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.

Top Iranian officials promised Hamas figurehead Khaled Meshal (inset, on the right) ongoing support to carry out further terrorist attacks against Israel, according to the London-based Asharq Alawsat newspaper.

The newspaper reported that high level Iranian political, security, military, and religious officials met with Hamas Political Bureau Chief Khaled Meshal in Tehran to discuss Iran’s ongoing supply of weapons, military training, and financial support to Hamas.


One alarming part of the report stated that Iranian Brigadier General Ahmad Wahid — a key leader of the country’s missile program — promised Mishal that Iran would “provide very advanced missiles that are currently being produced at the Martyr Bakiri Complex in Tehran especially for Hamas.”

Other Iranian officials present at the talks with Hamas included:

• Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander in Chief Maj. General Jafari;
• Brigadier General Qasim Sulaymani, Commander of Iran’s Quds Force;
• Officials from Iran’s Defense Industries Organization

Israel has long known about Iran’s role in equipping, financing, and training Hamas terrorists to carry out attacks against Israel. The New York Times reported last August that:

Hamas has sent hundreds of its fighters abroad for military training, most of them to Iran, the Israeli Army’s deputy chief of staff says, and Israel has the names of more than 100 of them.

On March 9, 2008, the The Sunday Times reported that a senior Hamas commander boasted that 300 of the organization’s “best brains” were secretly sent to Iran for military training from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard:

“Iran is our mother,” the commander said. “She gives us information, military supplies and financial support.”

The Sunday Times report said that since 2005, at least seven (7) separate groups of Hamas fighters trained with Iranian instructors so that they could be snipers, make explosives out of everday items, and make deadlier rockets to use in terrorist attacks against Israel.

Israel’s Shin Bet security service warned Sunday that the Hamas terrorist group’s daily Qassam rocket attacks on Israeli civilians could extend far beyond their 12 km range already proven capable of hitting Ashkelon.


According to Ha’aretz correspondent Barak Ravid, the Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin warned Israeli’s cabinet that the Hamas’ ongoing arms smuggling from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to Gaza would lead to “rockets capable of striking beyond Ashkelon, and possibly reaching as far as Ashdod and Kiryat Gat.”