The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported Monday afternoon that the Islamic Jihad held a press conference warning that it would not agree to a truce with Israel while air strikes continue to kill Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“We will not agree on a ceasefire stipulated by Israel, neither do we accept a ceasefire while the lives of our people are taken without restraint,” Jihad officials told reporters in Gaza City.

Reportedly, Israeli air strikes have killed 23 Palestinians and wounded at least 80 since Friday, when Israel killed the leader of the Popular Resistance Committees who kidnapped Gilad Shalit.

The PRC’s armed wing, the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, on Monday expressed its support for Islamic Jihad’s stance. Brigades spokesman Abu Mujahid urged all other Palestinian factions to join forces to face the Israeli assaults on the Gaza Strip.

The Islamic Jihad says it has fired 80 Grad missiles and 100 other mortars and rockets into southern Israel since Friday, and pledged to continue fighting.

It is believed that as few as six Israelis have been hurt by rockets from Gaza.

Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar says Israel is interested in a ceasefire, and the IDF spokesman confirmed that Israel was in contact with Egyptian mediators. A Palestinian official close to the mediation told Reuters that Israel had agreed to a midnight ceasefire.

But the Islamic Jihad are insisting that any truce must include a commitment by Israel not to target terrorist leaders in future air strikes.

Many Militant Groups Claim Responsibility for Rocket Attackss

Several militants groups have claimed responsibility for firing rockets into southern Israel on Monday, according to the Palestinian Ma’an news agency, while the rocket count is up to 20. It appears that many are eager to be counted among today’s “heroes.”

Islamic Jihad’s military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, claimed responsibility for firing Grad missiles at Beer Sheva, Ashkelon and Ashdod on Monday morning.

The PRC’s military wing, the Nasser Saladin Brigades, said they had launched projectiles at Netivot, Ashkelon, Sderot and Beeri, while the PFLP’s armed wing, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, said it had fired two projectiles at Israeli towns.
The al-Ahrar movement claimed that its military wing, the al-Ansar Brigades, fired two homemade projectiles at southern Israel.

A military group called Jaysh al-Umma, army of the nation, said its’ fighters had fired two 107 mm rockets at Israeli towns.

Terrorists in Gaza fired 17 rockets at major Israeli population centers on Monday morning, primarily at Beersheba and Ashdod.  Seven of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, one exploded outside a kindergarten.

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The Israeli Air Force launched nine anti-terror strikes in Gaza overnight and into Monday morning, targeting Gaza operatives continuing to fire missiles at civilian targets in Israel’s south.  The Gaza-based Islamic Jihad has stated it is not considering a ceasefire and will continue to attempt to kill Israelis, as Israel has refused to agree to cease targeting terror leaders, according to Channel 2 news.

Islamic Jihad also reported that the IDF succeeded in neutralizing 3 more terrorists during the night in operations targeting weapons storage facilities and four rocket-launching sites.

Of the 17 rockets fired into Israel, 6 were launched at Ashdod, with 5 being intercepted by the Iron Dome, the 6th falling in an open area.  Two Grad missiles landed north of Beersheba and two were fired at Gan Yavneh.  One rocket exploded outside a kindergarten in Eshkol, bringing the 4-day total to approximately 170.

Twenty terrorists have been killed in ongoing operations.

122mm Grad missiles have a range of 25 miles (40 kilometers), enabling them to reach major Israeli cities such as Ashdod, Sderot, Ofakim, Gedera, Ashkelon, Rehovot, Kiryat Malachi, Kiryat Gat, Gan Yavne, Netivot and Beersheba, all of which experienced another day of school cancellation by the Home Front Command.  Approximately 1 million Israelis – over 13% of the total national population – are estimated to be in the affected vicinities.  Israelis in those areas are being asked to stay close to reinforced shelters, and to stay indoors as much as possible.

The IDF posted video on YouTube of citizens in shelters as the Iron Dome missile defense system deployed against a missile launched at Beersheba.

On a tour of southern Israel on Sunday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu promised citizens that “we will continue to hit whoever plans to attack citizens of the State of Israel,” adding that home front defense would also be enhanced. Speaking at a ceremony welcoming Italian Defense Minister Giampaolo di Paola to Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that “those who attack our civilians will be punished,” and vowed that “the IDF will continue to protect Israeli citizens and will strike all those who rise to attack us.”  IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz postponed a trip this week to the US due to the situation.

Targeted missile launches against Israeli civilians began Friday after an IAF air strike killed two Arab terror leaders from the Popular Resistance Committee who were planning an attack on Israel via the border with Egypt – senior terror leader Zuhir Mussah Ahmed Kaisi and accomplice Mahmoud Ahmed Mahmoud Hanani.

