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Palestinian Arabs

Senior IDF officer: Gaza a boiling pot


By Stan Goodenough
July 19, 2007

In August 2005, following years of intense pressure by the international community, Israel's once great warrior, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, forcefully drove 9,000 Jews out of their Gaza Strip homes and towns, surrendering the land to the Palestinian Arabs.

Instead of seizing the opportunity to build a state for themselves, Gaza's Arabs rapidly converted the abandoned land into terrorist-central.

Rockets aimed at killing, maiming and terrorizing Jews flew in ever increasing numbers out of Gaza, while weapons and explosives in ever greater quantities poured into the now unpoliced area.

Terrorist training camps were erected on the demolished Jewish settlements, and the work of building a large terrorist force got seriously underway.

Four weeks ago, the Hamas terrorist group kicked PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah terrorist group out of Gaza and took control.

The Islamist organization has moved with lightning speed to consolidate its fighters into a fully-fledged army 13,000 strong, divided into four brigades, armed with anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, plus older versions of the Katyusha rocket and the daily-fired Kassams.

It is only a matter of time, the senior IDF officer who released this information told Army Radio Thursday, before the IDF and Hamas' army collide.

And if Israel hoped to come out on top in such a clash, it must move fast.

"There is an opportunity today since the world has not yet become accustomed to the new Hamas entity, and Hamas has not yet fully completed strengthening it's military capabilities," the officer said, according to The Jerusalem Post.

But, he added darkly, "the Gaza Strip is a boiling pot, the fire underneath is fueled by [a poor] economy and [an Islamist ideology] and the lid over it is Israel.

"Hamas is currently not acting against Israel because it is not in the group's interests, but one must not mistake this with the organization's ultimate goals," he added.

Those goals, according to the Hamas Charter, remain the complete destruction of the Jewish state.

According to the Post, the officer also noted that several hundred Arabs had traveled from Gaza to Iran since Israel left the strip. They had received training there and returned.

One of these was responsible for training 400 "Palestinians" upon his return to Gaza.

The officer believed the IDF was able to deal with Hamas, and just needed the green light from Jerusalem to do so.

Israel's chief of military intelligence recently warned, however, that an IDF attack on Hamas in Gaza was one of six potential triggers that could ignite a regional conflict.

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