Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy

AlQuds alArabi says the reason Hamas had not evacuated its police and security locations on Saturday when the bombings occured--killing over 200 including cadets at a graduation ceremony at the Gaza police headquarters--was a specific piece of misinformation that was transmitted to the Hamas leadership by the Egyptian authorities, who assured Hamas on Friday evening that Israel was not going to launch an attack immediately.

Sources in the Hamas movement close to Dr Mahmoud Zahar told AlQuds alArabi that Egypt informed Hamas on Friday night that Israel was in agreement on opening negotiations toward a new truce, and that it would not launch an attack on the Gaza Strip until Cairo had exhausted all of its efforts toward a [new truce] agreement between Tel Aviv and the resistance factions. And the sources said it was this assurance from Cairo that prevented the [Hamas authorities] from evacuating these Palestinian security locations. The sources said the Hamas ministry of the interior had evacuated the security locations on the occasion of every Israeli threat, but in this case it had not done so, based on the assurances last night [Friday night] that Israel would not launch an attack during the coming 48 hours, particularly considering that Saturday is a public and religious holiday, and it would not begin an attack on the Gaza Strip on that day.

Pictures on AlJazeera and elsewhere show the slaughter that resulted.

(The AlQuds alArabi report also quotes diplomatic sources to the effect that Egypt security chief Omar Suleiman had been in touch with other Arab regimes to inform them of the Israeli plans for an attack, a further indication of official Arab-regime collusion with Israel in this).