According to the IDF, terrorist retaliatory attacks are being launched from Beit Lahiya, Jabaliya, Rafah, Gaza City, and El-Bureij.

Who says there are no peace talks going on in the Middle East?

The peace process is underway in the Middle East, but not between Israel and the Palestinians. The only peace talks that are taking place these days are between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Abbas has chosen to talk to the enemies of peace who want to destroy Israel and replace it with an Iranian-backed Islamist state. On the one hand, he says he supports the two-state solution. On the other hand, however, he is seeking to form an alliance with all those who are vehemently opposed to the two-state solution.

Just last week Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, during a high-profile visit to his friends in Tehran, reiterated his wish to “liberate Palestine from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. Those who think that Hamas and Islamic Jihad would ever recognize the right of a Jewish state to exist are engaged in self-deception and are living in a world of fantasy.

Abbas spent the past few days in Egypt negotiating with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other radical Palestinian groups that are strongly opposed to any peace process with Israel. He held lengthy talks with Hamas’s Khaled Mashaal and Islamic Jihad’s Ramadan Shallah about ways of achieving “national reconciliation and unity” among Palestinians.

The peace talks between Abbas and the radicals will not bring about a two-state solution. This is a dangerous process that will facilitate Hamas’s takeover of the Palestinian Authority, whether through violence or free elections.

Abbas is working hard to convince the radical Palestinian groups to agree to the formation of a Palestinian unity government under his leadership. He seems to be naive enough to think that Hamas or Islamic Jihad or the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine will change their ideologies and strategies and abandon their dream of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.

Some Westerners also appear to be naive enough to support Abbas’s peace process with radicals and terrorists. This is the same Abbas who for the past few years has refused to sit and talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas prefers to talk to Muslim fundamentalists instead of negotiating with Israel about achieving peace in the region.

But Abbas’s peace process with the radicals will only embolden Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This is a peace process that will eventually lead to the creation of a Palestinian government or state that would be controlled by Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Muslim Brotherhood.

If the US and EU want peace, they should be urging Abbas to negotiate with Israel, not with those who openly call for the destruction of another state and have aligned themselves with Iran.

If Abbas truly wanted a two-state solution, he would be negotiating with Israel. By preferring to negotiate with the enemies of peace, Abbas is sending a message that he, too, does not want a two-state solution.

 

Originally published by Stonegate Institute www.stonegateinstitute.org

Much fanfare has surrounded Khader Adnan, a self-described leader of Islamic Jihad, currently on a hunger strike against his administrative detention in an Israeli prison. He has predictably become the newest pop-cause for the ‘blame Israel first’ movement by virtue of the simple fact that he is a Palestinian incarcerated in Israel; but his hunger-strike has turned him into a veritable celebrity. The Arab media has compared him to  Mohandas Gandhi; the who’s who of so-called human right organizations have offered their condemnations -  including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as Israel’s own B’tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel; and solidarity marches for Adnan have been held in New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C. Adnan’s celebrity status was confirmed when British newspapers the Independent and the Guardian dedicated in-depth pieces to him, glorifying him as a political prisoner. And Catherine Ashton, EU foreign affairs chief, provided the stamp of official credibility by chiming in as well.

But who IS Khader Adnan? Although his ‘plight’ is well-documented, mainstream media articles have provided little in the way of his past, and the possible reasons for his incarceration in the first place, save for a few obligatory sentences providing context. To those that support Adnan, or more accurately – oppose Israel, what he did is essentially immaterial, and the mere fact that he is being detained by Israel is proof of his innocence and Israeli injustice.

Is Khader Adnan merely a baker and post-graduate student, or something more?

And so, it would probably not move these people to know that, contrary to the narrative engendered by his wife and picked up by the mainstream media, he is not an innocuous economics graduate who runs a bakery. Yes, he has tenure, but it is as a member of the Islamic Jihad, currently the most active and dedicated anti-Israel genocidal terrorist organization.

Despite his wife’s fierce denials of Adnan’s role in Islamic Jihad, or in any militant activities, his own statements flatly contradict this narrative. He is a self-described leader of Islamic Jihad, and has taken the initiative in calling for terror attacks against Israel. He has held this position for at least 6 years: on June 8, 2005, the Boston Globe identified Adnan as an “Islamic Jihad spokesman,” quoted him repudiating any sort of cease fire with Israel, and urging all Palestinian terror groups to resume fighting with Israel. In the same article he lambasted the PA, and said the period of calm negotiated by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas “is now in its last days”; in a first person interview with al Jazeera in 2005 he said, “we, the PA and all the Palestinian people are in one trench, which is the resistance trench and targeting the Zionist enemy”; and to dispel any doubts that he may have reformed his ways, he was recently described by an Arab news source as “Sheikh Khadar Adnan, the political leader of Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine” (Uruknet, http://www.uruknet.info/?new=85772, 16/2/2012).

