Quick Takes: News From Israel You May Have Missed

A portion of $86.4 million in aid that the United States pledged last week to bolster security forces affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party will fall into the hands of the Hamas terror group, Hamas officials told WorldNetDaily.

Abu Oubaida, a spokesman for Hamas’s so-called “military wing,” said his group will obtain any weapons transferred to Fatah militias or purchased by Fatah using the incoming U.S. aid.

“I am sure that, like in the past, this $86 million from America will find its way to the Hamas resistance via the honorable persons in the Fatah security organizations, including in Force 17. I can confirm 100 percent that this money and purchased weapons will find its way to Hamas,” said Abu Oubaida.

The Hamas spokesman and other Hamas officials said “scores” of Fatah militants have switched over to Hamas in recent months.  Sources close to Hamas said the Fatah militants, including members of Abbas’s Force 17 security forces, worked with Hamas after receiving larger paychecks from the terror group.

“When they join Hamas, they bring along their new weapons,” said a Hamas source.

Also,  Muhammad Abdel-Al, a leader and spokesman of the Popular Resistance Committees, a terror group allied with Hamas, told WND his organization is planning attacks against Israel using weapons recently transferred to Fatah by the U.S. and Egypt.

Since a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza-based terror groups was agreed to in November, more than 60 rockets have been fired by Palestinians in Gaza, seriously injuring two Jewish teenagers and disrupting life in Israeli cities neighboring the Gaza Strip. 

The Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which bills itself as the “military wing” of Abbas’s Fatah party, has taken responsibility for about one-third of the recent rocket fire.

Abbas has claimed that Brigades leaders firing rockets from Gaza during the truce are “renegade” members of the group, and that he doesn’t have authority over the militants.

Miri Eisin, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said that the Al Aksa Brigades members firing the projectiles from Gaza are not affiliated with Fatah and don’t take orders from Abbas. She said the militants are directed by the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hizbullah militia. 

But Abu Ahmed, the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades leader in the northern Gaza Strip, told WND that his group, including the militants launching rockets, is loyal to Abbas and coordinates “resistance operations” with the Fatah party.

“The Al Aksa Brigades is the military wing of the Fatah and [Abbas] is the chairman of the movement…. All our activity is in accordance with the political line of Fatah, which consists of fighting the occupation until the creation of a Palestinian state. The rocket shooting is part of this vision,” Abu Ahmed said.

All rockets fired from Gaza have been launched from the northern part of the territory, which falls within Abu Ahmed’s jurisdiction in the Brigades.

Asked why Abbas distances himself from Al Aksa’s rocket firing, Abu Ahmed said, “Listen, we are aware of our president’s declarations but we are also aware of the international political system that brings the president to adopt this position.”

Ahmed said Abbas had never asked his group to halt the rocket fire.

Hamas members have been flying to Iran and Lebanon for advanced military training with Iranian Revolutionary guard units and Hizbullah militants, according to senior Israeli and Palestinian intelligence sources.

The Israeli security officials said dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Hamas terrorists have been training in Iran in Hizbullah-like guerrilla tactics. The officials said they fear the training will greatly improve Hamas’s military capability in any future battle with Israeli troops in Gaza.