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Abbas Calls for Murder, Palestinians Attack

October 7, 2015

Abbas Calls for Murder, Palestinians Attack, Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, October 7, 2015

  • The terrorists did not need permission from Hamas leaders to murder the first Jews they ran into. The inflammatory rhetoric of Abbas and Palestinian Authority (PA) officials and media outlets was sufficient to drive any Palestinian to go out and murder Jews.
  • Instead of condemning the murder of the Jews, the PA denounced Israel for killing the two Palestinians who carried out the Jerusalem attacks.
  • The Palestinian Authority and its leaders are in no position today to condemn the murder of any Jews, simply because the PA itself has been encouraging such terrorist attacks through its ceaseless campaign of incitement against Israel.
  • The PA is playing a double game: it tells the world that it wants peace and coexistence with Israel; meanwhile it incites Palestinians against Israel, driving some to set out with guns and knives to murder Jews.
  • Although Abbas has repeatedly stated during the past few years that he does not want another intifada against Israel, his statements and actions show that he is doing his utmost to spark another wave of violence, in order to invite international pressure on Israel.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leaders, including President Mahmoud Abbas, cannot evade responsibility for the latest wave of terror attacks against Israelis in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

True, in the end it turned out that Hamas was behind the murder of Eitam and Naama Henkin in front of their four children, but there is no ignoring the fact that the anti-Israel incitement of Abbas and other Palestinian leaders in Ramallah paved the way for the terrorists to carry out this and other attacks.

The incitement, which has been around for many years, intensified after the arson attack that killed three members of the Dawabsha family in the West Bank village of Duma in July.

Since then, Abbas and his senior officials have been waging an unprecedented campaign of incitement against Israel in general and Jewish settlers in particular, although the perpetrators of the Duma attack still have not been identified or caught. Palestinian Authority leaders have since accused the Israeli government of committing “war crimes,” and have told their people that the arson attack was actually part of an Israeli conspiracy against all Palestinians.

Abbas has even gone as far as accusing Israel of promoting a “culture of terror and apartheid.” That claim came in addition to threats by senior Palestinian officials to launch retaliatory “operations” against Israel in response to the arson attack.

The West Bank’s Palestinian media, which are controlled by the PA, have also played a role in the massive campaign of incitement against Israel and settlers. Jewish settlers are depicted in Palestinian media outlets as “gangsters” and “terrorists” and the Israeli government is dubbed the “Occupation Government.”

1279Official Palestinian Authority media outlets incite Palestinians, from a young age, to murder Jews. (Image source: Palestinian Media Watch)

The recent tensions at the Aqsa Mosque compound on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem have also been exploited by Abbas and the Palestinian Authority leadership to delegitimize Israel and demonize “Jewish extremists and settlers.” For several months now, Abbas and his senior officials and media outlets have been accusing Jewish visitors to the holy site of “contaminating” and “desecrating” one of Islam’s holiest shrines. Palestinian officials and journalists have been telling their people that the Jews are plotting to demolish the Aqsa Mosque. Moreover, they have been urging and encouraging Palestinians to converge on the Aqsa Mosque compound to “defend” it against purported Jewish schemes.

The campaign of incitement reached its peak recently when Abbas was quoted as accusing Jews of “defiling the Aqsa Mosque with their filthy feet.” Abbas also announced that, “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood.”

The Hamas terrorists who murdered the Henkins live in the West Bank, and were undoubtedly exposed to the incitement by Abbas and the PA. The terrorists did not need permission from the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip or Turkey to go out and murder the first Jews they ran into. The inflammatory rhetoric of Abbas and Palestinian Authority officials and media outlets was sufficient to drive any Palestinian to murder Jews.

The two Palestinian assailants who carried out last week’s stabbing attacks in Jerusalem wanted to kill Jews because they were led to believe that this was the only means to stop them from “contaminating” the Aqsa Mosque. After all, this is precisely what Abbas and other PA officials have been telling them for the past few months. Again, while the two stabbers were not Abbas loyalists (one of them, Muhannad Halabi, was affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad), there is no doubt that the incitement of the Palestinian Authority played a major role in increasing their motivation to murder Jews.

Halabi, who stabbed and shot four Israelis in the Old City of Jerusalem, killing Rabbi Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Banita, and wounding Adele Banita and her baby, wrote on his Facebook page hours before the attack: “What is happening to al-Aqsa Mosque is what is happening to our holy sites, and what is happening to the women of al-Aqsa is what is happening to our mothers and women. I don’t believe that our people will succumb to humiliation. The people will indeed rise up.” Halabi’s statements are not much different from those made by several senior PA officials in recent weeks and months.

The Palestinian Authority also bears responsibility for the wave of terror attacks: its leaders never condemned the murder of the four Jews near Nablus and in the Old City of Jerusalem. By refusing to denounce the attacks, Abbas and the PA leadership are sending a message to Palestinians that it is fine to murder Jewish parents in front of their children, or Jews on their way to pray at the Western Wall. Instead of condemning the murder of the Jews, the Palestinian Authority chose to denounce Israel for killing the two Palestinians who carried out the Jerusalem attacks. By doing so, the PA is actually inciting Palestinians to seek revenge for the “cold-blooded execution” of the two assailants.

The Palestinian Authority and its leaders are in no position today to condemn the killing of any Jews, simply because it is the PA itself that has been encouraging such terrorist attacks through its ceaseless campaign of incitement against Israel.

In this regard, the PA is playing a double game: on the one hand, it is telling the world that it wants peace and coexistence with Israel; on the other hand, it is continuing to incite Palestinians against Israel, and driving some to take guns and knives and set out to murder Jews.

The Palestinian Authority’s fiery anti-Israel rhetoric has led to a wave of terrorist attacks that could easily deteriorate into a third intifada. Although Abbas has repeatedly stated during the past few years that he does not want another intifada against Israel, his statements and actions show that he is doing his utmost to spark another wave of violence in order to draw the world’s attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and invite international pressure on Israel.

Categories: Abbas, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Death to Israel, Defense of Israel, Fatah, Filthy Jews, Hamas, Islamic terrorism, Israel, Jews, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Temple Mount, West Bank
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Migration Crisis: “Islam Will Conquer Europe Without Firing a Shot”

September 28, 2015

Migration Crisis: “Islam Will Conquer Europe Without Firing a Shot” Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, September 28, 2015

(The principal focus of the article in on Israel and the Palestinians. — DM)

  • The failed foreign policies of the EU and the US under President Obama, have brought the Arabs to the brink of chaos, and destroyed regimes which, even though they were not democratic utopias, at least provided governance and public order. These failed policies have abandoned the Arabs to the atrocities of the Sunni Islamists and to the murderous proxies of the Iranian Islamic Revolution — and are ultimately the cause of the tsunami of refugees beating at the gates of Europe.
  • Now the EU and Obama want to bring the catastrophe of Gaza to the West Bank.
  • The American FDA is more careful with experiments on animals than the White House is with experiments on the people of the Middle East.
  • Every time the Palestinians have taken steps against the Israelis, we have hurt no one but ourselves, and are left with — nothing.
  • The Arabs living in Israel and the Palestinian Authority territories know, although it is a bitter pill to swallow, that we have been favored by fortune, because under the State of Israel we live in security.
  • In the face of ongoing mass murder in the Middle East, what arcane consideration, apart from Federica Mogherini being a racist, could possibly bring the EU to deal with something as marginal to global issues as boycotting Israeli face-cream and cookies?

