02-Jan-16: Friday night rocket volley on southern Israel: little-reported and most of the damage is inside Gaza

Since they are so rarely reported, Friday night's rocket volley on southern Israel is something we feel the need to mention here:

Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip exploded in Israel on Friday night, in the south's Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council. No one was injured and there were no reports of damage. A further two rockets at least were thought to have fallen short and landed inside the Gaza Strip. The number of rockets fired in one volley is unusual in the relative quiet that has persisted since the end of Operation Protective Edge. Several explosions were heard after a rocket alert sounded at 11:07pm in Sderot and communities in Sha'ar HaNegev... [Ynet, Friday January 01, 2016]

Other Friday night reports indicated that the volley consisted of five rockets. Two crashed into Israel, as Ynet reported, and three are "Fell Shorts", meaning they failed to get as far as Israel and fell and exploded onto the heads and homes of Palestinian Arabs living in the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip.

The outcomes of these Fell Shorts, which represent a large proportion of all the Israel-bound rockets despatched by Gaza's rocket-rich terrorists, are almost always shrouded in Hamas-imposed secrecy. It's a very rare thing for news reporters to challenge that news ban. So there's very little understanding outside of Israel and Gaza about the death, injuries and damage caused to Gazans by the flourishing rocket-firing industry based there.

In Haaretz, Jack Khoury says he knows who is seeking "credit" for last night's explosions:

Israeli detection systems picked up the launches and identified two projectiles that crossed the border, the other three exploded on the Gaza side of the border... The "Aj'nad Beit al-Maqdis" (Soldiers of the Holy Temple) organization, ideologically affiliated with Al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the five rockets fired from Gaza toward southern Israel on Friday... According to Gaza residents, it is possible that minority factions operating on the ground took advantage of the stormy weather to carry out the rocket fire... There is often tension among Hamas and organizations affiliated with ISIS and Al-Qaida regarding operations on the ground in Gaza. Disputes over power struggles between commanders in the field are often expressed through rocket fire toward Israel. Israel's defense establishment therefore responds proportionately, in order not to provoke an additional response from Hamas.

Was it Aj'nad Beit al-Maqdis? Times of Israel says terrorists

affiliated with the Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility Saturday for firing rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip late on Friday night. The Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis Islamist group issued a statement hailing its attacks on “occupied Palestine” and gloating that it had “turned night into day” for residents in the Sderot area. Nonetheless, Israel has said it holds Gaza’s Hamas rulers responsible for any attacks out of the Hamas-run Strip.

If the jihadists of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis are the shooters, they come with a long record of mayhem [see here]. We have posted about them here at least a dozen times, most recently when they launched a rocket at Israel on a day when school-children were on the roads and could easily be hit ["01-Sep-15: Inbound rocket from Gaza announces new school year"]; that assault, like three of Friday's rockets, was also a Fell Short.

Designated as terrorists by Egypt, United Kingdom and the United States among others, the Ansar people have claimed to be part of ISIS since November 2014.

01-Jan-16: Friday afternoon shooting in central Tel Aviv

Via social media

There are reports now of a Friday afternoon shooting (it's now 3:00 pm, just an hour before the onset of the Sabbath) at a pub in central Tel Aviv. The first moments after such dramatic news tend to be affected by speculation, but the indications are - for the moment - that this is a terror attack.

Israel National News:

"One person has been killed and at least four others severely wounded in a in a shooting along Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Street. Magen David Adom paramedics at the scene are treating one critically injured person, along with three others in serious condition. The circumstances of the attack are not yet clear. According to initial reports the shooter has been "neutralized.""

But other reports say there is a chase underway after the gunman. Haaretz says this is happening at the intersection of Gordon and Dizengoff. All the streets in the vicinity are now blocked as a search goes on for the shooter.

Via Channel 2's live coverage, it appears (at 3:15 pm) that a suspect was apprehended, though it's too there were, naturally, doubts whether he is the shooter or related to the shooting.

It's a very busy part of Israel's biggest city. The Channel 2 interviews indicate 10 injured including 4 in serious or critical condition, one dead. Everyone is being careful not to confirm that this was a terror attack, though there's agreement that an armed individual entered a pub and opened fire.

