Jerusalem – Residents of Gaza, on the day following a night of widespread arrests, tried to recover. Hamas shut down 60 Fatah institutions, including those belonging to the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) and charity institutions indirectly belonging to other organizations.

Since Friday’s explosion in the car of senior Hamas figure Khalil al-Haya near the Gaza beach – an explosion that caused the deaths of five Hamas militiamen and a six-year old girl – over 200 arrests have been made in the Gaza Strip. Hamas blamed Fatah for blowing up the car, launching a manhunt.

Palestinian sources in Gaza described Friday’s incident as a “work accident”

“The explosive charge was in the private vehicle of senior Hamas figure Khalil al-Haya, the vehicle left his home in the direction of the sea, to a particular area of the coast known as Istirahat al-Hilal, which only Hamas members enter. Mr. al-Haya’s house in Gaza is considered a fortified outpost,” the sources say. “There is no way that anyone from Fatah could have entered the house of the senior figure, certainly not with an explosive charge that would be placed in the vehicle that the Hamas militiamen were traveling in.”

The long list of detainees and closed institutions, a Palestinian source said, were part of an orderly plan of action by Hamas.

“Such a large number of arrests in such a short time is an operation that even the [Israel Defense Forces] could not carry out,” he said. “This was planned in advance; there were lists of institutions and senior members of Fatah including their locations.”

Palestinian sources say Hamas had intended to carry this plot in Jan. 2009 when Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ current term ends. On Jan. 5, the sources allege, Hamas had intended to declare Mr. Abbas an irrelevant figure without authority. If the operation had been carried out in Jan., it would have been interpreted as a coup. Hamas exploited Friday’s incident to carry out its scheme under the guise of a response to a military incident.

In the course of the arrests, Hamas and members of the Army of Islam, a radical religious organization that competes for the support of the believers on the Islamic street, exchanged fire.

Filastin, a newspaper affiliated with Hamas, reported three Army of Islam members were caught trying to cross the border into Egypt and were arrested on suspicion of involvement in planning the explosion. In response to Hamas’ arrests in the Gaza Strip, Fatah responded with arrests in Judea and Samaria, detaining 40 Hamas sympathizers, including the mufti of the Tulkarm district, who works at An-Najah University in Nablus.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com. His Web site is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com

©The Bulletin 2008

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Previous articleA Sderot delegation visits the Knesset: A Knesset Lobby for Sderot in Formation
Next articleIsraeli Legislators Confront The UN
David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR