Mousa Abu Marzook

Mousa Abu Marzook, Deputy Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, writes: The latest Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip has prompted several European countries and the US to reaffirm their position of unwavering support for the aggressor. William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary, Cathy Ashton, the EU high representative for foreign affairs, and Barack Obama, have all claimed that Hamas’s rockets were responsible for the crisis and that it is the right of Israel to defend its citizens. Had they checked the facts, they would have realised Israel started the attacks. The escalation started when an Israeli military incursion into Gaza on 8 November killed a Palestinian child. That was followed by other Israeli incursions and attacks, provoking a response by Palestinian factions.

Despite that, there were serious efforts to calm the situation and reach a truce. But clearly Israel had another agenda. By targeting Ahmed al-Jabari, leader of the al-Qassam Brigade, it sabotaged Egyptian efforts to conclude a truce between all Palestinian factions and the Israelis. This was confirmed by Egypt’s president on Saturday.

With the approach of the Israeli elections, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, wanted to trade with the blood of the Palestinians, especially after his alliance with the ultra-extremist Avigdor Lieberman failed to boost his popularity in the polls as he’d expected. This is not the first time the Israelis have launched a war for electoral gain. Shimon Peres did it to Lebanon in 1996 and the Olmert-Livni-Barak alliance did it to Gaza in 2008. What is important here is the immoral and short-sighted stance of the European and US governments; they have misconstrued the facts and displayed complete partiality in favour of the aggressor.

The western position has given political cover to the Israeli aggression and encouraged its leadership to continue their attacks. Thus, in the eyes of our people and those of the entire region, western countries are complicit. European governments, in contrast to their peoples whose majority support Palestinian rights, have demonstrated their double standards and hypocrisy again.

The human rights that Europe claims to defend all over the world are denied to the Palestinian people. European governments have done nothing while 1.7 million Gazans have been subjected for the past five years to an Israeli blockade – denying them food, water, medicine and even determining how many calories they should be allowed each day.

The right of people to resist occupation and confront aggression is guaranteed to all peoples; but if Palestinians seek to exercise this right it immediately becomes terrorism and for this they must be persecuted. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports on ceasefire negotiations being brokered by the Egyptian government in Cairo. Israeli forces are poised to invade the Gaza Strip, yet in this report it is Hamas that is characterized as assuming an “aggressive stance” because it has the apparent audacity to be making some security demands — as though the only reasonable demand Hamas could make would be for Israel to suspend its current assault.

Hamas, badly outgunned on the battlefield, appeared to be trying in the talks to exploit its increased political clout with its ideological allies in Egypt’s new Islamist-led government. The group’s leaders, rejecting Israel’s call for an immediate end to the rocket attacks, have instead laid down sweeping demands that would put Hamas in a stronger position than when the conflict began: an end to Israel’s five-year-old embargo of the Gaza Strip, a pledge by Israel not to attack again and multinational guarantees that Israel would abide by its commitments.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel stuck to his demand that all rocket fire cease before the Israeli air campaign lets up, and Israeli tanks and troops remained lined up outside Gaza on Sunday. Tens of thousands of reserve troops had been called up. “The army is prepared to significantly expand the operation,” Mr. Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.

Reda Fahmy, a member of Egypt’s upper house of Parliament and of the nation’s dominant Islamist party, who is following the talks, said Hamas’s position was just as unequivocal. “Hamas has one clear and specific demand: for the siege to be completely lifted from Gaza” he said. “It’s not reasonable that every now and then Israel decides to level Gaza to the ground, and then we decide to sit down and talk about it after it is done. On the Israeli part, they want to stop the missiles from one side. How is that?”

He added: “If they stop the aircraft from shooting, Hamas will then stop its missiles. But violence couldn’t be stopped from one side.”

Hamas’s aggressive stance in the cease-fire talks is the first test of the group’s belief that the Arab Spring and the rise in Islamist influence around the region have strengthened its political hand, both against Israel and against Hamas’s Palestinian rivals, who now control the West Bank with Western backing.

It also puts intense new pressure on President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was known for his fiery speeches defending Hamas and denouncing Israel. Mr. Morsi must now balance the conflicting demands of an Egyptian public that is deeply sympathetic to Hamas and the Palestinian cause against Western pleadings to help broker a peace and Egypt’s urgent need for regional stability to help revive its moribund economy.

Bloomberg reports: Israeli ground forces are poised to invade the Gaza Strip for the first time in almost four years amid efforts by Egypt and Turkey to help end exchanges of fire that have killed 96 Palestinians and three Israelis.

The decision whether to expand the Gaza operation or reach a cease-fire agreement “is rapidly approaching, and is a matter of hours, not even days,” Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said in an interview today on Army Radio.

Air-raid sirens sounded twice in Tel Aviv yesterday as four rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system. A rocket was fired at Jerusalem on Nov. 16, the first such attack in decades. At least 1,100 missiles, rockets and mortars have been fired at Israel since Nov. 14, according to the Israel Defense Forces. About 15,000 have been launched from Gaza in the past 11 years.

The escalating conflict between Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, threatens a region still unbalanced after a wave of popular uprisings last year. Hamas is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union.

Hamas is “mildly optimistic” about efforts to broker a cease-fire with Israel, Nabil Shaath, a senior adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said today in an interview. “They think negotiations are going seriously, but it’s difficult to predict when that will come to fruition,” he said, speaking in the north Sinai town of el-Arish.

The Guardian reports: At least 11 members of one family, including five women and four children, were killed when Israel bombed a house in Gaza City on Sunday as the five-day-old war claimed more civilian lives with no sign of a let-up in the intense bombardment.

The air strike flattened the home of the Dalou family in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City, causing the biggest death toll in a single incident since the offensive began last Wednesday.

On Monday morning the Israeli defence force appeared to admit the family had been killed by mistake. The Haaretz website quoted the army as saying their house was either incorrectly pinpointed or a missile malfunctioned.

Elsewhere in the city early Monday an air strike levelled two houses belonging to a single family, killing two children and two adults and injuring 42 people, including children, said Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra. Rescue workers were frantically searching for 12 to 15 members of the Azzam family under the rubble. Shortly afterwards, Israeli aircraft bombarded the remains of the former national security compound in Gaza City. Al-Kidra said flying shrapnel killed one child and wounded others living nearby.

After the Dalou family home was destroyed, the bodies of the children were pulled from the rubble and taken to the morgue at Shifa hospital. The dead also included an 80-year-old woman.

Ismael Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, described the deaths as an “ugly massacre” and the Hamas military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, said: “The massacre of the Dalou family will not pass without punishment.”

Diggers at the scene of the explosion were scooping rubble from flattened buildings as rescuers tried to locate survivors.

Witnesses said there were chaotic scenes as the dead and injured were brought to the Shifa hospital, which has been on emergency footing since the start of Operation Pillar of Defence.

The bodies of four young children lay on two metal trays in the morgue, covered in dust and blood. A crowd of onlookers outside became increasingly distressed as the body of the children’s mother was wheeled in, covered in blankets.

The strike was originally thought to have been aimed at a Hamas official, Mohamed Dalou.

In all, 84 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, have been killed in the five-day onslaught and 720 have been wounded. Three Israeli civilians have died from Palestinian rocket fire and dozens have been wounded.

The parents of an 11-month-old child, Omar Misharawi, killed in an Israeli strike hold his body at his funeral in Gaza City.

Rabbi Brant Rosen writes: Israel’s military assault on Gaza in 2008-09 represented an important turning point in my own relationship with Israel. I recall experiencing a new and previously unfamiliar feeling of anguish as Israel bombarded the people living in that tiny, besieged strip of land over and over, day after day after day. While I certainly felt a sense of tribal loyalty to the Israelis who withstood Qassam rocket fire from Gaza, I felt a newfound sense of concern and solidarity with Gazans who I believed were experiencing nothing short of oppression during this massive military onslaught.

