According to Egypt’s official news agency, Hamas and Israel have agreed to a truce that begins at 6 a.m. on Thursday morning, June 19, 2008.


Remaining cautious, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak remained cautious, saying that “it is still early to declare” that Hamas rocket attacks on Israel civilians living just outside of the Gaza strip were safe from further terrorist attacks from this site.

In Sderot, Ashkelon, and other Israeli communities outside of Gaza, two days is an extraordinarily long time not to face the threat of continued attacks from Hamas operatives and their homemade Qassam rockets.

An Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman said that a “cessation of all hostile acts and military action” would start at 6 a.m. on Thursday.

If it happens, this would the first cessation of hostilities with Hamas since 2006.

Retired U.S. diplomats who are member of a vehemently anti-Israel lobbying group on Washington, D.C. met with Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya in the Gaza Strip today.


The anti-Israel lobby, Council for the National Interest (CNI), included Richard Viets, a retired former number two U.S. diplomat in Israel in its contingent. Viets was also U.S. ambassador to Jordan in the early 1980s.

The ‘meeting’ is nothing more than a public relations stint by Hamas’ Haniyah, a man who once called a Hamas suicide attack that killed 9 civilians in Tel Aviv “an act of self-defense.”

Did the INC tell Hamas to free Israel’s Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped Israel soldier who was taken by Hamas while on guard duty inside Israel? Did it denounce Hamas’ terror, weapons, and financial ties to Iran?

Don’t bet on it. Viets was quoted as saying that the anti-Israel group went to Gaza to “educat[e] ourselves better about the situation here in order to return home and to explain to our countrymen the reaction and the views of what we heard.” In other words, to act as P.R. spokesmen for a group which has remained on the U.S. State Department’s list of designated terrorist groups for years.

Israel Radio is reporting that French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Israel’s Foreign Minister that his country would cease contact with Hamas.


Since Hamas kidnapped Israeli soldier and French citizen Gilad Shalit by crossing into Israel from Gaza in June 2006 in an unprovoked attack, France has reportedly played a behind-the-scenes role in helping to secure Shalit’s freedom.