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When Israel is

Cry for “Peace and Safety,” Sudden Destruction Comes!

June 18, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

I Thessalonians 5:3,4 – For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. [4] But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

When I read the following article from YNet News by Professor Israel Aumann, I was struck with the realization that the expression “Peace and safety,” may not mean they have already attained the condition, but are crying out for it to come into being.

Israel has been crying out for peace with security in the land for almost 60 years, and the cry became louder and louder when the suicide bombings began to take their toll. I cannot help but believe this call will eventually be answered by “sudden destruction” when will initiate the time of “Jacob’s trouble.”

Jeremiah 30:7 – Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.

Zechariah 13:8,9 – And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein

shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. [9] And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God.

Begin YNet News Article

See to our needs first

There is no leadership crisis, but rather, crisis among the people

Prof. Israel Aumann

The question is not whether to enter the Gaza Strip or not.

Before discussing Gaza we must first enter Israel and mend the deep crises created among the people.

What is happening today in the Gaza Strip is the direct result of Israel’s failed and defeatist policies over the past 15 years. Since my opinion has been sought, I say that this is a policy destined to bring about the demise of the State of Israel. It’s not just the policies. It’s also the defeatist state of mind.

All day long people are screaming “Peace, peace, and gestures, gestures!” Concessions and disengagements were made and settlers expelled.

All this has ultimately achieved the oppo site

result.

We have to stop the empty slogans such as “Peace is made with enemies and not with friends.” In order to achieve peace we must first and foremost be prepared for war.

We have to change this state of mind at the core.

It wasn’t only the Romans who said that those who seek peace should prepare for war.

Even in game theory, for which I received the Nobel Prize, says so. We have to be emotionally prepared to bear and to inflict casualties – and not to scream “peace, peace,” all day long. Only if we are prepared to kill and be killed – we shall not be killed. This is the paradox of war.

We have to extract ourselves from the bubble in which we are living and to understand that we are under a great existential threat.

I hear the arguments saying that everything stems from a leadership crisis.

There is no leadership crisis – the crisis is entirely among the people.

We elected our leadership knowing full well who these leaders are and what they are capable of. We elected this leadership six months after the expulsion from Gush Katif – and thus we endorsed the expulsion with our own hands. So don’t say there is a leadership crisis, the crisis is entirely among the people.

Prof. Israel Aumann is an economics Nobel Prize laureate

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Reports Continue to Indicate War this Year!

June 17, 2007

It is amazing how many different sources continue to think we will have a major conflict this year in the Middle East, but I doubt it will occur.

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The following three reports paint a picture of the latest events between the opposing forces in Israel and its environs.

Arab Media Reports Syria Making Preparations for War with Israel

1 Tammuz 5767, 17 June 07 09:26

by Hana Levi Julian

(IsraelNN.com)

A Qatari newspaper, Al Watan, reported Friday that Syria is making concrete preparations for war with Israel, saying that the Syrian government has removed the Government and State Archives from the Damascus area.

According to the paper this move indicates preparations for war.

Syrian parliament member Muhammad Habash confirmed on Al-Jazeera Arabic world news satellite TV last week that Syria is indeed engaged in active preparations for a war with Israel.

The conflict, said the Syrian MP, is expected to break out during the summer months.

Officials close to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reported Sunday that their efforts to begin negotiations with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad have gone unanswered.

They also said that Mr.

Assad’s failure to reply signaled that his claims of wanting peace were not honest and were meant to improve his own status in the international community.

Last week, the head of Mossad, Israel’s international intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, warned that Syrian President Assad was putting up a smoke screen by claiming he wants to open peace talks with the Jewish State.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi has also raised the issue numerous times. “The IDF is preparing for an escalation on both the Palestinian and the northern fronts,” he said bluntly during a speech to the IDF Officers Training School earlier in the year.

The IDF held a large-scale exercise ten days ago simulating a Syrian invasion to Israel’s north. Infantry units, tank divisions and the Air Force took part in the exercise, which took place at the Shizafon IDF installation, in the southern Negev.

Asked about the exercise by Army Radio, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said that the IDF was indeed preparing for the possibility of war with Syria, but said this does not mean that Israel would initiate such a war. “Our preparedness is not an indication of any decision by either us or Syria to go to war – these are purely defensive measures,” he said.