And now it’s happening again. Only this time I don’t think the term “anguish” quite fits my mindset. Now it’s something much closer to rage.

It’s happening again. Once again 1.7 million people, mostly refugees, who have been living in what amounts to the world’s largest open air prison, are being subjected to a massive military assault at the hands of the world’s most militarized nation, using mostly US-made weapons. And our President is not only looking on – he is defending Israel’s onslaught by saying it has a right to “self-defense in light of the barrage of rocket attacks being launched from Gaza against Israeli civilians.”

Let’s be clear: this tragedy didn’t start with the Qassams. It didn’t start with the election of Hamas. And it didn’t start with the “instability” that followed Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

No, this is just the latest chapter of a much longer saga that began in 1947-48, when scores of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their cities and villages in the coastal plain and lower Galilee and warehoused in a tiny strip of land on the edge of the Mediterranean. [Continue reading…]

On November 15 some anti-war organizations held an anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv against the latest massacre in Gaza. This is some footage from the counter demonstration. The bearded man giving a speech in this video is Michael Ben Ari, an Israeli Knesset member.

Gilad Sharon

In the Jerusalem Post, Gilad Sharon, son of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, writes: Why do our citizens have to live with rocket fire from Gaza while we fight with our hands tied? Why are the citizens of Gaza immune? If the Syrians were to open fire on our towns, would we not attack Damascus? If the Cubans were to fire at Miami, wouldn’t Havana suffer the consequences? That’s what’s called “deterrence” – if you shoot at me, I’ll shoot at you. There is no justification for the State of Gaza being able to shoot at our towns with impunity. We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant – but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.

If the government isn’t prepared to go all the way on this, it will mean reoccupying the entire Gaza Strip. Not a few neighborhoods in the suburbs, as with Cast Lead, but the entire Strip, like in Defensive Shield, so that rockets can no longer be fired.

There is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip. Otherwise there will be no decisive victory. And we’re running out of time – we must achieve victory quickly. The Netanyahu government is on a short international leash. Soon the pressure will start – and a million civilians can’t live under fire for long. This needs to end quickly – with a bang, not a whimper.

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Yagil Levy writes: Israel assassinated its subcontractor, the one who took care of its security in the Gaza Strip, Aluf Benn says in a Haaretz article (November 14 ) about the killing of Hamas’ military chief, Ahmed Jabari. Indeed. Israel has done it again. Its history is fraught with the overuse of military force that has weakened the sovereignty of political entities with which it could have crystallized the rules of the game to improve its security. And the more these entities were weakened, the more Israel escalated its hits and weakened them still further.

In the same way, during its first years of statehood Israel weakened the regimes in Egypt and Jordan, which had tried to seal their borders against the penetration of infiltrators. Israel was not satisfied with this and hit them hard with retaliatory raids. The regimes did not collapse: Egypt sought an alliance with the Soviet Union, which merely weakened Israel’s security; Jordan was saved by the pressure the West brought to bear on Israel. Had these regimes been weakened even further, the borders with them would have been even less secure.

In the 1970s, similar reasoning led Israel to strengthen its reactions to hostile acts on the part of Palestinian organizations from Lebanon. Thus it contributed to the weakening of Lebanese sovereignty and later to its disintegration and the formation of a Palestinian ministate in southern Lebanon. And when this ministate grew stronger and was successfully holding back activities against Israel, the latter attacked it without any pretext, during the first Lebanon war in 1982. Once again, a political and military vacuum was created which drew Israel into a bloody war of attrition.

After Israel’s gradual withdrawals, a ministate led by Hezbollah was formed in southern Lebanon, which stuck to the rules of the game and maintained quiet on the northern border between 2000-2006. But Israel also wished to destroy this entity without reason, and without sufficient pretext, in the Second Lebanon War. Fortunately, military weakness prevented a diplomatic failure that would have been created had this entity indeed disintegrated and southern Lebanon turned into a no-man’s-land.

