WarSclerotic

6 killed, 10 wounded after mortar fire on Eshkol – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Unofficial truce between Hamas, Israel ends in the afternoon after four rockets launched at Hof Ashkelon.

Itay Blumenthal, Yoav Zitun
Latest Update:     07.28.14, 18:28 / Israel News

At least six people were killed, while at least 10 were wounded, some criticially, by mortar fire on Eshkol near the Gaza border early Monday evening.

At 12:40 pm on Monday the unofficial ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was broken when Code Red sirens blared in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council as four rockets were fired from Gaza. It was reported that the rockets fell within the Gaza Strip.

Several minutes before 5pm, the Code Red rocket siren was sounded in Ashkelon and in Hof Ashkelon Regional Council. The rocket launched was intercepted by the Iron Dome. Some 15 minutes later, Code Red was once again sounded in Ashkelon, and the Iron Dome intercepted 2 more rockets, while a third hit an open area.

The political establishment, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, has attempted to reach a ceasefire with Hamas. A political source said that “the ceasefire will continue according to the situation on the ground.”

Up until the noon salvo, only one rocket was fired by Gaza militants. The IDF retaliated with a precise strike. Meanwhile, a soldier was wounded in light-to-moderate condition during clashes in Beit Hanoun. He was evacuated to Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer.
During the ceasefire, and before the air raid sirens sounded in southern Israel, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit released a video documenting the operations of special forces in the Strip.

Shortly after 7am, a single rocket was fired on Asheklon and exploded in an open area. The IDF later attacked two concealed rocket launchers and a weapons manufacturing site in the north and central Gaza Strip – in retaliation for the rocket fire. The IDF had no casualties overnight.

Yoav Zitun contributed to this report.

Kerry’s mistakes strengthen Hamas’s resolve | The Times of Israel.

Has the US really forsaken Egypt and Israel to join forces with the Muslim Brotherhood, or is its top diplomat merely naive?

By Avi Issacharoff July 28, 2014, 3:10 pm

150 Palestinians surrender to IDF in Gaza
By Adiv Sterman July 24, 2014, 11:44 am

​ (‘Feel Good’ story of the day.-LS)

Dozens of operatives from southern Strip, mostly Hamas members, transferred to Israeli facilities for interrogation.
Dozens of Palestinian terror operatives, most of whom were said to be members of Hamas, surrendered Wednesday to IDF soldiers during raids in the southern Gaza Strip cities of Rafah and Khan Yunis.

The operatives, who came out of hiding spots with their hands raised above their heads, were taken into Israeli custody for further questioning.

In total, 150 Palestinians were arrested, but only 70 of them who were suspected of carrying out terror attacks were transferred under tight security to IDF Intelligence and Shin Bet facilities for interrogation, an IDF spokeswoman told The Times of Israel, adding to 28 operatives already captured. The remaining detainees were later released, Army Radio reported.

A picture of the Gazans posted on Facebook by Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz showed two rows of captives wearing only underwear and shoes, on their knees in the sand. They were stripped of their clothes in order to ensure they were not carrying weapons.

The IDF said no soldiers were injured during overnight operations in the Gaza Strip, but several were lightly hurt Thursday morning in the northern part of the Strip.

More than 100 targets were struck by the IDF Wednesday throughout the entire Gaza Strip, an army spokesman said. Since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge on July 8, the IDF hit more than 3,330 targets, including tunnels, rocket launchers, and several Hamas military headquarters.

On Wednesday morning, three Israeli paratroopers were killed in Khan Yunis, bringing the army’s death toll to 32 since the IDF began operating on the ground in Gaza last week, the army said. Two soldiers were seriously wounded and 10 more were moderately injured.

Additionally, the army on Wednesday bombed Al-Wafa hospital in Gaza City, calling it “a Hamas military compound.” The IDF said there was a command-and-control center in the hospital, a lookout post used to monitor IDF forces, and several access shafts to a tunnel network beneath the hospital.