With the anniversary of Al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, internal Palestinian discourse revolves around radical Islam and America’s actions. It relates to the slaughter, rape and millions of refugees who have fallen victim to Al-Qaeda, humanitarian calamity of and the Islamist terrorist organizations to which it gave birth, such as ISIS. Today an apocalyptic proportions is unfolding in territories that used to be Arab states but are now the battle grounds for feuding Arab tribes, whose only objective is to destroy one another.

In their heart of hearts, the Arabs living in Israel and the Palestinian Authority territories know, although it is a bitter pill to swallow, that we have been favored by fortune because under the State of Israel we live in security. This reality is brought home to us by the feeble international response and the strange behavior of U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of the Western world who have abandoned the Arabs to the atrocities of the Sunni Islamists (and their supporters in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar), and to the murderous proxies of the Iranian Islamic Revolution (mainly in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon).

In view of what is happening in neighboring countries, it is clear to us what will happen if Israel is in danger of destruction: no Western state will come to its aid and no Arab state will come to our aid. Our fate will be the same as that of our brothers beyond Israel’s borders. It is hard not to identify and sympathize with Israel’s efforts to fight terrorism and with its objections to the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Despite the chaos and worse than chaos in the Middle East, the EU’s foreign minister, Federica Mogherini, recently announced that the EU had decided to mark products made in the Israeli settlements. That is mind-boggling, so say the least. In the face of the ongoing mass murders in the Middle East, what arcane consideration, apart from Mogherini being a racist, could possibly bring the EU, now, to deal with something as blatantly marginal to global issues as the provenance of face cream and cookies?

In the final analysis, if the Europeans harm Israel’s ability to market goods manufactured in the West Bank, the first victims will be the Palestinian workers in the Israeli settlement factories. Every time the Palestinians have taken steps against the Israelis, we have hurt no one but ourselves. The last time we boycotted Israeli products we wound up buying them on the black market at double and triple the price. When we refused to work on construction sites, the Israelis switched to modular, prefabricated units, and the Palestinian construction workers who went on strike are unemployed to this day. When we refused to work in Israeli agriculture, they brought in workers from Thailand, who took our jobs and left us with — nothing.

The Western pressure on Israel and the Palestinians to establish a Palestinian state as soon as possible, when viewed through the prism of the mass murders and uncertainty in the Middle East, is incomprehensible. The initiative, and the obsession, to promote such a dangerous project at a time when everyone understands that the conditions on both sides are not yet ripe is dangerous; and the motives involved, whatever they really are, are suspicious. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not new, it has been waged in an atmosphere of terrorism and violence and hostility and complete lack of trust for a hundred years. So why exert pressure now?

Everyone, at least everyone living in the Middle East, knows full well that the conflict will not end with a “peace for our time” agreement forced on the two sides and accompanied by a handful of empty, meaningless documents; the dynamics are too dangerous. For both us and the Israelis it is a matter of life and death, not semantics; and it will probably take another hundred years before enough trust can be built on both sides to find a just solution.

The irony is staggering. At a time when the Arab states that were artificially created after the First World War crumble to dust, the EU is pressing for the creation of another artificial Arab state, this one called “Palestine,” to be carved out of territories once belonging to Jordan and Egypt. If “Palestine” is granted the status of statehood, it will force not only Israel but the rest of the world to grant it complete control over its borders, airports and a seaport. That will expose the new weak “state” to a rapid and certain takeover by Hamas, ISIS and various other terrorist organizations. Given the current situation in the West Bank, the elected government of “Palestine” will be controlled by Hamas. It will overthrow the Palestinian Authority, the way it did in the Gaza Strip, take over the West Bank, use its airports and seaport to import missiles, various other weapons and Islamist terrorists, and help Islamist terrorism in general, and ISIS in particular, to operate from its territory. The Islamists will proceed to attack Israel and Jordan the way ISIS is currently attacking Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula. Worse, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad will enter the new “Palestine” and strengthen its relations with Iran, just as it has in the Gaza Strip and Syria, and with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Evidently the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, which led directly to Hamas’s bloodbath and takeover of the Gaza Strip, the expulsion of the Palestinian Authority and the entrenchment of Islamist terrorism, was not enough for Europe. Now the EU and U.S. President Barack Obama want to bring the catastrophe of the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. The American Food and Drug Administration is more careful with experiments on animals than the White House is with experiments on the people living in the Middle East.

In view of the events in the Arab countries, it is clear to the Palestinians that American and European actions in the Middle East are the direct result of stupidity and complete ignorance of the Middle Eastern mindset, if not outright racism and malevolence. What is inescapable is that under Obama, both America and Europe brought the Arabs to the brink of chaos and beyond, destroyed regimes which, even though they were not democratic utopias like the United States, at least provided governance and public order. That is ultimately the cause of the tsunami of refugees beating at the gates of Europe, all of it caused by the United States and its failed foreign policy.

All the signs indicate that the Middle East disaster is hardly far from over. It is actually just beginning. it will get worse because of the tens of billions that will now pour into the Ayatollahs’ coffers from the insane agreement with Iran. Much of this money will go directly not only to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force, Iran’s arm of international terrorism, but to the various proxy terrorist organizations Iran supports, thus hastening the total destruction of the Middle East and eventually large swaths of Africa.

The wave of refugees will increase, and the price will be paid by the Europeans, already faced with legions of refugees and no plan for dealing with them. Eventually Gaddafi’s prophecy will come true: Islam will conquer Europe without firing a shot.

Categories: Europe, European Union, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Islamic immigration, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Middle East, Obama - Middle East, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, West Bank
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The Fiction of Political Islam

September 2, 2015

The Fiction of Political Islam, The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, September 2, 2015

  • To this day, the Obama administration mourns the fall of Egypt’s Islamist President Morsi, and turns a cold shoulder to forward-looking President el-Sisi, who is (sometimes) trying to take Egypt into the 21st century and extricate Egypt from its economic and societal crisis.
  • Muslim Brotherhood terrorism against the Egyptian regime is a perfect example of how this “political movement” is in reality a terrorist movement whose objective is the violent overthrow of Egypt’s government. The White House, fully aware of the facts, continues hosting senior Muslim Brotherhood officials and shows them respect during consultations about the American Islamic community and U.S. policy in the Middle East.
  • Events in Sinai prove there is no such thing as “political Islam.” There is a radical Islamist leadership that represents itself to the gullible West as “moderate,” preaches violence from mosques, cloaks itself in ideological-religious tradition, and employs Islamist terrorists to attack civilians and Egyptian government targets.
  • It is hard not to conclude, looking at President Obama’s record (ignoring protesters of 2009 in Iran; “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone”; the dictatorial way the Iran deal is bypassing the democratic process) that in his heart-of-hearts, he is far more committed to supporting extremist Islamist regimes — whether the mullahs of Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood — than to supporting democracy, individual freedoms or human rights.
  • The Europeans are more aware of the situation but woke up too late. As hundreds of thousands of migrants from Muslim lands continue to pour over Europe’s open borders, there is little doubt that radical Islam is poised to take over the West. Islamic communities and terrorist cells continue to mushroom throughout the cities of Europe.
  • The world is beginning to understand that the catastrophes of the Middle East have nothing to do with the resolution of the Palestinian issue but are caused by the innate homicidal tendencies of the Arab rulers and the regional Islamist terrorist organizations.

