(1) Funds, (2) Training, and ((3) Improved Rockets for Hamas insure Hudna followed by War!
March 7, 2007
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Hamas needs Funds, Training, Improved Short Range Rockets, more anti-tank and anti-antiaircraft rockets, and more time to prepare for war, which it will obtain eventually by declaring a Hudna (False Peace Truce) with Israel. All of these elements are coming into place at this time, and my guesstim
ate as to the time of the brief Hudna, which will be followed by a surprise Jihad attack from within and without by an Arab coalition, is at some point in time between 2008 and 2012.
(1) Funds – Begin Jerusalem Post Article
Mashaal secures Iranian pledge of funds for Hamas
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST
March 5, 2007
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal extracted from Iran Tuesday a pledge to fund his radical Palestinian movement to compensate for the West’s financial blockade of the Palestinian government.
Mashaal, who arrived in Iran early Tuesday, told a press conference with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki that Iran had been giving financial and political support to the Palestinians, whose government has been cut off from Western aid since Hamas took office in March last year.
“We still look forward to get support (from Iran) to break the political and economic sanctions,” Mashaal said.
Mottaki told reporters that Iran would continue to provide money to Hamas, but he did not give any figures.
Iran is known to have given sums of money to Hamas since it took office following its victory in the PA legislative elections. But there was no word Tuesday on what more would donated.
The major aid donors to the Palestinian Authority – the United States, the European Union and Canada – cut off aid because Hamas has refused to renounce violence and recognize Israel and the previous agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians.
Last month, Mashaal and Palestinian Authprity President Mahmoud Abbas signed a Saudi-brokered agreement in Mecca under which they would form a coalition government and Hamas promised to “respect” the previous agreements.
The United States and others are waiting for the coalition to be formed before declaring whether the Mecca agreement warrants a resumption of aid.
At Tuesday’s press conference, Mashaal was asked if Hamas had now recognized Israel.
The Hamas leader did not answer directly, but said: “The Palestinian government insists on June 4, 1967 borders (for Israel), full Palestinian sovereignty with Jerusalem as its capital.”
He was referring to the borders of the Israeli state before the 1967 war, which broke out on June 5 that year.
Mottaki said his government backed the Mecca accord.
“Iran supports this initiative, and it also supports any step toward achieving greater unity among Palestinians,” the foreign minister said.
Mashaal met President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday and was expected to meet the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei before he leaves the country.
He lives in exile in Damascus, Syria.
Iran had close ties with Israel when Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was in power.
However after the shah toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution, the new Iranian government broke ties with Israel and turned the former Israeli Embassy into a Palestinian embassy.
(2) Training – Begin New York Times Article from Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Daily Alert
Israel: Iran Is Training Hamas
Steven Erlanger
Yuval Diskin, the chief of the Israeli internal security service, said Monday that the Islamic movement
Hamas had sent dozens of men from Gaza to Iran for military training. “We know that Hamas has started to dispatch people to Iran, tens, and a promise of hundreds….I see this as the strategic danger, more than any weapons smuggled into Gaza.” Diskin also said that Fatah is continuing to fragment under weak leadership from Mahmoud Abbas, and would lose another election, if it were held now, to Hamas. “Fatah is disintegrated and nearly destroyed, with no strong leadership.”
Hamas, part of the larger Muslim Brotherhood, would never change its fundamental beliefs, he said, and he contended that Hamas’ offer of a long-term truce w
as intended to allow the movement to consolidate its control over the Palestinians and to mask a buildup of military armaments and power that would eventually be aimed at Israel. (New York Times)
(3) Improved Rockets – Begin DEBKAfile Article
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Improved Iranian surface missiles for Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami bring 250,000 more Israeli civilians within range
March 6, 2007, 3:14 PM (GMT+02:00)
According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the two missiles which reached the southern part of Ashkelon Tuesday, March 6, were range-finding exercises for the new weapons.
Their manufacturers, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, have overcome the snag which held the radius of Palestinian missiles down to 12-13 km from Gaza and upgraded it to 19 km. Another quarter of a million civilians are now threatened, the populations of the port-resort of Ashkelon, Netivot, Ofakim and the outskirts of Kiryat Gat, as well as important military bases in central Israel. Hamas and Jihad Islami, which took delivery of the new weapons, can now match Hizballah attacks on northern Israel with missile barrages against Israel’s Southwest and its central heartland.
Tehran, Hizballah, Hamas and Jihad Islami are making good use of the Israeli government’s compulsive activity in the fending off of domestic criticism for its performance in the Lebanon War of summer 2006 – and infighting in general. They are building up the Palestinian war machine gun by gun, missile by missile and bunker by bunker, unhindered by Israeli military intervention.
As the Olmert government’s negligence in preparing the north for the Lebanon war last summer unfolds, another quarter of a million Israelis find themselves unprotected in the face of the expanding Palestinian threat from Gaza. Olmert and his ministers have not delivered on pledges of generous allocations for protective measures and better shelters, especially for the schools of long- beleaguered Sderot.
Israelis living around the Gaza Strip are watching tensely as Hamas and Jihad Islami missile crews test-fire their new Iranian missiles, aware that their range and precision are improved.
For the moment, the Palestinian terrorist groups are only firing scattered missile volleys; they are not yet ready to let loose against Israeli targets for three reasons.
1. Hamas and Jihad Islami are not yet ready to show their hand; they therefore test-fire the new missiles from deep inside the Gaza so that they land harmlessly in the sand dunes outside Ashkelon. They know that as long as no one is hurt, the Israeli army is under orders to stand aside.
2. Their leaders do not want to provoke an Israeli invasion of Gaza at this time.
Neither has yet perfected its war preparations. More funding and arms consignments are awaited from Iran, to top up their military arsenal and complete their underground fortress. (See separate item on this page).
3. Hamas does not want to break up its unity negotiations with Fatah. Its leaders prefer to keep the talks going on a low fire to mask their war preparations; damaging missile attacks against an Israeli town would derail the process.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources add: Both Hamas and Fatah have admitted that their power-sharing talks serve merely to keep the lid on their disagreements, although the next armed clash is only a matter of time.
A Palestinian source told DEBKAfile: “The talks between (Palestinian Authority Chairman) Mahmoud Abbas and (Hamas prime minister) Ismail Haniyeh will go on desultorily until one side or the other feels strong enough to break away and resort to violence.
Those sources stress that, for the Palestinians, the first target for any violence is Israel – especially that now they have at last got hold of missiles which can reach deep inside Israel.
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