6 dead in battle between Hamas, Palestinian police
jlew24asu
Posts: 10,118
It's going to be tough to accomplish peace if they can't stop killing each other..
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090531/ap_ ... s_violence
QALQILIYA, West Bank – Palestinian forces stormed a Hamas hideout in the northern West Bank, setting off a fierce battle that left six dead Sunday in the bloodiest factional violence since the Palestinian president launched a crackdown on the Islamic militant group two years ago.
Hamas militants lobbed grenades and fired automatic weapons to push back the raid, drawing dozens of government forces to the scene. After the battle, hundreds of spent bullet casings, puddles of blood and tear gas canisters were visible at the hideout, a two-story building in Qalqiliya, a West Bank town known for its strong Hamas presence. Parts of the walls were burned down.
Two top Hamas militants who had been on the run from Israel for years were among those killed, along with an unarmed Hamas supporter and three Palestinian policemen.
Hamas immediately hurled angry accusations at the Western-backed president, Mahmoud Abbas, threatening revenge and accusing him of betraying Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation. Relations have been sour since Hamas seized Gaza by force two years ago, leaving Abbas only in control of the West Bank.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090531/ap_ ... s_violence
QALQILIYA, West Bank – Palestinian forces stormed a Hamas hideout in the northern West Bank, setting off a fierce battle that left six dead Sunday in the bloodiest factional violence since the Palestinian president launched a crackdown on the Islamic militant group two years ago.
Hamas militants lobbed grenades and fired automatic weapons to push back the raid, drawing dozens of government forces to the scene. After the battle, hundreds of spent bullet casings, puddles of blood and tear gas canisters were visible at the hideout, a two-story building in Qalqiliya, a West Bank town known for its strong Hamas presence. Parts of the walls were burned down.
Two top Hamas militants who had been on the run from Israel for years were among those killed, along with an unarmed Hamas supporter and three Palestinian policemen.
Hamas immediately hurled angry accusations at the Western-backed president, Mahmoud Abbas, threatening revenge and accusing him of betraying Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation. Relations have been sour since Hamas seized Gaza by force two years ago, leaving Abbas only in control of the West Bank.
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jlew24asu wrote:It's going to be tough to accomplish peace if they can't stop killing each other
That's exactly Israel's and the U.S's intention, which is why they continue to support and encourage such factional in-fighting by propping up their puppet regime in the West Bank.0 -
Byrnzie wrote:jlew24asu wrote:It's going to be tough to accomplish peace if they can't stop killing each other
That's exactly Israel's and the U.S's intention, which is why they continue to support and encourage such factional in-fighting by propping up their puppet regime in the West Bank.
so its the US and Israel's fault?0 -
http://original.antiwar.com/frykberg/20 ... it-israel/
Bloody New Battles Suit Israel
by Mel Frykberg, June 01, 2009
'...The attacks come at a time when the rest of the international community, propelled forward by U.S. President Barack Obama, appears to be developing the resolve to pressure Israel into fulfilling its part of various peace agreements.
The calls from a growing number of world leaders for Israel to freeze settlement-building are growing louder. Obama has reportedly given himself two years to reach a diplomatic settlement on a two-state solution as a means of resolving the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel argues that natural growth in the settlements has to be taken into account. However, most of the settlement building has been to accommodate increasing settler numbers – and as their numbers increase, further settlement-building would be required.
There are currently about 500,000 illegal settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem.
Additionally, Israeli attempts to outlaw Palestinians commemorating their Nakba (meaning catastrophe, to mark the day of the Israeli onslaught that drove them out of their land in 1948) with threats of three years imprisonment is not winning Netanyahu any support regionally or internationally either.
During the Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either fled or were expelled from their homes, while over 500 villages were razed to make way for the establishment of Israel.
Neither are Israel’s accelerated attempts to Judaize East Jerusalem by expelling Palestinians and demolishing their homes there helping its PR efforts.
Bloody Palestinian infighting might just be what a cornered Israeli government needs at the moment to focus attention elsewhere.0 -
jlew24asu wrote:so its the US and Israel's fault?
That's right. In case you hadn't noticed, Israel - supported by the U.S - has been carrying out an illegal occupation for the past 40 years, and has been preventing - with the help of the U.S veto - any chance of peace in the region.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ja ... -palestine
How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Avi Shlaim
The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009
'...Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.
