Ariel Levin-Waldman
August 07, 2022 at 02:25 AM

i24NEWS reporter

Attia Muhammed/Flash90Members of the Saraya al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestine Islamic Jihad, take part in a military parade, in Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, on June 24, 2022.

We ‘don’t agree with Hamas’s idea of a long ceasefire with Israel,’ group’s former leader says

Considered more radical and extremist than even Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has been fighting Israel almost from the moment it was spawned from the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood party in 1981.
Its charter calls for the total annihilation of Israel, and it rejects any political or peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even a long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, an idea sometimes floated in an effort to halt the violence, if even for a while, is anathema to the PIJ.

Former PIJ Leader Ramadan Shalah said in 2009 that while the PIJ and Hamas shared “the same Islamic identity,” they differed tactically.
“I don’t agree with Hamas’s idea of a long ceasefire with Israel, because Israel will only use the time to make things worse,” he declared.
This obduracy has put the PIJ at odds with Hamas, notably in 2019 after PIJ leader Baha Abu Al Ata was eliminated and the PIJ launched attacks on Israel even though Hamas didn’t want escalation.
Unlike Hamas, but like Hezbollah in Lebanon, PIJ is very much an Iranian proxy. Tehran supplies it with funding and weapons, notably Iranian-made missiles and advanced armed drones that Gaza militants cannot manufacture locally. The PIJ leadership is also in direct and regular contact with Iranian leaders.
Although primarily Gaza-based, the PIJ is also making inroads in the West Bank, its members regularly confronting the Israeli army during the latter’s almost-nightly search-and-arrest raids.
It was the arrest last week of PIJ West Bank head Bassam al-Saadi and his son-in-law which sparked the current tensions, as the PIJ vowed revenge, and Israel raised its alert level in the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip, and closed Gaza-area roads to civilian vehicles.
According to the army, at the start of Operation “Breaking Dawn,” the PIJ arsenal included around 5,500 rockets and missiles. While most are short or medium range, with a limit of up to 28 miles, the group also has several long-range systems, with ranges of up to 50 miles, which could hit Tel Aviv and its northern suburbs, or even Jerusalem.
To this can be added the formidable rocket arsenal of Hamas, (around 6,000 missiles, some with ranges of up to 125 miles) should it decide to join the fighting

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Sunday, 7 August, 2022 – 10:30 – www.aswasat.com

A fire near Sderot settlement caused by rockets fired from Gaza on Saturday, August 6, 2022. (Reuters)

Ramallah – Asharq Al-Awsat

Hamas movement, which has been ruling Gaza since 2007, has left the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) alone in confronting Israel’s attacks on the enclave.
This is not the first time that Hamas distances itself from such a confrontation, a tactic that Israel succeeded in imposing on the Strip twice, the first in 2019 and the second in the current ongoing war.
A flare-up with the PIJ came in 2019, following Israel’s killing of the commander in al-Quds Brigades, Baha Abu al-Ata. Hamas did not join the fray in that conflict.
Al-Quds Brigades is the armed wing of the group.
The Israeli army announced then that it was not targeting Hamas, urging the group not to take sides.
Ahead of Israel’s war on the PIJ, Hamas and Egypt pressured the group to avoid any military escalation.
Both sides called on the PIJ not to be triggered by Israel’s misleading narrative, in which it accused the Islamic Jihad of seeking revenge following the humiliating arrest of its senior leader, Bassam al-Saadi, in the West Bank last week.
Tel Aviv later launched a sudden attack killing several PIJ officials.
While Israel seems to have embarrassed the mediators, including Hamas, it was keen not to provoke it to ensure it remains on the sidelines for reasons related to power.
There is a significant difference between the PIJ and Hamas, which enjoys greater influence and acquires more military equipment, number of fighters, and developed arms.
However, will Hamas remain on the sidelines? It is still early to decide. Political Analyst Talal Awkal said the movement can not distance itself any longer.
He told Asharq Al-Awsat that Palestine seems to be following a specific tactic in its aggression, which has been recently launched.
“The factions decided they will not respond all together by using force.” Awkal explained, adding that they believe it will be a long war of attrition and that even the PIJ still hasn’t used its basic power.
“I think we are facing a gradual use of force and a response that expands to include the participation of the rest of the factions.”
He warned of the moral and political consequences of Hamas’ decision to remain distant and leave the PIJ alone in the confrontation with Israel.
“Last year, the resistance’s rhetoric was different, unified and loud and called for uniting efforts,” Awkal stressed, noting that there is no guarantee that the battle will remain against the Islamic Jihad only and within the enclave’s borders.
Al-Quds Brigades issued a statement on Saturday saying that as part of the Unity of Battlefields operation, it launched an attack, along with the National Resistance Brigades, the Mujahideen Brigades and the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, targeting five Israeli settlements by salvo of rockets.
This statement could be aimed at pressuring Hamas to participate with the rest of the factions in the fight against Israel or showing that the factions are gradually taking part in the battle.
Israel is aware that Hamas’ participation will be the decisive factor that will determine the nature and duration of the battle.