On Tuesday ​the hospital was evacuated from patients and staff, the army said, but was still in use by Hamas gunmen, who continued to fire at the IDF forces. On Wednesday, prior to the airstrike, the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration confirmed that the hospital was empty of patients and staff.

The strike set off massive secondary explosions, supporting the army’s contention that there was an arms cache, perhaps of rockets, beneath the hospital.

Meanwhile, the Shin Bet announced that it had succeeded, along with the army, in either killing or incapacitate four mid-to high-level Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders, all in the Khan Yunis area.

According to the Shin Bet, the officials included the group’s Khan Yunis commander Akram Shaar, who was behind a series of attacks against Israeli soldiers and was in charge of rocket fire from the area; Mahmoud Ziada, a resident of Jabalya, who had served as a battalion commander in the northern sector; Sha’aban Dahduh, of Gaza City, also a battalion commander, whom the Shin Bet referred to as “outstanding”; and Saeed Ma’amar, also a battalion commander, in the Rafah brigade.

According to the IDF, more than 210 terrorists were killed since the ground incursion began last Thursday night, among them several high-ranking Hamas officers, including the commander of the group’s surveillance unit.

A senior Israeli security source asserted Wednesday that Hamas’s rocket manufacturing capacity had taken a strong hit during the IDF’s operation in the Palestinian enclave.

Obama Demands Israel Agree to Immediate Unconditional Ceasefire, Canada Free Press, Joseph A. Klein, July 28, 2014

(The United States may well be among Israel’s few friends and allies. The Obama Administration, currently in charge of American foreign policy, is not. To yield to advice from the Obama Administration would be suicidal. — DM)

If Prime Minister Netanyahu does not give in to the Obama administration pressure, it is quite possible that the administration will back a UN Security Council resolution along the lines proposed by Jordan as a follow up to the Presidential Statement the Security Council has already issued. In addition to directing that there be an unconditional immediate ceasefire, such a resolution would likely call explicitly for Israel’s forces to be immediately removed from Gaza and for the border crossings to be opened, without addressing the remaining tunnels or rockets other than vague references to security concerns. Israel will then be forced to choose between doing what it has to do to protect its citizens and bowing to the so-called “international community’s” edict. The Jewish state has no choice but to follow its own course for its survival. [Emphasis added.]

President Obama is seeking to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into agreeing to an immediate unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. In a phone call on Sunday, Obama reportedly told the Israeli prime minister that such a ceasefire was “a strategic imperative.” Obama specifically referred to the ceasefire proposed by Secretary of State John Kerry, which Israel’s security cabinet rejected unanimously last Friday.

Very early Monday morning, in an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the Council issued a unanimously adopted “Presidential Statement” expressing “strong support for the call by international partners and the Secretary-General of the United Nations for an immediate and unconditional humanitarian ceasefire.” The Presidential Statement went on to commend “the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for their efforts in this regard.”

Security Council Presidential Statements do not have any binding legal effect under international law as resolutions do. However, they sometimes serve as the first step towards such resolutions.

Israel has been willing to observe several humanitarian pauses, primarily on a unilateral basis. Hamas went along with one 24-hour pause during the first part of the weekend and then resumed its rocket firings. After Hamas proposed its own additional 24-hour pause on Sunday, which Israel was willing to accept, Hamas nevertheless kept firing its rockets. Nothing in the Security Council Presidential Statement acknowledges that fact. Nor do Obama or Kerry for that matter.

Kerry’s ceasefire proposal was inadequate to protect Israel’s security concerns. It would have left the remaining tunnels used by Hamas to infiltrate Israel in place, which Israel simply could not accept. According to a leaked draft document of the proposal that both Aljazeera and Haaretz were reported to have obtained, Kerry’s ceasefire proposal skirted the specific concerns raised by Israel about allowing the tunnels to remain intact and letting Hamas keep its weapons stockpiles. Instead, it focused on opening the border crossings, with no specific security monitoring plan in place to ensure that Hamas would not build up its military capabilities even further. It called for the “withdrawal of IDF from Gaza Strip” and the end to any “military or security targeting of each other.” With the IDF gone and no more “security targeting,” that means the tunnels and remaining rockets would stay put for Hamas’s later use.

