On Friday, Hamas is expected to announce its final position regarding the cease-fire with Israel that expires on the same day.
During the past week, Hamas officials issued contradictory statements as to whether they would agree to the extension of the truce, which they refer to as a tahadiyeh (period of calm), sparking speculation about sharp differences among the movement's top brass.
The reports about a split in Hamas coincided with the movement's celebration of its 21st anniversary - an event that saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians attend Hamas's main rally in Gaza City earlier this week.
Continued on Page 49
Jerusalem Maan Assassinating Hamas leaders is one option being explored as Israeli troops prepare for the end of the ceasefire, according to a Thursday report in the Israeli daily paper Maariv.
The paper quoted military sources as saying Arab countries advised Israel to assassinate major Hamas leaders if they reject the truce. The story appeared on page two of the Hebrew paper and claims un-named Arab states have given Israel the green-light to use extra-judicial means to ensure the disappearance of Hamas leaders in case the party refuses to extend the truce. Fed up with their "Palestinian brothers" are they?
The article, by Israeli journalists Ben Kesbit and Amir Raybot, claimed that Arab heads of state sent secret letters to the Israeli government. They hinted that the assassination planning was a major factor regarding why no major military action has been undertaken so far.
Those listed as candidates for assassination are: Making a list
Checking it twice...
De facto Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh
De facto Minister of the Interior Said Siyam
De facto Minister of Foreign Affairs Mahmoud Az-Zahhar
Head of the military wing of Hamas in the Gaza Strip (The Al-Qassam Brigades) Ahmad Aj-Jabary
Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and leader of the Popular Committee against the Siege in Gaza Dr Jamal Al-Khudari
Secondary leaders in the Al-Qassam Brigades Ibrahim Ghandur and Muhammad Deif, who have both survived several assassination attempts, were also on the list. Looks like Mashaal can continue to disco the night away in Damascus...
The Egyptian-brokered ceasefire is set to end on Friday.
Hamas has approved for the first time the establishment of a new bank in the Gaza Strip under its authority, a move that could open a door to bypass a financial blockade imposed by Israel and its Western allies. Islamic National Bank chairman Ala al-Rafati said the new financial institution had received a license from the government run by the Islamist group which controls the Palestinian coastal enclave and planned to open for business early in the new year.
Hamas said it will not control the new bank, an assertion disputed by its rivals in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed Palestinian Authority is based. Rafati likewise asserted that the bank had no factional affiliation, saying the venture was designed to boost local investment in Gaza's economy "in an environment of resistance," a reference to the conflict with Israel.
The Western-backed Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) in Ramallah, which registers and regulates established banks, said it would shun the Islamic National Bank, meaning the institution may have to function autonomously, without access to funds in the West Bank or to the global banking system. "The PMA has not authorized the licensing of such a bank, and, accordingly, if there is such a bank, we will pursue every legal action to prevent it from operating," said PMA governor Jihad Wazir.
Matt Levitt, a former senior official at the U.S. Treasury Department, said such a bank would face serious obstacles. "This would be mostly a bank in name only," said Levitt, an expert on militants' financing at the Washington Institute. "It's unlikely that any international bank, let alone any Israeli bank, would have anything to do with any bank registered with Hamas and not with the West Bank-based government."
Despite the boycott and other hurdles, a senior Western diplomat said the new bank, which will operate under Islamic rules that bar charging interest, could prove profitable. "You get all the money ... from the tunnels ... and then you actually use it for investments within Gaza. You get a rate of return and you're using this liquidity more efficiently," the diplomat said.
United Nations' refugee agency on Thursday suspended food distributions to Palestinians in Gaza Strip after it ran out of food stockpiles.
In a statement sent to the media, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said Israel closed all the crossing points into Gaza and humanitarian aid and fuel supplies cannot get through. The largest relief organization in Gaza said the stockpiled flour ran out and forced it to halt the regular and the emergency distributing programs.
Israel imposed severe restrictions on shipments to Gaza Strip since early November after a wave of violence erupted between its forces and Palestinian militants, violating an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. Since November, Israel only allowed several aid convoys, whose shipments were distributed quickly, leaving the organization unable to store food rations.
As the agreement, which calls on Israel to ease Gaza blockade in exchange for lull, coming to an end on Friday, the armed Palestinian groups stepped up rocket attacks into Israeli border communities and the Jewish state responded by tightening the closure.
