Israeli security officials said that the Islamic resistance movement Hamas has decided to reduce the number of attacks it makes, especially inside the 1967 Green Line border, Israel Radio reported Friday, cited by Haaretz.
The security sources said that “Hamas regarded Arafat’s ceasefire declaration as a tactical move only, and it is convinced that [Palestinian President Yasser] Arafat will soon give the group a green light to act freely."
Israel accuses Arafat of agreeing to Hamas’s suicide attacks, but the PA official stance is that it is against the killing of civilians, whether Israelis or Palestinians.
According to the report, Hamas commanders do not want to confront Arafat because a confrontation would damage the status of Hamas among Palestinians and would force Arafat to take action against the organization’s infrastructure.
Since the outbreak of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict last September, Reuters reports that Palestinians have killed approximately 88 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. The latest suicide bombing raises that toll by at least 20. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to CNN, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 450 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s. The most recent Israeli tank attack raises that death toll to at least 453.
According to Amnesty International, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children.
In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