Moreover, under the Kerry proposal, the parties would begin discussing, within 48 hours of cessation of fighting, much of the Hamas agenda:

“arrangements to secure the opening of border and non-border crossings, allow the entry of goods and people and ensure the social and economic livelihood of the Palestinian people living in Gaza, including fishing rights up to 12nm, transfer funds to Gaza for the payment of salaries for public employees, and address security issues.”

After Kerry continued his discussions in Paris with foreign ministers from two of the leading Hamas supporting countries, Turkey and Qatar, President Obama tried to put the squeeze on Prime Minister Netanyahu to effectively leave the Israeli people exposed to more rocket fire and Hamas infiltration into Israel from their remaining intact tunnels. Obama and Kerry are so eager to seek peace at any cost that they evidently did not include representatives from Egypt or even from the Palestinian Authority in the high level Paris discussions. As a result, even the Palestinian Authority is disgusted with the Obama administration. Walid Assad, one of the spokespersons of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, complained of Kerry’s “appeasement” of Qatar and Turkey.

The Obama administration’s deference to Qatar, home to a major U.S. air base, is no doubt motivated in part by all the money that Qatar has committed just recently to spend on purchasing Apache attack helicopters, Patriot missile defense batteries and anti-tank Javelin missiles. An $11 billion deal was announced on July 14^th. Qatar provides support to Hamas and other jihadists threatening peace and security in the region. Apparently, the Obama administration is not worried or does not care that some of those missiles and helicopters could well find their way to the wrong hands.

As for Turkey, President Obama considers its Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to be his “personal friend.” Obama’s buddy is the same guy who just a few days ago said that “You can see what Israel does to Palestine, to Gaza right now, surpasses what Hitler did to them. We do not accept this persecution, the massacre, the genocide by Israel.” Obama let this scurrilous remark pass without a word of rebuke in defense of America’s closest ally in the Middle East. And it comes from the leader of the same country that committed genocide against the Armenians and has illegally invaded and occupied northern Cyprus.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) is planning another effort to break Israel’s lawful sea blockade of Gaza. The last one back in 2010 led to a violent confrontation with the Israeli Defense Force. This time, according to the IHH, it will have the protection of the Turkish navy.

While Obama was on the phone Sunday pressuring Israel’s leader to cave in to the demands of Hamas’s Turkish and Qatari protectors, Hamas’s political leader Khaled Meshaal, living in luxury in Qatar, received a phone call of assurance on Sunday from Hamas’s main arms supplier, Iran. Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, is reported to have told Meshaal not to worry about depleting Hamas’s stockpile of weapons. More will be on the way.

DebkaFile has advanced a very plausible theory as to why Obama and Kerry are tilting towards the Qatar-Turkey axis, which is trying to protect Hamas’s ability to live and fight another day. At the same time, Obama and Kerry are tilting against the Israel-Egypt-Saudi Arabia triumvirate, who are united in their resolve to severely curtail the threat that Hamas poses in the region once and for all. It is all about Iran. According to DebkaFile’s analysis:

“So why is the Obama administration shoving this powerful coalition out of his way and building a rival alliance to counter it?

Its primary motive is fear that if this group is allowed to make the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip a success, it will become the springboard for its next move, a victorious assault on Iran.

This sequence of events would totally derail current US Middle East policy, which hinges on détente with Tehran, Obama’s advisers warn him, and even jeopardize his strategy for bringing the nuclear negotiations between the six world powers and Iran to a successful conclusion.”

The Obama administration just last week agreed to a four month extension of the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. It does not want anything to possibly get in its way of making a deal with Iran.