Hamas is in trouble. Its relations with Egypt are going from bad to worse, and the influx of money, primarily from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the mosques in the Western world — where charity (zakat) was collected to finance anti-Israel terrorism — has dwindled to almost nothing. So has the flow of arms and explosives from Iran, Libya, Sudan and Lebanon. The resulted is the weakening of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, making it ever more difficult for Hamas to continue its ongoing subversion of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and its non-stop attempts to overthrow President Mahmoud Abbas to take over the West Bank and establish there the sort of Islamic emirate it established in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas’s military buildup was halted when the President Mohamed Morsi’s radical Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt was toppled and General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was elected President. Morsi, it will be recalled, strangely received support from President Obama until he was ousted. The Obama administration supported him despite Morsi enabling for the flow of money and arms to Hamas in Gaza to continue unhampered through the tunnels in the Sinai Peninsula. The weapons were used not only to attack Israel, but also to sabotage peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians and, indirectly, to attack the Palestinian Authority.

The Islamist terrorism festivities ended when President el-Sisi clamped down on the Islamists in Egypt, destroyed the tunnels and sealed Egypt’s border with Gaza. Since el-Sisi has been president of Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood rule has ended and the tunnels have been destroyed. It is hard to fathom why, to this day, the Obama administration mourns the fall of the Islamist Morsi administration and turns a cold shoulder to forward-looking el-Sisi, who is (sometimes) trying to take Egypt into the 21st century and extricate Egypt from its economic and societal crisis.

Since el-Sisi has been in power, money and arms no longer flow through the tunnels into the Gaza Strip; instead they began to flow in the opposite direction, from the Gaza Strip into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Since the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated terrorist organizations, Hamas among them, have not accepted defeat, there has been an increase in terrorist attacks targeting the Egyptian regime both inside the country proper and in the Sinai Peninsula. The terrorist campaign receives ongoing support from the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military-terrorist wing, and the ISIS-affiliated Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis. Both continuously attack the Egyptian police and army in the Sinai Peninsula, murder Egyptian officials and target Egyptian institutions.

The endless terrorist campaign in Egypt has proven yet again that the claim of a political Islam, separate from the terrorist organizations, is simply a lie. Muslim Brotherhood terrorism against the Egyptian regime is a perfect example of how the “political movement” tries to represent itself as dealing only with the da’wah [proselytizing], while in reality it is a terrorist movement whose objective is the violent overthrow of el-Sisi’s administration. The White House, fully aware of the facts, continues hosting senior Muslim Brotherhood officials and shows them respect during consultations about the American Islamic community and U.S. policy in the Middle East.

919 (1)While being hosted by the State Department on a visit to Washington in January 2015, Muslim Brotherhood judge Waleed Sharaby (left) flashed the organization’s four-finger “Rabia” sign. At right, ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi (from the Muslim Brotherhood) displays the Rabia sign.

The events in the Sinai Peninsula prove there is no such thing as “political Islam.” There is a radical Islamist leadership that represents itself to the gullible West as “moderate,” preaches violence from the mosques, cloaks itself in ideological-religious tradition, and employs a hard core of Islamist terrorists to carry out attacks on civilians and Egyptian administration targets.

In the meantime, the real victims are the Egyptians. The Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorism has paralyzed Egypt’s tourist industry, as foreigners fear to visit Egypt’s antiquities. And now there are terrorist threats to the New Suez Canal, a project initiated and carried out under the leadership of General Sisi to turn both banks of the two canals into an international logistics, commercial and industrial area.

The Islamists’ plans are clear. First, they want to leverage violence, murder and countless Egyptian army casualties into establishing an autonomous terrorist enclave in the Sinai Peninsula. Then they will try to overthrow the Egyptian government and reinstate an Islamist Muslim Brotherhood regime headed by Morsi. That is exactly what their offshoot, Hamas, did in the Gaza Strip when it liquidated Palestinian Authority officials and established an Islamic emirate. The writing on the wall is still illegible as far as the U.S. government is concerned. Or else the Obama administration is still in the thrall of extremist Islam and its Muslim Brotherhood leaders. The two main ones are Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has just called new elections so that he can try again to acquire enough seats in parliament to amend Turkey’s constitution to award himself a one-man Sultanate, an absolute dictatorship-for-life to go along with his new palace. The other is Mohamed Morsi, whom Obama apparently is still backing.

It is hard not to conclude, looking at the U.S. president’s record (ignoring the protesters of 2009 in Iran; “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone” and the dictatorial way the Iran deal has been short-circuited to bypass the democratic process) that in his heart-of-hearts, he is far more committed to supporting extremist Islamist regimes — whether the mullahs of Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood — than to supporting democracy, individual freedoms or human rights.

The Europeans are more aware of the situation but unfortunately woke up too late. As hundreds of thousands of migrants from Muslim lands continue to pour over Europe’s open borders, there is little doubt that radical Islam is poised to take over the West. Islamic communities and terrorist cells continue to mushroom and gather strength throughout the cities of Europe.

From the beginning of the wave of attacks in Egypt, senior Egyptian security officials threatened Hamas. Egypt warned Hamas to stop training, arming and sending its terrorists to collaborate with ISIS operatives in attacks against the Egyptian army. Hamas steadfastly denies any involvement, even as it continues collaborating with ISIS against Egypt.

As far as Hamas is concerned, destroying the Egyptian army is essential, because its continued actions along the Rafah border and in Sheikh Zuweid in the northern Sinai Peninsula prevent Hamas from acquiring money and stockpiling weapons to fight Israel, which weakens its subversion against Mahmoud Abbas and its plans to take over the West Bank.

Despite profuse denials, at the end of August 2015, four operatives from Hamas’s military-terrorist wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, were taken off a bus by armed Egyptians on the way from Rafah through the Sinai Peninsula to Cairo. Hamas immediately accused Israeli intelligence of responsibility and warned the Egyptian authorities that “the abduction of its operatives will not go unpunished.”

In response, Dina Ramez, a co-host on Egypt’s official TV station, called Hamas out on its lies and denials of its terrorist activities in the Sinai Peninsula against the Egyptian regime. She asked Hamas, “If you are not involved in terrorism, what were your senior Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operatives doing in Sinai?” and called them “cockroaches.”

Sources in Hamas called her a “whore,” and called Egypt a loser country defeated by Israel, using a peace treaty to sell Palestine to the enemy. Was that really the way to thank Egypt for everything it has done for the Palestinians, sacrificing its army and soldiers for us? It is a sad situation for the Palestinians and for our leadership.

What have we Palestinians gained from Hamas’s military actions against Egypt? What have we gained from our solidarity with Islamist organizations fighting against Assad in Syria, or joining organizations such as the “Palestinian Liberation Army” fighting for Assad? Why are we killing each other in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp? Why do we refuse everything the Israelis offer us?