America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.
As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.
Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.
It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.
The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood...'0 -
this just goes to prove there will never be peace with Hamas in the equation0
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jlew24asu wrote:
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/02 ... g-charity2
Hamas Victory Is Built on Social Work
By Kim Murphy
March 02, 2006
KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip — For a basic tooth filling and crown, the price difference is negligible: $17 at a regular clinic, $15 at Al Quds Clinic. The real distinction is in the extras.
“It’s safer to come to an Islamic place, where you can find a doctor who’s not only a good dentist, but a good Muslim,” said Najwa abu Mustafa, 24, who sat one recent afternoon in the sunny waiting room with several other women, shrouded in black veils but for the thin openings around their eyes. “You’re putting yourself in God’s hands.”
The small clinic on the edge of one of the Gaza Strip’s biggest refugee camps is one of hundreds of medical centers, food banks, summer camps and schools across the West Bank and Gaza operated by Islamic charities, many of them linked to the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by its Arabic acronym Hamas.
The militant group’s recent victory in parliamentary elections is testimony in part to its long track record on the streets. Its services are often perceived as being of higher quality and less tainted by corruption than the cumbersome and often ineffective social network operated by the Palestinian Authority controlled until now by Fatah.
The work Hamas does at home is an often-overlooked key to the domestic popularity of an organization most known elsewhere for killing. The United States has declared Hamas a terrorist organization, and U.S. and Israeli counter-terrorism experts have cited numerous instances in which Al Qaeda and Hamas drew funding from international Islamic charities. Hamas also reportedly has used schools and hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza to store weapons and plan attacks.
Faced with U.S. and European measures aimed at preventing charity funds from being funneled into terrorism, Hamas has erased many of its traceable financial links to the humanitarian programs. But Hamas figures remain on the boards and in management of the programs, which analysts say have become an essential component of the group’s public support.
“Hamas has been very good at compartmentalizing their activities – where they have a soup kitchen, for example, they simply give soup, nothing more,” said Mouin Rabbani of the International Crisis Group, which studied Islamic social activism in the occupied territories. “But it all fits into a broader pattern of popular mobilization and becomes another way of seeking support for the organization.”
Over the last two decades, several large Islamic charities have come to be closely associated with Hamas, including the Mujamma Islami network, Al Salah Society, the Islamic Center and the Islamic University of Gaza. But the International Crisis Group said there was little “substantial evidence” that Islamic welfare institutions “systematically divert” funds to support terrorist activity.
“Hamas doesn’t have much in the way of resources, but they have a big network of charity working in order to reduce the suffering of the Palestinian people,” said Sami abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the group in Gaza. “People feel the credibility of Hamas, and its ability to make change through the charity organizations that it runs.”
In Gaza, Al Salah Society’s school for 1,000 orphans and other youngsters in the teeming town of Deir al Balah stands in sharp contrast to the crumbling concrete and dusty streets around it, a fenced-in oasis of palms and neat classrooms.
“Muslims are the best nation created in the world,” says a banner hanging outside the school, next to another that says, “Those who learn more earn a higher degree in paradise.”
Al Salah’s director, Ahmad Kurd, was recently elected mayor of Deir al Balah, and Hamas scooped up two of the region’s three parliamentary seats in the January elections.
“In 1994 there was an Israeli operation which destroyed several Palestinian houses [of families of suspected militants] in one of the poorest neighborhoods,” Kurd said. “I had to meet with the Israeli commander, and he asked me, ‘Why are you supporting and helping those victims who lost their homes?’
“I told him, ‘The Red Crescent is helping, the Churches United organization also gives some help to them, the Catholic Relief organization, the United Nations. And Al Salah Society is there as well. Is it forbidden?’ And he was not able to respond to that.”
When Israeli forces launched a major incursion into the southern Gaza refugee camp of Rafah in 2004, leaving nearly 1,500 residents homeless, Al Salah sent fundraisers with megaphones down the streets, going door to door, standing on street corners and outside the mosques. Women were asked to drop their gold necklaces into the collection boxes. Poor families gave sacks of rice. Al Salah collected $1 million worth of food, valuables and cash in Gaza, one of the poorest places in the Middle East.