The same process took place in areas overseen by the Palestinian Authority. The gradual escalation in Israel’s reaction to the events of the second intifada led to the collapse of the PA which, between 1996 and 2000, had effectively thwarted terror against Israel – to a large extent thanks to Israel’s contribution toward strengthening it. After its collapse, terror grew stronger and it was only the rebuilding, however limited, of the PA in the West Bank that contributed to restraining it from 2005.

The weakening of the PA contributed to the growth of the Hamas ministate in the Gaza Strip. But just as it created the infrastructure that made it possible to restrain the other armed organizations in Gaza – and to ensure relative quiet in the south – Israel once again took steps to weaken it through actions that eroded Hamas’ sovereignty (for example, the security strip inside Gaza ), to say nothing of the economic blockade. And now the assassination of Jabari, the most effective military leader in Gaza, will merely weaken the sovereignty of Hamas and strengthen its rivals.

When military thinking is paramount, diplomatic possibilities are pushed to the sidelines – such as the assumption that sometimes it is worthwhile working toward bolstering the sovereignty of the rival. Because the stronger its military and political infrastructure becomes, so its responsibility to the population under its control increases its interest in tranquillity. The rival translates this tranquillity into activities for the good of its citizens, which in turn strengthen its legitimacy and thus also its ability to impose authority on the armed organizations.

The bolstering of the sovereignty is achieved in different ways, including military forbearance. Ignoring this logic leads to military action, which does not take into account the fact that the overuse of force will lead to the opposite result from the one hoped for. That is what is happening now.

The Guardian reports: Israeli military planes struck two media headquarters in Gaza City in the early hours of Sunday morning, injuring six people including a cameraman, who lost a leg.

A number of media organisations are based in the al-Shawa building, including al-Quds television, which is associated with Islamic Jihad. Khader al-Zahhar, a cameraman with al-Quds TV, had his leg amputated as a result of injuries sustained in the attack.

A second air strike struck another media complex in the city, the al-Shuruq building. It houses Sky News, the al-Arabiya news network, Dubai TV and an office of al-Aqsa TV, which is affiliated with Hamas.

Sky News reporter Sam Kiley was sleeping in the offices when the missile struck shortly before 7am. “The missile hit the floor above us. There was a big flash of light and the sound of breaking glass.”

In a statement, the Israeli Defence Forces said: “A communications antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity against the state of Israel, was … targeted.” [Continue reading…]

Al Ahram reports: Egypt’s political forces, including the majority Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), demand the Egyptian government and president immediately move to revise the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty amid Israel’s ongoing onslaught on the Gaza Strip.

They also call on the Arab League to activate the joint Arab Defence Treaty and for the Egyptian government and all Arab and Islamic governments to take immediate punitive action to stop Israel’s sustained attack on Palestinians in Gaza.

After nearly five hours of discussions at the headquarters of the FJP, during a meeting dubbed “Emergency parties meeting to support Gaza,” a lengthy joint statement was issued by all attendees.

The statement began by expressing condolences for the martyrs of Gaza killed in the Israeli assault that it described as a flagrant violation of international law and charters.

FJP President Mohamed Saad Al-Katatni, who headed the meeting, read the statement: “Revolutionary Egypt is no longer a strategic treasure for the enemy and is now biased to and supportive of Arab citizens everywhere, especially the Palestinians. Political parties and forces call on the Egyptian government to take concrete steps to stop the Zionist assault on the besieged Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. They welcomed President Mohamed Morsi’s decision to withdraw Egypt’s ambassador from the occupation state.”

Political forces also called on Morsi to “freeze all relations with the Zionist entity, whether diplomatic, political, economic or security, and leave the Rafah border crossing permanently open. They urge Arab and Islamic governments and international organisations to take punitive measures against the Zionist enemy to end the assault on Gaza,” according to the statement.

Egyptians in Cairo on Wednesday protesting against latest Israel airstrikes on Gaza.

