Word: israels
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When Canadian businessman Sam Ismail brought his wife and five children to visit his brother's family in Ramallah last week, he planned to stay for 10 days and tour both Israel and the Palestinian territories. They had flown into Amman, crossed over to the West Bank. Knowing that Palestinian Authority license plates are banned in Israel, Ismail reserved a car at an Israeli rental company. But, when he got to Israeli border control, he was shocked to discover that his Canadian passport was stamped "Palestinian Authority Only." "Last time they came, they visited Acre, Haifa, Jerusalem - the whole country...
...emirate." Hamas security men moved in to disarm the group, and 24 people, including Moussa and about 20 of his followers, were killed in the ensuing firefight. Their group, Jund Ansar Allah, claimed inspiration from al-Qaeda, and condemned Hamas both for maintaining a cease-fire with Israel and for its failure to impose Islamic Shari'a law after taking full control of Gaza in 2007. It had mounted small-scale attacks on rivals inside Gaza, and two months ago failed in a bizarre cavalry charge by mounted fighters against Israeli border guards. Following the Rafah showdown, the fringe group...
...precisely that more pragmatic strain in Hamas that has often infuriated al-Qaeda leaders. Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has savagely and repeatedly condemned Hamas for participating in elections, for accepting Saudi and Egyptian mediation of its conflict with Fatah, and for observing a cease-fire with Israel. Hamas officials routinely dismiss al-Qaeda's criticisms. Hamas' Beirut representative Osama Hamdan two years ago suggested that "a fugitive in the Afghan mountains" offered the Palestinian cause no advice worth heeding. Also in 2007, when a self-styled "Army of Islam" claiming inspiration from al-Qaeda kidnapped BBC reporter...
...jihadist group is a warning to all potential rivals that Hamas will tolerate no challenge to its authority in Gaza. But it also signals that as long as Hamas maintains a cease-fire, it is willing and able to forcibly restrain others in the Strip from launching attacks on Israel...
...They were bolstered, according to Palestinian observers, by jihadist elements from other Arab countries, taking advantage of the widespread despair and frustration in Gaza brought on by the ongoing economic siege. While Hamas is currently enforcing the cease-fire it adopted seven months ago at the close of Israel's Gaza invasion, the economic siege remains largely in place - although if Egyptian-mediated negotiations over the fate of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit are successfully resolved, that might prompt Israel to ease the pressure...