Israel has arrested some 60 Hamas legislators and ministers, and apparently threw in a few Fatah members for good measure. Ha’aretz says the arrests were planned before Cpl. Shalit was kidnapped.
The detention of dozens of Hamas lawmakers in the early hours of Thursday morning had been planned several weeks ago and received approval from Attorney General Menachem Mazuz on Wednesday. The same day, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin presented Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with the list of Hamas officials slated for detention.
The Group of Eight industrialized countries said Thursday that the Hamas arrests raised “particular concerns.”
Israel Defense Forces troops launched the major arrest operation overnight, detaining 64 of the ruling party’s cabinet ministers and parliamentarians in the West Bank, as well as another 23 military activists.
The move is part of Israel’s expanded military operation against the Hamas-led government in the Palestinian Authority.
The arrests took place in Ramallah, Qalqilyah, Hebron, Jenin and East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian reports. Soldiers carried arrest warrants signed by judges that were issued following cooperative preparatory work by the state prosecution and police.
This operation was not a surprise.
There appeared to be some confusion Thursday as to whether Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Nasser a-Shaer, had been one of those detainees or whether he had evaded capture and gone into hiding in the West Bank.
The Hamas ministers had apparently expected the arrests. A-Shaer’s wife said Thursday that he had avoided the military arrest operation as he had not been sleeping at home when the sweep took place.
He reportedly had disconnected all his cellular telephones for fear Israeli security services would again attempt to track him down and arrest him.
I suppose the world is going to blather on about “democratically elected representatives,” yadda yadda yadda. The fact that these are democratically elected terrorists doesn’t seem to matter to anyone but Israel, but, well, Israel’s the one doing the arresting.
And these are three great quotes:
A Hamas official called the arrests an “open war against the Palestinian government and people,” and said that Israel must be prepared to pay their consequences.
As opposed to the secret war that Hamas has been waging against Israel?
“We have no government, we have nothing. They have all been taken,” Saeb Erekat, an ally of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said of the arrests. “This is absolutely unacceptable and we demand their release immediately.”
You can almost see Erekat crying those crocodile tears. “Wah, wah, you’re destroying Hamas, our bitterest political enemies, the ones who kicked our asses in the elections… oh, wait a minute.”
Israel Radio quoted Shin Bet security chief Yuval Diskin as having told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the day of the kidnapping: “If the soldier is not returned in 24 hours, Israel will not allow the Palestinian government to survive.”
Yes, but the story has already established that the arrests were planned weeks before Cpl. Shalit was abducted. Still, that is an awesome quote. If I had a random quote generator on this blog, I’d put it in. Hm….
This is the best bit of Israeli ass-kicking I’ve seen in a long time. Suddenly nothing is left of Hamas but Hamasburger.
“Chairman Abbas, would you like fries with that?”
Israel should make good on its word. The Palestinian government should not survive. Not one minister, nor one member of its assembly should survive. That includes Abbas.
chsw
That is a reason why I did not get overly upset when the IAF had some collateral damage the past few weeks. I konw that the IDF/AF is humane in a situation where one side lacks all sense of humanity. These people are so nihilistically savage that any residual sympathy I might have for them has beeen bombed out of me. War means fighting and fighting means killing. Let the bloody work commence. I doubt though that Olmert has the stamina for this.