A Palestinian News Conference on Hadera

Palestinian Islamic
Jihad militants attend a news conference in Gaza city, Wednesday Oct. 26, 2005.
Dozens of masked Islamic Jihad militants
held a news conference where they said they were celebrating the suicide bomb
attack in the Israeli town of Hadera, a ‘great victory as a message to our
beloved Palestinian people and Islamic and Arab nations.’  (AP Photo/Adel Hana).

Gaza is now a
place where terrorists hold press conferences.  With weapons (no Palestinian policemen in sight).  To celebrate killing and maiming scores of innocent
people.

 And the Associated Press attends and takes pictures.

 The caption is a little inaccurate.  It was a joint press conference.  Khaled Abu Toameh, reporting
in the Jerusalem Post on the open cooperation between Islamic Jihad and “militiamen
belonging to [Abbas’] ruling Fatah party,” notes that joint Fatah-Islamic
Jihad cells have conducted a series of attacks in the last 18
months, and have begun operating in Jenin and Nablus:

And in yet another indication of the
harmony between the two groups, masked gunmen belonging to Fatah and Islamic
Jihad held a joint press conference in Gaza City Wednesday night to claim responsibility for the Hadera attack.

The fact that such a press conference
is held in public in the center of Gaza City — and is attended by scores of journalists —  shows that the PA
security forces have almost no control over what’s happening in the area.

Toameh
reports that the growing cooperation between Fatah and Islamic Jihad “has
prompted some of Abbas’s top aides to voice concern that Islamic Jihad elements
would now try to infiltrate the PA security forces.”

Infiltrate?  They’ve been invited to
join!  So there will be “one gun.”

Civilians helped wounded Israelis on Wednesday after a Palestinian
suicide bomber blew himself up at an outdoor market in the town of
Hadera.  (George Ginsberg/Reuters).