Twelve Jordanian parliamentarians have cancelled a planned visit to Gaza on security grounds.

The lawmakers traveled last week to Cairo, expecting to enter Gaza via the Rafah border crossing in a “solidarity” move following this summer’s Operation Protective Edge. Also on the agenda were planned meetings with leaders of Hamas and other terrorist groups.

On Saturday, however, they announced they were turning around and heading back to Jordan without having visited Gaza.

“The Egyptian authorities have informed us that the security situation in Sinai is very dangerous, especially the area between Rafah and Al-Arish, which makes it difficult for us to reach the border with the Gaza Strip,” said Jordanian delegation head Yehya Al-Saud. He added that the Egyptian government asked the group to postpone its visit out of concern for “the safety of its members,” saying they “wouldn’t be able to guarantee our safety.”

A second delegate, Khamis Attiyeh, said “We are all very sad because of the cancellation of our visit due to the situation.”

One Palestinian Authority Arab was killed and two others were wounded Saturday in clashes with Egyptian soldiers near Rafah, according to Arab sources. A group of Gazans emerged from a smuggling tunnel on the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza, according to the report. Egyptian officers opened fire after the group ignored calls to surrender, and instead attempted to re-enter the tunnel and escape back into Gaza. Egyptian security has been on high alert after receiving intelligence about planned attacks through the tunnels.

Last week six Egyptian police officers were killed and two more were wounded last week when a roadside bomb exploded in northern Sinai on the road between Rafah and the provincial capital, El Arish. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, a terror group linked to Al Qaeda, has taken responsibility for similar past attacks, claiming it is avenging the blood of Islamists killed and detained in the government’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood organization.

In the past month several people have been beheaded in the Sinai Peninsula. The victims were murdered for allegedly collaborating with Israel. They were killed by Ansar Beit al-Maqdis terrorists.

Ten armed Hamas security men robbed a “Bank of Palestine” branch in the Rimael neighborhood of Gaza City on Wednesday, according to Khaled Abu Toameh.

Fatah (Palestinian Authority) sources said the Hamas terrorists made off with $750,000.

They specifically confiscated money belonging to the Jawwal Cellular Communications Company, claiming the company owed taxes to Hamas.

Jawwal was the first Cellular firm set up in the Palestinian Authority, in 1999.

Hamas appears determined to sabotage the shaky Palestinian Authority unity government to which it belongs. Hamas spokesperson Mahmoud al-Zahar said Wednesday that Palestinian Authority unity government chairman Mahmoud Abbas is not the group’s legitimate leader.

Zahar, who co-founded Gaza’s ruling terrorist organization, is a member of the Hamas leadership.

Hamas is a member of what is supposed to be a Palestinian Authority coalition government together with Fatah, the faction led by Abbas, who also is chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Abbas is the only person authorized to advocate for PA Arabs at the United Nations and in any international arena.

But speaking in an interview with Lebanon’s Al Akhbar, Zahar charged that the unity government has been a failure. He scored Abbas for going to the media with accusations that Hamas is running a “shadow government” in Gaza.

Hamas has refused to place control of security and other various ministries under the authority of the unity government, Abbas said.

“Fatah lost the legitimacy to represent the Palestinian people after the (2006) elections,” Zahar told the newspaper. “Abu Mazen (Abbas) is not a legitimate or agreed-upon president. He is a president because there is no other choice.”

Elections have yet to be held in the Palestinian Authority, although the unity agreement mandated polls six months after the government was formed. In the wake of this summer’s Gaza war and the repeated violations of cease-fires by Hamas, Abbas has refused to hold the elections.

“According to our information, Abbas fears the results of the election,” Zahar said in the interview. He added that no further talks or permission was needed for Hamas to go ahead with its plans to build an airport or seaport in Gaza, regardless of the cease-fire deal that mandated negotiations over the issue.

If we decide to build an airport and Israel responds by attacking it, then we will attack [Israel’s] airport in return,” he said.

On Sunday, one of our bloggers, JoeSettler, first reported on a human smuggling ring that helps smuggle Gazans out of Gaza and into Europe, via the Sinai and Egypt.

In the past week, three boats carrying hundreds of Gazans, as well as some Syrian refugees sunk on the way to Italy.

One Gazan survivor reported that their boat was deliberately sunk by rival Egyptian human traffickers.

Today, Israel’s Reshet Bet reports that Fatah (the Palestinian Authority) is claiming that Hamas runs the Gazan side of this human trafficking ring, charging between $2000 to $3500 for each person they allow out.

Gazans are in shock over the loss of their family members.

Today, the Palestinian Authority radio listed off the names of 90 Gazans who disappeared this past week trying to escape from Gaza to Europe.

Hundreds of more people are still missing.

In response, Hamas said the smuggling ring to Europe has always existed, and they arrested some people involved in it.

Internal Arab polls indicate that at least 70% of Gazans want to leave Gaza for good. The Europeans must take the moral step to help these people leave safely to European shores.

The Palestinian Authority unity government is falling apart over the issue of who should pay the back salaries of Hamas civil service workers.

Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization stopped paying its workers months ago, instead diverting funds to weapons development, tunnel building and other war mongering activities. Nor are they paying them now.

As late as three weeks ago Hamas terrorists were still summarily executing numerous Gaza civilians they believed may have been collaborating with Israel, usually after quickie kangaroo court trials — if any at all.

When the unity government deal was signed last spring, Hamas assumed the new administration would take over all the debts. But Ramallah-based Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman and rival Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is refusing to pay the bills until Hamas is willing to allow the unity government to actually govern the workers – and Gaza.

