ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: The Voice Of Russia
08April2011 8:00amEST
GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Hamas has declared a ceasefire, which came into effect on Thursday night.
The offer came as fighting flared in Gaza over the past two weeks.
On Thursday a Palestinian anti-tank missile hit an Israeli school bus, wounding two, and Israeli forces retaliated with planes and artillery, killing four Palestinians and injuring more than 30. (read full report)
ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: DEBKAfile
02April2011 1:00pmEST
GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Saturday, after nearly two months of heightened Palestinian terrorist activity and low-key Israeli reprisals, both sides dropped their long pretense of seeking calm.
Ever since the massacre of five members of an Israeli family at Itamar on Feb. 11, Israeli government leaders have tried to sell the line that Hamas was not really seeking to raise the level of violence.
They continued to play down Hamas' motives through a 50-round mortar barrage in a single day (March 19) on Israeli civilian locations abutting the Gaza Strip, several Grad missiles fired at the towns Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba and Netivot and a bombing attack in Jerusalem on March 23, which killed a tourist and injured 65 after two relatively terror-free years.
In between major attacks, the Palestinians have maintained up until the present a steady trickle of Qassam and mortar fire against Israeli civilians.
While intensifying its attacks, Hamas picked up the convenient Israeli mantra which claimed that the terrorist-rulers of Gaza wanted nothing but a ceasefire which would also embrace all the smaller terrorist organizations taking part on the shooting as well.
The Israeli army statement after the pre-dawn air strike over Gaza Saturday abruptly broke that pose by exposing Hamas's true intentions for the first time. He admitted that the Palestinian radicals had set up a major murder-cum-kidnap campaign for striking terror across the Green Line and favorite Israeli vacationing spots in Sinai, to be launched during the eight-day Passover holiday April 18-28...(read full report)
ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: Jerusalem Post
22March2011 8:00amEST
GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Facing a possible new conflict against Hamas, concern is growing within the IDF regarding increased efforts by Palestinian terrorist groups to dig tunnels under the border that could be used to infiltrate into Israel and perpetrate attacks.
According to IDF sources, the number of tunnels has grown in recent years. Hamas is under orders to dig “terror tunnels” along the border.
Hamas has split into five different regional brigades – north, Gaza City, central Gaza, Khan Younis and Rafah.
The exact number of tunnels is unknown to the IDF.
Tunnels have been used in the past by Hamas and other terrorist groups to infiltrate into Israel. The terrorists who abducted Gilad Schalit from his military post near Kerem Shalom, in June 2006, crossed into Israel through an underground tunnel.
Palestinian terror groups in Gaza have made some major improvements to their military capabilities since Operation Cast Lead over two years ago, it is understood. One of these improvements has been in missile capability, with the addition of new long-range rockets, like the Iranian-made Fajr-5 that has reportedly been smuggled into Gaza and can reach Tel Aviv.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad are also believed to have obtained new guided anti-tank missiles like the Kornet, Fagot and Sagger, one of which was fired at an IDF patrol on Friday.
The IDF believes that Hamas is also working to improve its communication capabilities. (read full report)
ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: Debkafile
21March2011 6:00amEST
GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Israeli civilians living around the Gaza border woke up Saturday, March 19, to the most massive mortar attack in years – 50 rounds fired in 15 minutes. Two civilians 
were injured and substantial damage caused to property. Hamas unusually claimed responsibility, emboldened by the support it has won from a new ally, the new rulers of Cairo, which have now lined up with Syria and Iran.
The Netanyahu government has not informed the Israeli public about the ominous new winds blowing in fromCairo although they are already in motion: Cairo has given Hamas rule of the Gaza Strip de facto recognition, is about to lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip and is forging new understandings with Damascus and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad radicals based there.
The Egyptian military which has taken over in Cairo also turned a blind eye to at least two or three Iranian arms ships which, prior to the capture of the A.S. Victoria last week, made it through the Israeli sea blockade and delivered weapons, including C-704 shore-to-sea missiles at El Arish.
Hamas will be free to go out and collect them through the reopened Rafah crossing.
