Deep concern over the Palestinian Hamas organization’s rich terrorist past – some 60 suicide bombings in five years – has distracted most observers from questioning the character of government the Hamas proposes to mete out to the Palestinian people. Consequently, no one in Washington, Jerusalem or any other world capital, has any plans ready to meet the new Palestine which is just around the corner. Saturday, Feb. 18, Hamas’s majority party will be sworn in by the newly-elected legislative council. In the days and weeks ahead, the terrorists will assume power. While sworn to destroy Israel, they are determined first of all to reshape the chaotic national entity they have inherited from Fatah.

How will the new entity look?

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Islamic and counter-terror sources inquired and discovered two fixed prospects:

1. For the first time in a century, the United States and the West will be face to face with a Muslim Brotherhood regime – one, moreover, headed by a branch with its own unique attributes.

Hamas is not like any other known terrorist group, such as al Qaeda or Hizballah. Its government will not resemble that of the radical Sunni Taliban ousted in Afghanistan.

It its highly hierarchical, organized and disciplined. Unlike other Palestinian terrorist organizations, Hamas has a clear order of priorities and is capable of building a layered program of action towards its ultimate objective. Its leaders will take all the time they need to get ready for the ultimate violent clash with Israel.

In the meantime, Hamas will go through the motions of hanging up its bomb vest for a while. But that is a mere tactic that will deny Israel any reason for attacks. In respect of the Zionists’ great military strength and US support, Hamas will bide its time until its war machine is ready. These preparations may take a generation or two until Hamas decision-makers feel certain of victory. Hamas’ foremost ideologue, the late Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, who was killed by Israeli rockets in 2004, set 2025 as the target year for this battle. But that date is no more sacred than any other, except as a pointer to Hamas’ long-term planning capability.

Until then, the terrorist organization will busy itself on two tracks:

A. The Open Track

Hamas plans to give the Palestinian people good government. Its ministers will strive to efficiently run the administration and services, end the current mayhem and supply the population’s needs for security, law and order, work, education, social welfare and medical care. As we reported in our last issue (DNW 241), no hefty budgets on the Western scale will be required. Hamas will govern on the cheap. Outlay will be slimmed down, but services allocated universally instead of preferentially to favored elites as in the days of the defeated Fatah. In the first stage, Hamas will not force Islamic restrictions down the people’s throats, such as the veil for women and a ban on the sale of alcohol in Ramallah’s night spots.

In day-to-day, meat-and-drink matters, Hamas will pragmatically maintain contacts with Americans and Israelis - and anybody else willing to contribute to government of a quality unheard-of by the Palestinians or almost any Arab or Muslim country. The new Palestinian rulers will therefore keep in with Washington, on the one hand, and Tehran on the other, allowing neither to dictate its goals. Hamas will preserve its independence of any outside power, unlike the Lebanese Hizballah which is inextricably tied to Iran.

However, at all times, Hamas will never forget that however rational and constructive its conduct, it is no more than a screen to disguise progress on the clandestine track to its overriding objective.

B. The Clandestine Track

All the radical Islamic organization’s actions will be programmed to lead to the ultimate war confrontation with the Jewish state it has sworn to displace. Even the spanking new, efficient Palestinian national entity will be covertly tailored to become the first modern fascist-Islamic state in history. Its be-all and end-all will be war.

Hamas’ master plan is already in motion. Its first action upon assuming office will be the takeover of Palestinian domestic security agencies – known as the Preventive Security Services – and the civilian police force.

Hamas leaders have already ordered the heads of its covert security service, the Rasad, to start rounding up hundreds of recruits in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and training them for operating at the national level, i.e. seizing control of the many existing Palestinian security bodies.

Stage two will entail taking control of the 20,000-strong Palestinian national security forces. Hamas activists have been ordered to enlist 10,000 men. Together with the 6,000 terrorist operatives of the Hamas’ Ezz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas will within a few short weeks have acquired a standing army almost the size of the national security force. Its number-crunchers reckon that the entire project will cost no more than $4 million.