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Liad Osmo|
Published: 08.06.22, 23:37 – YNetnews.com

 

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday that his organization stand with the Palestinians factions in Gaza.
Speaking in a televised address, Nasrallah said the “resistance,” will have the upper hand.
“I am telling the enemy not to hold a mistaken view of Lebanon,” the leader of the Iran-backed group said. “Events in Gaza do not affect us and we are stronger than ever,” he said.

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The fragile Palestinian economy in the Gaza Strip has been largely affected by the Russian-Ukrainian war, which has caused price hikes and an increase in taxes.
 

A Palestinian police officer searches a truck’s fabrics cargo slated for export at the Kerem Shalom crossing, Rafah, Gaza Strip, June 21, 2021. – Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images

 
Rasha Abou Jalal
@rashaaboujalal1

By Rasha Abou Jalal @rashaaboujala1
Al-monitor.com

August 8, 2022

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The fragile Palestinian economy in the Gaza Strip has been drawn into a deep crisis in the wake of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which has caused price hikes, confusion in local fees and taxes imposed on goods, and lower public sector employees’ salaries.
The Hamas movement, which has been in control of Gaza since 2007, has recently adopted several measures to tackle this increase in prices. Back in June, Hamas started off by reducing taxes on basic commodities such as cooking gas, but it was not long before this measure backfired and led the movement to grapple with a stifling financial crisis, while it mainly relies on local taxes to cover its expenses.
To compensate for the reduced taxes on basic commodities, Hamas imposed new taxes on other goods such as imported clothes, and is considering slashing a bigger percentage of the salaries of its approximately 40,000 government employees, which has deepened the crisis instead of solving it.
Since Egypt demolished in 2013 the border tunnels with the Gaza Strip on which Hamas relied to smuggle goods and cover its finances, government employees have been receiving only 60% of their monthly salaries.
Awni al-Basha, undersecretary of the Gaza Finance Ministry, told Al-Monitor that the government is suffering from a stifling financial crisis that will negatively affect the salaries of its employees, as the government is bearing the rise in prices of basic commodities, especially fuel, as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Basha said that the government was forced during the past months to borrow from local banks in order to be able to cover the 60%, but it is no longer able to continue fulfilling this obligation.
He pointed out that the government has developed a plan to overcome this budget deficit through a set of austerity measures at the level of expenditures, operational budgets and development budgets.
Of note, Hamas does not disclose its tax revenues, expenditures or employee payroll bills.
Mohammed Abu Jiyab, editor of Al-Eqtesadia newspaper in Gaza, wrote in a Facebook post July 27, “I have a question for the government: what is the reason behind the decline in revenues, what is the percentage of this decline, and what are the most important revenue sources that decreased? Can the government tell us the size of the [amount it collects in taxes and fees] and how it classifies its resources, or is it forbidden?”
An official at the Ministry of Economy in Gaza told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that the tax revenues of the Hamas government amount to no more than roughly $40 million per month. He said, “The rise in fuel prices has led the government to lose $5 million per month in taxes, which, alone, plunged the government into a financial crisis.”
Salama Marouf, chairman of the Gaza government media office, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed website July 27, “The government has reached a stage where it is impossible for it to cover 60% of the employees’ salaries.”
In a July 23 statement, the Public Employees Syndicate in Gaza expressed its categorical refusal of any proposals to reduce the public employees’ salary rate, as it stressed its insistence on increasing the 60% rate.
In order to confront this deficit in taxes and the crisis in paying employees’ salaries, the Ministry of Economy in Gaza announced in a July 19 statement the imposition of new taxes on imported items and goods.
The ministry explained that the decision aims to increase the competitiveness of local products in comparison with foreign products all the while increasing the number of industrial establishments, expanding existing factories and increasing the number of workers.
According to the decision, a tax of $3 will be imposed on each imported piece of trousers, jilbab (long and loose-fit coat) and abaya (long-sleeved, floor-length garment); $300 will be imposed as fees on each ton of nylon; $60 per ton of juice; $1,000 per ton of thyme or nuts; and $230 per ton of biscuits.
While local factory owners back the decision as it supports local products, the importing traders strongly reject it, and say it aims at reviving government revenues at their own expense.
Ziad al-Shanti, owner of Shanti Denim Factory in Gaza, welcomed the decision to impose new taxes on imported goods. He told Al-Monitor that the decision is in the interest of local products.
He noted that the local product is of high quality comparable to imported ones, “but people prefer to buy imported goods because there is a popular belief that imported products are always better than local ones, and that is wrong.”
He pointed out that imposing a new tax on imported goods would increase the price of imported goods and would make local products more attractive.
On July 21, clothing merchants and importers in the Gaza Strip organized a protest in front of their union headquarters in Gaza City in order to voice their opposition to the new taxes.
Emad Abdelhadi, representative of Gaza’s Union of Clothes’ Merchants, refused these taxes. He told Al-Monitor that the Ministry of Economy did not discuss such measures before imposing them, and that it came as a surprise to merchants who are facing the risk of bankruptcy due to the taxes imposed on their imported products.
Abdelhadi explained that about 800,000 pairs of trousers and 20,000 robes and abayas are imported on an annual basis.
He said that in order to support local products, the quantities of imported goods should be reduced and the quantities of local products increased. Increasing the customs value would only lead to increasing the price of imported products, which is something that would affect consumers in the first place.
Palestinian activists called for demonstrations in the Gaza Strip Aug. 5, dubbed as the “Friday of Dignity,” in rejection of the recent taxes introduced amid high unemployment and poverty rates in Gaza.
According to statistics published June 21 by the United Nations on the situation in the Gaza Strip, about 80% of Gazans depend on humanitarian aid, and more than half of the population of 2 million live in poverty, while roughly 80% of the youth are unemployed.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/08/russia-ukraine-war-leaves-hamas-financial-crisis#ixzz7bPCntMNk

