ISRAEL - Apr 10 - Israeli Security Agency Warns Of New Attacks By Hamas.

A recent wave of arrests of Hamas militants in the West Bank town of Qalqilya provide evidence that members of the Palestinian faction there are primed to resume attacks in Israel, the Israeli internal security service Shin Bet asserted. It added that the Qalqilya network had already sent a truck packed with explosives on a failed suicide mission in the Tel Aviv area in March. According to Shin Bet's statement, information about the truck bomb emerged during the interrogation of detainees. A would-be suicide bomber had driven a truck packed with about 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds, of explosives to the Tel Aviv area, Shin Bet said, but for unspecified reasons the attack was not carried out. The truck returned to Qalqilya and later blew up there in what Shin Bet termed a "work accident". Nineteen members of the Hamas network in Qalqilya have since been arrested, the statement said, thwarting plans to carry out attacks during the Passover holiday, which ended here Apr 9 night. The statement warned that Hamas operatives in Qalqilya "continue to work on the planning and execution of significant attacks, including ones in the immediate future". Hamas was at the vanguard of Palestinian suicide bombing campaigns in Israel, starting in the 1990s. But there has been a hiatus in Hamas suicide attacks since August 2004, and Hamas has been committed to an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire agreement in the Gaza Strip since November. All recent suicide bombings in Israel have been carried out by the smaller, more extreme Islamic Jihad group, according to Israeli security officials. A return to suicide bombing would constitute a change for Hamas, which is now the dominant faction in the new Palestinian unity government. The government guidelines refer to the Palestinians' "legitimate right" to resistance "in all its forms", but also speak of extending the cease-fire from Gaza to the West Bank. There have long been differences between some of the more pragmatic political leaders of Hamas, who sit in the government, and the militant underground that is believed to answer to more hard-line leaders in exile. A senior Israeli Army commander, speaking on condition of anonymity, said recently that in Israel's assessment Hamas had not changed its policy, but that there were "some groups in the military wing of Hamas that don't like the cease-fire or the unity government". On March 19, Hamas's underground, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the shooting and wounding of an Israeli Electric Corporation employee who was working inside Israel near the Gaza border fence. That was the first attack of any kind claimed by Hamas since November. A Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Fawzi Barhoum, denied any divisions in Hamas over the unity government and dismissed such talk as "Israeli propaganda aimed at trying to bring about Hamas's collapse". Official Hamas spokesmen made a point of not reacting to the Shin Bet statement, apparently in show of not lending them any credence. The Israeli daily Haaretz cited denials of Shin Bet's claims by unidentified Palestinian police officials and Hamas officials in Qalqilya. After the Shin Bet statement, David Baker, an official in the office of PM Ehud Olmert of Israel, asserted that Hamas "continues to target Israeli civilians". "Terrorism is a cornerstone of the new Palestinian government, a government that should be shunned", he said. Israel maintains a complete boycott of the Palestinian unity government and has been calling on the international community to do the same, with limited success. The US and Europe are maintaining contacts with Palestinian ministers who are not members of Hamas, and a senior British diplomat met last week with the Palestinian PM, Ismail Haniya of Hamas, in what was described as a humanitarian mission to help secure the release of a British journalist kidnapped in Gaza. A Hamas-orchestrated suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya on the eve of Passover in 2002 killed 30, and precipitated Israel's re-invasion of the Palestinian cities of the West Bank. Shortly afterwards, the Israeli cabinet approved the construction of the West Bank security barrier, following intense public pressure to find a way of keeping suicide bombers out.