Anyone who remembers history remembers the ungrateful path trodden by the Palestinians against the Kingdom of Jordan, when our leaders, headed by Arafat, tried in 1970 to overthrow King Hussein, despite the refuge Jordan offered us during the catastrophes of the Nakba in 1948 and the Naksa in 1967. Then we did the same thing in Lebanon, to where we fled from Jordan. The PLO relocated its headquarters to Beirut, and went on to turn Lebanon into a terrorist country and the lives of the Lebanese into a nightmare. If the Israelis had not invaded Lebanon in 1982, and forced the PLO to relocate to Tunisia (where its behavior was also criminal), the Palestinians definitely would have destroyed Lebanon.

The Middle East is in chaos, and Palestinian factionalism and ingratitude continue to inflame the dissolution of the Arab states and the internal Palestinian division between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The world is beginning to understand that the catastrophes of the Middle East have nothing to do with the resolution of the Palestinian issue, but are caused by the innate homicidal tendencies of the Arab rulers and the regional Islamist terrorist organizations.

The only person left who believes the Israeli-Palestinian nonsense is President Barack Obama, even though he is witness to the murders, rapes, beheadings and the millions of refugees, next to which the Palestinian issue is an old, irrelevant and very tired joke.

Categories: Defense of Israel, Egypt, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Iranian proxies, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Morsi, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Political Islam, Reform Islam, Siani, Sisi, Support for terrorism, West Bank
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Rocket from Gaza follows IDF-Palestinian clash in West Bank town of Jenin

September 1, 2015

Rocket from Gaza follows IDF-Palestinian clash in West Bank town of Jenin, DEBKAfile, September 1, 2015

Palestinian rocket fire from the Gaza Strip put southern Israel on red alert before dawn Tuesday. Sept 1 in the wake of a major clash that erupted in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin Sunday night. The circumstances of that episode are not entirely clear. Israel playing the Jenin encounter down, whereas the Palestinians are presenting it as “the biggest battle of the third initifada.” An Israeli soldier and five Palestinians were injured.

It began, DEBKAfile’s military sources report, when a large combined force of the IDF, Shin Bet and Police Special Operations, riding in dozens of vehicles, entered the Jenin camp Monday night to round up Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorist suspects. In the Al-Hadaf district, they surrounded the homes of Bassam Al-Saeedi, reputed Jihad chief on the West Bank, and Majdi Abu al-Hejja, a local Hamas military arm operative.

At some point, Israeli rocket fire badly damaged Al-Saeedi’s house.

The IDF sources say it was a single small rocket, without explaining why it was fired. The IDF spokesman first reported “a heavy exchange of fire” around the building. Early Monday, the word “heavy” was dropped from the briefing to reporters and finally, there was no reference to any exchange of fire at all.

The Palestinians claim that the Jihad leader was not at home at the time of the raid and so escaped his pursuers.  But there is no word on either side about the fate of any occupants of building and whether any were killed.

Did the IDF decide to knock the building down in response to gunfire coming out of it? Or was it a warning to the Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terrorist groups to halt their latest spate of violence or lose their homes?

Another mystery is how Bassam Al-Saeedi came to be away from home, confounding the information reaching the Shin Bet? Did he get a tip-off of the impending Israeli raid for his arrest?

If armed Palestinian groups on the West Bank have taken to posting spotters outside their areas to forewarn them of approaching Israeli forces, this would ratchet up their operational tactics to the military level observed by fellow Hamas and the Islamic Jihad groups in the Gaza Strip.

While Bassam Al-Saheedi escaped arrest, the Hamas operative Majdi Abu al-Hejja and his brother were captured and taken away for interrogation.

In weighing in heavily for a preventive detention operation against suspected terrorist leaders Sunday night, Israeli security chiefs were almost certainly acting on a decision to avert any possible terrorist action for  disrupting the opening of the school year Monday, Sept. 1. The level of Palestinian violence on and from the West Bank and Jerusalem has risen sharply in recent weeks.

Thirteen years ago, at the peak of the Palestinians’ Second intifada, Israel launched a major assault on the Jenin refugee camp. Thirteen Israeli soldiers were lost in this major battle on April 5, 2002. Since then, the refugee camp has claimed to hold the flag of armed Palestinian resistance to Israel and its army. Security forces arriving there to detain suspects routinely come under a hail of rocks and firebombs. However, the current clash of arms represented a sharp escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation on the West Bank.

Categories: Defense of Israel, Hamas, IDF, Iranian proxies, Islamic jihad, Israel, Palestinians, West Bank
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International inspections of Iran’s nuke sites are a sick joke

August 20, 2015

International inspections of Iran’s nuke sites are a sick joke, Dan Miller’s Blog, August 19, 2015

(The views expressed in this post — which for the most part consists of links to and quotations from recent articles posted at Warsclerotic — are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

 

Over the past few days, Iranian officials have confirmed that international inspections of its nuke sites will be severely limited if permitted at all. This post provides excerpts from recent articles quoting them. 

Iran’s nuke sites

The restrictions noted in this post are in addition to previously disclosed prohibitions on access by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to military sites, which Iran itself will inspect instead. Even The Daily Beast has mentioned this problem in reliance on an Associated Press article which states,

All IAEA member countries must give the agency some insight into their nuclear programs. Some are required to do no more than give a yearly accounting of the nuclear material they possess. But nations— like Iran — suspected of possible proliferation are under greater scrutiny that can include stringent inspections. [Emphasis added.]

The agreement in question diverges from normal procedures by allowing Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence of activities it has consistently denied — trying to develop nuclear weapons. [Emphasis added.]

Olli Heinonen, who was in charge of the Iran probe as deputy IAEA director general from 2005 to 2010, said he could think of no similar concession with any other country.

Recent disclosures

According to an article by Adam Kredo at Washington Free Beacon, No international inspectors will be admitted to Iran unless approved by Iranian intelligence officials.

A senior Iranian official declared on Monday that international nuclear inspectors would only be permitted into the country once they receive approval from the Islamic Republic’s Intelligence Ministry, putting another roadblock between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran’s contested nuclear sites.

Sayyed Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister and one of the top negotiators in talks that led to the recently inked nuclear deal, told the country’s state-controlled press that Iran’s intelligence apparatus must approve of any inspector who is issued a visa to enter Iran. [Emphasis added.]

Acording to an article at DEBKAfile, No international inspectors will be given access to military sites unless they first submit acceptable evidence of prohibited nuke activities there.

International nuclear inspectors will only be permitted into the country after offering proofs of suspicious activity at the sites to be inspected, Iran’s Defense Minister Brig. Gen Hossein Dehqan said Tuesday. DEBKAfile: This condition is not contained either in the nuclear deal Iran signed with the six world powers last month or in its contract with the IAEA. How will the international watchdog obtain proofs if it is denied visits for inspections? [Emphasis added.]

According to another article by Adam Kredo at Washington Free Beacon, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was threatened with “harm” should he tell U.S. officials about the Iran – IAEA secret deal(s)

Iranian leaders prevented a top International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official from disclosing to U.S. officials the nature of secret side deals with the Islamic Republic by threatening harm to him, according to regional reports. [Emphasis added.]

