Hamas, which violently overthrew Fatah and took control of Gaza last year, now threatens to take control of the Israeli Galilee city of Akko.
The terrorist organization held a mass march in the Gaza city of Jebalya on Saturday night, expressing solidarity with the Arab residents of Akko in their struggle against the "Zionist conquerors."
The main speaker, Hamas party whip in the Palestinian Authority legislature Mushir Al-Masri, fired up the masses with his promise that, "The moment of victory is coming closer, and the day will soon come when soldiers of Hamas and the Al-Kassam Brigades will liberate Akko, with the help of Allah."
In sharp contrast, the Chief Rabbis, President Peres, and Cabinet Minister Dichter visited with local Jewish and Arab leaders in Akko on Monday morning, trying to find ways to restore calm.
"The enemy will be crushed on the walls of Akko," Al-Masri railed, "just like the other invaders in past history... The normalization and the negotiations will never cause us to forget even one inch of our stolen land of Palestine."
In sharp contrast, Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar, accompanied by President Shimon Peres and Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, visited with local Jewish and Arab leaders in Akko on Monday morning, trying to find ways to restore calm to the troubled city.
Police Commissioner David Cohen said Monday morning that that 64 people - 27 Jews and 37 Arabs - had been arrested as a result of the Akko riots of the past few days, and that 34 are still in custody. The police have received 85 complaints of damage done to their cars; hundreds of Arabs rampaged in a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur, smashing cars and store windows.
In his Saturday night speech, Al-Masri incited the mobs of Gazan Arabs by reminding them that Arabs had lived in Israeli cities such as Yafo (Jaffa), Tzfat (Safed), Haifa and Akko (Acre) since before 1948, "and we await the moment of liberation that is soon coming. We await the next intifada, and hope to join the liberation army to free our land from the impurity of the Zionist conquerors."
In apparent reference to outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's recent remarks that the "dream of a complete Land of Israel [for Jews] is over," Al-Masri said, "The collapse of the Zionist and American enterprise means that the future belongs to the program of the Quran - which will illuminate from Gaza and which has trained 10,000 people to know the Quran by heart in two months... It's time for the nation to know that there is no place for peace with the enemy or for coexistence with the terrorist criminals. Jihad is the way to liberation and victory!"