Israel: Hamas Avoiding A Fight

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March 7, 2006: Hamas, the largest Palestinian terrorist group, continues to mellow, and maintain its truce with Israel. Hamas radicals still call for Israel's destruction, but the people who actually run Hamas have not made any threatening moves. Hamas has rejected an al Qaeda call to violence. Foreign aid is starting to get to Hamas, by various routes. While, in general, Western donors are against giving money to Hamas, there is much public and private pressure to provide economic aid to Palestinians (who have destroyed their economy with their five year terror campaign against Israel.) Meanwhile, Israel has made it clear that, if Hamas resumes its terrorist attacks, Hamas leaders, from the head of the Palestinian government on down, will be targets for Israeli missiles.

March 6, 2006: Another Palestinian terrorist died when his vehicle was hit by an Israeli missile, launched from the air. Israeli intelligence still has informants throughout the West Bank and Gaza, and these continue to supply identities and locations of Palestinian terrorists. Raids and missile attacks have disrupted nearly all Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israel for the last year.

Meanwhile, Hamas is training thousands of new gunmen, for future battles with Israel.

March 5, 2006: In northern Gaza, Palestinians continue to fire Kassam rockets into southern Israel. In response, the Israelis have used aerial reconnaissance (especially UAVs that stay up there round the clock) to track the movement of the terrorists and their rockets, then artillery and aerial bombing tries to shut down the routes the terrorists take to move the rockets into firing positions. This has kept the number of rocket attacks down. But that isn't news, only the few rockets that are launched is newsworthy.

March 4, 2006: The Lebanese army moved troops and tanks to the Syrian border, to block the illegal movement of weapons into the Bekaa valley. The weapons are apparently for the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command). While the Shia Hizbollah controls the Bekaa, the area also houses several other terrorist groups, like the PFLP-GC. Syria has long provided sanctuary for Palestinian terrorist groups, and Hizbollah is supported, and supplied (with money, weapons and technical advisors) by Iran. About 35 percent of Lebanese are Shia, and Shia Iran considers these Lebanese their responsibility. Syria has been urging Palestinians to continue terror attacks on Israel, but the main Palestinian group, Hamas, has not been hospitable to Syrian advice.

 

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