Yukiya Amano, IAEA director general, purportedly remained silent about the nature of certain side deals during briefings with top U.S. officials because he feared such disclosures would lead to retaliation by Iran, according to the spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI).

Amano was in Washington recently to brief members of Congress and others about the recently inked nuclear accord. However, he did not discuss the nature of side deals with Iran that the United States is not permitted to know about.

Iran apparently threatened Amano in a letter meant to ensure he did not reveal specific information about the nature of nuclear inspections going forward, according to Iranian AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi.

“In a letter to Yukiya Amano, we underlined that if the secrets of the agreement (roadmap between Iran and the IAEA) are revealed, we will lose our trust in the Agency; and despite the US Congress’s pressures, he didn’t give any information to them,” Kamalvandi was quoted as saying Monday during a meeting with Iranian lawmakers, according to Tehran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency.

“Had he done so, he himself would have been harmed,” the official added. [Emphasis added.]

If these analyses are correct, and they appear to be, there will be no meaningful “anytime anywhere” international inspections of Iranian military sites. Although Obama has repeatedly said that the current nuke “deal” is not based on trust, that appears to its only basis, an absurd one.

Iran’s missiles

Acording to another DEBKAfile article, Iran’s missile research and development are continuing despite (or perhaps because of) the August 2015 “deal.”

Shortly before US Secretary of State John Kerry was due in Qatar Monday, Aug. 3, Iran’s highest authorities led by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Sunday launched a public campaign to support Tehran’s noncompliance with the Vienna nuclear accord and UN Security Council Resolution 2231 of July 20, on its ballistic missile program. The campaign was designed by a team from Khamenei’s office, high-ranking ayatollahs and the top echelons of the Revolutionary Guards, including its chief, Gen. Ali Jafari. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

The Security Council Resolution, which unanimously endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Vienna nuclear accord) signed by Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, called on Iran “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic technology until the date eight years after the JCPOA Adoption Day.” [Emphasis added.]

Tehran retorted that none of its ballistic missiles were designed to deliver nuclear weapons, and so this provision was void. Shortly after its passage, the foreign ministry in Tehran issued an assurance that “…the country’s ballistic missile program and capability is untouched and unrestricted by Resolution 2231.”

On July 30, Ali Akbar Velayati, Khamenei’s senior adviser on international affairs and member of the Expediency Council, told reporters, “The recent UNSC Resolution on Iran’s defensive capabilities, specially (sic) its missiles, is unacceptable to Iran.”

According to an August 16th article at the Iranian media site Tasnim, there is no impediment to continuation of Iran’s missile program.

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi underlined that there are not any obstacles to the country’s missile program. [Emphasis added.]

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s missile activities, as planned inside the country, will not face any obstacles,” the senior officer stressed on Sunday.

The general also reiterated that Iran’s missile tests are going to be carried out in a timely manner according to the plans endorsed by Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.

Iran – North Korea nuke nexis

Nuke cooperation between Iran and North Korea was not considered during the P5+1 “negotiations.” The text of the current “deal” is silent on the subject. Kerry’s State Department has limited media contact with Douglas Frantz, his Assistant Secretary in charge of the Bureau of Public Affairs, to avoid releasing information on the Iran – North Korea nuke nexus. Mr. Frantz, formerly a highly respected journalist, had written extensively on North Korea’s nuclear program.

An honest accounting would quite likely reveal something that many press reports have alleged, but U.S. administration officials have never publicly confirmed: A history of nuclear weapons collaboration between Iran and nuclear-proliferating North Korea.

. . . .

Drawing on “previously secret reports, international officials, independent experts, Iranian exiles and intelligence sources in Europe and the Middle East,” Frantz wrote that “North Korean military scientists recently were monitored entering Iranian nuclear facilities. They are assisting in the design of a nuclear warhead, according to people inside Iran and foreign intelligence officials.”

. . . .

Perhaps Frantz should recycle that article to Secretary of State John Kerry, who while testifying to a congressional panel last month was asked about its allegations by Rep. Christopher Smith, and ducked the question.

. . . .

[I]t appears that as a State Department advocate of a free and well-informed press, Frantz himself is not free to answer questions from the press about his own reporting on North Korea’s help to Iran in designing a nuclear warhead. The State Department has refused my repeated requests to interview Frantz on this subject. Last year, an official at State’s Bureau of Public Affairs responded to my request with an email saying, “Unfortunately Assistant Secretary Frantz is not available to discuss issues related to Iran’s nuclear program.” [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Of course, the real problem for the Obama administration is that an officially confirmed story of Iran-North Korea collaboration on nuclear warheads could spell further trouble for winning congressional approval of this nuclear deal.

Conclusions

Assuming (a highly dubious assumption) that Kerry and Obama’s other P5+1 “negotiators” wanted to limit Iran’s Uranium enrichment to peaceful purposes, to terminate its nuke weaponization and to restrict its missile development and use they failed. It might have been entertaining to have watched Obama instruct Kerry on how to negotiate for magic carpets in a Persian market. The Persians saw Obama’s P5+1 “negotiators” as suckers and took all of their cash. They then took whatever honor they may once have had.

With international inspections permitted, if at all, only at Iran’s whim, and international sanctions “snap back” a fantasy, Iran has been given a bright green light to do whatever it pleases. What pleases Iran should not please even Obama, who envisions a new era of Middle East stability as a major fruit of His victory in getting the July 2015 “deal.”

Iran plans to “stabilize” Israel first. Israel is the only free and democratic nation in the Middle East; America was once her most reliable ally. No longer, but perhaps one fine day she will be again.

A conference of religious scholars features speaker after speaker calling Israel’s annihilation inevitable and promising that a “new phase” in that effort is about to begin. [Emphasis added]

While some in the United States and among its Western allies may hope that a nuclear weapons deal with Iran might steer the Islamic Republic in a new, more responsible direction, hardliners draw new lines and issue new threats.

On Monday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei took to social media to attack the United States and Israel. “We spare no opportunity to support anyone #FightingTheZionists,” wrote the ayatollah, whose regime supplies Hizballah and Hamas with rockets and other weapons of terror.

Here’s a recent video from Iranian television showing how Iran plans to eliminate Israel.

The July 2015 “deal” remains a mystery shrouded in secrecy and deception. Obama has tried to mislead the the American public and the Congress. He has threatened members who have voiced opposition and characterized them as disloyal. Congress should kill the “deal.” Those members whose ultimate loyalty is to America rather than to Obama will vote to do so and then to override his veto.

Categories: Death to America, Death to Israel, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - North Korea axis, Iran - secret deal, Iran / Israel War, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iran UN arms embargo, Iranian anti-semitism, Iranian media, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic supremacy, Israel, Jerusalem, Kerry, Khamenei, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Sanctions, U.S. Congress, U.S. politics, United Nations, West Bank
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Iran to arm West Bank Palestinians for new Eastern Front to “efface”Israel

August 18, 2015

Iran to arm West Bank Palestinians for new Eastern Front to “efface”Israel, DEBKAfile, August 17, 2015

Suleimani_Qassem_nameAl Qods chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani

Attesting to the seriousness of Iran’s intent, Jmail Majdalani, PLO executive committee member and personal representative of Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, has arrived in Tehran. He is there to arrange his boss’s first visit in many years to the Iranian capital.