Its third project is the resuscitation of the Popular Army project begun in 2004 to enlist every able-bodied man from 15 to 60 left out of the regular security frameworks or terrorist groups. They are required for home guard-type duties as guards and taught to use simple rifles and hand grenades.

A fourth military framework, the Youth Brigades, will be established in Palestinian schools. Participation for boys and girls alike will be compulsory. Over their years at school, they will be taught different military skills and set up companies for, say, infantry, navy, communications and the like.

To maintain control of this extensive war machine, the Hamas will take charge of all Palestinian media, radio, television and print press. Instead of seizing existing media, the new rulers will simply set up new ones to choke the veteran outlets out of business.

An important part of the Hamas blueprint is accretion of the northern and southern arms of the Israeli Arab Islamic movement. The addition of 1.3 million Israeli Arabs to the final war against Israel is deemed an essential element of victory.

The main impediment to Hamas’ plans is the Palestinian Authority’s chairman, Mahmoud Abbas who has now acquired presidential powers. As long as he leaves the new government alone, he will be allowed to live out the four years remaining of his tenure in peace. If he interferes with their plans, they will get rid of him one way or another.

The first six months of Hamas rule will determine whether Abbas as leader of the defeated Fatah accepts this quiescent role. If not, both Hamas and Fatah will gear up for an armed duel to determine who is to be top dog of the Palestinian people.

Egyptian ambassador to the US, Nabil Fahmi, had his hands full this week arguing his government’s case to vice president Dick Cheney, national security adviser Stephen Hadley and any State Department official dealing with the Middle East he was able to buttonhole.

His presentation did not take long: holding elections in Egypt’s 70,000 local councils on schedule in two months time would very likely bring down Hosni Mubarak’s central government in Cairo.

The Egyptian ambassador explained further that local councils and municipalities administer the day-to-day lives of Egyptian citizens. Their capture by Muslim Brotherhood radicals, which is predicted by all the polls, would destroy the substructure of national government and topple the presidency in its wake.

Reporting this, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources reveal that Ambassador Fahmi armed himself for his meetings with US officials with an intelligence appraisal which president Mubarak handed him in person. The document specifies which of Egypt’s main cities are most at risk of falling into radical Muslim Brotherhood hands in an April election.

Our sources present the gist of those findings here:

The big cities certain to be lost:

Abu Hummus, Talkha, Damanhur, Zagazig and Mansura – all in the Nile Delta region north of Cairo; Rashid, north of Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast.

Parts of Cairo outside of the Wasta, Giza, and El Saff districts.

Asyut and Souag in the Lower Delta.

All these locations have populations of more than a million.

Other towns certain to be lost are El Arish and a-Tur in the Sinai Peninsula

Borderline towns:

Towns which could go either way include Alexandria, Ismailiya – on the Suez Canal and the strategic town of Aswan near the Aswan Dam in the south.

The Egyptian ambassador argued that the only way to arrest the country’s slide in the hands of radical Islam was to have parliament postpone the elections by two years. By delaying the ballot, president Mubarak would gain time to pass constitutional amendments setting out local councils’ authority under a plan to decentralize government.

The replies he encountered from all Washington officials were uniform: a resounding No! Elections must not be postponed in Egypt or any other part of the Middle East.

Nonetheless, Mubarak went ahead Tuesday, Feb. 14, and submitted to the lower house of parliament a bill for deferring the local council ballot by two years, leaving time to pass the necessary constitutional amendments.

Washington was quick to show its displeasure. Referring to the Egyptian Shura Council’s approval of the delay, US state department spokesman Sean McCormack said stiffly: “As a matter of principle we do not favor postponing elections. It is something that we are going to be discussing with the Egyptian government.”

He added: “I expect we’ll do it through conversations here, probably as well as in Cairo.”