Report: Barak planning military operation in Gaza within weeks By Haaretz Service

June 17, 2007

Newly elected Labor Party Chairman Ehud Barak, who is set to take over as defense minister on Monday, is planning to launch a military operation aimed at combating Hamas in Gaza, Britain’s Sunday Times reported.

The British publication quotes an Israeli source as saying that the operation will include 20,000 troops and will be aimed at destroying Hamas’ military capabilities in a short period of time.

According to the source, the Israel Defense Forces will launch the operation if Hamas continues to fire Qassam rockets into Israel, or if terror attacks against Israel are renewed.

According to the Times, Barak has already asked the IDF to draw up detailed plans for the deployment of troops inside the Gaza Strip.

A close aide to Barak told the Times that Israel would not allow a “Hamastan,” to rise within its borders, and that an attack on Gaza seems inevitable.

“The question is not if, but when,” he said.

Due to the escalating violence in the Gaza Strip in the past week, during which the militant Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip in bloody battles with rival party Fatah, Barak was granted the defense ministry portfolio by telephone in a hastened emergency appointment.

Prosecuted. Recapture of the Philadelphi Route Is Proposed to stop the Hamas Horror Show from Moving forward

June 17, 2007, 1:04 PM (GMT+02:00)

More and more Israeli commentators are frankly admitting that Israel’s pull-out from Gaza in the summer of 2005 was an open invitation to the forces of radical Islam to set up house in the defenseless territory. Now, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, foreign minister Tzipi Livni and the rest of their Kadima party who presided over that withdrawal are building new castles in the sky to vindicate that error.

Hamas has not triumphed, they say, but offered Israel the chance of a fresh start to separate Gaza, a mere “terrorist entity,” from the West Bank. There, a Hamas-free regime led by Abbas is a fit partner for peace diplomacy.

With this fallacious thesis, Olmert is on his way to a three-day visit to the United States including talks with President George W. Bush as the White House Tuesday, June 17.

It was this thinking that led him to heed the advice, which DEBKAfile’s military sources report came from chief of staff Lt. Gen Gaby Ashkenazi – and was opposed by the OC Southern Command Brig. Gen Yoav Galant – to refrain from interfering in the Hamas takeover. His predecessor, Dan Halutz, likewise played down the Hizballah threat from Lebanon until it was too late.

Rather than getting to grips with the Gaza crisis, Olmert shored up his cabinet and political strength by designating the newly-elected Labor leader Ehud Barak defense minister to mind the store in his absence. The onus is now on the new minister, a former prime minister, to come up with an ingenious remedy for restoring Israel’s security initiative and deterrence, however belatedly.

A former Israeli national security adviser Gen (ret.) Giora Eiland argues now that the influx of tons of smuggled weapons and explosives into Gaza Strip must be halted at any price. There is a real danger of Hamas importing reinforcements from Syria and Lebanon for its next offensive. Egypt will, as usual, stand aside.

Eiland was the only defense official at the time to oppose disengagement as a recipe for bringing Iran and al Qaeda to Israel’s borders. Having been proved correct, he now proposes to limit the damage by recapturing the Philadelphi route and the southern outskirts of Palestinian Rafah, flatten the houses there and evict 15,000-20,000 people.

Gaza must be cut off from Israel to block Hamas and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors’ path to a second victory on the West Bank.

The cutoff would apply to humanitarian aid. Let the Arab world deal this time with Gaza’s distress and pump aid to the Rafah crossing via Egypt.

Eiland allows for an international outcry, argues Israel is left with no choice at this late date but to break some eggs. This option would give Israel the chance to start combating Hamas at a point from which the IDF enjoys a position of strength.

The Philadelphi route offers that point.

Olmert is meanwhile pursuing other plans.

One is for an international force to police Gaza’s Philadelphi border route with. Egypt must play its part by halting arms smuggling. This is a non-starter. No sane government would expose its soldiers to the unbridled violence in the Gaza Strip, even if Hamas agreed. And Egypt has never lifted a finger to stop arms smuggling through Sinai and is not about to change its spots.

Still, Olmert will discuss this and other knee-jerk remedies with President Bush, including the tightening of the financial squeeze by Western powers and Arab governments on Hamas and placing Gaza under siege. Olmert can expect a sympathetic hearing from a president who is grappling with his own reverses in Iraq and now in Lebanon. He will no doubt follow Washington’s lead in releasing frozen funds withheld from the Hamas-led Palestinian government in the past to Abbas and his No. 2, Mohammed Dahlan, who made sure of arriving in Ramallah only after the Gaza debacle was over.

