FRIENDS, READ THE HIGHLIGHTED PARAGRAPHS AND TELL ME IF YOU THINK THIS CEASE FIRE WILL HOLD. **NOTE** even while announcing the cease fire Hamas is bragging about having beat Israel. His arrogance knows NO Boundaries. During his emotional news conference, Abu Zuhri boasted that the Gaza brigades had shut down Tel Aviv’s international airport and that Hamas rocket fire had forced Israeli residents in the border communities to flee their homes. “Whatever Netanyahu says, he will not be able to defend his failure,” the Hamas spokesman said. GAZA CITY — Palestinians in the Gaza Strip poured into the streets Tuesday to celebrate the announcement that Hamas and Israel had agreed to an open-ended cease-fire after 50 days of warfare that has killed more than 2,200 people. “We have won,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri exulted at a news conference in front of Shifa Hospital. He said the group’s fighters had accomplished “what no Arab army has done. We have defeated them,” referring to Israel. His exuberance aside, officials from Hamas and another Gaza-based militant group, Islamic Jihad, said the cease-fire agreement essentially brings Israel and Palestinians back to terms agreed upon in the truce signed after the 2012 Gaza war. A senior official in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, speaking about the latest cease-fire on the condition of anonymity, said Hamas had gained little, if anything, from the conflict, which has left vast tracts of Gaza in ruins. “Hamas is now finally accepting a cease-fire proposal that was first proposed by Egypt on July 15,” the official said. “There is nothing more to the proposal than there was a month and a half ago.” Kerry also sounded a note of caution, saying in a statement, “We are all aware that this is an opportunity, not a certainty. ... We are approaching the next phase with our eyes wide open. We have been down this road before and we are all aware of the challenges ahead.” The senior Netanyahu official expressed similar views, saying, “There have been 11 cease-fire attempts that have either been rejected or violated by Hamas, and the key to moving forward and easing the restrictions is honoring cease-fires.” washingtonpost/world/middle_east/israel-hamas-reach-cease-fire-deal-brokered-by-egypt/2014/08/26/cc834c02-2d49-11e4-bb9b-997ae96fad33_story.html
Posted on: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 22:47:38 +0000
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