The UNRWA said the suspending of food distributions would affect the 750,000 Palestinian refugees out of Gaza's 1.5 million population.
GAZA CITY - Israeli warplanes conducted two nighttime air strikes against the Gaza Strip following rocket fire against Israel, witnesses said Thursday.
The raids, which targeted metal workshops in the towns of Jabaliya and Khan Yunis in the north and south caused extensive material damage but no injuries, witnesses and medical sources said. The Israeli military confirmed the air strikes and said the workshops were used to manufacture rockets.
There has been upsurge in rocket attacks and Israeli reprisal air strikes ahead of the expiration Friday of a six-month ceasefire.
A Palestinian man was killed during an Israeli air raid on Gaza on Wednesday, a day in which 19 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel according to the Israeli military.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/18/2008 00:00 ||
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#2
I would like to know why is not some type of anti-missile system covering Gaza. I read (probably here) that they have a fancy new radar but I have heard nothing about what anti-missile hardware might be in the pipe. Is Israel keeping a new system under wraps? Or are they suffering from the Not Invented Here Syndrome?
#4
The world has changed somewhat recently but the darn sickening old media is still trying to redirect unworthy focus on such endless Baalestinian barfs.
Palestinian militant factions in the Gaza Strip said Wednesday they were unlikely to extend an Egyptian- brokered six-month truce with Israel that expires on Friday.
Both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the current, outgoing Israeli government meanwhile welcomed UN Security Council resolution 1850, adopted Monday in New York, which called the Israeli- Palestinian negotiations relaunched in Annapolis, Maryland one year ago 'irreversible.'
They called the Titanic 'unsinkable' ...
The resolution also called for negotiations on all of the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 'without exception' and, initiated by the US and Russia, was a bid by the Annapolis process' key sponsors to safeguard progress made thus far, ahead of Israeli elections on February 10.
Abbas meanwhile urged all factions in Gaza to keep the truce with Israel, while Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said earlier that his country would not shrink from launching a military offensive in Gaza if necessary, but was also not 'running toward' one.
'Calm in Gaza will be met with calm,' he reiterated to a conference in northern Israel late Tuesday.
Palestinian fighters in the strip fired 15 self-made rockets into southern Israel on Wednesday, in addition to one mortar shell, a military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said, adding they brought the total number launched since Tuesday to 25. One of the missiles landed in the centre of the town Sderot, two kilometres from the Strip, injuring two people. Several others were treated for shock, and several vehicles were damaged.
Abu Obaida, a spokesman for the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling Gaza, said his movement was not 'rushing' toward extending the truce. The al-Qassam Brigades 'regards the calm (truce), in its current form, as unsuitable for extension,' he told reporters in Gaza.
Both Israel and Hamas have been using the Hebrew and Arabic terms for 'calm' to describe the truce, underscoring that it is an informal and indirect agreement between two parties which do not recognize each other.
Other armed factions active in Gaza also voiced negative assessments about the truce. Naffez Azzam, of the Islamic Jihad, said it had 'served the Israeli occupation rather than the Palestinian people' and criticized the undetermined stance of his faction.
The Islamic Jihad claimed credit for firing most of Wednesday's rockets, saying they were revenge for the killing of one of their militants during an Israeli arrest raid in the West Bank city of Jenin earlier this week. The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) too claimed responsibility for some of the rockets.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said 'Friday will be the final end to the calm, which already collapsed in the middle because of Israel which increased its attacks and tightened its siege on the Palestinian people,' a Gaza leader, Kayed al-Ghoul said.
The truce, which had largely held for five months, began disintegrating in early November, when five Hamas militants were killed in a heavy clash near the Gaza border with Israeli soldiers, who had uncovered a tunnel dug by militants and who Israel had said had planned to infiltrate into its territory.
Although sporadic, one-off rockets also landed in Israel before that November 4 clash, militants have stepped up their rocket fire since then. Israel has responded by renewing its near-total blockade of the strip, shutting its border crossings to all but periodic shipments of basic humanitarian aid.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/18/2008 00:00 ||
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United Nations' refugee agency on Thursday suspended food distributions to Palestinians in Gaza Strip after it ran out of food stockpiles.
GAZA CITY - Israeli warplanes conducted two nighttime air strikes against the Gaza Strip following rocket fire against Israel, witnesses said Thursday.
Palestinian militant factions in the Gaza Strip said Wednesday they were unlikely to extend an Egyptian- brokered six-month truce with Israel that expires on Friday. 