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources report that, unofficially the Americans were livid.

Rice phoned Fahmi to tell him that the administration continues to insist that elections take place in April. When the ambassador replied that parliament had decided otherwise, the secretary of state retorted: So change the decision.

The upshot of the row is that both sides are firmly entrenched in their positions; the Bush administration stands by its demand for an April election - come what may, while the Egyptian president is just as firmly fixed on postponement.

“On no account,” he told his aides, “will I allow Egypt to fall in a process like the one that brought Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority by the ballot box!”

While protesting its nuclear activities are destined solely for peaceful purposes, the Islamic Republican regime in Tehran has taken out some divine insurance – just in case the painstakingly assembled American dossier proves incriminating enough for the UN Security Council.

It takes the form of a fatwa by a senior cleric affirming that it is permissible to make a nuclear bomb “for the purpose of a retaliatory strike against those aspiring to attack us with nuclear weapons.”

This fatwa was read out Wednesday, Feb. 15, by Hojjat-el-Eslam Mohssen Gharavian, closest aide of Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, who happens to be the teacher and mentor of none other than Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This week too, Iran’s nuclear misdeeds were listed by American spokesmen, including secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Director of Intelligence John Negroponte.

Iran’s crimes are a good deal graver even than those held against Saddam Hussein three years ago. The Islamic Republic is accused of:

• A clandestine program for manufacturing a nuclear bomb.
• Sponsorship of Palestinian and Islamic terrorist organizations and orchestrating their operations.
• Fomenting with Syria violent protests by extremist Islamic groups.
• Repression of human rights
• Denial of the Nazi Holocaust.
• Issuing calls for Israel’s destruction.

The rejoinder to American charges came a day later: the unidentified head of an Iran organization called The Martyrs Forces – Lashgar e-Estesh-Hadioun – informed reporters in Tehran: “Our forces are poised to inflict death blows on imperialism. No power on earth can deflect those blows once the order issues from Khamenei’s office (the supreme ruler). Our fighters are already out in the field and will stay there for many years, cut off from all contacts until their mission is accomplished.”

Farsi airwaves for psychological warfare

Wednesday, Feb. 15, Rice, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced the White House would request $75 million in a supplemental budget to expand broadcasting into Iran, support civic groups such as labor unions and increase visits to the United States by Iranian students.

She promised: “The United States will actively confront the policies of this Iranian regime, and at the same time work to support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom in their own country. “ Rice called Iran a strategic challenge to the United States.

A major portion of this budget will be spent on television broadcasts into Iran. This medium is considered of high propaganda value. Iranian citizens eagerly pick up Farsi broadcasts from stations in Los Angeles. Their content is mediocre for lack of funding.

By chance, the Gharavian edict coincided with Rice’s statement to the Senate committee.

It was Tehran’s first blunt affirmation of a need to resort to nuclear weaponry. Addressing a closed meeting, the Iranian cleric said: “Whereas the entire world has nuclear arms, it is only natural that this form of weapon will be available to us for a retaliatory operation.”

He added: “The most important thing is to determine its destination.”

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iranian sources draw a circle around this statement as denoting a fundamental change in Tehran’s tactics.

Until now, Iran’s ecclesiastical leaders insisted that the production and use of nuclear arms was strictly forbidden under Islamic law.

While their assertions were not taken seriously, more as whitewash for the government’s actions, nevertheless their words were taken by the West as some sort of starting point that made diplomacy possible.

For the Iranian people, the religious taboo on nuclear weapons was a kind of guarantee that Tehran’s policy was not leading the country to such disasters as an economic showdown with the West or, even worse, an American military strike.

Now, for the first time, the West is hearing an influential Iranian cleric sanctifying the use of a nuclear bomb, implying it is under development as a weapon of retaliation. By the same token, the Iranian people are told shockingly for the first time that the nuclear program underway is not destined for peaceful purposes but to be a military deterrent.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iran experts infer from this tidal policy change and other symptoms that the ruling hierarchy and its decision-making echelons on nuclear policy are in a state of seismic flux.