But that does not mean the makeshift strategy Olmert & Co. have cooked up can be made to work any better than their previous, largely passive, policies.

DEBKAfile’s Middle East analysts point to six fallacies in their thinking:

1. Hamas is not short of cash. The people of Gaza are in deep distress because that cash is not spent on feeding them or creating jobs but on the tools of war for Hamas’ Executive Force. The Islamist group is subsidized by Iran, Damascus and other Arab and Muslim states. Suitcases full of banknotes pass through the Rafah crossing. The Islamist lords of Gaza will no more be starved into submission than Iran is cowed by sanctions to give up its nuclear ambitions (another item on Olmert’s White House agenda).

Hamas’ masked gunmen can be seen every day smartly outfitted in clean black uniforms, brandishing new weapons with no shortage of ammunition and carrying personal gear in top condition.

These sinister fighters are professional and disciplined. None look underfed.

2. Pouring US and Israeli hopes and investments into the Abbas-Dahlan outfit ended in disaster in Gaza. The Fatah-forces built and trained under the supervision of an American general were utterly humiliated in Gaza. Any hope of their coming up to scratch in a second round on the West Bank, which is bound to follow, is a pipe dream.

3. Not only Iran and Syria, but six Arab governments, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, refuse to cut their ties with the Hamas regime or hold back funds. So forget about an Arab boycott of Hamas. Forget also about a siege; it never works.

For Abbas, the unkindest cut of all was Qatar’s announcement at the Arab League foreign ministers’ meeting in Cairo Friday, that it would not recognize the emergency government Mahmoud Abbas is installing in Ramallah with Salim Fayyad at its head. Abbas’ main base of residence and personal business is located in Doha.

The Arab League’s resolution carried Friday contained another painful barb: The Palestinians were called on to respect the legitimacy of Abbas’ leadership but also of the Legislative Council where Hamas holds a majority.

This cut the ground from under Abbas’ emergency administration. To gain legitimacy and Arab recognition, Ismail Haniyeh’s Gaza government needs only to wield its majority in the Legislative Council.

4. The premise that Fatah forces are strong on the West Bank compared with their weakness in Gaza is another illusion floated to corroborate Olmert’s reading of the Palestinian crisis. After losing the Gaza Strip, masked Fatah gunmen seized several hundred Hamas officials and stormed Hamas-controlled parliament, government and local council premises across the West Bank. But they do not have the popular leverage for purging Hamas’ influence in the key West Bank towns of Greater Nablus, Tulkarm, Qaiqilya, Ramallah, Hebron and East Jerusalem. There, Hamas is not only popular, but works hand in glove with radical factions of Abbas’ own Fatah al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, who like Hamas are in the pay of Iran, Syria and Hizballah.

One Israeli parliamentarian said Abbas had been reduced to being “mayor of Ramallah.”

5. Neither Hamas nor its generous sponsors in Tehran and Damascus intend to stop at the Gazan border. When the moment is opportune, they will go for the West Bank too and unite both under fundamentalist Islamic rule which will then be armed for its next target, Israel.

6. Mahmoud Abbas faces criticism in his own party for spurning hardline Hamas politburo leader Khaled Meshaal’s overtures. The influential terrorist lifer, Marwan Barghouti, and the former Preventive Intelligence chief, Jibril Rajoub, urge him to reach an understanding with Hamas leaders in Gaza and Damascus.

Abbas was never one for a clear course of action and is therefore unpredictable. But both he and his Hamas rival Meshaal seem to be saying in the last 24 hours that a straight divorce of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is undesirable. Therefore some give and take is on the cards.

By the time the Israeli prime minister reaches the White House, therefore, he may have been overtaken by events and the separation of Palestinian territories he hailed as a fresh start may have evaporated as a working hypothesis.

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Two Reasons Why I do NOT expect an All-Out War this Year, and One Reason Why I could be Wrong!

June 17, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

I am not hedging, although I do confess the title does certainly give that impression.

I really do not guesstimate that a full-scale major war will break out in the Middle East until some point in time between 2008 and the end of 2012, with the latter half of that time span being the most likely. I have two definite reasons for believing this will be the case, and one reason for thinking a certain scenario might bring it in this year.

