posted June 13, 2006 03:12 PM            

An Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer has confirmed that the explosion that killed eight Palestinians on Friday, was caused by a stockpile of Hamas explosives.

"Shortly after we stopped defensive firing at Hamas rocket launch pads which were deployed behind Palestinian human shields, members of Hamas scrambled to fire more rockets at our positions," said Col. M. "We have eyes on every meter of Gaza, from the sky, from the ground and from the sea. One of their rocket tripods collapsed inadvertently setting off an explosion of a stockpile of Qassam rockets. The Palestinians killed their own children. And this was not the first time."

Hamas terrorists fired rockets and mortar bombs from a crowded Gaza beach at southern Israel. Some of the rockets fell near the Israel city of Ashkelon. Some 17 rockets were fired between Saturday and Sunday morning. A man at a school in the Israel town of Sderot was wounded, Israel officials said.

Israel Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant said today that the Israel Defense Forces has additional evidence that it wasn't Israel artillery that hit the beach in Gaza. Galant, who commands Israel's southern command, said Israel stopped firing 15 minutes before the explosion. It's all on secure videotape from both sides of the conflict. Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he was sorry about the deaths, which included three children.

Hamas's military branch had been responsible for dozens of suicide terror bomb attacks on Israelis since the second Palestinian uprising began in 2000. But until Saturday, Hamas had been honoring an informal ceasefire forged in February 2005 by Ariel Sharon, then Israel prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority.

The truce had been broken on occasion by other Palestinian terror groups, such as Islamic Jihad, and by Israeli forces, who said they were acting in retaliation.

Galant, warned that Palestinian terrorists "should expect a serious blow" since Hamas had ended its ceasefire. As the violence flared, Abbas was trying to convince Hamas to back his plan to hold a referendum on establishing a Palestinian state. The plan implicitly recognizes Israel's right to exist, which Hamas has so far refused to do despite tremendous international pressure, including the halting of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority from the European Union, the United States and others. Hamas wrestled control of the Palestinian Authority from Abbas's Fatah party in a January election, but Abbas — who was elected separately as president — still retains much power.

Abbas argued that the referendum should be held on July 26, while Hamas leaders said the vote should be delayed because of the beach attack.

Palestinian terrorists have been using their own civilian population as human shields for many years. An even more disturbing trend is that there is increasing evidence that "Palestinians" are killing "Palestinians" not only for collaboration with Israel (which could mean as little as buying and selling an Israeli product), but also for bumping up the numbers of "martyrs" for the "Palestinian" cause.

When the current Intifada started, after Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, a handful of Palestinian rioters were "shot in the back" as they were throwing stones at the Israeli Police. The Israel Police never gave the order to use live ammunition. If the rioters backs were towards the Temple Mount compound, from what direction did the shots come?

Jibril Rajoub, head of PA Preventive Security had led the Israeli government to believe that there would be no reaction to Likud MK Arik Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount as long as Sharon did not attempt to enter the mosque itself. Yet exactly the opposite happened. Using forensic evidence to try and trace the source of the bullets themselves would be complicated by the fact that the Israeli Government authorized the transfer of thousands of guns to the Palestinians, for use by the Palestinian Police force. “We have no problems with weaponry since we have enough guns that were given to us by Israel,” stated Abed el-Qader, Senior Tanzim Leader on March 8, 2001.

The film clip of the shooting of Al Dura, the 12 year old palestinian boy, shown worldwide clearly shows firing coming from someone who stood next to the Palestinian camera man Talal Abu Rahma.

A BBC editor was killed by Hisbollah mortar fire, as the Israel troops were retreating from Lebanon, was blamed on Israel. The Christian German doctor from Beit Jalla who was asked to leave his house at 11:30 at night by Palestinian Paramedics, only to be gunned down 50 yards from his front door with bullet holes riddling the wall behind him that could not have come from an Israeli helicopter.

But perhaps the worst example of Palestinians killing Palestinians is when they teach their children that this is the norm. Mohammed al-Dura, the 12-year-old Palestinian youth whose shooting death made him the poster boy of the "Intifada," was courtesy of Palestinian television spoke to an ever-angrier generation of Arab youths from beyond the grave, beckoning to them from paradise to become terrorists and suicide bombers – in a word, martyrs.

According to Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch, "examination of the TV clips aired extensively on PA [Palestinian Authority] television" reveals "incessant broadcasting" of programming that "extols and glorifies the dead and especially their willingness to be killed, and portrays their afterlife as idyllic." One particular film, he says, "openly and explicitly tells the children to seek death by portraying the most famous child 'Martyr,' Muhammad al-Dura, calling to other children to join him, in his idyllic afterlife."