*********************

Al Qods commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani, acting on the orders of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, this week set up a new Iranian command to fight Israel, DEBKAfile reports exclusively from its military and intelligence sources.

It has been dubbed the Eastern Command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.The Al Qods Brigades, which are the external terrorist arm of the Guards, are organized according to sectors, with commands for Hizballah, the Palestinians, Syria, Iraq and the Gulf.

Their newest sector is the Eastern Command which, our sources report has been assigned as its first task to start handing out weapons, including missiles, to any Palestinian West Bank group willing to receive them. Tehran’s object is to transform the West Bank into a territory hostile to Israel on the model of southern Lebanon which is ruled by the armed Hizballah and the Gaza Strip under the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.

In the first week of August, Tehran published a book of 416 pages written by Ali Khamenei entitled “Palestine.” The cover image was labeled “The flagbearer of Jihad to liberate Jerusalem.”

 The volume was released to Western sources, who reported that the most constantly recurring phrases in the text in relation to Israel are “nabudi” – meaning annihilation; imha – meaning disappearing or fading out; and “zaval” meaning effacement.

Khamenei asserts that Israel must be destroyed because it captured Islam’s third most sacred city and is the foremost ally of “Big Satan” – America.

The Iranian leader goes into detail about exactly how Israel should be annihilated – not by “classical wars” or “massacres of the Jews” but by means of a “long period of low-intensity warfare designed to make life impossible for a majority of Israeli Jews.”

When he visited Beirut on Aug. 12, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Zavad Zarif said it was necessary after the nuclear deal, to “confront the challenges of the region, the most important of which is the Zionist and extremist regime.”

Members of the Obama administration wave away these disclosures of Iranian intent as no more than letting off steam to pacify the hard-line opponents of the nuclear deal – US Secretary of State John Kerry said on July 24: “I also told them that their chants of Death to American and so forth are neither helpful and they’re pretty stupid.”

But in Iran, the supreme leader’s words are treated as decrees demanding obedience. Indeed, at the first conference of the new Eastern Command, Gen. Soleimani read out passages from Khamenei’s book and told the officers that they were under orders to carry those decrees out to the letter.

Attesting to the seriousness of Iran’s intent, Jmail Majdalani, PLO executive committee member and personal representative of Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, has arrived in Tehran. He is there to arrange his boss’s first visit in many years to the Iranian capital.

Categories: Abbas, Al Qods, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Israel, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Soleimani, West Bank
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When Palestinians Die in Jail

July 6, 2015

When Palestinians Die in Jail, The Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, July 6, 2015

  • Like the mainstream media in the West, the UN chooses to look the other way when Palestinians torture or kill fellow Palestinians.
  • The Palestinian Authority and Hamas claim that the three men committed suicide.
  • When three detainees die in less than a week, this should sound an alarm. But pro-Palestinian groups and human rights activists do not care about the human rights of Palestinians if Israel cannot be held responsible. Their obsession with Israel has made them blind to the plight of Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority.

Three Palestinian men were found dead in their jail cells in the West Bank and Gaza Strip this past week.

But their stories did not attract the attention of the international media or human rights organizations in the U.S. and Europe. Nor was their case brought to the attention of the United Nations or the International Criminal Court (ICC).

By contrast, the case of 17-year-old Mohamed Kasba, who was shot dead north of Jerusalem by an Israeli army officer as he attacked the officer’s car with stones, received widespread coverage in the Western media.

The UN even rushed to condemn the killing of Kasba, and called for an “immediate end” to violence and for everyone to keep calm. “This reaffirms the need for a political process aiming to establish two states living beside each other safely and peacefully,” said UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Maldenov.

The UN official, needless to say, made no reference to the deaths that occurred in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas jails. He did not even see a need to express concern over the deaths or call for an investigation. Like the mainstream media in the West, the UN chooses to look the other way when Palestinians torture or kill fellow Palestinians.

The reason the case of the three detainees will not interest anyone in the international community is because the men did not die in an Israeli jail. Instead, the three men died while being held in Palestinian-controlled jails.

Had the three men died in Israeli detention, their names would have most likely appeared on the front pages of most leading Western newspapers. The families of the three men would have also been busy talking to Western journalists about Israeli “atrocities” and “human rights violations.”

But no respected Western journalist is going to visit any of the families of the three detainees: they did not die in an Israeli jail.

The same week that the three Palestinian men were found dead in jail, the UN Human Rights Council decided to adopt a resolution condemning Israel over the UN report into last year’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. Again, the UN Human Rights Council chose to ignore human rights violations by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, who deny detainees basic rights and proper medical treatment.

Two of them died in PA security installations in Bethlehem, while the third was found dead in a Hamas-controlled jail in the Gaza Strip.

The two detainees who were found dead in their jail cells in Bethlehem are Shadi Mohamed Obeidallah and Hazem Yassin Udwan. The man who died in the Gaza Strip jail was identified as Khaled Hammad al-Balbisi.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas claim that the three men committed suicide.

In the case of Obeidallah, the Palestinian Authority police said he hanged himself with a piece of cloth inside the jail restrooms. He was taken into custody on suspicion of committing a murder three years ago.

The second man, Udwan, died a few days later in another Bethlehem police facility. According to police officials, he too committed suicide.

The detainee in the Gaza Strip, al-Balbisi, was being held by Hamas authorities for allegedly assaulting his wife.

But al-Balbisi, 43, apparently did not commit suicide. He was very ill when he was arrested by the Hamas security forces, and did not receive proper medical care while in detention.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a Gaza-based non-profit group dedicated to protecting human rights, promoting the rule of law and upholding democratic principles in the Palestinian territories, called for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the detainees.

“PCHR stresses that the Palestinian Authority is responsible for the lives of prisoners and detainees under its control and is thus responsible for treating them with dignity, including offering them medical care,” the group said in a statement.

1143The Palestinian Authority police on parade, January 2015.

When three detainees die in less than a week in Palestinian detention, this should sound an alarm bell, especially among so-called pro-Palestinian groups and human rights activists in different parts of the world.

But these folks, like the UN and mainstream media, do not care about the human rights of the Palestinians if Israel cannot be held responsible. Their obsession with Israel has made them blind to the plight of Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as well as to the horrific crimes committed every day by Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The story of the three men who died in Palestinian jails is yet another example of the double standards that the international community and media employ when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Categories: Cognitive dissonance, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Ideology, IDF, Israel, Jerusalem, West Bank, Western media
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Palestinians: Why Salam Fayyad Lacks Popular Support

July 1, 2015

Palestinians: Why Salam Fayyad Lacks Popular Support, The Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, June 30, 2015

  • It is no secret that several senior Palestinian officials see themselves as potential successors to Abbas. Like his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas has stubbornly refused to share power with anyone. And like Arafat, he continues to run the Palestinian Authority as if it were his private fiefdom.
  • In Palestinian culture, it is more important if one graduates from an Israeli prison than from the University of Texas in Austin. A Palestinian who carries out an attack on Israel has more credentials among his people than one who studied at Harvard or Oxford universities.
  • It took Salam Fayyad too long to realize that no matter how many good things he does for his people, in the end he will be judged on the basis of his contribution to the fight against Israel, and not how much humanitarian and financial aid he provides.

