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Monday, December 22, 2008

Today's Palestinian Arab news

An Al Jazeera reporter who was covering the latest Free Gaza publicity stunt accidentally shook hands with the far-left Israeli Channel Ten reporter who was on the same boat, and then said that had she known that the reporter was Israeli she would never have done so.

There are reports that Egypt asked Hamas to stop any rocket attacks for 24 hours so that Israel would continue to ship humanitarian aid to Gaza. This is plausible; there were no Qassams this morning although one landed in the afternoon so far. This means that Israel can expect huge rocket attacks one day and much fewer rockets the next, as Israel's policy has been to close the crossings for one day no matter how large or small the barrages are.

Gaza's electric company claims that they are down to 30% of their needs. Not that Israel is stopping sending electricity to Gaza, but the transformers have been burning out because of increased demand.

It appears that the technical hurdles to pumping natural gas from Egypt to Gaza through Rafah tunnels are being overcome; lead pipes from the UAE are being used to build these pipelines.

Refrigerators and washing machines are now being smuggled as well into Rafah.

Hamas is threatening to resume suicide attacks against Israel.

It appears that a Hamas-backed sheikh, during a Friday sermon, called Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh a "caliph", which upset the worshippers so much that they threw shoes at him.

PA security forces arrested a Hamas leader who had been thought to have been dead for years.

Another tunnel death. The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now 221.