Power-hungry Ahmadinejad’s stealthy putsch

Our Iranian sources confirm that the power-hungry president has abandoned his earlier show of allegiance to the supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khameni and the ruling elite, and embarked on a reshuffle which is more like a putsch.

Key jobs are being transferred from the incumbents to his radical allies and followers.

The regimes prior to Ahmadinejad’s preserved a balance tilted carefully between opposing factions - “reformists” and “conservatives” under president Muhammad Khatami; pragmatists and dogmatists in Hashemi Rafsanjani’s day.

By filling key positions with radical clerics and Revolutionary Guards hardliners, the new presidency is destroying this equilibrium.

Unless it is curtailed, this process, according to most experts, will bring to power the Sepah-e-Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards Corps) which are already bending every national financial and technological resource to the attainment of an atomic bomb and long-range missiles for its delivery.

They are harnessing to this goal the most radical members of Iran’s clergy, like fascist-Islamist Mesbah-Yazdi.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iran watchers note that, albeit less than a year in office, the new president has taken an axe to local government: two thirds of all district governors have been sacked in favor of ex-officers of the Revolutionary Guards. Forty percent of the new appointees are cronies of the president, his brothers-in-arms from the Revolutionary Guards in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

Ahmadinejad and his supporters are not yet done.

They have begun planting allies in the powerful Council of Experts, Shura-Ye-Khobregan, which controls the supreme ruler and is empowered to choose his successor. The plan is to add 34 secular members to the 85 all-clerical panel and so alter its internal balance. The new members will specialize in various fields of state management with the accent on the military and security spheres. The Revolutionary Guards will then be in position to sway the Council of Experts and determine who succeeds Khamenei, whose health is not good. This change, if approved unanimously by the full council, will put paid to Rafsanjani’s hopes of succeeding as supreme ruler.

The frog dies in the French cook-pot

The president this week took to task foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki for his tardiness in replacing the ambassadors in Britain, France and Germany. A month ago, when the three European powers broke off their halting nuclear negotiations with Tehran,

Ahmadinejad sacked 30 ambassadors. He ordered them replaced with Revolutionary Guards officers.

Ahmadinejad’s own mentor has been awarded a fat bonus. The budget for Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi’s office has been raised tenfold to a sum equivalent to a colossal $40 million. Amid genuine fears in Iran of a US-Israeli military assault, the piper repaid his master by singing the right tune: “Allah,” said Mesbah-Yazdi, “has set a heavy price for the struggle on behalf of Islam and the state for the purpose of testing the believers.” He added: “Allah sometimes sends sinners and criminals to harm the righteous and the believers in order to strengthen their faith.”

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Islamic experts see the firebrand president as having commissioned this doomsday rhetoric to prepare the nation psychologically for a heavy casualty toll in the event of a military confrontation with the West. Tehran is gripped by the pervasive fear that Washington is preparing to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s subterranean nuclear installations.

Ahmadnejad does not only retain a fire-eating ayatollah, but also a tame political theoretician: Hassan Abassi this week warned Tehran not to make concessions to the West on its nuclear program. To make his point, he used an allegory. The West, he said, is employing “the frog tactic.” To preserve the fine taste of frog’s meat, French chefs start cooking it alive in cold water which gradually heats up. The frog does not wake up to its peril until it is too late and it dies in the scalding water. Abassi warned that, by granting the West concessions on its nuclear program, Tehran would play into western hands like the frog in the French cook-pot.

Withal Ahmadinejad’s maneuvers, Tehran has not shut the door on diplomacy. It has gone back to playing the card of talks with Moscow for Russia to host elements of its uranium enrichment operation - even suggesting a return to talks with the three European powers. The Iranians know that the easiest way to buy time and stay clear of the UN Security Council is to dangle the prospect of negotiations with the West.