Despite reports (which are seeing) that the shooter is in the hands of the authorities, it seems clear (at 3:25 pm) he is not, and a full-scale police operation is underway in one of the cafe, bar and restaurant precincts of Tel Aviv, adjacent to the busy Dizengoff Mall, with armed personnel moving quickly with their weapons brandished.  An interviewee describes seeing the shooter, acting methodically, holding and firing an M-16 automatic rifle.

Screen capture at 3:30 pm Friday: Police in pursuit.

The death of a second victim was just announced (3:33 pm). Concrete information remains in short supply. 

On the Arab side, the public reactions will cause little surprise. Click this link and see Arabic-language Tweets, many of which are referring at this hour, when no victims have been named, to Israeli settlers having been shot.

More to come.

01-Jan-16: How even the bodies of dead jihadists get to play roles in Pal Arab terror

"State" funeral in May 2014, honoring the remains of the human bomb
that attacked Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria 13 years earlier [Source] 

As we have written here often, the message being beamed at the Palestinian Arab masses about the Arab stabbers, rammers and shooters engaged in a frenzy of Arab-on-Israeli attacks since September is that the perpetrators are "martyrs" and that the attacks are "alleged" and "suspected".

It's a strategy calculated to keep the attacks coming. They do keep coming and, as we noted earlier today, the violence is likely to get worse. That's because Fatah/PA have "no choice" and Hamas, who have a choice, want it to be worse - much worse. (In reality, they are closely aligned in their views.)

Ma'an News Agency, which has unrealized pretensions to being a serious journalism channel, has been fanning the flames of support for more terror via the steady drumbeat of disingenuous reporting of non-existent doubts about the intentions of the attackers stopped by Israeli security.

Today, under the heading "Israel to hand over bodies of 23 slain Palestinians, 17 from Hebron", Ma'an publish this piece of despicable, agenda-driven "reporting". It's a story about Israel delivering the bodies of 17 dead Palestinian Arabs today, all of them eliminated in the course of attacking Israelis in the past few months.

The Palestinian liaison said the bodies were expected to be delivered Friday afternoon... During a Knesset meeting on Nov. 5, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said that “holding onto bodies is in itself not a deterrent to potential terrorists,” announcing that bodies would be returned on a “case-by-case basis.” Bodies have since been handed over conditionally, with Israeli authorities demanding the bodies be buried immediately following their handover and that funerals be limited in attendance... The Palestinian Ministry of Justice has reportedly adopted a resolution to perform autopsies on the bodies of all Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in effort to document “Israeli crimes.” Sabir al-Alou, a coronor responsible for performing autopsies on a number of slain Palestinian and head of Al-Quds University's Institute for Forensic Medicine, told Ma’an Thursday that Israel has returned the bodies full frozen, making immediate autopsies before burial impossible.

(Dead bodies, and the things that can be done with them, play a significant role in Palestinian Arab society. The funeral of the human bomb whose exploding guitar case destroyed so many lives - including our child's - in the attack on a Jerusalem pizzeria received the full Pal Arab death-cult treatment 18 months ago. Our posts: "4-May-14: Who cares about justice? About the victims? About truth?"; "6-May-14: In search of appalled, sickened Palestinian Arabs"; "11-May-14: Still searching for outraged moderate Palestinian Arab voices".)

Portraying themselves as victims has enabled Palestinian Arabs at large, and their society, to ignore the daily reality of the death-cult values they have permitted to engulf them. By completely failing to acknowledge how children, girls, mothers young and old, as well as young males with most of their lives still ahead have bought into the message of martyrdom and murder beamed from the highest rungs of their society's ladder, they ensure it keeps happening.

Dark, unspeakable "crimes" done to dead Arabs are a small, fiendish refinement on the self-destruction going on across Israel's Palestinian Arab border. Their best-known foreign-language news outlet might have been expected to keep out of that swamp, but the attractions of burying themselves in that muck were evidently too compelling to resist.

01-Jan-16: Storms ahead? Not everyone notices

Abbas and the inner circle of PA insiders [Image Source]

Soaking rain and the first significant storm of the winter season are greeting the first day of 2016 here in Jerusalem. There's a chance of snow tonight. Understandably, such are the matters on Israeli minds as people hunker down for an indoor Shabbat. 

