The Economist, 13 Jun 07: The Road to Hamastan
    By the end of this week, the Islamists of Hamas will have either destroyed the secular-minded Fatah in the Gaza Strip, or at least shown that they can. The relative quiet after a deadly burst of violence between the rival Palestinian parties in May was broken by a series of ###-for-tat killings that quickly got out of hand. After troops from the presidential guard of Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, fired rockets at the house of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister, the Islamist party launched a full-scale attack. Hamas troops have taken control of most of the Gaza Strip and have chased Fatah forces out of their bases, while several top Fatah commanders have either fled Gaza or been killed....

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    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    Conflict Blotter reports directly from Gaza, including a scene worth reading full as a Palestinian peace march by civilians is raked with gunfire.

    We were ducking for cover in an alleyway, and all of a sudden peace marchers, including young girls and old women draped in Palestinian flags marched into the crossfire. With the .50 cal machine gun pickup truck behind them, a hailstorm of Kalashnikov bullets raining down from in front of them, they started dancing and shouting amid the firefight. Another group of protesters swarmed a Fatah gunman who was returning fire and physically forced him to lower his rifle. And then the impossible happened, both sides stopped firing to allow the marchers to pass. It was all quite touching, but things soon took a more sinister turn.


    The march turned north, bound for the Al Bakry compound, home to a family of Fatah loyalists that Hamas had under siege in the Beach Camp, a refugee camp home to Ismail Haniya and solid Hamas country. The protesters turned up a dusty alley way close to the besieged compound and Hamas (we assume anyway) opened fire. Protesters scattered and a boy of about 20 was shot down in the street and whisked off by an old silver mercedes.

    A group of perhaps two dozen marchers regrouped and ran right back down the alley straight into the oncoming machine gun fire. It was a chilling spectacle that called to mind Tiananmen Square. Six more protesters, including a middle aged woman, were gunned down and dragged off by screaming fellow demonstrators. People were devastated. Our fixer was in tears. It was profoundly moving display.
    They are of the opinion that Hamas is going to win control of Gaza decisively. Fatah is on the run.

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    Default Hamas Bolsters Its Hold In Gaza

    14 June Washington Post - Hamas Bolsters Its Hold In Gaza by Scott Wilson.

    Hamas gunmen consolidated their hold over large swaths of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after attacking military posts controlled by the rival Fatah movement, whose own fighters responded with a daylight raid in the West Bank, broadening the civil strife.

    At least 21 Palestinians were killed Wednesday across Gaza, driving up the four-day death toll to at least 63 in factional violence that both Palestinian parties described as civil war.

    The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing that has begun referring to Fatah as the "Jew American Army," gave the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Forces across northern Gaza until Friday evening to surrender their weapons and turn over their posts. The Hamas tactic, which has included broadcasting inaccurate claims from minarets that Fatah posts have fallen, has proved highly effective in prompting outgunned Fatah fighters to flee.

    At least one battalion of the Palestinian National Forces was reported to have run out of ammunition and others may be approaching the end of supplies. Israeli officials have warned for months that Hamas has been stockpiling ammunition, small arms and explosives...

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    Default Hamas Seizes Broad Control in Gaza Strip

    14 June NY Times - Hamas Seizes Broad Control in Gaza Strip by Steven Erlanger.

    Hamas forces consolidated control over much of Gaza on Wednesday, taking command of the main north-south road and blowing up a Fatah headquarters in Khan Yunis, in the south.

    In northern Gaza and Gaza City, Hamas military men, many of them in black masks, moved unchallenged through the streets as Fatah fighters ran short of arms and ammunition and abandoned their posts. Hamas controlled all of Gaza City except for the presidential compound of Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and the Suraya headquarters of the National Security Forces, the Palestinian army. Hamas has surrounded Al Suraya, calling on the occupants to surrender.

    The powerful Hamas move to exert authority in Gaza, and the poor performance and motivation of the larger security forces supposedly loyal to Fatah, raised troubling questions for Mr. Abbas and Israel, and left the White House with a dwindling menu of policy options...

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    From MSNBC/6/14/07:

    "The moderate President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, for the first time in five days of fierce fighting, ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back. But his forces were crumbling fast under the onslaught by the better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters."

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    Israeli intelligence official warns of "Hamasstan"
    “We are moving toward a situation in which Gaza will be a formal terror state,” he said.


    “In the short term, Israel will face an organized system of guerilla warfare similar to what is going on in Lebanon. This system will grow stronger and stronger with each passing day. In the long term this entity will have long-range missiles and other capabilities, which will affect not only Sderot, but Kiryat Gat and Ashdod as well. Eventually these missiles will reach Haifa.”


    The former intelligence officer continued to say that Israel must prevent Hamas from reaching Hizbullah-like capabilities.


    To this end, Amidror said, Israel “must be prepared to remain in the area (Gaza) for years”.


    “Those who make the decisions have a difficult one to make, because the meaning of this is a harsh war - and then staying in the area for years,” he said. “If we are not ready for these two outcomes – then it’s best not to enter in the first place.


    “If we do not act, Hamas will inevitably grow in strength and turn into Hizbullah.”

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    Default 3 Strikes and You're Out

    - with hizbullah to the north, secure Gaza then destabalize Jordan......

    From MSNBC.COM 6/14/07:

    "We are telling our people that the past era has ended and will not return,” Islam Shahawan, a spokesman for Hamas’ militia, told Hamas radio. “The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived.”

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    Default How Arafat ruined the Palestinians

    When tracing back the roots of the terrible Jihadist violence and anarchy swamping Gaza, this is a timely article -- about Arafat's vile leadership.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200509/samuels

    Arafat's failure to conquer Jerusalem did not shatter his conviction that history was moving in his favor: under pressure from within and without, isolated in the world, the State of Israel would eventually crack apart and dissolve, to be replaced by Arab Palestine. "We will continue our struggle until a Palestinian boy or a Palestinian girl waves our flag on the walls, mosques, and churches of Jerusalem, the capital of our independent state, whether some people are happy about it or not," he promised. "He who doesn't like it may drink the water of the Dead Sea." Arafat understood his actions as part of an unfolding within the long duration of historical time rather than as disembodied headlines on CNN. The inability of his diplomatic interlocutors to understand what he was driving at exposed the fatal limits of the Western conception of politics as a way to find a happy medium between competing interests.

    ...

    Nofal tells me that Arafat's strategic use of violence after Oslo began with permitting Hamas and Islamic Jihad to launch terror attacks. Arafat would then crack down on those same organizations to show that he was in control. Nofal first heard Arafat give orders that led directly to violence, he says, before the riots that erupted over the excavation of the Hasmonean tunnel, near the Haram al-Sharif, in 1996. Nofal says that the impetus for the violence was the statement by the newly elected Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he would not speak to Arafat directly. Arafat was furious at the slight.

    "I was with him in his office," Nofal recalls. "He got up and walked around the desk. He was very, very angry. Finally he calmed down a bit and he pointed to the phone on his desk. He said, 'I will make Netanyahu call me on this phone.'"

    Arafat ordered demonstrators into the streets, and told them to provoke the Israelis. When violence erupted, the Israelis were blamed. ...

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