Recent intelligence reports describe Iraq’s al Qaeda chief Abu Musab al Zarqawi as secretly sending some top commanders to one of the most forbidding regions of Saharan Africa – the Sahel. The wanted terrorist with a finger in every pie may even have arrived in the region in person.

Some accounts contend that al Qaeda’s networks are now poised in their Sahel and Saharan sanctuaries for a fresh wave of attacks on American targets in Europe, possibly even using unconventional weapons.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly discloses that this information brought US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld hurrying over to North Africa last Saturday for three days of talks on Feb. 11-13 with the rulers of Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.

Sahel, a 3,000-mile strip of arid savanna girdling the continent, cuts through Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan. It is the belt that separates the arid Sahara from tropical West Africa

Mashal: “We come to power with gun in hand!”

10 February: “The Palestinian rifle proved its power to evict the Jews from the Gaza Strip when Israel carried out its evacuation,” Meshaal declared. “Unless we use force, no one will talk to us. At this moment, Palestinian government belongs to the force whose platform pledges warfare.”

DEBKAfile’s political sources describe the rush of events Friday as blowing away the last policy parameters charted for the Middle East in Washington and Jerusalem

Our Moscow sources report Meshaal made his speech after Russia’s special Middle East envoy Alexander Kalugin personally handed him President Putin’s invitation to visit the Russian capital. He then received a pile of invitations from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Syria. Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan said he justified the Russian-French position. “I too invite Hamas leaders to Ankara,” he said.

Too Late to Thwart Hamas

10 February: DEBKAfile’s political sources accuse acting prime minister Ehud Olmert and foreign minister Tzipi Livni of doing too little, too late in their campaign to keep the Hamas Islamic terrorists from coming to power.

Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov predicted correctly that other states will follow suit and favor contacts with Hamas now that the Jerusalem campaign heavily dependent on Washington has gone up in smoke. As he spoke, France jumped aboard.

What this means is -

1. After failing to prevent the election, Israeli should have struck hard and swiftly to round up the terrorist group’s leaders, all of whom have black records of orchestrating dozens of suicide massacres of Israelis. Instead, Olmert and Livni decided to wait for the “international community” to fight Israel’s wars and then trail in its wake.

2. Russian president Vladimir Putin did not miss the opening left by the inaction of Washington and Jerusalem for scoring points with the Muslim world, which is up in arms against the West over the Prophet Mohammed cartoons.

3. Jerusalem must stop stammering over such issues as the transfer of moneys to the Palestinian Authority and abandon its waiting stance – “Let’s first see what sort of government Abu Mazen sets up” – and seize the initiative with clear action.

On Jan. 26, the day after Hamas swept the Palestinian election, Jerusalem’s first response was to wait for Washington to wake up (it was still night) and provide a lead. However, Bush administration officials were just as much at sea as the Israelis.

That was the Olmert government’s big chance for a move to block Hamas’ ride into government. Instead, they waited for Washington to cobble some guidelines together - and Hamas walked off with the initiative.

After that, Israeli officials echoed the US State Department’s decision to leave it to Mahmoud Abbas to clear up the mess. When he failed, the Egyptians were called in to save the day.

Abu Mazen frees second batch of convicted Palestinian terrorists from Jericho lock-up

12 February: IDF brought reinforcements Sunday night to surround the town and threw up roadblocks on roads to other parts of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The first 56 were suddenly released on Palestinian Authority chairman’s orders Thursday Feb. 9. Among them were 26 Islamic Jihad members from northern and central Samaria, who plotted and masterminded suicide bombings in Hadera, Netanya, and Kfar Saba in 2005. Also released were 13 members of the PA General Intelligence Service, loyal to Col. Tewfik Tirawri, and 17 members of the PA Military Police – all of whom participated in terrorist attacks.

