Hamas Threatens Further Fighting, Will Resume Attacks If Demands Not Met

Hamas Warns That Without Deal On Harbor, Attacks Will Resume Friday

The Times of Israel is liveblogging events as they unfold through Friday, the 32nd day since the start of Operation Protective Edge. An Israeli delegation is in Cairo to discuss the terms of a long-term ceasefire with Hamas, but Hamas has not accepted a ceasefire extension beyond Friday morning.

If Hamas attacks us again, ‘we’ll respond in kind,’ says PM

PM Netanyahu is vowing a tough reaction if Hamas renews hostilities, as it has threatened, at 8 a.m.

“They might reject an extension. If they attack us, we’ll respond in kind, as any government would,” he tells Germany’s ZDF television.

An Israeli defense official earlier said Israel would respond “forcefully,” and that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yaalon had instructed the military “to be ready for anything.”

Earlier, a text message from Hamas’ military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, warned there would be no extension of the cease-fire — set to expire in less than six hours — if there is no agreement to permanently lift the blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt since the terrorist group overran Gaza in 2007.

Abu Obeida, the al-Qassam spokesman, appeared on the group’s Al-Aqsa TV station and said Hamas was “ready to go to war again… The resistance is capable of imposing its conditions,” he said.

A security official in Egypt said Egyptian negotiators were struggling to bring the two sides closer together, with one official saying Hamas and other Gaza militants were refusing to compromise.

I’m not sure the battle is over, PM tells US TV

Israel has “nothing against the people of Gaza” and wants to help them deal with the “tyranny” of Hamas rule, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News on Thursday.

“I’m not sure the battle is over,” he told the cable network’s “Hannity” program.

“I think we’ve degraded their (Hamas) capabilities significantly,” he said, adding there may still remain tunnels dug by Hamas under the Gaza-Israel border that have yet to be found.

“It really depends on whether they want to continue this battle. I think we have to find a peaceful solution, if we can,” he added.

He added: “We have nothing against the people of Gaza. In fact, we want to help the people of Gaza who are suffering under this terror tyranny.”

On the high number of Palestinian civilian casualties that has provoked international condemnation, Netanyahu described such deaths as inevitable in the heat of battle.

“Those casualties are cruel, but they’re unintentional,” he said.

“Israel acts that way. It attacks combatants and accidentally kills non-combatants — but in the case of the terrorists, it’s the exact opposite.”

Netanyahu also warned Americans that “the greatest danger we face” is terrorist groups or nations, backed by Iran, equipped with nuclear-tipped rockets and missiles.

“Look at the danger we face when they have rockets and missiles,” he said.

“Now, imagine what kind of danger we’d have if they could put a nuclear warhead on top of these missiles. That’s the danger that is coming from Iran.”

Fighting In Gaza May Resume In Hours After Hamas Makes Unrealistic Demands Of Israel

Thursday has delivered yet another blow to those forever trying to construct a moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas.

With the ceasefire in the Gaza strip set to expire in hours, negotiations between Israel and Hamas have ground to a halt. Israel has demanded that Hamas disarm, but it has indicated that it is willing to extend the ceasefire without precondition in order to allow negotiations to continue. Hamas, for its part, wants no part of that deal.

The terrorist group’s military wing has instructed peace negotiators in Egypt to reject any truce agreement unless all of its demands are met.

What are those demands, you ask? “Hamas has demanded the lifting of an Israeli and Egyptian blockade imposed on the coastal territory after the Islamic militant group seized power in 2007,” the Associated Press reported.

That is a nonstarter for both Israel and Egypt, which fear that Hamas militants will use the relaxed restrictions on ingress and egress to import armaments and defensive materials.

This report was leaked to the press via an Egyptian official who, according to the AP, expressed his concerns over the Hamas delegation growing increasingly unreasonable.

The counterpoint is that Hamas has little incentive to cease the violence because when the West Bank disarmed and the Palestinian Authority became a more responsible international actor, they got little for it. This is not an entirely unfounded concern, but to agree with this argument is to concede that violence against Israel is justified in order to achieve a political objective… which no one would ever come out and say…

Maybe the increasingly one-sided nature of the conflict in Gaza will prompt the global community to begin expressing their hope that Hamas rather than Israel will observe “restraint.” Maybe United Nations officials will condemn Hamas’s excessive and unproductive actions…

Hilarious, I know. But one can dream.

