Terrorism

The P.A. is “prepared to hold general elections, and if Hamas wins, the president will hand over the Authority.”

Akiva Van Koningsveld

(JNS)

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority is prepared to hand over the reins to the Hamas terrorist organization after the war in Gaza ends, P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman told Al Arabiya over the weekend.

Once Israel’s ground operation against Hamas concludes, Ramallah is “prepared to hold general elections, and if Hamas wins, the president will hand over the [Palestinian] Authority,” P.A. spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh told the Saudi state-owned television outlet on Saturday.

Hamas’s popularity has surged in the wake of its massacre of some 1,200 people during its Oct. 7 attacks in the northwestern Negev. According to recent polls, most Palestinians believe that Hamas is “the most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people today.”

In a presidential runoff between Abbas and Doha-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the latter would receive 78% of the vote, with 51% saying they would vote for Hamas candidates if Abbas called a parliamentary election.

“The contacts with Hamas did not stop in Algeria, El-Alamein or anywhere else,” Abu Rudeineh told Al Arabiya, in reference to previous reconciliation talks held between Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas.

P.A. officials were in contact with Hamas terrorists as recently as last week, he added, without revealing details of the conversations.

However, “the main problem that we are all facing now is the war against the Palestinian people, the mass extermination and the attempt to destroy Jerusalem,” stressed Abu Rudeineh, calling on all Palestinians to rally behind the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.

Hamas hosted secret talks in Qatar last month with P.A. representatives about forging a political alliance, The Wall Street Journal reported. The negotiations included Haniyeh and former Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, as well as top Abbas confidant Hussein al-Sheikh.

The PLO umbrella

The Fatah Party is the ruling faction in the P.A., which controls Palestinian areas of Judea and Samaria. The envisioned Fatah-Hamas coalition would also include Gaza and fall under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Dec. 8 that the preferred outcome of the war against Hamas would be for the terrorist organization to join a P.A.-led governing body as a junior partner.

“If they are ready to come to an agreement, and really accept the political platform of the PLO, accept the tools of struggle, … there will be room for talks,” he said.

Hamas is an “essential part of the Palestinian political mosaic” and Israel’s stated goal of destroying the terrorist group is unacceptable, Shtayyeh subsequently declared.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of State has refused to rule out Hamas retaining power in Gaza or joining a P.A.-led governing body as part of a unity deal or following elections in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Antony Blinken has repeatedly declared that Gaza must be handed over to the P.A. after the war. The solution “must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the P.A.,” Blinken said on Nov. 8.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Dec. 3 insisted that the Biden administration seeks to back an authority that “has the support of all Palestinians so that they can effectively help with post-conflict governance, particularly in Gaza.”

Last month, Mashaal claimed that “sooner or later, the United States will argue that Hamas is a reality and enjoys legitimacy among the people.”

“Rebuilding the Palestinian political scene without Hamas is a move destined for failure, but we are ready for reorganization within the framework of the PLO as part of a national consensus,” Mashaal told France’s Le Figaro newspaper, speaking from his residence in Doha.

Image: P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas speaks at a Fatah meeting at the Palestinian Presidential Office in Ramallah, Dec. 18, 2019. Credit: Flash90.

Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38, were both featured earlier this week in a video released by the terror group.

(JNS)

Israeli hostages Yossi Sharabi and Itai Svirsky have died in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip, Kibbutz Be’eri announced on Tuesday night in Israel.

Sharabi, 53, and Svirsky, 38, were both featured earlier this week in a video released by the terror group. The clip concluded with what appeared to be two bodies Hamas claimed belonged to the hostages.

In the footage, fellow hostage Noa Argamani, 26, also appears on camera. “I was located in a building. It was bombed by an IDF airstrike, an F-16 fighter jet,” she appears to say in the recording. “Three rockets were fired. Two of the rockets exploded, and the other didn’t.”

“I was injured in my head. My head is full of shrapnel, and I have injuries to my body. Itai Svirsky and Yossi Sharabi died because of our own IDF airstrikes,” Argamani seems to add.

