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JERUSALEM – The Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip used a truce with Israel to re-arm, regroup and prepare for attacks against the Jewish state, Yuval Diskin,(picture left) head of Israel's Shin Bet Security Services, told the Knesset yesterday.Immediately after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to the cease-fire with Hamas on June 19, WND quoted Gaza-based senior terror leaders on the record stating they will use the truce to re-arm, regroup and prepare to attack Israel.As part of the truce, Olmert decreed Israel will hold off all military operations in Gaza in exchange for a complete cessation of Palestinian rocket attacks and violence. Gaza-based Palestinians fired over one dozen rockets since the truce went into effect, but Israel refrained from retaliation.According to Diskin's address to the Knesset yesterday, Hamas used the period of the cease-fire so far to smuggle into Gaza four tons of explosives, 50 anti-aircraft missiles, dozens of Kalashnikov rifles and explosives used to produce rockets.Diskin said aside from smuggling in weapons, Hamas also transported into Gaza large quantities of cement intended to construct underground bunkers to protect themselves from the Israel Defense Forces.Within hours after the June cease-fire was forged, WND spoke to Gaza-based terrorists, who called the truce a victory:Abu Abdullah, considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas' so-called military wing, told WND his group will use the truce to rearm itself. "The hudna (temporary truce) will be used for more training, arming. ... We don't have any intention to stop from bringing in weapons from the Sinai into Gaza," said Abdullah.He called the cease-fire "one more sign of the collapse of the Israeli army, that this big Israeli army with the so-called best air force in the world didn't succeed to stop the rockets, and they accepted the truce."Muhammad Abdel-Al, a leader and spokesman for the Hamas-allied, Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees terror group, commented, "We are humiliating the Israelis. They kept threatening to make a huge operation in Gaza, but they were the ones who begged us to go into the cease-fire."A senior terrorist in Gaza, speaking on condition his name be withheld, said of the cease-fire, "It is not really a period of rest. We have been training, receiving religious courses ... we've been producing weapons, working on smuggling everything that can reinforce us.""This period will make that our capacities will be much stronger than before the truce," the senior terrorist said.The term "hudna" dates back to Islam's founding in the 7th century, when Muhammad declared a 10-year hudna with the tribe that controlled Mecca. Later, after rearming, Muhammad attacked the tribe, claiming it had broken the truce. In 1994, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat invoked Muhammad's hudna when he justified the launch of the second intifada during the Oslo peace process.The Washington Institute for Near East Policy noted in 2003 that Hamas had agreed to 10 cease-fires in the previous decade and returned freshly armed after each one."It is important to note," the institute said, "that all cease-fire offers have been presented at a time when Hamas needed a moment to step back and regroup after an organizationally exhausting confrontation with a more powerful foe (either Israel or the PA)."As in the days of Noah....