Egypt-Hamas Animosity Casts Pall Over Ceasefire Hopes

Egypt’s future attitude toward the Gaza Strip, an issue scarcely mentioned as a key point of contention between Israel and Egypt, may cause the shaky 72-hour ceasefire ending Friday morning to collapse, leaks from the talks in Cairo reveal.

“There is no agreement to extend the ceasefire,” Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau and a participant in the Cairo negotiations, wrote on Facebook late Wednesday night, upping the ante if negotiations failed to address his movement’s list of demands.

A day later, an Egyptian security official said that the Palestinian delegation was refusing to compromise. The Egyptian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said Thursday that the Palestinian delegation’s stance had hardened after the arrival in Cairo of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders from the Gaza Strip.

On Thursday evening, Hamas announced that it would resume attacks against Israel on Friday morning if its demand to end the blockade on Gaza was not met.

ISIS Invading More Christian Villages In Iraq - Sells Women As Sex Slaves

They called this the Second Wave of displacement of Christians by ISIS. The outcry is loud from the suffering Christians who are weeping and the heart wrenching testimonies are aimed at the United States to send help

In an all out offensive, Isis advanced into the Kurdish region in which residents of Qaraqosh, Iraq’s biggest Christian town, the Christians were given the same ultimatum as in Mosul; leave, convert to Islam or face death. In addition, the Iraqi Red Crescent confirmed that ISIS created a market for women slaves (Sabaya) to be displayed for sale in the marketplace.

According to eyewitnesses reported by Awsat News, the number of abducted Christian women in the city of Mosul alone reached more than 500 women. He stressed that the beautiful among them were taken to the ISIS princes.

"ISIS detained dozens of families at the airport in Tal Afar, Turkmen, Yazidi and Christians after killing all the men.”

"information confirming that “ISIS took women and girls who are being held inside Sinjar and also deported a number of women with their families at the airport in Tal Afar after the killing of the men. The fate of each of these women is unknown.”

The Ministry emphasizes that any “delay in rescuing the people of Sinjar will double the size of the suffering and contribute to increasing the quality and quantity of violations, which ISIS persist to commit heinous acts of brutality.”

Alqosh resident Father Gabriel said that when the raids started late on Wednesday night, the Christians and other minority groups ran for their lives with tens of thousands of people heading for the Kurdish area of northern Iraq.

Will The West Stand By And Watch The Slaughter Of Yazidis And Cleansing Of Christians In Iraq?

Russian Strategic Bombers Conduct More Than 16 Incursions Of U.S. Air Defense Zones

Russian strategic nuclear bombers conducted at least 16 incursions into northwestern U.S. air defense identification zones over the past 10 days, an unusually sharp increase in aerial penetrations, according to U.S. defense officials.

The numerous flight encounters by Tu-95 Russian Bear H bombers prompted the scrambling of U.S. jet fighters on several occasions, and come amid heightened U.S.-Russia tensions over Ukraine.

Also, during one bomber incursion near Alaska, a Russian intelligence-gathering jet was detected along with the bombers.

“Over the past week, NORAD has visually identified Russian aircraft operating in and around the U.S. air defense identification zones,” said Maj. Beth Smith, spokeswoman for U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

The bomber flights are the latest case of nuclear saber rattling by the Russians.

However, other defense officials said the large number of aerial incursions is very unusual and harkens back to the Cold War, when Soviet bombers frequently sought to trigger air defenses along the periphery of U.S. territory as preparation for a nuclear conflict.

The Washington Free Beacon first reported that two Bear bombers flew within 50 miles of the California coast on June 9—the closest the Russians have flown their nuclear-capable bombers since the days of the Cold War. A U.S. F-15 intercepted the bombers.

Russian strategic nuclear forces appear to be “trying to test our air defense reactions, or our command and control systems,” said an official familiar with reports of the incursions.

“These are not just training missions,” the official added.

Adm. Cecil Haney, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, expressed concerns about the increase in Russian strategic nuclear activities during a speech in Washington June 18.

Haney said Russian nuclear activities coincided with recent tensions over Ukraine and included the test launch of six air-launched cruise missiles in a show of force.

A Russian Defense Ministry statement on the cruise missile test launches said a Tu-95 bomber “is capable of destroying the critical stationary assets of an enemy with cruise missiles, in daytime and nighttime, in any weather and in any part of the globe.”