Hamas calls off truce with Israel
Middle East Desk Report

DAMASCUS—Palestinian group Hamas chief-in-exile Khaled Mishaal said on Friday a nine-month truce with Israel was over. “There is no room for truce. I say to our brothers in the (Palestinian) Authority that we are witnessing political stagnation...,” Mishaal told a rally in the Syrian capital Damascus. “I say it loudly, we will not enter a new truce and our people are preparing for a new round of conflict”.
Israel rounded up 19 Islamic militants in the West Bank on Friday and pounded the Gaza Strip with artillery fire, pressing forward with a crackdown in the wake of a suicide bombing at a shopping mall this week. In the days since Monday’s suicide bombing, which killed five people in the coastal city of Netanya, Israel has killed three militants in airstrikes on the Gaza Strip and rounded up dozens of others in the West Bank.
The army said it carried out an arrest sweep overnight near Tulkarem in the northern West Bank. Ten of the suspects belonged to Islamic Jihad, which carried out the attack, the army said. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has also ordered the arrests of those involved in the suicide bombing. Islamic Jihad leaders say Palestinian security forces have rounded up more than 80 members, including three militants arrested Friday in the village of Monday’s bomber.