Meanwhile in the news media, at least for those watching for such things, there are indications of approaching turbulence of a different sort. 

The Jerusalem Post this past Monday quoted a report by Gal Berger on Israel Radio's Reshet B of the same day [Hebrew audio of the Berger article here]. Berger recounts things he heard from an un-named "senior Palestinian official". In our words, here are some of them:

• Voices within the leadership of Fatah are currently calling for the resumption of 'suicide bombing' attacks. For the moment, Fatah's view is to wait before acting - in the words of the JPost report, to "see which way the wind is blowing". Fatah, in case it's forgotten, is headed by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
• The current street violence, the Arab-on-Israeli attacks carried out daily for the past three months, is "sooner or later" going to be escalated . Fatah sees itself as being "forced" to "join the current uprising".
• Those same insiders, realizing that the young people who are at the bleeding edge of the current violence directed at Israelis, see an impending collapse of the PA establishment and its power. This is, naturally, Israel's fault.
• What's likely to happen next is a rechanneling of the Arab-on-Israeli street violence into physical attacks against the Palestinian Authority regime. When that happens, the Palestinian Arab political leadership - again, out of having "no choice" in the matter - will redefine how it relates to Israel. (He gave no indication of what the Palestinian Arabs would do for water, electricity, medical care and a long list of other civil services in the wake of such a redefinition.)
• "Lone wolf attacks" will proliferate and this will be "very difficult" to control.
• It's foreseeable that internal rivalries among the numerous Palestinian Arab factions and their competing with one other for popular support will produce bad outcomes. Israel's fault, again.

We have commented several times in the last few weeks about the incitement emanating directly from the PA's Abbas. When he stands in front of foreign media and global gatherings of polite politicians, he's for peace, against terror and manifestly moderate. When speaking in Arabic to the people who groan under the burden of being led by him, it's a very different story, like when he notoriously praised the terror being done on Israel's streets by Palestinian Arabs:

We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every martyr (shahid) will reach paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah... The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours and they [the Jews, naturally] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem." "01-Dec-15: PA president: When the subject is terror, double-talk and blatant hypocrisy work"

Incitement clearly works. We summarized an under-reported Palestinian Arab public opinion survey ["14-Dec-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?"] which laid this bare: 

• They unambiguously support violent, armed violence against the Israelis: 60% support it today, up from 57% in the PSR September 2015 poll.
• The cohort most supportive of "an armed intifada and stabbings" is the one aged between 18 and 22. That's also the cohort most opposed to a two-state solution. In fact, the notion of a two-state solution, so admired by peace-oriented outsiders (like the Obama administration and the EU) and by 63% of Israelis in a 2013 poll, is rejected by a growing majority of Palestinian Arabs (54% today; 51% in the September 2015 poll.)
• Fully two-thirds of all Palestinian Arabs say they are in favour of stabbing attacks on Israelis. 
• About the same proportion are of the view that Abbas, elected in January 2005 to a four-year term as PA president, holding on tenaciously to his power for the past eleven years and with no election on the horizon, must resign. This doesn't happen because, as the poll shows, if presidential elections were held today, the Hamas candidate would defeat Abbas comprehensively. 

Another sign of very bad weather ahead: Hamas, according to Ynet yesterday (Thursday), has ordered its cells in the West Bank to launch "suicide" bombings against Israeli targets, and will target senior officials in the Israeli political and defence establishments. It is specifically targeting victims inside the so-called Green Line, the 1947 cease-fire line that is mischievously referred to often in the news media as the 1967 borders.

Hamas says it has "sleeper" cells in place and is now activating them. One such cell was the subject of a post here ["24-Dec-15: Another terror outrage narrowly averted - and Shalit Deal releasees are again at the heart of the darkness"] last week. Its members were discovered, interrogated and arrested in a joint Shin Bet/IDF operation in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Abu Dis, along with a sophisticated, well-stocked explosives lab that was preparing bombs for use against Israelis.