In a surprise move, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has frozen the bank account of a non-profit organization headed by former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

The decision is seen in the context of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s effort to undermine and discredit Fayyad. Abbas believes that Fayyad, who resigned in 2013, is seeking to replace or succeed him as president.

Following his resignation, the US-educated Fayyad established a Ramallah-based group called Future For Palestine. According to Fayyad, the group’s mission is to “enhance the resilience of Palestinian citizens in their homeland, especially in marginalized and severely impacted areas, by providing the basic development requirements.”

Abbas and the Palestinian Authority leadership did not like the idea from the beginning. Ever since Future For Palestine was established in August 2013, they have been working toward undermining the group and its founder, Fayyad.

The PA leadership is convinced that Fayyad is using the group to advance his own political goals and establish bases of power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

During the military confrontation between Israel and Hamas last year, Fayyad’s group launched acampaign to aid the residents of the Gaza Strip. The campaign included the purchase of tens of thousands of bottles of mineral water that were supposed to be dispatched to the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority thwarted the campaign.

To justify the crackdown on Fayyad back then, the PA said that the former prime minister was part of a “conspiracy” to overthrow the Abbas regime. Some reports even suggested that Abbas had ordered his security forces to detain Fayyad for interrogation, but backtracked after threats from the US and several European governments.

Later, Abbas sent security officers to raid the offices of Future For Palestine and conduct a thorough search of its files. Some of Fayyad’s top aides were taken into custody and questioned about the sources of the group’s funding.

Last week, the campaign against Fayyad reached its peak when the Palestinian Authority announced that it has seized the assets of Future For Palestine, and accused the former prime minister of “money laundering.”

PA officials claimed that Fayyad’s group had received $10 million from the United Arab Emirates, a Gulf country that supports Abbas’s political enemy, ousted Fatah leader Mohamed Dahlan. The officials accused Dahlan and Fayyad of working together to topple the Abbas regime. Dahlan fled the West Bank several years ago after falling out with Abbas, who accused him of attempting to stage a coup against the Palestinian Authority leadership.

1135Former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, pictured on January 25, 2013 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (Image source: World Economic Forum)

Fayyad said this week that he is planning to take legal measures to cancel the decision to freeze his group’s assets. Denying the charge of “money laundering,” Fayyad added that Future For Palestine was operating within the framework of the law and did not commit any offense.

The decision to freeze the bank account of Future For Palestine came in the wake of increased talk about a behind-the-scenes power struggle to succeed the 80-year-old Abbas. The name of Fayyad has repeatedly surfaced as a potential successor to Abbas — a suggestion that has clearly enraged the Palestinian leader and his senior officials in Ramallah.

It is no secret that several senior Palestinian officials see themselves as potential successors to Abbas. These include, besides Dahlan, the chief of the PA’s General Intelligence Security Force in the West Bank, Majed Faraj, Palestinian Football Association Chairman Jibril Rajoub and Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat.

Abbas believes that he has thus far succeeded in sidelining and discrediting at least two candidates: Fayyad and Dahlan. The charges made by Abbas against the two men are designed to depict them as agents of foreign countries who are plotting against him and the entire Palestinian people.

Like his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas has stubbornly refused to share power with anyone. And like Arafat, he continues to run the Palestinian Authority as if it were his private fiefdom.

Fayyad’s chances of succeeding Abbas are, anyway, very slim, if not non-existent. Fayyad is an independent figure who does not belong to Fatah, Hamas or any other political group. When he ran in the January 2006 parliamentary election at the head of the Third Way list, his group received two seats out of 132.

The reason most Palestinians did not vote for Fayyad is because he had not played any role in the “revolution” against Israel. In this culture, it is more important if one graduates from an Israeli prison than from the University of Texas in Austin. Fayyad did not participate in any armed attack on Jews and never supported the armed struggle against Israel. Nor did he send his son to throw stones or firebombs at Israelis. That is the real reason why people like Fayyad lack popular support.

If and when Abbas steps down, the only candidate who has a good chance of replacing him is one who was part of the “revolution.” A Palestinian who carries out an attack on Israel has more credentials among his people than one who studied at Harvard or Oxford universities. It took Salam Fayyad too long to realize that no matter how many good things he does for his people, in the end he will be judged on the basis of his contribution to the fight against Israel, and not how much humanitarian and financial aid he provides.

Categories: Abbas, Arafat, Fatah, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian elections, Palestinians, Peace process, Terrorism, Two state solution, West Bank
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State Department Report Minimizes Palestinian Incitement to Violence

June 19, 2015

State Department Report Minimizes Palestinian Incitement to Violence, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jume 19, 2015

These blatant omissions from the report leave create a sense that examples of Palestinian incitement to violence and glorification of terrorists are sporadic occurrences. In reality, the Palestinian Authority institutionalizes a systematic campaign of violent incitement and continues to praise terrorists for killing Jews and Israelis, while encouraging other Palestinians to follow in their footsteps.

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The U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2014 issued Friday minimizes official Palestinian incitement to violence against Israel and completely overlooks Palestinian glorification of terrorists.

The annual report lists major terrorist incidents worldwide and outlines each country’s counterterrorism efforts and legislation. Terrorism attacks and their resulting deaths spiked last year, the report found, an increase largely driven by attacks by the Islamic State and Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist groups.

With respect to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the report praises the PA for taking “significant steps to ensure that official institutions in the West Bank that fall under its control do not create content that leads to incitement to violence.” The report acknowledges that “some instances of inciting taking place via official media” still occur, listing only three examples. However, the report diminishes the fact that incitement to violence is a systematic and institutionalized PA phenomenon.

Click here for an Investigative Project on Terrorism comprehensive outline of Palestinian violent incitement focused only on incidents last fall.

The State Department assessment also ignores the direct participation of senior PA officials in praising terrorists and inciting violence against Israelis and Jews.

For example, the report does not mention PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ call last October for Palestinians to prevent Jews from going to the Temple Mount compound “in any way.” The video clip of Abbas’ Oct. 17 speech was shown 19 on PA television times in three days, implicitly calling for Palestinians to use violence against Israelis.

Instead, the report described PA efforts “to ensure” Friday sermons in more than 1,800 mosques controlled by the PA “do not endorse incitement to violence … the guidance is that no sermon can discuss political or lead to incitement to violence.”

In February, however, the PA Minister of Religious Affairs and other prominent religious officials resorted to an age-old blood libel accusing Jews of attacking Muslims sites and that Israel is trying to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports. Such accusations are baseless and encourage Palestinians to conduct terrorist attacks against Israel.

The State Department report also omits any reference to official Palestinian glorification of terrorists.

For example, after the October shooting of Rabbi Yehuda Glick, Abbas sent a condolence letter to the family of terrorist Mutaz Hijazi who was killed by Israeli authorities in a firefight during a raid for his capture. In the letter, Abbas called the terrorist a “Shahid,” a martyr, who “rose to Heaven while defending our people’s rights and holy places,” PMW reported.