While Israeli officials denounced the propaganda video as psychological terror, the Israel Defense Forces contacted the families of the hostages and expressed concerns about their safety in Hamas captivity.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesman, said during a press conference on Monday that Israel had neither targeted nor attacked the building in which Sharabi and Svirsky were being held.

“This is a lie of Hamas,” Hagari insisted. “We do not attack a place where we know there may be hostages.”

Svirsky, a Tel Aviv resident with dual German-Israeli citizenship, was visiting his elderly parents at Kibbutz Be’eri for Shabbat and the Simchat Torah holiday on Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists launched the cross-border raid. Both of his parents were murdered by Hamas.

Yossi Sharabi, a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri, was last seen being taken to Gaza by Hamas terrorists on a pickup truck, along with his brother, 51-year-old Eli Sharabi. The younger Sharabi is still being held hostage in the coastal enclave.

Hamas kidnapped some 240 people during its invasion of the northwestern Negev, in which terrorists murdered around 1,200 civilians and soldiers. According to official figures, around 136 hostages remain in Gaza, although dozens are believed or confirmed to be dead.

An estimated 10% of the 1,100 residents who lived in Kibbutz Be’eri were killed in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks with an equal number of its residents kidnapped during the murder spree and infiltration of Israel’s southern border.

Image: Israeli hostages Yossi Sharabi (left) and Itai Svirsky died in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip. Source: Screenshot.

Palestinian terrorists in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley have killed five civilians and wounded many others since Oct. 7.

(JNS)

As the Israel Defense Forces battles Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the country’s Judea, Samaria and Jordan Valley regions are experiencing a parallel rise in terror incidents, according to data published by Rescuers Without Borders (Hatzalah Judea and Samaria) on Tuesday.

Between Oct. 7 and Jan. 15, Rescuers Without Borders first responders recorded more than 2,600 attacks targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers, including 760 cases of rock-throwing, 551 fire bombings, 12 attempted or successful stabbings and nine vehicular assaults.

Among the report’s findings was a sharp increase in the number of shootings, with 127 instances of gunfire reported over the past three months. By comparison, in all of 2022, Hatzalah recorded just under 100 shooting attacks.

The organization’s figures do not include the hundreds of violent attacks on security personnel occurring during counterterrorism operations in villages under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria have killed five Israelis and wounded many others since Oct. 7, according to Hatzalah.

Rescuers Without Borders was founded in 2000, at the beginning of the Second Intifada, with the goal of establishing a civilian emergency response infrastructure in remote parts of Judea and Samaria.

Last month, the IDF carried out a drill simulating an Oct. 7-style attack on Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, according to Hebrew reports.

The exercise was one of various scenarios the military is preparing for in Judea and Samaria following the invasion of southern Israel by Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip, in which 1,200 people were murdered, thousands more wounded and 240 kidnapped.

Meanwhile, in recent weeks, the IDF has been investigating possible infiltration tunnels Israeli forces discovered near Jewish communities in the Hebron Hills in Judea and Shiloh in Samaria’s Binyamin region.

Since Hamas launched its war against Israel, residents of the Binyamin region have reported an accumulation of artificial hills between Shiloh and Ofra, in a possible sign of heavy digging by Palestinians in the area.

The IDF has also been looking into complaints by residents of Bat Hefer, a village east of Netanya, of tunneling sounds coming from the direction of P.A.-controlled areas. Residents have reported heard tunneling originating from Shuweika, a satellite village of Tulkarm.

Image: An Israeli man was killed in a terrorist shooting along Route 465 in the Binyamin region of Samaria, Jan. 7, 2024. Credit: TPS.

The building where hostages Yossi Sharabi and Itai Svirsky were held was not attacked by Israel, IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said.

(JNS)

Israeli officials denounced a Hamas propaganda video, which claimed that two hostages whom the terror group holds captive in the Gaza Strip were killed in an Israeli Air Force strike, on Monday night as psychological terror.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israel Defense Forces spokesman, said during a press conference that Israel had not targeted nor attacked the building in which Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38, were held.

