Barak admits goal of military operation is to topple Hamas

Barak admits goal of military operation is to topple Hamas

Israeli war minister Ehud Barak acknowledged for the first time that the goal of military operations against Gaza is to overthrow the rule of Hamas and bring back PA chief Mahmoud Abbas and his security apparatuses to control Gaza.


In an interview with the Hebrew radio, Barak threatened to target political leaders of Hamas especially premier Ismail Haneyya and revealed that Israel conducted international diplomatic contacts with many leaders of the world to justify its crimes against the Palestinian people.


In another context, Israeli media outlets said on Sunday evening that Eli Moyal, the mayor of Israeli Sderot settlement was injured and taken to hospital during a rocket attack carried out by the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in retaliation to the Israeli massacres committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza.


They added that a number of rocket attacks on Sderot and Ashkelon resulted in the injury of 20 Israeli settlers and caused a state of shock to many others.


The Qassam Brigades had announced on Sunday its responsibility for firing more than 10 homemade rockets on Sderot, where the Israeli occupation acknowledged that Palestinian rocket attacks inflicted injuries among settlers and considerable material damage on settlement units.


Israeli internal security minister Avi Dichter had admitted the failure of the Israeli military operations which started on Wednesday and have not stopped until now.


Israeli media outlets quoted Dichter as saying during the Sunday cabinet meeting that the IOF troops, after five days of fighting, were unable to achieve their objective which was to stop the firing of rockets on Israeli settlements.


The Israeli minister also stated that the range of the homemade rockets became longer and reached Ashkelon and Netivot.


In another context, the Hebrew radio reported at night Sunday that the Palestinian resistance used, according to military experts, a new type of rockets having a devastating capability different from the previous ones.


According to the radio, Israeli experts embarked on studying the new rocket which fell on the western Negev area, south of the Palestinian lands occupied in 1948, adding that the rocket produced huge explosion and caused considerable material damage in the area. 


For its part, the Israeli Natal society specialized in dealing with psychological problems called on Israeli settlers who suffer a state of shock resulting from rocket attacks to call or visit the society in order to get treated.


In retaliation to the Israeli massacres in Gaza, the Qassam Brigades announced in a communiqué received by the PIC its responsibility for firing at dawn Monday a homemade rocket on the Israeli Nahal Oz settlement.


In another unrelated development, Palestinian eyewitnesses in the Zeitoun neighborhood, east of Gaza told the PIC reporter that a Palestinian young man affiliated with the Qassam Brigades managed to survive an attempted kidnapping after he pushed strongly his kidnappers and fled away.


The eyewitnesses added that suspicious men boarding a civilian car tried to kidnap him as he was walking near the Salahuddin mosque in the neighborhood.


Hamas had warned in a previous statement of suspicious moves made by a group of collaborators who abandoned resistance under official orders from Ramallah.