Ahdaf Soueif writes: If you click here, you can listen to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. You can hear explosions, drones and ambulances. This is the soundtrack of the lives of Palestinians there now. They’re recording it and transmitting it, and their friends all over the world – particularly the Arab world – are listening to it live.

We are also reading the tweets and blogs the young Gazans are putting out, and taking a good look at the images they’re posting – like the one of Ranan Arafat, before and after. Before, she’s a pretty little girl with green eyes, a green halter-neck top and green ribbons in her hair. After the Israeli bomb, she’s a charred and shrunken figure. Her mouth is open. A medic lifts – for just a moment – her blue hospital shroud.

In that hospital, Shifa in Gaza City, we watched the Egyptian prime minister, Hisham Kandil, this morning. For the first time in 42 years an Egyptian prime minister was where we Egyptians wanted him to be. For the first time a government official was telling the truth when he said he spoke for the Egyptian people. And he was spot on when he referred to the Egyptian people first, before the Egyptian president.

Since he won the presidency, Mohamed Morsi has tried to be a pragmatic politician. He pressed on with “security co-ordination” with Israel in Sinai; he started sealing up the tunnels that provide a lifeline to the besieged Gazans; he rejected the proposal of a free trade area on the borders between Egypt and Gaza; and he sent an ambassador to Tel Aviv with a fulsome letter to Shimon Peres. And so he found himself uncomfortably cosied up with remnants of the Mubarak regime and aficionados of the military government.

The rank and file of the Muslim Brotherhood and their Freedom and Justice party had a hard time justifying the actions of their man in the presidential palace to the rest of the country. Progressives and liberals mocked them for their big talk on Palestine all the years they were in opposition, and their resounding silence now they were in power. Skits about Morsi’s “love letter” to Peres appeared online and parodies on Cairo walls.

Now, the Israelis have pushed him – pushed him perhaps into a position where he’ll find himself more at ease in his presidency, and more in tune with the people. Large groups of young Egyptians have been heading for Gaza; my youngest niece is one of them. Like the efforts of the world’s civil society to send ships to Gaza, young Egyptian civilians with a passion for freedom are going to support their friends. [Continue reading…]

Lara Aburamadan writes: I don’t know how the story ends.

What I know is that this all started on a quiet day with my friends, as we sat down to watch the initial movie in a series that was supposed to be part of a “Nordic Film Festival” — the first of its kind in Gaza. The main character’s name was Sebbe, a Swedish boy five years my junior.

But halfway in, just as Sebbe’s story began to arc, the reel stopped, just as surely as the world around me.

A festival organizer interrupted the film and relayed the news: The Israelis, we were told, had just assassinated someone. There was already word of retaliatory rockets fired from Gaza. Things were going to get bad quickly, and we had better get home, where it would be safer.

But it hasn’t been. In the last 48 hours, my mother and I have kept vigil by my siblings’ side — my twin, an adolescent brother and a sister within earshot of her high school valediction. We sit together, my mother and I, in an inner room without a view, watching the furrowed brows of my brother and two sisters straining to sleep.

And all the while, we hear bombs. Bombs that bear autumn’s scent and winter’s chill. Bombs that batter. Bombs that kill. I still have waking nightmares of the bombs that tore through our sky nearly four years ago, when a classmate, Maha, lost her mother in an Israeli strike. And a childhood friend, Hanan, who saw her mother’s leg severed under the rubble from another strike. [Continue reading…]

Gershon Baskin writes: Ahmed al-Jabari — the strongman of Hamas, the head of its military wing, the man responsible for the abduction of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit — was assassinated on Wednesday by Israeli missiles.

Why? Israel’s government has declared that the aim of the current strikes against Gaza is to rebuild deterrence so that no rockets will be fired on Israel. Israel’s targeted killings of Hamas leaders in the past sent the Hamas leadership underground and prevented rocket attacks on Israel temporarily. According to Israeli leaders, deterrence will be achieved once again by targeting and killing military and political leaders in Gaza and hitting hard at Hamas’s military infrastructure. But this policy has never been effective in the long term, even when the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, was killed by Israel. Hamas didn’t lay down its guns then, and it won’t stop firing rockets at Israel now without a cease-fire agreement.

