Hamas

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A Hamas spiritual leader yesterday called teaching Palestinian children about the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews a “war crime,’’ rejecting a suggestion that the UN might include the Holocaust in Gaza’s school curriculum. A senior Israeli official called the Hamas statements “obscene’’ and said such statements should make the West think twice about ending its boycott of Hamas, in place since the group seized Gaza by force in 2007. Israeli officials said the statements place Hamas in a pariah club of Holocaust deniers that includes Iranian President Mahmoud...

At 26, Saed Qasrawi is among the oldest students at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. The leading Hamas activist has been enrolled for eight years, but he has been unable to complete his undergraduate engineering program because he keeps getting detained by Palestinian security forces before final exams. This year, Qasrawi and more than a dozen other supporters of the Islamic militant group tried a new tactic. Since May 5, they've remained on campus — a sanctuary considered off limits to the security forces — to evade arrest.

GAZA CITY -- The Hamas-led government said yesterday it will pay partial salaries to its 165,000 employees, the first payday for some Palestinian workers in three months. The announcement came after thousands of angry workers staged an anti-government protest. Salaries have not been paid since a cutoff of Western aid and Israeli tax transfers after the militant Islamic movement took over the Palestinian government. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said he hoped the workers would get checks "in the next few days" for approximately $330, equal to a full month's salary for about a...

Relatives of a slain Hamas operative seek to block the release of a movie being made in Israel about his 2010 assassination in a Dubai luxury hotel, a family member said Sunday. The killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was widely blamed on Israel's Mossad spy agency, which never confirmed or denied involvement. Israeli defense officials have alleged that he played a role in smuggling weapons from Iran to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The movie, which features Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli as a temptress working for the hit team, is a "Zionist conspiracy" to defame al-Mabhouh, said a...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - At 29, Tahani is considered a spinster by the standards of deeply conservative Gaza. So in her search for a husband, she turned for help to the best in the marriage business: the Islamic militant group Hamas. “I gaze at all the men on the street and think, ‘Oh God, isn’t there just one for me?’ ’’ said the young woman with dark skin and honey-colored eyes, set off by a maroon headscarf. Her application is among 287 from single women in the files of the Tayseer Association for Marriage and Development in Gaza.

Germany says Israel accepted a proposal by a German mediator to free a soldier captured by Hamas-linked militants in Gaza five years ago, but Hamas did not sign off on it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he had accepted the proposal, but Hamas rejected the deal. It is thought to include hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit. Hamas said Netanyahu was lying about the mediation effort. On Monday, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert confirmed that Israel had accepted a...

Hamas security officials released a prominent Gaza rights activist Tuesday, several days after he was repeatedly interrogated and detained over his participation in a French conference about Palestinian activism, his brother said. Mohammed Matar, 25, was released hours after international media reported his arrest, according to his brother, Salem Matar. His colleagues had also urged supporters on Facebook to pressure the Hamas government to release him. Mohammed Matar belongs to a group of activists who held small rallies in March urging Gaza's Hamas rulers to unite with their rivals,...

JERUSALEM — Palestinian militants in Gaza fired more than 50 mortar shells into Israel yesterday, the heaviest barrage in two years, Israeli officials said. A Hamas official was killed and four civilians were wounded when Israel hit back with tank fire and airstrikes, said Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Adham Abu Salmia. Israel invaded Gaza two years ago to put a stop to daily rocket barrages by Gaza militants, and yesterday’s exchange showed how the conflict could quickly spiral out of control.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Hamas confirmed yesterday it is unable to pay thousands of government workers in full for a second straight month — a new sign that the Islamic militants are caught in what may be the most serious cash crunch in three years of ruling Gaza. Hamas dismisses rumors of a financial crisis and insists its money woes are temporary. However, it has resorted to an unpopular tax drive to raise money, suggesting that a heavy blockade on the territory, an Egyptian crackdown on smuggling, and an increasingly expensive government bureaucracy are...

JERUSALEM -- Hamas angrily rejected a warning by the moderate Palestinian president yesterday that he could dismiss its month-old government, threatening to scrap a truce with Israel if he does. The public warning heightened tensions between the Islamic militant group and President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads Fatah. Hamas defeated Fatah in January parliamentary elections. Abbas, elected separately, has been trying to trim the new Cabinet's powers. In an interview broadcast yesterday on CNN-Turk, Abbas said Hamas must recognize Israel and talk peace to avert an economic...