Begin Archive Special Prophecy Update Number 17A, April, 2001

SPECIAL PROPHECY UPDATE 17A

April, 2001

EARLY ISRAEL NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT AND SUBSEQUENT QUANTITY & QUALITY GROWTH!

I have recently received queries, from scanners of our web, requesting a more detailed outline of the history of Israel’s nuclear development. The outline is as follows:

1956 – Israel asks France for a nuclear reactor in return for her cooperation in the 1956 Suez recovery campaign.

1957 – The French begin to build an atomic reactor at Dimona in the Negev wilderness.

1960 – The 24 megawatt reactor is completed supposedly for the purpose of generating commercial power. After the French leave, the Israelis jack it up to 150 megawatts in order to build atomic bombs.

1964 – The first atomic bomb is completed. I will not discuss where, or how, it was tested.

1967 – Egyptian overflights of Dimona in May cause Israel to launch pre-emptive strikes in June against her Arab neighbors because of the fear of three pronged air strikes against her nuclear facility, and the Six Day War begins. Israel has a few atomic bombs at that time, but does not use them.

1968 – About 200 tons of yellowcake (crude uranium) is smuggled into Israel in December off a Liberian tanker.

1969 – Israel develops her first hydrogen bomb. I will not discuss how, or where, it was tested.

1973 – Israel is attacked by her Islamic neighbors, but does not use her numerous nuclear weapons.

2001 – Israel now has more than 200 nuclear warheads. Many are mounted on Jericho missiles in the Negev wilderness. These missiles are capable of reaching all targets in the Islamic kingdoms of the Mid-East.

Israel also has more than enough chemical and biological warheads to launch against any nation that launches the same against her. I do not believe Israel will launch chemical, biological, or nuclear warheads unless they are first launched against her. If the armies of Islam are able to drive her into the Negev without launching any of the aforementioned types of warheads against her, and will stop their advance north of Beersheba, I do not believe that Israel will

launch her warheads against them.

End Archive Special Prophecy Update Number 17A, April 2001

When I retired from the NSA-USAF Branch at Ft. George G. Meade in 1971, I had not kept any written record of anything I ever participated in, or knew about, or of, in the Agency. I made no notes at home and never discussed anything with anyone, not even my wife. I kept my vow of silence for seven years and did not travel outside the United States until 1982.

Since 1982 I have traveled frequently to the Middle East, Europe, Eurasia, and Africa.

I am including this paragraph for two reasons.

First, to assure those who read it that I have never betrayed the security of any information that has not become known generally since my retirement, and will take some things with me to my grave. Second, to advise those who read my Blogs, that I kept no notes, and at age 75, I must warn you that my memory does not work like a computer file – It is fuzzy.

The history of Israel’s nuclear history may have at couple of glitches from 1956 to 1971 due to poor memory, and my sources and estimates after 1971 are based on what I knew at retirement, and subsequent analysis of events as they painted pictures of WMD and missile development by statements coming out of Israeli intelligence sources, which are fair game.

I will assure you of this, poor memory or not, faulty analysis or not, Israel has sufficient WMD to completely destroy the military capabilities of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, and Hamas within a matter of hours, and because of the efficiency of the electronic intelligence intercept collected by the Soviets on Israel, and then shared with Syria and Iran, I do not believe Iran will start an all-out Middle East War until it is satisfied it has sufficient deterrent WMD it can deliver by missiles against Israel. That is the first reason I do not look for a major war this year.

The second reason is found in two paragraph excerpts from a lengthy article by Stewart M. Powell in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on May 22, 2007, which follows:

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/316612_secondsurge22.html

U.S. quietly, dramatically increasing Iraq troop levels

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Last updated 12:20 p.m. PT

By STEWART M. POWELL

HEARST NEWSPAPERS

“[This “second surge” of troops in Iraq, which is being executed by extending tours for brigades already there and by deploying more units, could boost the number of combat troops to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year. When support troops are included, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 — the most ever — by the end of the year.]”

“[The buildup was designed to give commanders the 20 combat brigades that Pentagon planners said were needed to provide security in Baghdad and in western Anbar province.]”

End Two Paragraph Quote

With some 200,000 American troops in Iraq between the eastern border of Syria and the western border of Iran, and a gigantic allied armada poised to strike from Gulf and Mediterranean waters, I seriously doubt if either one would deliberately start a Major War in the Middle East this year.