Abu Mazen thus renews Yasser Arafat's revolving-door policy for terrorists.

Hamas Angles for an Invitation to Baghdad

12 February: Our sources in Baghdad report Hamas leaders are making a point of being received and recognized by an Arab government backed to the hilt and sustained by the US government and army.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources note: An invitation from the democratically-elected government in Baghdad to a democratically-elected Palestinian (terrorist) party would place the Washington in a cleft stick, after having initiated both elections. Cooperation between the only two elected Arab regimes would be hard to challenge. On the other hand, since Hamas is listed as a terrorist group in the US and Europe, such cooperation would show the Bush administration as having placed democratic reform in the Middle East ahead of the global war on terror and at its expense.

Abu Mazen Assumes Presidential Powers

13 February: Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas took advantage of the last day of his own Fatah majority Monday, Feb. 13, to push through the parting session of the outgoing legislature a series of measures which incoming Hamas deputies describe as a “white revolution.” They accused him of seizing the prerogative for drumming up a constitutional crisis in a few months’ time, sacking the Hamas government and dissolving the legislature. Hamas promised to annul these measures when its 74 members take their seats for the first time in the new house next Saturday.

But, according to DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources, Hamas lacks the two-thirds majority in the 132-seat house to annul Abbas’s draconian legislation.

The measures endorsed::

1. Set up a constitutional court of nine judges to arbitrate in disputes over the distribution of powers among the president, government and legislature, disqualify basic laws, dissolve parliament and call new elections.

2. A new Palestinian broadcasting service was placed under control of the president 4.

New 207mm Katyusha rocket in hands of Fatah terrorist arm, al Aqsa Brigades

13 February: The menacing Russian-made rocket, which the Palestinian terrorists have dubbed Aqsa 2 or Aqsa 207, arrived in the Gaza Strip last week through northern Sinai. It extends the range of Palestinian rocket fire from the Gaza Strip to a maximum of 16-18 kilometers. Well within this range are Ashkelon and its port, power and oil pipeline installations, as well as the southern Israeli towns of Ofakim and Netivot.

While the rockets are “imported”, the launchers are assembled at Fatah foundries in the Gaza Strip.

The war materiel is smuggled in from Sinai - either through illicit tunnels running under the border or openly under the eye of the Egyptian border units. The Fatah armed group is anxious to prove that despite its crushing defeat by Hamas in last month’s election, it is still capable of spearheading the war against Israel.

What did Israel’s acting PM Olmert mean by “new rules for a Hamas Authority”?

13 February: Ehud Olmert warned that after the newly-elected Palestinian legislative council is sworn in Saturday, Feb. 18, it becomes a “Hamas Authority” and new rules of the game then apply:

1. The new legislature will be denied full attendance at its first session in Ramallah by an Israeli ban on the passage of Hamas delegates from Gaza, Nablus, Tulkarm, Hebron or Jenin to take their seats. The full 74-man Hamas complement will therefore be kept away from the 132-seat parliament.

The session will be held by videoconference.

2. Olmert proposes to finally halt all payments to the Palestinian Authority once Hamas is sworn in.

3. Israel will cancel the Palestinian VIP passes that facilitate the movements of top Palestinian officials between the West Bank and Gaza.

4. Israeli-Palestinian exchanges on mundane matters like water, electricity, food supplies, port facilities and access to hospitals will be left henceforth to petty officials, who will have to defer to their bosses for every decision – with consequent delays.

Supreme Court Justice Mishael Heshin defines the Palestinian Authority as an enemy state de facto

14 February: He rejected petitions to allow Palestinians married to Israelis to settle in Israel under the family reunification law as a loophole that would pose a risk to state security. “Just listen to daily declarations made by Hamas. The Palestinian people chose Hamas which seeks to destroy Israel and they are citizens of an enemy state.” He asked why Israel should take risks with Israeli lives, any more than did England and America by admitting Germans in the Second World War. The judge said no one is preventing mixed couples from building a family, but they should live in Jenin. The right to life takes priority over any other consideration.

