Hamas intelligence gets a simple message

THE Islamist movement Hamas says it has launched a crackdown on maverick resistance fighters operating in the Gaza Strip to prevent an Israeli military offensive even more deadly than the 2009 Operation Cast Lead.

Intelligence indicating that the Israelis were ready to strike Gaza was passed to Hamas officials last week via Egypt after more than 30 separate rocket and mortar attacks against Israel since the start of 2011.

''The message was very simple,'' Hamas's national security spokesman Ihab Ghussain told The Age this week. ''If the rockets continue, then Israel will launch a war against Gaza.''

No Israeli citizens have been killed or injured by the 2011 onslaught, but Israel's policy of counter-attacking every rocket fired into its territory has resulted in the deaths of at least 20 Palestinians and wounded dozens more. Hamas organised an urgent meeting last Wednesday of all Palestinian factions operating in Gaza to ram home the message that unless all the rocket and mortar fire was halted, war was inevitable.

Yet as recently as Tuesday, Palestinian militants fired four mortars at Israeli targets. In response, Israel Defence Forces troops shelled what they claimed was a group of Palestinians ''in the process of setting up explosives near … the (northern) Gaza border''.

One man was killed and two others injured.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, a Gaza-based advocacy group, disputed Israeli claims that the men were laying explosives, saying they were construction workers collecting scrap building materials left in the wake of the 2009 Cast Lead offensive.

''Everyone must acknowledge that the Gaza Strip is under occupation, and it is under daily attack, and so people have the right to maintain an armed resistance,'' Mr Ghussain said.

''But we have established a system of checkpoints, search-and-seizure operations, and other measures to try and prevent the rocket attacks because we have no interest in another war with Israel.''

Despite the threatening start to 2011, rocket and mortar attacks into Israel fell to 235 last year, compared to 853 attacks in 2009 and 3716 attacks in 2008.

''Israel knows that last year was one of the quietest of the decade, and that Hamas has been very serious about maintaining the present state of calm,'' Mr Ghussain said. ''Yet what we hear is that they want war.''

According to Akram Attallah, a Gaza columnist for the Fatah-aligned newspaper al-Ayyam, talk of another war is rife within Gaza, the besieged Palestinian enclave that is home to 1.5 million people.

''The peace process has stalled, Gilad Shalit is still a prisoner of war, Hezbollah is unchecked in Lebanon, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has a very uneasy relationship with his main coalition partner [Foreign Minister] Avigdor Lieberman,'' he said.

''So yes, I think this man wants a reason to attack Gaza because it will divert attention from the other problems,'' Attallah said.

The three-week Operation Cast Lead resulted in the deaths of 1400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, and saw both Israel and Hamas accused of war crimes in a United Nations investigation.