Hamas’ aims at border fence exposed
The rioting crowds have dispersed, but Israel’s border with Gaza was still under attack this week, as terrorists breached the fence.
THE rioting crowds have dispersed, but Israel’s border with Gaza was still under attack this week, as terrorists breached the fence.
The border has calmed since the March of Return came to a head last week, with violent clashes that left around 62 Palestinians dead.
Internationally, claims that Israeli forces overreacted, and that Palestinians were protesting peacefully, are spiralling. But the IDF says that the events of Tuesday show that the border is under threat now, and was under threat last week.
“A short while ago, a number of terrorists infiltrated into Israel and set a military post on fire,” the IDF announced on Tuesday afternoon. In response, an Israeli tank targeted a Hamas observation post in the southern Gaza Strip.
Israel said all through Hamas’ march that it wasn’t a peaceful protest but rather a riot where civilian protectors were used as cover for militants to get close to the border to breach it or carry out attacks.
But since the bloodiest day of the march last Monday, Hamas has changed its tune and indicated that militants were actually at the centre of things. Meanwhile, the IDF has taken the international media to task, saying that Hamas lied and, “much of the world simply fell for it.”
Salah Bardawil, a top Hamas official, acknowledged in an interview that 50 of the estimated 62 Palestinians killed were Hamas members.
The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre said that the claim was “exceptional because until now Hamas has tried to obscure or hide its central role in the ‘great return march,’ which has been falsely represented as a popular initiative.”
On Monday, IDF spokesman Ronen Manelis quoted Bardawil’s figure, and other information, in a scathing article in the Wall Street Journal where he suggested that the world had been duped by Hamas.
He wrote that calling the gatherings in Gaza a protest is the “biggest lie of all” because there is no freedom to demonstrate in Gaza — it was just a Hamas-orchestrated show where Hamas brought in civilians as “extras, paying $14 a person or $100 a family for attendance—and $500 if they managed to get injured.”
He also noted a speech last month by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s stating the aim of the protests was to “tear down their border and tear out their hearts”.
Manelis argued that Israeli forces acted with “courage and restraint,’ and stated: “Some of Israel’s greatest friends might have preferred that we had looked better in the media this past week, but between vanity and truth, the IDF always chooses truth.”
Meanwhile, a senior member of Hamas said that when his organisation discusses “peaceful resistance, we are deceiving the public”.
Discussing the border clashes, Mahmoud al-Zahar told Al Jazeera earlier this month, “This is not peaceful resistance. Has the option [of armed struggle] diminished? No. On the contrary, it is growing and developing. That’s clear. So when we talk about ‘peaceful resistance,’ we are deceiving the public.”
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council has published a translation of a post from a Palestinian Facebook page which suggested that Hamas had told protestors to arrive armed and even ready for a kidnapping.
According to AIJAC the post, which is no longer online, told Gazans to “bring a knife, a dagger or a gun” which should stay concealed until soldiers or “settlers” are identified. It then urges: “Do not kill Israeli civilians, instead deliver him immediately to the resistance [Hamas], because that is the point that Israel is afraid of, because she knows that the kidnapper can demand what he wants.”
In Palestinian media, journalists are ramping up anger against Israel and America, citing the Gaza events and the opening of the new US embassy.
One article in the official Palestinian Authority Al-Hayat Al-Jadida claimed that Gaza’s “enemies and the robbers of the land and the homeland are vampires who are shepherded by a rebellious cowboy.” This was a reference to Donald Trump.
The paper told Gazans that “the moron Trump and his staff who are obsessed with Armageddon – sprinkle your pure blood over their putrid heads that are contaminated with the conduct of capitalists, that are mired in the bog of robbing the peoples and planting the satanic Zionist plant in the inhabited home and homeland.”
NATHAN JEFFAY
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