Hamas politburo head Khaled Mashaal says: Our mission is to liberate Jerusalem, purify the al Aqsa Mosque

14 February: Addressing a pro-Hamas rally in Khartoum, Mashaal referred to Western threats to cut off aid: “God, the Islamic nation are with us, will lead us to victory and liberation. Do not fear poverty.” He thanked Sudanese parties for raising funds for the Hamas-ruled Palestinian government.

Hamas leader Mahmoud a-Zahar declares Palestinian war on Israel will go on

14 February: Spelling out the incoming Palestinian government’s agenda, a-Zahar said: We will not recognize Israel; our armed struggle will go on until all of Palestine is “liberated;” we will abrogate the Oslo accords and all the agreements the PLO and the Palestinian Authority signed; all negotiations with Israel must go through a third party; we don’t need money from Israel or “the Satan;” Arab nations will give us money; we have long-range missiles.

DEBKAfile: Mahmoud a-Zahar, who is terminally ill with cancer, in effect handed down his political-military testament. It contained the incoming Palestinian government’s point-by-point response to the conditions laid down by the United States, Israel and the Middle East Quartet (sans Russia) for dealing with a Hamas-led government – recognize Israel, renounce terror and honor international accords. He showed the Islamic terrorists to be unmoved by threats of isolation and the restrictive rules of engagement the Olmert government proposes to impose on a Palestinian Authority after Hamas is sworn in.

Egypt unofficially blockades Palestinian transit to and from Gaza Strip

15 February: Six days after the naval attaché at the Egyptian embassy in Gaza City Hossam Musseili was snatched by masked gunmen, Cairo has suspended permits for Palestinians to enter Egypt from Gaza or enter Gaza from northern Sinai.

The blockade will remain in force until they surrendered the abductors to Egypt.

The Egyptian government knows who the kidnappers are. They are members of the Atiya clan of Rafah, one of the Palestinian crime families operating the weapons-smuggling tunnels from northern Sinai to the Gaza Strip. Last week, Egyptian security officers rounded up Atiya clansmen living on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border. Musseili was snatched as an act of retaliation..

Israel’s defense chiefs recommend embargo on Hamas-governed Palestinian areas

16 February: DEBKAfile reports: Thursday, Feb. 16, defense minister Shaul Mofaz and top officials of the national security and military branches advised the following steps to be enforced when Hamas deputies take their seats in the new Palestinian legislative council Saturday, Feb. 18:

1. To annul existing customs accords between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel’s customs authorities will henceforth treat Palestinian imports and exports like any other foreign goods transiting state borders according to tariffs determined in Jerusalem. This will also eliminate any future transfers to the Palestinian Authority.

2. Palestinian workers will no longer be allowed to work in Israel. Tens of thousands will be stopped at the Gazan checkpoints as of Sunday.

3. Israel will cancel all the VIP permits issued to high Palestinian functionaries.

4. Palestinian travel between the Gaza Strip and West Bank across Israeli territory will be banned.

These steps are recommendations. It is up to the prime minister to decide whether to adopt them.

King Abdullah okays Hamas politburo move from Damascus to Amman

16 February: The Jordanian king, held up as Israel’s foremost Arab ally, has granted Khaled Meshaal permission to reopen his offices in the Jordanian capital, seven years after the late King Hussein expelled him with his staff as a threat to the realm

DEBKAfile’s sources: Abdullah’s move is a grave setback for the Olmert-Livni plans to cut down Hamas. The Islamist terrorists will now have an alternative base of operations for bypassing Israel’s steps against them next door in Jordan, with direct access to the West Bank. A Hamas government will, for instance, be free to channel incoming assistance for running its administration through Jordanian banks, thereby circumventing Israel’s freeze on allocations.