It is now obvious that Cairo's permission for two Iranian warships to transit the Suez Canal on Feb. 22, knowing that at least one was laden with weapons for extremists, was in line with the new Egyptian policy. (read full report)
ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: DEBKAfile
04March2011 9:40pmEST
GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: The prospects of Egypt resuming its gas supplies to Israel dropped to zero Thursday, March 3 when Egypt's state security prosecutor Abdel Magid Mahmud announced that deposed president Hosni Mubarak would be summoned for questioning next week about allegedly corrupt deals for selling Israel Egyptian gas at knock-down prices, DEBKAfile's Cairo sources report. Mahmud claimed he had documentary evidence that Egypt lost more than half a billion dollars on its gas sales to Israel and sought to follow up suspicions that the difference was shared out between the Mubarak family and the Israeli and American partners in the transaction.
The flow of gas to Israel was suspended on Feb. 5 when Hamas blew up the pipeline running through Sinai during the Egyptian uprising. Our sources confirm that supplies will not be renewed until the end of the corruption inquiry which could go on for years.
In response to a statement by the Merhav company, the Israeli partners of the joint company EMG, that supplies would be resumed Friday, March 4, word came from Cairo that there is no such intention (as DEBKAfile predicted immediately after the explosion.)
The damage to Israel's power supply is substantial. Egyptian gas fueled 40 percent of Israel's electricity requirements. In the meantime, world fuel prices have shot up and Israel has been forced to convert its power stations from gas to heavy fuel, incurring extra outlay running into hundreds of millions of dollars a month. (read full report)
ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: DEBKAfile
24February2011 10:32amEST
GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Israel's security leaders ought not to have been surprised when Hamas fired two long-range Iranian-made Grad missiles Wednesday night, Feb. 23 at the Negev cities of Beersheba and Netivot. The attack occurred exactly when Iranian Navy commander Adm. Habibollah Sayyari was due in Syria's Latakia port to attend the welcoming party for the two Iranian warships which made it through the Suez Canal without US or Israeli interference. It also marked a fresh, redoubled Hamas offensive against Israel.
The occupants of the Beersheba home, hit by the first long-range Grad surface missile to reach the Negev city from the Gaza Strip (30 km away) since Israel's Cast Led campaign of 2009, saved themselves by using the seconds between the warning siren and the explosion to take shelter in a bomb-proof room. That was the only part of their home to survive the blast. Eleven shock victims were hospitalized along the battered street.
The town of Netivot was spared by the Grad falling outside the built-up area.
Earlier that day, a shoot-out flared at the Karni crossing when a Palestinian gang laid explosives at the border fence and followed up with mortar fire. IDF border patrols and tanks crews returned the fire, injuring 11 Palestinians. A second round of Palestinian mortar fire followed against a Shaar Hanegev kibbutz.
No Israelis were hurt in this round of incidents.
Wednesday night, Israel put the communities within range of the Gaza Strip, including the cities of Beersheba, Netivot, Ofakim, Sderot, Ashkelon and Ashdod, on heightened alert status for further Palestinian attacks. That night, Israeli air strikes hit a Jihad Islami missile team and then spread out to bomb Hamas command centers, which had meanwhile been hurriedly evacuated in expectation of Israel's routine aerial reprisal. (read full report)
ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: JPost
11February2011 7:46pmEST
GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman promised Israel in 
2005 that he would prevent Hamas from gaining control over Gaza, according to a US diplomatic cable released on Friday.
According to the cable, which was leaked to WikiLeaks and published by Norweigan newspaper Aftenposten, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security Bureau, secretly visited Suleiman, then the head of Egyptian intelligence, in September 2005. Gilad then reported on the visit to US diplomats in Tel Aviv. (read full report)
ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: Israel National News
02February2011 1:40pmEST
GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and de facto 
Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, worried they also may be struck by “revolutionary fever,” have banned rallies supporting the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
In Gaza, Hamas forces not only broke up a sit-in demonstration but they also beat journalists. In Ramallah, armed PA police confiscated journalists' cameras and ordered them to turn off recorders.
Arab activist Omar Barghouti told the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency, "Heavy-handed suppression of the youth-initiated and…peaceful celebration of the Tunisian uprising's overthrow of the dictator, Ben-Ali, indicates where the PA's loyalty lies." (read full report)
