Now wait a minute. Just a week ago Ahmed Yousef, “a senior adviser to the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya,” published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for a truce between Hamas and Israel. It is clear in that essay that Yousef is unaware of any truce already being in effect. And now here’s Khaled Mashaal saying the truce is over.
It’s all just more sleight-of-hand. Most people who hear this from Mashaal will assume there must have been a truce, and that the Israelis have broken it. But Hamas has been fighting all the while. You have to give them this: the Palestinian propaganda machine is very sophisticated. And Western analysts like Mark LeVine, as well as the Western media, fall for it hook, line, and sinker, every time.
From AP:
DAMASCUS, Syria – Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal said Wednesday that a truce with Israel is finished and his group’s militants can resume fighting following an Israeli tank attack that killed 18 Palestinians.
Militants will answer the deaths with “deeds, not words,” Mashaal told a news conference in the Syrian capital.
“The truce (with Israel) ended at the end of 2005,” Mashaal said. “The armed struggle is free to resume, and the resistance is dictated by local circumstances.”
The truce formally ended last year but had remained in effect.
It ended, but it didn’t end. Thanks, AP.