Palestinian officials say Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is replacing almost half of his West Bank-based Cabinet. The reshuffle is a clear sign that efforts to end the Palestinian political split and blend separate governments in the West Bank and Gaza are stuck. The West Bank is run by internationally backed pragmatists while the militant Hamas is in charge in Gaza since a violent 2007 takeover. A Palestinian unity deal has been held up by repeated disagreements. The officials say the 10 new ministers are to be sworn in later Wednesday.

Authorities in the U.S. have accused a divorced Palestinian man of illegally moving his three children from their home in Kansas to his native Gaza earlier this year. Their mother, Bethany Gonzales, says she wants her children back in the U.S., but she has limited political and legal means available to her in the Gaza Strip, a largely isolated and impoverished Palestinian territory ruled by the Islamic militant group Hamas. The father, Ahmed Abuhamda, denies any wrongdoing, saying he followed the couple's divorce decree when he moved the children from the...

Hamas has been holding secret political talks with five European Union member states in recent months, a senior official in the Islamic militant group told The Associated Press on Wednesday. If confirmed, such talks would be a sign that the isolation of the Gaza-based Palestinian movement is easing in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings that have brought Islamists to power in parts of the Middle East. The EU and the U.S consider Hamas a terror group and refuse to deal with it unless it renounces violence and recognizes Israel.

The government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has moved to silence critics, raising new concerns about freedom of expression in the West Bank. Abbas' communications minister, Mashour Abu Daqa, said late Thursday that the attorney general's office ordered several websites shut down over the past six months. The sites belong to an Abbas rival, former Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan. Security forces have also arrested four journalists and an anti-corruption activist who have criticized Abbas and other Palestinian officials on...

JERUSALEM — Israel's Iron Dome rocket shield has aced its first serious test. Hamas rulers in Gaza have been careful to stay on the sidelines. And Islamic Jihad — now closer to Iran than is its larger rival Hamas — is taking the lead in this round against Israel. These are some of the trends emerging from four days of fighting between Israel's air force and Gaza rocket squads, triggered by Israel's killing of a militant leader last week. Twenty-four Palestinians have been killed, including seven Monday, and about 1 million Israelis in rocket range have...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Cross-border fighting between Gaza and Israel, touched off by Israel's killing of a top militant leader, showed no signs of letting up on its third day Sunday. Gaza militants fired dozens of rockets at Israeli towns, and Israeli airstrikes killed three Gazans, including a boy and a farm guard. Egypt tried to mediate but failed to end the worst violence in more than a year, which has killed 18 Gazans, all but two of them militants, and disrupted the lives of some 1 million Israelis living in Gaza rocket range.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement has politicians sweeping streets to show community spirit, activists distributing chocolates and cards signed “from Hamas with love,’’ and police officers visiting homes and schools to soften the often harsh image of the security forces. The Islamic militants, who mark the anniversary of their movement’s 1987 founding today, say the outreach is simply a way to reconnect with Gazans after more than three years in sole control of Gaza.

JERUSALEM -- Hamas protested "interference" by the United States and Israel following reports yesterday the nations were exploring ways to topple the militants' incoming government unless they renounced their violent ideology and recognized Israel's right to exist. In Washington, the White House and the Israeli ambassador to the United States denied such a plot. The State Department said it was reviewing US aid to the Palestinians and would make a decision within two weeks. Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said in Sudan his group had no plans to recognize...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Political expression in this seaside strip is firmly regulated by the ruling Islamist militant group Hamas, and authorities recently approved a robust street rally against an unlikely target: the government in Syria, long Hamas's benefactor and host. The demonstration, as well as Hamas leaders' statements in support of Syrian protesters and the abandonment of their Damascus offices, was an indicator of the Gaza-based movement's stark break with Syria - and of the rapidly shifting partnerships of a changing Middle East.

CAIRO (AP) — The Hamas prime minister of Gaza today expressed support for Syrian protesters seeking to overthrow President Bashar Assad, the first time a senior Hamas leader has publicly rebuked the group's longtime patron. Ismail Haniyeh said after Friday prayers at Egypt's Al-Azhar Mosque that Hamas commends ‘‘the brave Syrian people that are moving toward democracy and reform. " Assad has long hosted and supported leaders of the Islamic militant movement, which rules the Gaza Strip, but the group has significantly reduced the presence of its...