Hamas's armed wing yesterday warned Palestinian journalists against criticising its firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel after several opinion columns claimed the rockets harmed the Palestinians themselves. | "The time has come for the strange voices and the yellow media to stop stabbing the resistance in the back and go back to the right way. If not, history and the people will not have mercy on any who collude with the enemy against their religion, people and nation." |
The warning made by Abu Obeida, the head of the Izzedin al-Qassam militia, which fires the rockets, came on the same day that an Israeli computer technician was killed by a rocket fired into the Israeli border town of Sderot. Abu Obeida said in a statement carried by Hamas's Palestine Information Centre: "The time has come for the strange voices and the yellow media to stop stabbing the resistance in the back and go back to the right way. If not, history and the people will not have mercy on any who collude with the enemy against their religion, people and nation."
Yesterday, the Al-Ayyam newspaper, which is close to Mr Abbas, ran a column by Riyadh Malki, the director of the Panorama think-tank in Ramallah, arguing that the rockets brought harm to Gazans. He said the rockets enabled the Israelis to cast Palestinian resistance as terrorism and turn international public opinion against the Palestinians. No Palestinian militia or faction should have the right to launch a war without it being discussed in the government, Mr Malki wrote.