Special to WorldTribune.com

TEL AVIV — The Hamas regime has sent a message to Israel to halt retaliation for rocket attacks on the Jewish state.

Israeli sources said Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh urged Israel to stop air strikes on the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh said Israel should refrain from responding to Palestinian rocket attacks on the Jewish state.

“Haniyeh sent a message to Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu during threats by Israel of massive retaliatory strikes,” a source said. “Haniyeh said he needed time to stop the rocket attacks and that Israeli retaliation was making things more difficult.”

In early February, the Hamas premier was said to have sent the message to Netanyahu through an Israeli left-wing activist, Gershon Baskin. Baskin, who sponsored research on the Palestinian Authority, was said to have developed contacts with the Hamas political leadership, including Haniyeh.

The Israeli news website Walla reported that Baskin received Haniyeh’s message from his adviser, Ghazi Hamad. Walla said Baskin then relayed the oral message to the director of Netanyahu’s office.

“Contrary to popular belief, there are direct communications channels
between Israel and Hamas,” Israeli analyst Avi Issacharoff wrote in the
report for Walla.

Baskin was said to have confirmed the message while Haniyeh’s office
dismissed the report. The sources said Hamad asserted that the Islamist
regime did not want to end the ceasefire with Israel arranged by Egypt in
November 2012.

But the sources said Haniyeh’s message was followed by the deployment of
a Hamas force along the Israeli border. The redeployment did not stop
Hamas-supervised protests in which Palestinians sought to infiltrate Israel
from the northern Gaza Strip. On Feb. 14, 10 Palestinians were injured by
Israel Army fire when they sought to storm the border fence.

“Haniyeh wants to keep this thing from exploding, but he faces a Hamas
military as well as Palestinian militias that simply don’t listen to him,”
the source said.

  Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza Strip, Hamas leader appeals to Israel for relief from retaliatory strikes, Ismail Haniyeh