Yet Kurd said it would be a mistake to think Hamas won the votes because of its charity work.
“The people are getting a lot more money from America, from the international community. The international donors distributed perhaps $6 billion in the last 10 years. The Islamic charity organizations didn’t pay out 1% of that money,” he said.
Palestinians associate U.S. aid with Washington’s support for Israel, he said. “The Palestinian feels, ‘You give me that money, and you kill me. You give me money, and you destroy my house. You give me money, and you send planes to kill our kids.’ ”
Abu Zuhri, the Hamas spokesman, said international aid had focused on public works projects but had done little to provide direct help to the poor, or to those families that have lost a breadwinner in the conflict with Israel.
“Unfortunately, the Western side has donated for projects like cleaning the streets or painting the walls, but they didn’t give anything for the care of orphans,” he said. Some of the most controversial programs operated by the Muslim charities provide stipends, housing and direct financial aid to the families of suicide bombers.
In the narrow alleyways of the sprawling refugee camp at Deir al Balah, hundreds of families get cash payments of $40 to $100 a month from Mujamma Islami and Al Salah, along with meat, beans, flour and eggs.
“We would be completely destitute without this help,” said Ataf Ostaz, 41, who has nine children and whose husband died of a stroke two years ago. “Naturally, we gave our votes to Hamas, because they are the ones who touch our need.”
The unlikely mix of services offered at Al Quds Clinic – pediatrics, maternal healthcare, orthodontics and post-surgical care – is no accident. Mujamma Islami, which opened the center in October 2002, conducted a survey of the clinics already operating in Khan Yunis.
“We did studies and reached the decision that some services are not good enough in government hospitals, and so we decided to offer these services ourselves,” said clinic director Atiya Abumoaamar. “The point is that the public hospitals are very, very cheap, so where we compete with them is not in prices, but in quality.”
At the same time, fees generally are substantially lower than those at private clinics.
Caseloads now reach up to 400 patients a month, and if there is a profit at the end of the month, Abumoaamar splits it with doctors and office staff. Otherwise, they work without salary as volunteers. The effort has been judged such a success that two more clinics are opening soon, with funding from the Saudi-based World Assembly of Muslim Youth.
“If the international community will just give it a chance and will not isolate it, if donors don’t freeze the funds, if the Arab countries help make some solution, I guarantee that Hamas will do a better job of running this society,” Abumoaamar said.
But some Palestinians point out that there is a big difference between operating schools and clinics and running a government for 3 million people.
“The Palestinian Authority has to reach everyone, and in a situation of closures, unemployment reaching unprecedented figures, and in an environment in which you are constantly being undermined, these services are obligatory,” said Issam Younis, director of the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City.
“Hamas has done its homework. Over the years, they have established very good social services, they have the maximum use of the mosque,” he said. “And it will be good to have Hamas in the government. Welcome! But think of the situation.
“With Abu Mazen [current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas], the international community transferred only $350 million of the $1 billion they were supposed to send for 2005. This is with the good guys in charge, not the terrorists!” he said. “Imagine how things will be with Hamas.”"0 -
LOL thanks Kim.0
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yet another distraction for people to look at instead of addressing the real problem.0
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jlew24asu wrote:polaris_x wrote:yet another distraction for people to look at instead of addressing the real problem.
take Israel out of the equation and the violent struggle for power will continue.
given no outside influence - the palestinian people can adopt a democracy that is void of violence ... but eliminating that influence will be difficult0 -
polaris_x wrote:jlew24asu wrote:polaris_x wrote:yet another distraction for people to look at instead of addressing the real problem.
take Israel out of the equation and the violent struggle for power will continue.
given no outside influence - the palestinian people can adopt a democracy that is void of violence ... but eliminating that influence will be difficult
I disagree0 -
_outlaw wrote:
6 dead in battle between Hamas, Palestinian police0 -
jlew24asu wrote:yes I did. take away outside influence and nothing would change between the two groups. thats my opinion, feel free to disagree.
Of course, Arabs just can't be trusted. They're genetically wired to kill each other and are clearly incapable of conducting themselves like civilized human beings like their benevolent and passive Israeli neighbours.Post edited by Byrnzie on0
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