For those hailing him as a hero, the fact that Adnan has a lengthy rap sheet that transcends jurisdictional boundaries is a minor detail that need only be glossed over; besides the half-dozen times he has been detained by Israeli authorities for terror-related offenses, Adnan has also been arrested by the Palestinian Authority (as reported by Ma’an news agency and the BBC on September 30, 2010).

Not his first Hunger Strike

Moreover, this is not Adnan’s first hunger strike. He is apparently a skilled propagandist, with an established MO. His first hunger strike though, was not as successful, at least in garnering the international media attention that he and his ilk crave, and this is because it took place in a Palestinian Authority jail. Belying any sense of impartiality and revealing the politicized agenda of human rights groups and the mainstream media alike, no international outcry accompanied his hunger strike, and no international outrage was directed at the Palestinian leadership; not a word from Catherine Ashton, no solidarity marches across the globe, and no front-page exposure. The only protest was confined to a proverbial back page blurb: a condemnation by The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which for some reason remained a kind of internal memo.

Suicide Protester

Despite his record and his declarations,  and despite the fact that Israel has detained him for threatening regional security, Adnan has been hailed as enduring the longest hunger strike in Palestinian history. Islamic Jihad, infamous for its bloody history of suicide bombings and unrelenting war on Israel, has managed to seize on the opportunity to activate its first suicide protester, promising to attack Israel if Adnan dies.

Only in an Israeli jail could Adnan’s myth be nurtured and his persona hailed as a perverse kind of celebrity, with an eager audience collaborating to transform a terrorist into a hero. Nevertheless, the chorus of self-righteous voices wailing indignantly against Israel cannot and should not drown out the legality and morality of Adnan’s detention. Who is Khadar Adnan? A ranking member of a terrorist organization that has encouraged and overseen the murder of Israelis, and he is now trying to divert attention and pervert justice with the help of the usual suspects.

The Israel Air Force launched an airstrike against terror groups in Gaza Tuesday night, killing three jihadists and wounding at least 11 others.

The attack took place in coordination with Shin Bet security forces and eliminated Abdullah Talibani, an agent of Islamic Jihad’s violent al-Quds Brigades in his 20s, and two terrorists who attempted to sneak into Israel from along the Egyptian border – Rami Douad Jabber Kafarna, a 27 year old Hamas militant who had taken part in launching rockets into Israel, and Hazam Hohammed Sa’adi Al-Shakar, a 26 year old Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighter responsible for munitions storage in Gaza.

Some of the injured were taken to Amal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.

Terror groups responded to the attack by attempting to fire a Kassam rocket into the western Negev. Israel’s “color red” alert system was initiated in the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council, but the rocket did not make it to Israel, exploding instead in Gaza.  Army radio reported that the IDF is preparing for possible rocket attacks in response to the IAF attack in Gaza.

In a statement, the IDF Spokesman said, “The IDF will not tolerate attempts to harm Israeli citizens or IDF soldiers and will continue to operate strongly and decisively against anyone who uses terrorism against Israel.” It also held Hamas responsible for all terror activity out of Gaza.

Gaza Jihadists fired two short-range rockets into Israel on Sunday and Monday.  No damage was reported, and no one claimed responsibility for the attacks.

      A second security source added President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters in the Islamic theocracy could come out stronger and more authoritarian than ever if they successfully quell the protests and subsequently continue to stand up to the international community’s attacks on its nuclear program.

 

Islamic Jihad Suffering From Iran Protests

 

      One Islamic Jihad source told this column, “Hamas replied that if they help with money, it comes with strings.”

 

Hamas Denies Iran Involvement

 

      Multiple reports in Israeli and German newspapers this week quoted witnesses in Iran claiming Hamas was behind attacks on protesters there.

 

 

Alleged Carter Note Bypasses

Clinton’s Conditions

 

   Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.com. He appears throughout the week on leading U.S. radio programs and is the author of the book “The Late Great State of Israel.” Follow Klein on Twitter under the name “AaronKleinWND.”

Israeli media have portrayed the assassinated planner of this month’s Jerusalem shooting massacre as a member of the Islamic Jihad terror group – yet he is a well-known activist from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah organization.

