Monday, August 29, 2011

29-Aug-11: No, it's not quiet in southern Israel tonight, and hasn't been for some time

It's Sunday night, and the Gazan Palestinian terror groups are firing rockets at Israelis again. A Qassam rocket, fired from the Gaza Strip, exploded in an open area in the Eshkol region a short time ago [Ynet]. We're always pleased to be able to report that there are no injuries or damage, but it's not because of the terrorists and not even because of Israel's defensive measures. It's really an unpredictable and fortuitous thing that might just as easily have produced something much worse.

The tension in the south is high for other reasons. The IDF (according to Channel One news tonight, and Ynet) is carrying out a reinforcement of Israel's military presence in the Gaza Strip vicinity and the Israel-Egypt border. It's doing so on the basis of concrete intelligence and what's being termed "a terrorist alert" indicating that the Islamic Jihad terrorists are planning another attack in the area, following the losses they inflicted (including 8 Israelis killed) in their cowardly attack on unprotected, unarmed intercity buses and private cars traveling on public highways ten days ago. The estimates are that a terrorist cell has left the Gaza Strip en route to Egyptian Sinai which has become a hotbed of terrorist activity in recent months. Details of the alert have been shared with the authorities in Egypt.

We're also now aware that on Sunday night (yesterday), a GRAD missile crashed and exploded in southern Israel's Bnei Shimon region, in the general vicinity of Beer Sheba. No injuries and no damage, though not for lack of effort on the part of the terrorists. Credit was claimed by the Tawhid al-Jihad (Army of Islam) terror group.

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