This is, of course my second reason for believing there will not be a Major Middle East War this year.

However, it is possible that the United States and Israel, both hav ing a lot of hot political chestnuts

in the fire, which have driven the popularity of the Bush and Olmert Administrations to the depth of the great Marianna Trench, might try to pull all their chestnuts out of the fire by using their current military might to crush the built up military potential of Syria and Iran to wage war This action would also disrupt the Iranian support to a multiplicity of terrorist groups continuously growing around the world. That is exactly what I think they should do, because this may be their last chance. We need to start a Middle East war now while we have forces in large numbers in Iraq and Israel can cream Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas, and all the other internal terrorist groups.

But I do not believe the attitude of the American public will allow it to be done. Best of British luck to the next President and Congress, you are going to need it because you bailed out on God – In Self We Trust!

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Roadmap fall s

through Collapsed Bridge – Cry for Iraq Pullout Grows – Desperation could cause All-Out War – Maybe Now – But more likely Later!

June 16, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The Middle East conflicts and rumors of conflicts between different ethnic groups across the Middle East remind me somewhat of the early part of 1939 in Europe before Hitler invaded Poland.

The following set of articles paint a grim current situation across all the Middle East, and I will admit the possibility of a war breaking out this year, provided that Israel and the U.S. administration get frustrated to the point of pulling all their political chestnuts out of the fire.

They might attempt to do it by blowing up Iran’s Nuclear Facilities and in-country terrorist training centers, while Israel charges across Gaza in a full thrust invasion, killing every Hamas mother’s son, and lies in wait just hoping Syria and Hizbullah will cross its northern border. If that scenario does not happen, the war will likely be delayed until some point in time between 2008 and the end of 2012, which has been my guess for a long time. I do not think Syria and Iran want a war until Iran has a deliverable deterrent nuclear arsenal

and American troops are pulled out of Iraq. If the Bush Administration wants to win the war against terrorists in the Middle East, and Israel wants to crush the Palestinian terrorists in Israel, and secure its northern border, NOW is the time to pull their political chestnuts out of the fire by going to war. The terror organizations and terrorist Islamic countries are only going to grow stronger if they fail to do so!

Begin Excerpt of First Half of Article Extracted from “Middle East on Line” by Patrick Seale.

Middle East War or Peace this Summer?

June 15, 2007

Middle East Online

Patrick Seale

In view of several negative trends, some Israeli planners are thought to believe that the last months in office of George W.

Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney present what might be a last opportunity for Israel to defeat all its enemies in an extended war, says Patrick Seale.

As Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, prepares to travel

to Washington next week to meet President George W. Bush on June 19, the Middle East is awash with rumours of war — but also

of peace. Which will Olmert press for with his American “Big Brother”?

Some observers predict a hot summer in the Middle East. They think Olmert will seek Bush’s backing for another war in Lebanon, perhaps extending this time to Syria, to finish off their common enemies — Lebanon’s Hizbullah and President Bashar al-Asad’s regime in Damascus — in preparation for a joint assault on their ultimate nemesis, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

Israeli troops have recently carried out large-scale manoeuvres in both the Golan and the Negev, as if preparing for a much trumpeted second round, which some Israeli strategists believe is necessary to restore Israel’s deterrent capability, severely dented by the military fiasco in Lebanon last summer.

An American armada, including two carrier battle groups and 150 strike aircraft, has assembled on the approaches to the Iranian coast.

But another theory is that neither Israel nor the United States are ready for war. The United States and Iran have held a preliminary meeting in Baghdad, which might lead to more exchanges, while the Israeli media have reported that Olmert has sent secret messages to President Bashar in Damascus, responding positively to the Syrian leader’s repeated calls for a resumption of negotiations.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

PM expected to leave for US talks

JPost Staff and AP, THE JERUSALEM POST

June 15, 2007

Sources in Jerusalem said Saturday that the recent incidents in the Gaza Strip have caused a new, harsh reality which cannot be repaired.

They said that the void between Hamas and Fatah was final, and that not only would Hamas have to capture the whole Strip, but also provide for over a million civilians, Israel Radio reported Saturday.