Israel Defence Minister Amir Peretz said while on a visit to the 60-year-old Israel man seriously wounded by a rocket that Israel would make "painful" responses unless the rocket fire stopped. Peretz told the Israeli cabinet earlier that Israel would "act against all who are involved in terror, including Hamas members."

Many Israelis are doing themselves a gross disservice, and playing into the hands of the Palestinians, by presuming that an Israeli shell caused the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians Friday in Gaza, Prime Minster Ehud Olmert's Foreign media advisor Ra'anan Gissin said Sunday. "We are repeating the same mistakes of the past in taking responsibility when there are other possibilities about who is responsible," Gissin said. He said that Friday's tragedy on the Gaza beach may indeed be similar to the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura in 2000, the "Jenin Massacre" in 2002, and the killing of 21 people at the Jabaliya refugee camp last September.

While the Palestinians originally pinned the blame for all these incidents on Israel, it has since turned out that al-Dura may have been killed by Palestinians, that there was no "Jenin massacre," and that the deaths in Jabaliya were caused when Hamas activists "mishandled" explosives at a mass rally.

posted June 13, 2006 08:42 PM              

Israel strike in Gaza kills 8 civilians

By IBRAHIM BARZAK and SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writers
Tue Jun 13, 5:25 PM ET

An Israeli airstrike on a top Palestinian rocket launcher and his accomplice also killed two children and six other civilians Tuesday, inflaming Palestinian anger already aroused over the deaths of Gaza beachgoers.

The violence coincided with bloody infighting among Palestinian gunmen, and could hurt attempts by President Mahmoud Abbas and the West to pressure the Hamas government to moderate its virulently anti-Israel stance.

Abbas accused Israel of "state terrorism," and the Islamic Jihad militant group vowed to avenge the death of its chief rocket launcher, Hamoud Wadiya.

An official Israeli inquiry, meanwhile, concluded Israel was not responsible for the blast that killed eight Gaza beachgoers Friday, rejecting Palestinian accusations that an Israeli artillery round was to blame.

The results of the probe, released Tuesday, concluded the blast was caused by an explosive buried in the sand, but it was not clear how it got there. Israel has claimed that Hamas militants planted the device to target Israeli commandos.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, speaking at a news conference, denied responsibility for the blast. "The accumulating evidence proves that this incident was not due to Israeli forces," he said.

Palestinians angrily rejected the findings, saying militants were unlikely to plant bombs at a beach teeming with hundreds of people every weekend. Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led government, called the findings "baseless" and Palestinian lawmaker Saeb Erekat, who is close to Abbas, called for an international inquiry.

In recent months, volleys of homemade Palestinian rockets at southern Israel have provoked harsh Israeli artillery and airstrikes.

On Tuesday, Israel sent aircraft after militants it said were on their way to carry out a rocket attack on Israel.

A first missile missed the militants' yellow van as it traveled along a main road in Gaza City and sent it crashing into a curb, Palestinian witnesses said. Two more missiles killed two militants inside the van, as well as eight civilians who had gathered near the site of the first strike.

Two of the dead were children, and three were medical workers on their way to tend to the wounded.

Screaming ambulances carrying the 10 dead and 32 wounded raced toward Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. "He's dead!" shouted one medical worker as teams removed a victim from an ambulance. Other rescue workers carried a dead boy, the top of his head torn off by the blast.

Doctors, hard-pressed to handle the many wounded, treated some on the bloodied floor. Three lifeless bodies, drenched in blood, also lay on the floor.

At the hospital's morgue, angry women shouted, "Death to Israel, Death to the occupation!" One Islamic Jihad militant put his hands on one of the bodies, then smeared the blood on his rifle.

Dozens of gunmen fired in the air as families began taking bodies from the morgue to the mosque for funeral services.

"The Zionist enemy insists on shedding Palestinian blood and we insist on going ahead with our holy war and resistance," said Khader Habib, a group leader in Gaza. "God willing, the resistance groups ... will deliver a harsh response. All options are open."

A weeping Hekmat Mughrabi, her veil soaked with blood, said her 30-year-old son, Ashraf, and another 13-year-old relative died. The young man, hearing the explosion of the first missile outside his home, ran to the door to calm children who had been on the roof making paper kites.

"He was shouting to the kids, 'Don't be afraid, don't be afraid,'" and hadn't even finished his sentence when the second missile hit, she said. "My son died in my arms."

Shrapnel from the blast flew into the house, wounding other family members, she added.

Outside her house was Wadiya's mangled van, its interior a jumble of twisted metal and shredded upholstery. A white slipper lay in a pool of blood on the ground, and angry crowds burned tires.