Muhammad Shehadi was identified by security officials here as the planner of the terrorist shooting in which eight yeshiva students were murdered.

Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s leading daily, identified Shehadi as “an Islamic Jihad operative,” who planned the shooting. Haaretz reported that Shehadi was “the commander of Islamic Jihad in the Bethlehem area,” and was killed along with “two other Islamic Jihad members.” Israel’s Channel 2 also identified Shehadi as Islamic Jihad.

None of the Israeli media reports described Shehadi as working for Fatah.

While Shehadi temporarily worked for Islamic Jihad, he is a known Fatah member who ran unsuccessfully in the 2006 Palestinian elections as a local Fatah legislator from Bethlehem.

According to senior security officials speaking to WorldNetDaily, Shehadi was killed after the Israeli military received intelligence he was scheduled to attend a Fatah congress planning session in Bethlehem. Shehadi was killed along with Ahmed Dalbul, a Bethlehem-area leader of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah’s declared military wing.

According to Palestinian security officials, Shehadi worked for Islamic Jihad for about six months after losing the 2006 election as a Fatah leader. He later switched back to Fatah.

Palestinian Authority minister and Fatah Legislative Council member Qadura Fares told WND in an interview that “of course he was Fatah. We were even in jail together as Fatah members.”

Fares was among a delegation of nine Fatah members who visited the Shehadi family’s mourning tent in Bethlehem. Others included Kamal Hassouneh, the PA economic minister, and Azzam el-Ahmad, a PA parliament member and a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council. Fadwa Barghouti, wife of imprisoned Fatah leader and intifada architect Marwan Barghouti, was also present.

According to a Fatah source in the mourning tent, the Fatah delegation promised to rebuild the Shehadi family home after Israel bulldozed the house immediately following the Jerusalem shooting attack.

Prime Minister Olmert’s government has been holding regular negotiations with Abbas’s officials, in line with last November’s U.S.-backed Annapolis Summit, which seeks to create a Fatah-led Palestinian state by the end of 2008.

U.S. Weapons Used Against Israel

A Hamas official told WND that the group had used U.S. weapons against the Israeli military this past weekend. The weapons were seized last June when Hamas took complete control of the Gaza Strip, overtaking all U.S.-backed security compounds in the territory associated with Abbas’s Fatah party.

“We fired at incoming Israeli helicopters using the seized weapons. We will continue to balance the equilibrium of terror with the Zionists,” said Hamas spokesman Abu Oubeida.

Last Friday, Hamas gunmen used mounted heavy machine guns to fire at Israeli helicopters that were attacking a cell of terrorists attempting to launch Kassam rockets into Israel. Hamas claimed they struck one helicopter.

The IDF confirmed that a helicopter was fired at on Friday and returned to its base outside the Gaza Strip, but the army would not state whether the chopper was hit or whether it sustained any damage.

The U.S. has reportedly transferred large quantities of weaponry to Fatah forces in order to bolster Fatah against rival Hamas. Hamas officials repeatedly told WND that they intended to seize the American weapons.

Yosef Son Breaks Ranks

In unprecedented criticism of his father, the son of the spiritual leader of the Shas party demanded that the party immediately leave the government amid media reports that the division of Jerusalem is up for negotiation.

Shas is a major coalition partner in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government. Rabbi Jacob Yosef accused the ultra-Orthodox Shas party of “selling Jerusalem” for 478 million Israeli shekels, or $138 million.

Yosef’s father, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, serves as the spiritual leader of Shas, where he is also considered the party’s more important and revered figure.

Earlier this month, the Knesset’s Finance Committee approved $138 million in government funds to Shas’s educational institutions as part of the party’s coalition agreement with Olmert.

“How dare you sell out Jerusalem for 478 million shekels. Jerusalem is worth more than all monies in the world,” exclaimed Jacob Yosef, rabbi of the Givat Mordechai neighborhood in Jerusalem, addressing his father’s party.

The Israeli Shas party has stated it would bolt the prime minister’s coalition if it becomes clear the Israeli government is negotiating to cede of any part of Jerusalem.

Abbas, meanwhile, has repeatedly stated that Jerusalem is being negotiated, while Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has said that “all core issues” are being discussed.

Yosef accused his father’s party of staying in the government until a formal announcement regarding dividing Jerusalem is made – by which time, the rabbi said, it will be too late.

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief  for WorldNetDaily.com. He appears throughout the week on leading U.S. radio programs and is the author of the recently published book “Schmoozing with Terrorists.”