“This is a lie of Hamas,” Hagari insisted. “We do not attack a place where we know there may be hostages.”

Israeli jets attacked terror infrastructure near where Sharabi and Svirsky were held, leading Jerusalem to launch an investigation into Hamas’s claims about the two hostages’ fate, Hagari said.

The Israeli military contacted the families of the hostages and expressed concerns about their safety in Hamas captivity, per Hagari.

In footage that Hamas released on Monday evening, Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, 26, appears on camera. “I was located in a building. It was bombed by an IDF airstrike, an F-16 fighter jet,” she appears to say in the recording. “Three rockets were fired. Two of the rockets exploded, and the other didn’t.”

“I was injured in my head. My head is full of shrapnel and I have injuries to my body. Itai Svirsky and Yossi Sharabi died because of our own IDF airstrikes,” Argamani seems to add.

The video concludes with what appear to be two bodies that Hamas claims belong to the hostages.

JNS is not publishing the propaganda video.

On Sunday, Hamas released a “teaser” video showing Argamani, Sharabi and Svirsky apparently alive. “Tomorrow we will inform you of their fate,” it stated.

The video was the first sign of life from the three hostages since Oct. 7, some 100 days ago. It was not clear when that footage was captured. The two appear to introduce themselves and plead for the Israeli government to do everything possible to ensure their freedom.

Argamani was filmed being taken into Gaza after her abduction from the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im. “Don’t kill me! No, no, no,” she yells in the film, as she’s taken away on a motorcycle by Hamas terrorists, as terrorist gunmen push her boyfriend, Avi Nathan, around.

Hamas’s psychological warfare came on the 100th day of the war, which included a 24-hour rally in Tel Aviv organized by relatives of the hostages. Tens of thousands gathered with them at “Hostage Square” to demand their release.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated on Monday that only military pressure will secure the release of the hostages.

“If the fire stops, the fate of the hostages will be sealed for many years in the captivity of Hamas,” he said. “Without military pressure, no one will talk to us. Only from a position of strength can the hostages be freed.”

Gallant also announced an official end to heavy combat operations in northern Gaza. “The intensive maneuvering phase in the north of the Gaza Strip has ended, and in the south, it will also end soon,” the defense minister said.

Gallant’s statement came as the IDF’s largest regular-service armored division exited Gaza.

Soldiers of the 36th Armored Division, which includes the Golani Infantry Brigade and the 7th and 188th Armored Brigades, will be given a brief break from their service before they return for a period of training. The Israeli military will then decide whether and where to redeploy them.

Image: IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari briefs reporters in Tel Aviv, Oct. 16, 2023. Photo by Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90.

A three-man terror cell had infiltrated the Judea community of Adora; all three terrorists were killed by Israeli forces.

(JNS)

An Israel Defense Forces soldier was shot and moderately wounded on Friday in the Jewish community of Adora in Judea.

According to the military, a reservist guarding the community had responded to an alert in the community’s industrial zone.

“When the soldier arrived, he was hit by the terrorists’ gunfire,” the IDF said.

The victim, aged 34, sustained a bullet wound to the leg and was evacuated to the hospital fully conscious and in stable condition.

After a short manhunt, security forces tracked down and killed the three Palestinians, all of them teenagers with no prior security offenses.

Security forces found a M-16 rifle, several knives and fire bombs on the bodies of the terrorists.

“We have been warning about this scenario for several months already. Entire communities are located close to nests of terror, without sufficient security barriers,” said Yesha Council chairman and head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council Shlomo Ne’eman.

“There are unfenced communities without security elements, and we can’t always rely on miracles…. Therefore, the most important issue at the moment is to include the budget for security and reinforcement in Judea and Samaria in this year’s core budget,” he added.

Image: An Israel Defense Forces soldier was shot and moderately wounded during the infiltration by three Palestinian terrorists of the Jewish community of Adora, located in Judea, Jan. 12, 2024. Credit: TPS.