The sources stressed that Israel would not let Hamas take over the West Bank

and emphasized that Israel would help Abbas to improve the economic and security situation there.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was expected to leave for a three day visit to the United States on Saturday evening to meet with US President George W. Bush and other senior officials, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

Bush reportedly told President-Elect Shimon Peres in a telephone conversation on Friday night that he and Olmert would discuss “issues of great significance” and that he expected the visit to be fruitful, Israel Radio reported Saturday.

Bush had also said that terrorists can’t be allowed to win in the Gaza Strip and hold their heads high forever.

Peres told Bush that Hamas’s takeover of Gaza this week was “tragic,” but that the new reality presented not only difficulties, but also possibilities. According to Army Radio, Peres also added that Israel would do everything possible to strengthen those in the Palestinian Authority who sought peace.

Earlier, Olmert spoke with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and promised to take steps to bolster Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, his office said.

“Israel will do all it can to help moderates in the Palestinian Authority after the radical Hamas took Gaza by force,” a statement released by his office said.

The following articles were taken from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Daily Alert, June 15, 2007

Hamas Seizes Final Fatah Positions in Gaza City

Avi Issacharoff

Hamas fighters seized control of the Palestinian presidential compound in Gaza City on Thursday, the last of four key Fatah-run security compounds in the city which are now all under Hamas control. Hamas gunmen broke into the homes of Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan in Gaza and looted them. 99 Palestinian policemen loyal to Fatah who were border guards at Rafah fled to Egypt. (Ha’aretz)

Fatah’s Collapse in Gaza Rocks its West Bank Status

Khaled Abu Toameh

Fatah gunmen and PA policemen rounded up more than 30 Hamas officials and supporters in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm on Thursday in an attempt to consolidate Fatah’s grip on the West Bank.

Hamas does not have security bases in the West Bank, nor does it have armed groups that roam the streets openly. Yet Hamas remains popular in several cities.

In the last municipal elections, Hamas candidates scored major victories in Ramallah, el-Bireh, Bethlehem, Nablus and Kalkilya.

It’s true that many West Bankers are unhappy with what Hamas has done in Gaza. But there are still many Palestinians who are fed up with the scores of Fatah armed gangs that have long been running wild in the West Bank. Fatah gunmen may control the streets of the West Bank, but this does not mean they enjoy the support of the majority of the Palestinian public. In fact, Fatah’s humiliating defeat in Gaza is likely to undermine its standing in the West Bank. (Jerusalem Post)

Hamas Executes Fatah Men as Their Wives and Children Watch

(AP/Washington Times)

A witness named Amjad said men were killed as their wives and children watched.

“They are executing them one by one,” Amjad said by telephone.

“They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting.”

Fatah officials said Hamas shot and killed seven of its fighters outside the Preventive Security building.

A doctor at Shifa Hospital said he examined two bodies that had been shot in the head at close range.

As Gaza Unravels, Palestinians Flee

Ilene R. Prusher

(Christian Science Monitor)

Figures collected by European monitors at Rafah, the crossing into Egypt, show that some 14,000 Palestinians have left Gaza in the past year.

Palestinian officials had asked to close the Rafah crossing into Egypt when they saw they could not protect European monitors there.

“The real people controlling Rafah are Hamas, because they’re just outside the checkpoint and they’re controlling who can come and go,” said Shlomo Dror, Israel’s spokesman for the coordinator for government activities in the territories.

Gazans who hope to leave are turning to agents

who demand several thousand dollars for a plane ticket and a visa. The idea is to get to Egypt, and then, when the plane stops somewhere in Europe on its way west, to get off and ask for political asylum.

Assad Abu Nihad paid $2,500 to a broker to arrange his son’s trip. The son got off the plane in Spain on his way to Cuba and claimed asylum.

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Gaza Strip Now Hamastan – The Greater of Two Evils

June 16, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The Fatah terrorist group was, from its inception, no more than a large conglomerate of street gang thugs with leaders full of corruption and graft which never really induced a spirit of patriotic fervor at their core. It was always on the take almost as if to blackmail the West to keep the peace. To the general Palestinian population, Fatah consisted of street thugs parading in uniform, with their hands in the till of foreign aid flowing in from The West. There was never a remote possibility that Fatah could ever be a legitimate peace partner in any peace process. They did not even have control over their own splinter groups, let alone Hamas or Islamic Jihad, which is the primary reason Yasser Arafat did not want to sign a final peace arrangement with Israel, he knew he was unable to control the other terrorist groups.