Moreover, a senior Fatah official claimed that Hijazi was a Fatah operative and expressed pride in his actions, a PMW translation shows.

These blatant omissions from the report leave create a sense that examples of Palestinian incitement to violence and glorification of terrorists are sporadic occurrences. In reality, the Palestinian Authority institutionalizes a systematic campaign of violent incitement and continues to praise terrorists for killing Jews and Israelis, while encouraging other Palestinians to follow in their footsteps.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Fatah, Foreign policy, Israel, Jerusalem, Obama, Obama administration, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Temple Mount, Terrorism, Terrorists, Two state solution, West Bank
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Islamic State at Israel’s Gate

June 12, 2015

Islamic State at Israel’s Gate, Front Page Magazine, , June 12, 2015

(According to Israel National News, 

Late on Thursday night “color red” rocket sirens were sounded in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, as well as throughout the Ashkelon Coast regional council.

At least one rocket was identified as having been fired from Gaza, but IDF officials said it is believed the rocket exploded inside Gaza. No rockets were found in Israeli territory.

— DM)

ISIS-in-Gaza-404x350

All this is happening while the Obama administration, by the president’s own admission, has no clear strategy to defeat ISIS. At the same time, President Obama’s “strategy” to deal with Iran is to make concession after concession in order to secure any nuclear deal he can, including the possibility of providing Iran with relief from sanctions that were imposed for non-nuclear related reasons such as Iran’s support for terrorist activities

In short, Israel is facing Iran-backed Hamas from the south, Iran-backed Hezbollah from the north, and an expanding Islamic State presence north and south of Israel and within Israel itself. And that is before Iran gets its hands on a nuclear bomb and the Islamic State has enough radioactive material to build its own weapons of mass destruction.

*****************

Jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) are carrying on the rocket war against Israeli civilians from where Hamas left off. Following several rocket attacks in the last several weeks for which the Islamic State has taken credit, rockets launched from Gaza Thursday night exploded in the Ashkelon area.

Israel is still holding Hamas responsible for the attacks as the governing authority in Gaza.

“The IDF understands that Hamas wants quiet and is making an effort to prevent the shooting, but the State of Israel still sees Hamas as responsible for what happens in Gaza,” said Sami Turgeman, head of IDF’s Southern Command.

The Israeli military responded with measured attacks on Hamas facilities, while at the same time trying to avoid setting off a wider war at this time.  But Israel’s hand is being forced by the Islamic State, which is evidently working assiduously to supplant Hamas as the authoritative Islamic power in Gaza. The Gaza branch calls itself the Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade. It is cooperating with another ISIS-affiliated group operating in the Sinai Peninsula, which calls itself Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis.

According to a June 8th report by Debkafile, “Islamic State operatives in the Gaza Strip have been helping themselves to Hamas rockets in recent weeks after furtively penetrating the factory teams operating the group’s production and assembly lines… The jihadis then secretly passed the stolen rockets to their squads for launching against Israel.”

On June 7th Debkafile noted in more general terms Hamas’s loss of control in Gaza in the face of Islamic State infiltration: “The terror infrastructure Hamas built over many years in Sinai has been taken over by ISIS, and its control of the Gaza Strip is slipping, as yet more radical and violent organizations eat away at its authority and seize control of the rocket offensive against Israel.”

Thus, even as Hamas remains committed to the destruction of Israel and is trying to re-build its arms stockpiles with Iran’s help, it is engaged simultaneously in its own battles with the Islamic State. Hamas has arrested some ISIS supporters and bulldozed a Sunni mosque believed to have been used by ISIS affiliated jihadists, while Hamas’s own facilities have come under attack by ISIS affiliated jihadists. Hamas also claimed in a message to Israeli authorities, routed through an Egyptian intermediary, that jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State were deliberately trying to spark a renewed war between Israel and Hamas.

The Islamic State is also trying to position itself to challenge Israel from the north. Israeli TV Channel 2 reported last week that the Islamic State is moving forces in the direction of the Golan Heights and the Israeli border.

Moreover, ISIS is developing an increasing presence within Israel itself. Recruits, influenced by ISIS’s slick social media promotions, are attracted to ISIS’s self-declared purer Islamic ideology. Hamas is apparently too “moderate” for these jihadists’ tastes.

“Dozens of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join insurgent groups.” Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency said in a statement released last January 4th. Israel had announced that it managed to crack one Islamic State cell on its soil and arrested its alleged members. An Israeli security official described the cell as “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Last July, the Islamic State previewed its intentions in a statement that it issued regarding jihad against Israel:

As for the massacres taking place in Gaza against the Muslim men, women and children, then the Islamic State will do everything within its means to continue striking down every apostate who stands as an obstacle on its paths towards Palestine. It is only [a] matter of time and patience before it (Islamic State) reaches Palestine to fight the barbaric Jews and kill those of them hiding behind the gharqad trees – the trees of the Jews.

Arutz Sheva reported that a spokesperson for the Islamic State, Nidal Nuseiri, urged patience as the Islamic State wanted first to consolidate its control over Arab Muslim lands, but “reaffirmed that conquering ‘Bayt el-Maqdis’ (Jerusalem) and destroying the State of Israel is central to the group’s jihad.” Thanks to President Obama’s dithering, the Islamic State is well on its way to achieving such consolidation in Iraq and Syria, while spreading to Libya.

At least three questions arise from the emergence of ISIS as a direct threat to Israel. Will Israeli military and security forces, either on their own or in concert with Jordan and Egypt, take on ISIS directly, including going after ISIS’s command and control centers with far more firepower than the Obama administration has used thus far?

To what extent will Israel be willing to outsource military operations against ISIS affiliates in Gaza to Hamas, much as it has outsourced some security operations to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank? Major-General Turgeman tried to cast Hamas as the lesser of two evils, since, he claimed, “Israel and Hamas have shared interests, including in the current situation, which is quiet and calm and growth and prosperity.” Hamas “does not want global jihad,” he added. This is a truly incredible assertion coming from an Israeli military leader about a group willing to put its own citizens and their homes in harm’s way in order to launch their own thousands of rockets against Israel. What happened to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s concise description of Hamas and the Islamic State as “branches of the same poisonous tree?” This just further demonstrates how completely insane the Middle East has become.

Finally, how successful will Iran be in exploiting the chaotic situation in Gaza, positioning itself as it has in Iraq as an enemy of ISIS, while further bolstering Hamas to Israel’s detriment?

All this is happening while the Obama administration, by the president’s own admission, has no clear strategy to defeat ISIS. At the same time, President Obama’s “strategy” to deal with Iran is to make concession after concession in order to secure any nuclear deal he can, including the possibility of providing Iran with relief from sanctions that were imposed for non-nuclear related reasons such as Iran’s support for terrorist activities.

In short, Israel is facing Iran-backed Hamas from the south, Iran-backed Hezbollah from the north, and an expanding Islamic State presence north and south of Israel and within Israel itself. And that is before Iran gets its hands on a nuclear bomb and the Islamic State has enough radioactive material to build its own weapons of mass destruction.

Categories: Egypt, Foreign policy, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Iran scam, Islamic State, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, P5+1, Rocket attack, Sanctions, West Bank
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