By Stan Goodenough
Apr 13, 2007
Hamas, which has just won Norway's committed support for its members in the Palestinian Authority, is actively pursuing its terrorist activities even as it pretends to be abiding by a "ceasefire" with Israel, according to Israeli security sources Thursday.
The Islamist group has agreed to turn a blind eye to the rocket firings by its sometime rival, the smaller Islamic Jihad, and has been supplying them with Kassam rockets with which to continue trying to kill Jews.
Kassams are fired from the Gaza Strip virtually everyday, aimed at Israeli towns and cities in the south. Islamic Jihad claims credit for these attacks, but because the majority supported Hamas is purportedly adhering to the ceasefire, the IDF has been held back from retaliating.
The security sources refer to a "strategy of duality" whereby Hamas can pretend to be abstaining from terrorism in order to win more Western support and make diplomatic gains, of keeping the pressure of applied violence on via a second party - Islamic Jihad.
This strategy was employed effectively by terror chief Yasser Arafat, who committed his PLO to stop terrorism in order to be able to negotiate, while giving Hamas the green light to blow up buses and cafeterias to push Israel into making more concessions at the table.