The Hamas terrorists were more dedicated to their cause, no matter how misdirected it was – They were better organized and trained by Syrian and Iranian in-country training camps. The corruption and graft was much less in their structural complex than what existed in the Fatah organization.

The following article was extracted from the Jerusalem Center for Public Information – Daily Alert, and the second from DEBKAfile.

Article 1

Hamastan

Barry Rubin

Wall Street Journal

June 15, 2007

With the seizure of the Gaza Strip by Hamas, a new Islamist state is being established and it doesn’t bode well for the West or regional stability.

Since the peace process began in 1993 with the Oslo Accords, the Fatah leadership made hardly a single effort to move Palestinian society toward peace and moderation. Fatah did have an attractive alternative it could have offered: We will get a state, return the refugees to live in it, develop our economy and culture and enjoy large-scale international aid in exchange for ending the conflict.

Instead it continued to glorify violence, spread hatred of Israel and America, and raise a new generation with a belief in eventual “total” victory and the extinction of Israel.

Unwilling to make peace and uninterested in governing well, Fatah dug its own grave. Why should anyone be surprised that Hamas replaced it?

Let’s get this straight: There is no near-term solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

There is no Palestinian side with which a compromise agreement can be negotiated.

Western and especially U.S. policy must get beyond an obsession with solving this conflict.

It is going to go on for decades.

Hamas will not be persuaded to moderate – why should it when it expects victory at home and appeasement from Europe? Hamas is the enemy, just as much as al-Qaeda, because it is part of the radical Islamist effort to seize control of the region, overthrow anything even vaguely moderate, and expel

any Western influence.

It is time to support Israel proudly and fully. Israel has done everything possible for peace, taking great risks to do so.

The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center.

Begin Article 2 – DEBKAfile Article

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Hamas – and its Syrian and Iranian sponsors – capture priceless Palestinian Authority intelligence archives in Gaza putsch

June 15, 2007, 8:48 PM (GMT+02:00)

The Fatah-led general intelligence and security services caved in too fast to shred, wipe or burn documents, computer disks and archives. The entire collection fell into Hamas’ hands when they seized Palestinian Preventive Intelligence HQ at Tel Awa (henceforth Tel al-Islam) and the Palestinian General Intelligence center near Gaza port.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources say: Never before has a bonanza of Western intelligence secrets on this scale ever reached an implacably hostile Islamist terrorist gang. The US, British and Israeli intelligence services may have suffered their greatest debacle in the war on Islamist terror. It will take them many years to recover.

Hamas has taken possession of hundreds of thousands of documents cataloguing the clandestine operations of Western intelligence services in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates. It is now the owner of complete archives of Palestinian undercover links with foreign intelligence services going back decades, with names of spies, political collaborators and double agents. The documentation covers the secret ties Palestinian intelligence maintained from the 1970s, when Yasser Arafat was based in Lebanon, with the Americans, the British, the French, the Israelis and many others.

Most intelligence experts say Israel should have bombed the two buildings and destroyed their contents rather than letting them fall into the hands of an organization and country dedicated to its eclipse.

For Hamas, this booty is priceless – and not only as the repository of bombs for planting under Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts.

The Palestinian group’s Syrian and Iranian sponsors will pay a king’s ransom for this unique collection of explosive secrets hidden by many a Western intelligence agency and government.

Damascus and Tehran will be hugely empowered with the means to stay a jump ahead of American moves in the region and tools to sabotage US policies at any time. They will have a store of national secrets and compromising information to hold over the heads of Western leaders and officials, lists of undercover agents, and records of covert operations carried out by the Israeli Mossad, Shin Bet and Military Intelligence, CIA, British MI6 and other Western agencies. Iran, Syria and Hamas will know the names of politicians, including Israelis, who worked secretly with Palestinians and their shady deals.

One intelligence expert said that the Gaza hoard left in enemy hands by Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan are the crown jewels compared with the Saddam Hussein’ s intelligence archive

s.

In the Palestinian security service building, Hamas found computer hard disks covering years of undercover activity and a complete set of sophisticated wiretapping and surveillance equipment and sensors which the CIA and MI6 gave Mahmoud Abbas and his forces. It was all in perfect condition ready to switch on.

After the Nazi regime was defeated at the end of World War II and Eastern Germany fell in the 1990s, there were officials willing to make a desperate effort to destroy or hide their intelligence treasure. Palestinian intelligence officers did not burn a single page.

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