Moreover, in order to take on the current expenses of a unity government, — which he heads — Abbas says the administration must function as one entity. In addition, the 50-day counter terror Operation Protective Edge launched by Israel in Gaza this summer has exacerbated problems faced by the new government.

Cleaning staff in Gaza began a strike three days ago after going without salaries for the past five months, the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency reported. On Wednesday, Nabil Abu Aqlein spoke on behalf of Al Shifa hospital employees, saying cleaning staff in all Gaza hospitals would remain on strike until they are paid. Some 170 workers are currently on partial strike.

“If cleaning staff quit working there will be a disaster, and disease will spread throughout all hospitals,” Abu Aqlein pointed out, urging Abbas to intervene to resolve the crisis.

But Abbas won’t even enter the region, let alone intervene in a local financial crunch, until the issue of ‘who’s governing what’ is resolved.

“We will not retain partnerships with Hamas unless it accepts one arm, one legitimacy and one decision in the Palestinian territories,” Abbas told reporters. As a matter of fact, not even Abbas can safely enter Gaza at this point without bodyguards. Even then, his security is still at risk.

Abbas insists the unity government retain independent control over security and weapons. Hamas has not agreed. Gaza-based Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zukhri, called the demand “unjustified and unreasonable.”

The Hamas spokesperson told journalists that a meeting to discuss these issues has been set between Hamas and Fatah in the next few days, but “Fatah refuses to sit with Hamas in Gaza; it prefers the meeting be held in Egypt.”

The friendly soccer game between Israeli and Palestinian Authority youth and organized last week by the Peres Center for Peace was “a normalization in sports with the Zionist enemy [and] a crime against humanity,” said Jibril Rajoub,, a senior Fatah official and head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and the Palestinian Football Association.

Rajoub, besides being secretary of the central committee of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas’ party, he also is chairman of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and the Palestinian Football Association.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) translated and published Rajoub’s remarks that he posted on his Facebook page this week.

“The Palestinian sports leadership and community – the Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs, the Palestinian Olympic Committee and the Palestinian Football Association – have opposed such activities,” he wrote. ”Normalization in sports with the Zionist occupation is a crime,” and he demanded that “all individuals and institutions distance themselves from such activities, especially because their recurrence would arouse disgust and aversion towards all members of the [Palestinian] sports community.”

Rajoub’s comments were published today (Monday) by Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and were opposite in tone from an AFP report that was published by the Palestinian Authority daily and which reported, “After a summer of brutal war, destruction and fatalities, Palestinian and Israeli children met on Monday [last week] to participate in football matches a few kilometers from the devastated Gaza Strip….

“The Israeli children came from communities located near the besieged Gaza Strip, while the Palestinian children came from Yatta,” which for some reason AFP reported in Gaza but actually is immediately south of Hebron.

“Many of the children had already played in previous tournaments organized by the Peres Center for Peace, which is run by former Israeli President Shimon Peres,” the article stated. It added, “Qusai, 11, said, ‘I love it when we play together like this. I hope that one day there will be peace between Arabs and Jews and that there will be no more wars and death.’”

PMW also translated and published a comment in another PA news agency by Palestinian Olympic Committee member Abd Al-Salam Haniyeh, who denounced the soccer game as “a crime and an unpatriotic and immoral act” and demanded that Rajoub “immediately interrogate the organizers of the match, settle the account with them and prosecute them on charges of serious treason against the blood of the Martyrs and in violation of the decisions made by the Palestinian sports community’s leadership.”

Even more revealing of the two-faced character of Abbas’ party is that the leadership of the “peace partner’s” Fatah movement branch in Yatta held “an urgent meeting to discuss the ramifications of the normalization matches” and “strongly condemned” the event, according to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency.

Fatah branch secretary Dr. Kamal Makhamreh said that the participation in the match “was an individual act, conceived by sick souls that agreed to be humiliated for a handful of money,” and he “urged the residents to supervise their children and distance them from these kinds of activities, which damage our cause.”

The attorney general on Wednesday reiterated Israel’s ban on flying the flag of terrorist organizations. It is against the law to fly a flag from the Hezbollah, Hamas or Islamic State terrorist organizations. For that matter, it’s also against the law to fly the flag of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as well.

It’s a practice often seen at rallies and demonstrations held at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City on Fridays and elsewhere when things are heating up and Arab leaders are deliberately agitating to stir up a peaceful crowd into a rioting mob against Israel.

Some slack has been allowed in recent years, however, particularly in cases of flying the flag of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO. The ruling was transmitted in a letter Wednesday by aides in the office of Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to staff members in the Justice Ministry.

In Weinstein’s opinion, “The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was declared a terror organization many years ago and that designation has never been changed. Technically, flying the PLO flag is a crime, as that ws legislated when the PLO was declared a terror group.

“Given the new relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which represents the PLO, the Attorney General has for many years overlooked the criminal aspects of flying the PLO flag, and no one is persecuted for this anymore,” the letter states.

“With that, there is no overall protection for flying the flag of terror groups, which is still a crime.”

The law against flying the flag of terrorist organizations, the letter states, must still be enforced against other terror groups, including the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), Hezbollah and Hamas.

“When such flags and symbols are displayed police must judge whether there is a possibility of public disorder or disturbance, or danger to the public. If there is, police should take steps to remove the flags,” the letter continues.

“In appropriate cases, charges may be made against perpetrators.

“We have recently distributed these instructions to police and security officials and expect them to act in accordance with these principles.”