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By Patrick Goodenough | August 10, 2022 | 4:21am EDT – CNSNews.com

 
Journalists in Gaza City on Saturday. (Photo by Mohammed Abed / AFP via Getty Images)

 
(CNSNews.com) – Hamas, the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, issued an order prohibiting local journalists from reporting or facilitating reporting on several issues, including “rocket malfunctions,” according to an organization representing foreign media in Israel.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) said Tuesday the Hamas authorities had asked Gaza-based journalists “to pledge not to report on – or allow foreign journalists to cover – rocket malfunctions, militant capabilities or their role in the build-up to the weekend’s conflict.”

It said that after it held discussions with the “authorities in Gaza,” the order was withdrawn.
“The FPA is pleased with that reversal and notes that such a move would have constituted a severe, unacceptable and unjustifiable restriction on the freedom of the press, as well as the safety of our colleagues in Gaza,” it said.
The episode, first reported by the Associated Press, came shortly after three days of violence between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a less-prominent but also Iranian regime-backed terrorist group active in Gaza.

In the fighting, the terrorists fired more than a thousand rockets towards Israel, and the IDF carried out airstrikes on Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets, including the targeted assassination of two senior terrorist commanders, Taysir al-Jabari and Khaled Mansour. Israeli officials said it launched the “pre-emptive” operation because the PIJ was planning a large terror attack inside Israel.
The Hamas-run health ministry said a total of 46 Palestinians were killed. According to information and photos posted by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, 12 of them were the group’s fighters, “martyred” over the weekend. (The IDF deliberately avoided targeting Hamas, which stayed out of the fray.)

 
Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. (Photo by Said Khatib / AFP via Getty Images)

Israel acknowledged that some Palestinian civilians, including children, were unintentionally killed as a result of its airstrikes against terror targets, an outcome Prime Minister Yair Lapid called “heartbreaking.”
According to the IDF, however, at least 15 of the Palestinian fatalities were civilians killed as a result of Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets launched towards Israel, but falling short and landing in residential areas in Gaza.
Of 1,100 rockets launched by the group, the IDF said, more than 200 landed inside the strip.
On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that the IDF assessment appeared to be consistent with its own reporting.
It cited two incidents in Jabaliya in northern Gaza – one on Saturday night and the other on Sunday night – in which a total of 12 Palestinians, including children, had been killed in two explosions. Neither bore hallmarks of an Israeli airstrike. In both cases the PIJ had announced barrages of rockets at the time, it said.

Foreign media outlets represented in Israel hire the services of Gaza-based reporters and translators to facilitate their reporting inside the enclave. The Hamas order evidently sought to put pressure on the Palestinians by putting the onus on them ensure the foreign journalists did not cover issues deemed unacceptable to the terrorist group.
“Even if the rules are officially withdrawn, Hamas has still signaled its expectations, which could have a chilling effect on critical coverage,” the AP said.
The weekend flare-up ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire late on Sunday night.
In a statement welcoming the ceasefire, President Biden reiterated U.S. support for Israel’s “right to defend itself against attacks,” and called for investigations into civilian casualties in Gaza, “whether by Israeli strikes against Islamic Jihad positions or the dozens of Islamic Jihad rockets that reportedly fell inside Gaza.”

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