Peretz, the Israeli defense minister who reportedly delayed a major air offensive so Palestinians could curb the rockets, said all restraints were now off.

"We will act with all our might and use all our means against any group that acts against us," said Peretz, whose hometown, Sderot, comes under frequent rocket attack.

Rocket fire from Gaza rarely causes casualties, but it disrupts life in the southern Israeli towns where the projectiles fall. At midday Tuesday, the Israeli military said more than 100 rockets had been launched at Israel since Friday.

It said the cell it targeted Tuesday intended to launch Katyusha rockets, which have a longer range than the homemade ones militants usually fire.

Abbas accused Israel of trying to "wipe out the Palestinian people."

"Every day there are martyrs, there are wounded people, all of them innocents, all of them bystanders," he said. "They want to eliminate the Palestinian people, but we are going to sit tight. We are sitting tight on our land.

"What Israel is committing is state terrorism," he added.

The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, demanded an international inquiry "to investigate the brutal crimes and the bloody Israeli massacres of our people."

A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, said armed groups "have no other choice but to protect our people."

"The world must bear the responsibility for the explosive situation that will engulf the whole region," Abu Zuhri said.

Hamas recently resumed open involvement in rocket attacks against Israel and, after the beach explosion, called off a 16-month truce.

posted June 13, 2006 09:06 PM            

Hamas is a group of murderous terrorist sociopaths.

posted June 13, 2006 09:08 PM              

Hamas wouldn't murder Palestinians. But Israel has incentive.

posted June 13, 2006 10:10 PM            

How reassuring. In that case, the terrorists in Iraq, including Iraqi homeboys must not have blown up those Iraqi civilians, including women and children.

I suppose under terrorist rules of engagement, that means they also wouldn't open up on Iraqi civilians with automatic weapons either....or behead them.

That just leaves one culprit. The Americans set off those bombs in those Iraqi marketplaces and mosques. The Americans must have done it all and blamed it on the terrorists.

posted June 13, 2006 11:41 PM              

What does Hamas have to do with Iraq? There's obviously civil war in Iraq...thank Bush for starting the war and dividing up the country.

posted June 14, 2006 05:36 PM            

The fanatical leftists (I'll call em neo-com[munist]s) weilded great power when Clinton was in office, and it was just as scary to those who disagree with the left's agenda.

That whole power corrupting thing I guess...

posted June 15, 2006 06:08 PM              

The Hamas-led Palestinian government is willing to urge militants to renew a ceasefire if Israel halts its attacks on Gaza, a spokesman has said.
Ghazi Hamad said the government would urge militant groups to stop firing rockets from Gaza into Israel.

The Islamic Jihad group says it was to blame for the latest attack on Israel.

Tensions have increased since the deaths of eight Palestinians on a beach, for which Israel has denied military responsibility.

Hamas ended an informal ceasefire last week amid escalating tensions following the beach killings on Friday.

Israel has said it was not responsible for the deaths near Beit Lahiya, but Palestinians have dismissed Israel's denial and are calling on the United Nations to hold an independent investigation.

quote:

---

We are interested in a ceasefire everywhere
Ghazi Hamad
Hamas

---

Since the deaths, Hamas has fired dozens of home-made rockets at Israel, causing panic and several injuries.

But Mr Hamad told Israel Radio on Thursday he had spoken to Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, who had said the Palestinians wanted "quiet everywhere".

"We are interested in a ceasefire everywhere," Reuters news agency quoted Mr Hamad as saying.

"We are ready to launch discussions with factions over stopping rocket firing but only if there is an Israeli commitment to cease all military attacks against all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank."

Israel welcomed the offer, the Associated Press news agency reported, quoting foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev as saying: "If it is quiet, we will answer that with quiet."

'Clear messages'

Israel frequently bombards northern Gaza, targeting militant rocket crews who attack nearby Israeli territory.

Earlier, Israeli officials said threats from Israel had stopped Hamas militants from firing rockets.

A senior Israeli defence ministry official, Maj Gen Amos Gilad, told Israeli Army Radio on Thursday that attacks by Hamas had fallen after threats from Israeli officials.

"We sent clear messages... and at the end the firing of the rockets stopped," AP quoted him as saying.

Israeli media reports said Mr Haniya had asked his Hamas group's armed wing to stop the attacks, but Hamas officials denied this.

In other developments on Thursday, a second Palestinian minister crossed the border from Egypt into Gaza with a large amount of money in his luggage.

Information Minister Youssef Rizqa was carrying $2m (£1.6m), a day after Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahhar returned to Gaza with $20m in his luggage.

Officials said the money would be used to pay workers' salaries. The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has faced a financial crunch since Western donors cut off funding, accusing Hamas of being a terrorist group.

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5082820.stm