Hamas attacks Mosque, scores dead

[Raamsade]

Deadly gun battle in Gaza mosque

 

At least 13 people have been killed and at least 85 injured in a fierce gun battle in Gaza, emergency services say.

 

Eyewitnesses say hundreds of Hamas fighters and policemen surrounded a mosque where followers of a radical Islamist cleric were holed up.

 

Hamas fired rocket-propelled grenades at the mosque and stormed the leader's house in Rafah, near the Egypt border.

 

It is thought that at least 100 supporters of the al-Qaeda-linked group, Jund Ansar Allah, were inside.

 

At least one Hamas fighter was killed by a grenade fired from the mosque but most of those killed were supporters of the cleric. One child was also killed.

 

The entire neighbourhood was sealed off as the shooting continued after dark - in what was one of the most violent incidents in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip since an Israeli offensive in December and January.

 

It was not immediately clear if the mosque's imam, Abdul-Latif Moussa, was captured during the fighting.

 

Fighting pledge

 

Earlier, during Friday prayers, hundreds of worshippers at Ibn-Taymiyah mosque declared Gaza an "Islamic emirate".

 

 

These declarations [of an Islamic emirate] are aimed towards incitement against the Gaza Strip

Ismail Haniya,

leader of Hamas in Gaza

 

Abdul-Latif Moussa and armed supporters swore to fight to the death rather than hand over authority of the mosque to Hamas.

 

During his own Friday sermon, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, dismissed Mr Moussa's comments.

 

"These declarations [of an Islamic emirate] are aimed towards incitement against the Gaza Strip and an attempt at recruiting an international alliance against the Gaza Strip.

 

"And we warn those who are behind these Israeli Zionist declarations: the Gaza Strip only contains its people."

 

Jund Ansar Allah (Army of the Helpers of God) gained some prominence two months ago when it staged a failed attack on a border crossing between Gaza and Israel.

 

The group is very critical of Hamas, which seized Gaza in 2007, accusing the Islamist group of not being Islamist enough.

 

 

Hamas has cracked down on al-Qaeda-inspired groups in the past, the BBC's Middle East correspondent Katya Adler says.

 

Hamas is concerned they may attract more extremist members, and has forbidden anyone except what it describes as Hamas security personnel from carrying weapons in Gaza, our correspondent says.

 

BBC

 

 

Hamas is not Islamic enough? Hamas assaulting a mosque?

 

Whodathunkit!

 

But big up to Hamas, they sure know how to deal with Jihadi wannabes.

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

"These declarations [of an Islamic emirate] are aimed towards incitement against the Gaza Strip and an attempt at recruiting an international alliance against the Gaza Strip.

 

"And we warn those who are behind these Israeli Zionist declarations: the Gaza Strip only contains its people."

Dhalinta should listen to this honourable man. Soomaaliya belongs to Soomaalis, too.

[Meiji]

Congratulations to the democratically elected Palastinian Islamic party of Hamas!

 

They should defeat the religious pretenders who are linked to AL Qaida and want to highjack the legitimate cause of the Palestinians!

 

In Somalia too, we should be aware of religious pretenders who are linked to Al Qaida and want to highjack our legitimate struggle to unify and pacify our country. We should never allow our national struggle and cause to be turned into a global struggle and cause, i.e creating safe haven and training bases for Al Qaida and International-Jihadi st with global ambitions.

 

Hamas has cracked down on al-Qaeda-inspired groups in the past, the BBC's Middle East correspondent Katya Adler says.

Again, congratulations to the popular elected Hamas for dealing swiftly with these religious pretenders with links to Al-Qaida.

[Herer]

Palestine=Somalia

 

Hamas=Dawalada Sh.Shariif

 

Jund Ansar Allah=Al-Shabaab

 

Fatah=all somali Warlords

 

 

May Allah Guide all Muslim Ummah right path.

[Meiji]

Originally posted by m_aden_nur:

Palestine=Somalia

 

Hamas=Dawalada Sh.Shariif

 

Jund Ansar Allah=Al-Shabaab

 

Fatah=all somali Warlords

 

 

May Allah Guide all Muslim Ummah right path.

1)Palestine is not Somalia. Somalia is not occupied for over a half-century, nor do we face a superpower but instead face a poverty-stricken Ethiopia and corruption-infested Kenya.

 

2)Hamas is a democratically elected government and has the popular support of the Palestinians whereby Sharifs regime is a foreign-created one that came into existence in a foreign country and has little support from the Somali masses.

