Muslim Brotherhood terror group Hamas has said that it would expand its rocket range to again attack Tel Aviv should Israel refuse to comply with its demand to remove the Gaza blockade.
Israel moved forward with the blockade in 2007, hoping to stop foreign entities from aiding and abetting Hamas’s terror and rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.
“The Palestinian delegation to the talks has notified the Egyptian mediators that in the event Israel continues with its rejectionist stance, it will leave Cairo [on Sunday], which would then enable the factions on the ground to expand its rocket range to include Tel Aviv,” said a Hamas official to Lebanese Hezbollah-friendly paper Al-Akhbar.
In a separate interview with Watan TV, another Hamas official said, "If our demands are not met by Sunday, we will attack Tel Aviv.”
Israeli Communications Minister Gilad Erdan, a member of the security cabinet that makes decisions regarding military operations, told Israel’s Channel 2 news that “all options are on the table” should Hamas continue indiscriminate and unprovoked rocket fire into Israel. “It’s multiple attempted murders each day,” he said.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest weighed in on Hamas's continued rocket fire into Israel. He stated that the White House “did not believe it was appropriate for Hamas to restore rocket fire.”
Israeli officials are considering whether or not to attend long-term ceasefire talks in Cairo on Sunday. Israel is currently maintaining the position that they will not negotiate a truce with Hamas while the terror group’s rocket salvos continue to rain down on its cities.
According to The Times of Israel, unconfirmed reports from Egyptian media have stated that Israel is negotiating for the remains of the bodies of two IDF soldiers: Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin. Both were killed in battle, but their bodies were taken into Gaza by Hamas terrorists shortly thereafter. A Turkish source claimed that Israel was prepared to exchange 25 prisoners for the bodies of the two soldiers.
Facing the worst known outbreak of the Ebola virus, with almost 1,000 fatalities in West Africa, the World Health Organization declared an international public health emergency on Friday, demanding an extraordinary response — only the third such declaration of its kind since regulations permitting such alarms were adopted in 2007.
The organization stopped short of saying there should be general international travel or trade bans, but acknowledged that the outbreak, already in its sixth month, was far from being contained.
One major international medical organization, Doctors Without Borders, responded to the statement with a renewed call for a “massive deployment” of health specialists to the stricken countries. “Lives are being lost because the response is too slow,” it said.
Dr. Margaret F. C. Chan, the director general of the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency, told a news conference at its Geneva headquarters, “This is the largest, most severe, most complex outbreak in the nearly four-decade history of the disease.”
“I am declaring the current outbreak of the Ebola virus disease a public health emergency of international concern,” she said. “Countries affected to date simply don’t have the capacity to manage an outbreak on this scale on their own.”
Dr. Keiji Fukuda, head of health security for the health organization, said that “things will get worse for a while,” and that “we are fully prepared for addressing this for some months.”
The W.H.O. urged all nations where the disease is spreading to declare an emergency, to screen all people leaving at international airports, seaports and land crossings, and to prevent travel by anyone suspected of having the Ebola virus.
The declaration was apparently intended to display a more aggressive stance by the health organization. In the past, it has often bent to pressure from member countries, demanding that there be no consequences even as epidemics have raged inside their borders and sometimes slipped over them.
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