If Prime Minister Netanyahu does not give in to the Obama administration pressure, it is quite possible that the administration will back a UN Security Council resolution along the lines proposed by Jordan as a follow up to the Presidential Statement the Security Council has already issued. In addition to directing that there be an unconditional immediate ceasefire, such a resolution would likely call explicitly for Israel’s forces to be immediately removed from Gaza and for the border crossings to be opened, without addressing the remaining tunnels or rockets other than vague references to security concerns. Israel will then be forced to choose between doing what it has to do to protect its citizens and bowing to the so-called “international community’s” edict. The Jewish state has no choice but to follow its own course for its survival.

Ashkelon mayor: The formula ‘calm will be met with calm’ is a deception – Israel News, Ynetnews.

 IIlana Curiel and Matan Tzuri
Published:     07.28.14, 16:09 / Israel News

Ashkelon Mayor Itamar Shimoni said Monday that if the government won’t exhaust this operation, it will be a disaster for the Israeli public.

“There is a difficult feeling within the Israeli public that once again the government intends to back down and not go all the way with
the operation in Gaza, which is a disaster to us. I understand there are diplomatic considerations, but I don’t understand why we need to apologize for defending ourselves and operating to eliminate those who are trying to harm us,” said Shimoni.

“Should the operation end this way, it would be a political failure as well as a security failure and we will pay for it dearly. The formula ‘calm will be met with calm’ is unacceptable to us. It’s a deception that allows the enemy to accumulate more power.

Report: Hamas Used Child Labor to Build Terror Tunnels; Hundreds Killed
by Joel B. Pollak 27 Jul 2014

Hamas killed hundreds of children in the construction of its extensive tunnel network, built partly to carry out attacks on children across the Gaza border in Israel. That report–confirmed by Hamas itself–emerged in 2012, not from the Israeli government, but the sympathetic Journal of Palestine Studies, in an article that otherwise celebrated the secret tunnel system as a symbol of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli “siege” of the Gaza Strip.

The article, “Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel’s Siege,” was published in the Summer 2012 edition of the Journal by Nicholas Pelham, who writes for the Economist and the New York Review of Books, according to his bio. It is receiving new attention thanks to Myer Freimann of Tablet, an online journal of Jewish affairs, whose post about Hamas’s use of child labor has gone viral in social media.

Pelham wrote that despite the economic success of the tunnels underneath the Egyptian border, which enriched Hamas through a thriving black market as well as arming it with new weapons, there were a few drawbacks. One of these was a “cavalier approach to child labor and tunnel fatalities,” he noted. “During a police patrol that the author was permitted to accompany in December 2011, nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies. At least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials” (emphasis added).

Though some children likely worked voluntarily, the fact that there were public complaints about child deaths, to which Hamas felt compelled to respond at least superficially, is evidence of some amount of coercion. The number of deaths since 2012 has yet to be reported, but almost certainly exceeds the number Pelham reported.

To sum up: Hamas is not only using child labor, but likely child slavery, in building its terror tunnel network. While the world worries obsessively over the child casualties of Israeli attacks on Hamas targets in Gaza, it has ignored Hamas’s deliberate killing of hundreds of Palestinian children, over the objections of the local populace.

The knowledge that Hamas used children to dig tunnels for smuggling and terror up to 25 meters below ground changes the moral calculation of the war significantly. Not only does Hamas show extreme indifference to the lives of Palestinian children by using them as human shields, placing rockets in UN schools and the like, but it actively destroys those lives by sending Palestinian children to die underground in 19th century conditions.

Those defending the Palestinian resistance to Israel–and, equally, those demanding a ceasefire that would leave the Hamas tunnel network in place–are effectively defending a slaveholding regime more odious in moral terms than any the world has seen since the child soldiers of Joseph Kony’s brutal Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, or the forced labor camps of the Nazis in the Second World War, who set children to work for the war effort.

It is rather ironic that President Barack Obama, who touted his own election in 2008 as an answer to the moral stain of slavery in America, would insist today on shoring up a Hamas administration that demonstrably uses child slavery. The Israeli government was reportedly shocked at how closely Obama’s ceasefire terms reflect the Hamas position. The American public ought to be shocked at how cynically Obama has cast morality aside.