When we were negotiating with Hamas to release Mr. Shalit, members of the Israeli team believed that Mr. Jabari wouldn’t make a deal because holding Mr. Shalit was a kind of “life insurance policy.” As long as Mr. Jabari held Mr. Shalit, Israelis believed, the Hamas leader knew he was safe. The Israeli government had a freer hand to kill Mr. Jabari after Mr. Shalit was released in October 2011. His insurance policy was linked to their assessment of the value of keeping him alive. This week, that policy expired.

I believe that Israel made a grave and irresponsible strategic error by deciding to kill Mr. Jabari. No, Mr. Jabari was not a man of peace; he didn’t believe in peace with Israel and refused to have any direct contact with Israeli leaders and even nonofficials like me. My indirect dealings with Mr. Jabari were handled through my Hamas counterpart, Ghazi Hamad, the deputy foreign minister of Hamas, who had received Mr. Jabari’s authorization to deal directly with me. Since Mr. Jabari took over the military wing of Hamas, the only Israeli who spoke with him directly was Mr. Shalit, who was escorted out of Gaza by Mr. Jabari himself. (It is important to recall that Mr. Jabari not only abducted Mr. Shalit, but he also kept him alive and ensured that he was cared for during his captivity.)

Passing messages between the two sides, I was able to learn firsthand that Mr. Jabari wasn’t just interested in a long-term cease-fire; he was also the person responsible for enforcing previous cease-fire understandings brokered by the Egyptian intelligence agency. Mr. Jabari enforced those cease-fires only after confirming that Israel was prepared to stop its attacks on Gaza. On the morning that he was killed, Mr. Jabari received a draft proposal for an extended cease-fire with Israel, including mechanisms that would verify intentions and ensure compliance. [Continue reading…]

Haaretz reports: Cairo was leading intense efforts to reach a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Senior Egyptian sources told Haaretz on Saturday. The efforts, they said, were led by Egyptian Intelligence Minister Rafat Shehata.

Shehata has been conducting meetings in the Egyptian capital with the head of Hamas’ politburo Khaled Meshal and his deputy Moussa Abu Marzuk. According to the sources, Egyptian intelligence hopes to achieve agreement on a ceasefire that could go into effect within the next 24-48 hours.

It was not yet clear what the principles of this ceasefire would be, but it’s possible that Egypt will agree to a gesture toward Hamas by lifting some of the limitations it places on the entrance of goods through the Rafah crossing.

The reported push for lull in fighting began on Friday, as soon as Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil culminated his visit to the Gaza Strip.

As part of the efforts to reach ceasefire agreement between the sides, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi were holding a meeting in Cairo.

Hamas’ political leader Khaled Meshal was also in Cairo, along with Ramdan Shallah, the Islamic Jihad secretary-general. Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem who is visiting in Gaza, is expected to arrive in Cairo later on Saturday.

During the 2008-2009 war on Gaza, Michael Oren, now Israel’s ambassador to the US wrote that Gaza rockets and mortars being fired at southern Israel were “more than a crude attempt to kill and terrorize civilians — they were expressions of a genocidal intent.”

Phan Nguyen has crunched the numbers in order to figure out how long it would take for that genocidal intent to be realized, based on the current rate of fatalities caused by projectiles launched from Gaza. Admittedly, Nguyen opts for a maximal definition of genocide — the elimination of the entire Jewish population of Israel — but based on the current ratio of rockets and mortars fired and fatalities, it would require 4,477,714,286 attacks, and 4,477,714 years.

The fact is, over the last twelve years an average of two Israelis a year have been killed by rocket and mortar fire. Whatever the risks of premature death might be for most Israelis, being killed by militants in Gaza is probably the least among them.