Prominent Hamas leaders have turned off their mobile phones and gone underground to avoid Israeli assassination attempts after the Jewish state vowed all Palestinian activists were legitimate targets.
This month Israel stepped up its policy of targeted killings, a strategy condemned by the Palestinians and international community. On Sunday an Israeli Apache helicopter fired rockets in the occupied Gaza Strip, killing four Hamas activists.
“Dear mujahid, you are being watched closely around the clock. You are marked for liquidation,” said a statement circulated to members on Tuesday by the powerful resistance group spearheading the Intifadah or Palestinian uprising against Israel’s illegal occupation.
The Hamas decree advised activists to cut their use of mobile phones to a minimum to avoid giving away the location and times of meetings to Israelis spying on their calls.
The decree also bans travel except for “urgent missions”. Only one member should be in a car at a time and trips on foot should be limited to narrow streets invisible from the sky.
Senior Hamas leader Abd al-Aziz Rantissi, who narrowly escaped death when Israeli rockets slammed into the car he was travelling in two months ago, said the decree was addressed to all Palestinian resistance fighters.
“All this does not mean that we are afraid for our lives. It means that we should not let ourselves be easy targets,” said an activist.
Israel has killed dozens of resistance fighters - as well as women and children - during the Intifadah, including assassinating the commander of Hamas’ Gaza-based armed wing when it dropped a one-ton bomb on his house in July 2002.
Palestinians have postponed talks with Israel aimed at bringing about a Middle East peace summit after Israeli forces killed nine people in a raid on the Rafah refugee camp, in the Gaza strip.
"The meeting has been put off in protest at Israel's killing of Palestinians in Rafah," a senior Palestinian source said, referring to southern Gaza camp stormed by the army on Tuesday in what it called a swoop on gunrunner tunnels.
Top aides to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Quraya and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had been expected to meet in Jerusalem in ongoing efforts to arrange a summit and revive a US-led peace "road map" battered by renewed violence.
Israeli forces also carried out a raid in Jaba town near Jenin, killing a Palestinian. The troops claimed they were looking for wanted activists
The man was identified as Mamun, a father of four. He was shot in the head when the Israeli troops opened fire.
Elsewhere, about 15 Israeli military vehicles sealed off Qabatya town near Jenin at 0200 GMT and opened heavy fire, our correspondent reported.
The inmates of the houses were forced out and made to wait in the biting cold for several hours, while the soldiers carried out a search.
Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was injured on Wednesday in clashes with Palestinian resistance fighters in the Tulkarem refugee camp.
About 30 military jeeps had moved into the camp, but pulled out later in the day after facing Palestinian resistance.
An al-Qassam rocket hit the southern Israeli town of Sederot near the Gaza Strip early on Wednesday, but there were no casualties, a military source said.
The home-made rocket, fired from the north of the Gaza Strip, damaged a parked truck, the source said.
Two Israeli settlers were injured late on Tuesday when a similar rocket was fired on the Nisanit settlement in the Gaza Strip.
Hackers attempted to create a mysterious 'insider presence' at the organisation, which is investigating with the FBI.
The International Monetary Fund's computer system has been targeted in a cyber attack which sought to gain an 'insider presence' in the organisation's network.
An IMF spokesperson said on Saturday that the network was hacked and much information was stolen prior to the May 14 arrest of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but would not release more details about what was taken.
"I can confirm that we are investigating an incident. I am not in a position to elaborate further on the extent of the cybersecurity incident."
"This was a very major breach," a senior official with knowledge of the attack told the New York Times.
According to a cybersecurity expert who has worked for both the IMF and World Bank, the goal of the attack was to install software that would give a nation-state a "digital insider presence" on the network.
No reliable source has yet identified what government orchestrated the hack, but the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation is involved in an investigation of the cyber attack, according to a US Defense Department spokesperson.
The IMF, which has sensitive information on the economies of many nations, was hit during the last several months by what computer experts described as a large and sophisticated cyber attack, The New York Times reported.
"Last week we detected some suspicious file transfers, and the subsequent investigation established that a Fund desktop computer had been compromised and used to access some Fund systems," said the June 8 email to employees from Chief Information Officer Jonathan Palmer.
"At this point, we have no reason to believe that any personal information was sought for fraud purposes," the message to employees said.
Cybersecurity experts say it is very difficult to trace a sophisticated cyber break-in to its ultimate source.
An official with the World Bank, the IMF's sister institution in Washington, said the World Bank had cut its network connection with the IMF out of "caution".
"The World Bank Group, like any other large organisation, is increasingly aware of potential threats to the security of our information system and we are constantly working to improve our defenses," said World Bank spokesperson Rich Mills.
CIA Director Leon Panetta told the US Congress this week the United States faces the "real possibility" of a crippling cyber attack.
"The next Pearl Harbor that we confront," he said, could be a cyber attack that "cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems."
"This is a real possibility in today's world," Panetta told his June 9 confirmation hearing in his bid to become the next US defense secretary.
The incident comes as attacks on computer networks are said by experts to be on the rise - notably those targeting major companies and potentially compromising government security and customer information.
For instance, Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon's top military supplier by sales and the biggest information technology provider to the US government, disclosed two weeks ago that it had thwarted a "significant" cyber attack and said it was a "frequent target of adversaries around the world."
The attack on Lockheed followed the compromise of "SecurID" electronic keys issued by EMC's Ltd RSA Security division.
SecurIDs are widely used electronic keys to computer systems, designed to thwart hackers by requiring two passcodes: one that is fixed and another that is automatically generated every few seconds by the security system.
As an extra precaution, employees receive an automatic email each time they log in from outside, to flag the operation in case it was originated fraudulently by someone else, a World Bank staff member said.