Photo: Adel Hana/AP

Israel disputes US account of Kerry’s ceasefire effort | The Times of Israel.

( The word is that Obama called Netanyahu and threatened to withdraw US support unless Israel ceased fire.  This will preserve Hamas and guarantee continued conflict throughout the Middle East by the Moslem Brotherhood.  This goes way past incompetence. Following Kerry’s menage a trois with Turkey and Qatar, as well as Obama’s desperate support for Mursi, it’s now hard to dismiss the stories that Obama is a MB shill. – JW )

While US says document conveyed to cabinet on Friday was just a draft, didn’t require a vote, and didn’t help Hamas, sources tell ToI that ministers were asked to vote and did so 8-0 to reject a proposal that gave Hamas specific gains

By Times of Israel staff and Raphael Ahren July 28, 2014, 1:41 pm

‘Freedom Flotilla II’ set to sail for Gaza from Turkey
By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON, HERB KEINON
LAST UPDATED: 07/28/2014 03:20

Amid Israel’s Operation Protective Edge to stop Hamas attacks from Gaza, a “Freedom Flotilla” is being organized in Turkey to bring humanitarian aid to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian coastal enclave with the protection of the Turkish military, according to an unconfirmed media report.

The flotilla, called “Freedom Flotilla II,” is being organized by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), the same organization that was behind the Mavi Marmara flotilla that sought to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip in May 2010.

Israel Navy commandos boarded the ship, were attacked, and killed nine of the attackers.

IHH chairman Bulent Yildrim was quoted by The Middle East Monitor as telling Gulf Online last week that the activists would set sail as soon as they receive the necessary permit from the authorities in Ankara and that the Turkish military would provide protection to the ship.

Diplomatic officials said Jerusalem was following the reports carefully, but stressed that it was not clear whether the flotilla would ultimately set sail.

So far there has only been a declaration of intent, with no firm date set, one official said.

Harold Rhode, a senior fellow at the New-York-based Gatestone Institute and a former adviser at the in the office of the American defense secretary on Islamic affairs, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Sunday that the real issue in the ongoing conflict is that Turkey and Qatar are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in their goals.

“[Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan has been associated with the Muslim Brotherhood long before he was prime minister,” Rhode said.

It should now be clear to all that Erdogan “is now out of the bag,” Rhode said, adding that US President Barack Obama does not speak to the Turkish leader anymore despite previously describing him as one of his closest friends among the world’s leaders.

“Erdogan is doing whatever he can to help Hamas,” he said, asserting that it will only hurt the Palestinian people in the end.

Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.

Netanyahu’s dilemma: Back Obama’s save Hamas policy, or fight for its downfall with Egypt and Saudis, DEBKAfile, July 28, 2015

Binyamin Netanyahu and Saudi King Abdullah on the same side in Gaza

Netanyahu will . . . have to resolve which way to jump, one of the hardest decisions any Israeli prime minister has ever faced.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu entangled himself Saturday and Sunday, July 26-27,  in the net he had cast to blur the effect of the unanimous decision by the security-political cabinet of Friday to turn down the ceasefire proposals proposed by US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The two diplomats and their partners, a brace of European ministers and Qatar and Turkey, who met in Paris to concoct a peace framework for Gaza, were privately dubbed by wags in Jerusalem the “Save Hamas Squad.”

Netanyahu tried to present the flat cabinet “no” to the ceasefire as a “no, maybe.”

His purpose was to leave an opening for the US and UN to ginger up their pro-Hamas framework for ending hostilities in the Gaza Strip by incorporating elements that Israel’s security needs half way. If that was done, Israel, he indicated, would be amenable to joining lengthy ceasefire accords with Hamas, or even making unilateral halts in violence.

He explained to his close circle that he was performing these maneuvers to gain international legitimacy for Israel’s large-scale counter-terror operation against the Palestinian extremist organization in the Gaza Strip, now it its 20th day. This would be especially timely ahead of the UN Security Council session on the issue due to take place in New York Monday.