[Sherban Shabeel]

Congratulations to Hamas on showing who's boss in Gaza, and here's hoping Shariif will show everyone who's boss in Xamar.

[Jacaylbaro]

I don't understand why some are happy that Hamas attacked a mosque ...............

[Naxar Nugaaleed]

forget hamas and alqaida, abbas and fayyads "legitimacy by achievement " are the real deal

August 5, 2009

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Green Shoots in Palestine

 

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Ramallah, West Bank

 

In 2002, the U.N. Development Program released its first ever Arab Human Development Report, which bluntly detailed the deficits of freedom, women’s empowerment and knowledge-creation holding back the Arab world. It was buttressed with sobering statistics: Greece alone translated five times more books every year from English to Greek than the entire Arab world translated from English to Arabic; the G.D.P. of Spain was greater than that of all 22 Arab states combined; 65 million Arab adults were illiterate. It was a disturbing picture, bravely produced by Arab academics.

 

Coming out so soon after 9/11, the report felt like a diagnosis of all the misgovernance bedeviling the Arab world, creating the pools of angry, unemployed youth, who become easy prey for extremists. Well, the good news is that the U.N. Development Program and a new group of Arab scholars last week came out with a new Arab Human Development report. The bad news: Things have gotten worse — and many Arab governments don’t want to hear about it.

 

This new report was triggered by a desire to find out why the obstacles to human development in the Arab world have “proved so stubborn.” What the roughly 100 Arab authors of the 2009 study concluded was that too many Arab citizens today lack “human security — the kind of material and moral foundation that secures lives, livelihoods and an acceptable quality of life for the majority.” A sense of personal security — economic, political and social — “is a prerequisite for human development, and its widespread absence in Arab countries has held back their progress.”

 

The authors cite a variety of factors undermining human security in the Arab region today — beginning with environmental degradation — the toxic combination of rising desertification, water shortages and population explosion. In 1980, the Arab region had 150 million people. In 2007, it was home to 317 million people, and by 2015 its population is projected to be 395 million. Some 60 percent of this population is under the age of 25, and they will need 51 million new jobs by 2020.

 

Another persistent source of Arab human insecurity is high unemployment. “For nearly two and half decades after 1980, the region witnessed hardly any economic growth,” the report found. Despite the presence of oil money (or maybe because of it), there is a distinct lack of investment in scientific research, development, knowledge industries and innovation. Instead, government jobs and contracts dominate. Average unemployment in the Arab region in 2005 was 14.4 percent, compared with 6.3 percent for the rest of the world. A lot of this is because of a third source of human insecurity: autocratic and unrepresentative Arab governments, whose weaknesses “often combine to turn the state into a threat to human security, instead of its chief support.”

 

The whole report would have left me feeling hopeless had I not come to Ramallah, the seat of Palestinian government in the West Bank, to find some good cheer. I’m serious.

 

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to the wider Middle East what off-Broadway is to Broadway. It is where all good and bad ideas get tested out first. Well, the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, a former I.M.F. economist, is testing out the most exciting new idea in Arab governance ever. I call it “Fayyadism.”

 

Fayyadism is based on the simple but all-too-rare notion that an Arab leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans or rejectionism or personality cults or security services, but on delivering transparent, accountable administration and services.

 

Fayyad, a former finance minister who became prime minister after Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007, is unlike any Arab leader today. He is an ardent Palestinian nationalist, but his whole strategy is to say: the more we build our state with quality institutions — finance, police, social services — the sooner we will secure our right to independence. I see this as a challenge to “Arafatism,” which focused on Palestinian rights first, state institutions later, if ever, and produced neither.

 

Things are truly getting better in the West Bank, thanks to a combination of Fayyadism, improved Palestinian security and a lifting of checkpoints by Israel. In all of 2008, about 1,200 new companies registered for licenses here. In the first six months of this year, almost 900 have registered. According to the I.M.F., the West Bank economy should grow by 7 percent this year.

 

Fayyad, famous here for his incorruptibility, says his approach is “to tell people who you are, what you are about and what you intend to do and then actually do it.” At a time when all the big ideologies have failed to deliver for Arabs, Fayyad says he wants a government based on “legitimacy by achievement.”

 

Something quite new is happening here. And given the centrality of the Palestinian cause in Arab eyes, if Fayyadism works, maybe it could start a trend in this part of the world — one that would do the most to improve Arab human security — good, accountable government.