The trouble with this pretext is that the large measure of international sympathy Israel enjoyed in the early days of its Operation Defense Edge against Hamas’ rocket barrage collapsed the moment President Obama sent Kerry to the Middle East last week, for a bid to save Hamas before it was mown down by the IDF.

The Palestinian Authority was much more open and blunt than Netanyahu in its disapproval of the game that was being played out in Paris. Walid Assad, one of the spokesmen of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas protested what he called Kerry’s “appeasement” of Qatar and Turkey at the expense of Egypt and the PA, and his failure to invite either to the meeting for discussing a ceasefire in Gaza hostilities.

Senior Palestinian officials warned against attempts to “bypass the PLO as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

In the legitimacy stakes, Netanyahu has three solid allies for crushing Hamas: Saudi King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi and the UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Sunday, Mahmoud Abbas attached a Palestinian voice to this group.

This regional coalition has enormous clout, derived, on the one hand, from the Israeli military and its fight against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Egyptian army’s containment of Hamas efforts to break out into Sinai for strategic depth; and, on the other, from the financial might of Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates and the world prestige they enjoy.

So why is the Obama administration shoving this powerful coalition out of his way and building a rival alliance to counter it?

Its primary motive is fear that if this group is allowed to make the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip a success, it will become the springboard for its next move, a victorious assault on Iran.

This sequence of events would totally derail current US Middle East policy, which hinges on détente with Tehran, Obama’s advisers warn him, and even jeopardize his strategy for bringing the nuclear negotiations between the six world powers and Iran to a successful conclusion.

Netanyahu’s shilly-shallying between approval and rejection of Gaza ceasefires is the outcome of his dilemma: Sticking with the first solid alliance Israel has ever acquired in the region would cost him a deep rift with Washington. But going along with Kerry’s plan would cost Israel more in security against one of the most dangerous Islamist terrorist organizations on earth.

Vacillation by a war leader increases the dangers to his troops and the risk of missing its goals. A wishy-washy formula was thrown up in Jerusalem to cover this period of uncertainty: “Quiet will be met with quiet and fire will be met with fire!

This slogan was used at the start of the operation against Hamas. Its response was the contemptuous ramping up of rocket fire against Israeli population centers to 100 a day – which in turn, triggered Israel’s ground operation eight days ago.

Half measures will not go down well with the Israeli public, which, even after losing 43 servicemen in action in the Gaza Strip, is still solidly behind the operation. A poll conducted by TV Channel 10 Sunday found 87 percent of those canvassed demanding that Israel press on, and 69 percent urging the government to go al the way and overthrow Hamas rule of the Gaza Strip.

With the US, Europe, Iran, Qatar and Turkey at its back and a wavering Israeli government putting the IDF Gaza operation on stop-go, Hamas can afford to carry on shooting rockets at Israel when it chooses before, after and in the middle of its own ceasefires.

There might a slowdown for the three-day Eid al-Fitr which starts Sunday night.  But not necessarily. The Palestinian extremists may use an outburst of violence during the Muslim festival to rally their coreligionists across the Muslim world for huge marches of solidarity behind them. This could present Egypt and Saudi Arabia with a predicament.

Netanyahu will meanwhile have to resolve which way to jump, one of the hardest decisions any Israeli prime minister has ever faced.

Hamas won’t give him the peace to make up his mind. It has plenty of firepower and rockets left to keep Gaza violence and attacks on Israel on the boil, while making good use of the rising toll of Palestinian deaths in the fighting to place all the estimated 1,060 deaths squarely at Israel’s door.

Sunday, July 27, 2014, the Palestinian extremists received another shot in the arm from Iran, a phone call to politburo chief Khaled Meshaal from Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, with a promise to make up Hamas’ losses of weapons in the war with Israel.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossen Amir Abdolahian traveled to Beirut to discuss with Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, how they could help Hamas.

Charlie Rose Battles Hamas Leader Khaled Meshaal over Whether He’ll Recognize Israel – CBS – 7-27-14