In yesterday's Ynet report, Hamas voices are quoted, saying 

the only reason the members of the cell were caught was that one of its members told a member of the Palestinian security forces of the cell's existence, asking him to obtain fake permits for him and the other cell members... [T]he other terror cells would not be exposed because their members have no record of security-related offenses that would make them suspects... ["Hamas planning suicide bombings, targeting Israeli officials", Ynet, December 31, 2015]

How separate are these Fatah/PA and Hamas efforts at ramping-up terror? Not as separate as they might appear. Times of Israel said yesterday that the reporter's unidentified source inside Hamas

claimed that it was maintaining ties with members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement... ["Hamas says it plans to resume suicide attacks in Israel"]

This ought to surprise no one. When the Abbas regime pays out millions of dollars each month in its ghastly, but mostly ignored, cash-for-terror payments scheme, who gets most of the money? Again, Reshet Bet's Gal Berger provides some clear answers via Jerusalem Post. He

managed to lay his hands on actual Palestinian Authority spreadsheets that show precisely which convicted terrorists behind Israeli bars the PA subsidizes and at what level...  Here are comprehensive statistics that illustrate exactly how the PA uses its resources – including moneys handed over monthly by Israel as well as contributions the PA solicits from international donors... Apprehended, convicted and incarcerated terrorists – including the linchpins of the ghastliest of mass murders – are paid substantial monthly stipends while they do time... The newly uncovered evidence, moreover, shows that the PA’s largesse isn’t limited to Fatah terrorists but that most of its outlays are earmarked for Hamas members... Organizational rivalries and political affiliations are no bar for PA generosity toward terrorists. This encourages bloodletting, and is part and parcel of the glorification of terrorism in the purportedly moderate Mahmoud Abbas’s Ramallah-ruled jurisdiction. The glorification – indeed near-deification – of mass murder is an integral component of incitement to terrorism by Abbas’s top hierarchy... It was never a secret that the PA financially underpinned the prisoners’ relatives, a fact that helped boost their heroic status. Now, however, we know exactly who gets what, down to such details as how much is deposited when into which particular account in which particular bank... The PA ’s own paperwork shows unambiguously that tens of millions of dollars are shelled out every month to imprisoned terrorists and their relations – at a time in which Abbas moans that Ramallah can’t make ends meet. ["PA Spreadsheets", Jerusalem Post, October 10, 2015]

Several of the terrorists convicted of their involvement in the massacre that took our daughter's life in August 2001 are included in the PA payments plan.

Berger's revelations, and the PA spreadsheets, received virtually no mainstream news coverage when they were revealed in October. Now, with much colder air and many dead on all sides, we're likely to to reap the harvest of that willful neglect.

31-Dec-15: In Jerusalem, soldiers save two children from turning into murderers

These knives were taken from the two pre-teen Palestinian
Arab children yesterday [Image Source]

A small story that has probably slipped beneath the radar for most people. From Ynet today:

The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court on Thursday extended the remand of two 12-year-old Palestinian boys caught the previous day carrying knives. Police says the two planned to commit a stabbing attack, but they deny the accusations. The two children from Kafr 'Aqb were caught in Jerusalem around 6pm after raising the suspicion of police and civilians who saw them walking at the corner of Hahoma HaShlishit Street and Kheil ha-Handasa. Policemen at the scene approached the two and noticed they had their hands in their pockets. After searching them, the officers found the knives.

The two children made their way into town from their homes in Kafr Aqab, the northernmost Palestinian Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Though located within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, it's a mere two kilometers from Ramallah where the Mahmoud Abbas regime is based. The town had roughly 10,000 residents when a census was last conducted in 2006. One of the other residents was a young man called Ahmad Hamada Quneibi, 23, who was shot dead by Israeli security personnel on October 30, 2015 in the course of carrying out a murderous terror attack in Jerusalem. At the time it happened, we wrote this:

In the past few minutes (it's now Friday 1:45 pm), a stabbing attack by Arabs was launched on Israeli civilians standing at a tram stop in the Ammunition Hill section of Jerusalem. Israel National News says one of the injured is a yeshiva student of 22 with stab wounds to the upper body. He is evidently only one of several victims. The attacker was shot dead. No details about his identity yet. ["30-Oct-15: As Hamas announces more rage, "lone wolf" attackers pounce on cue"] 

Now we know his identity. At a guess, his "martyrdom" is probably one of the factors that brought a couple of twelve year-old kids to emulate some of his "fame" yesterday.

What a tragically-flawed, massively-self-destructive society they are creating for their children over there.

31-Dec-15: Pal Arab attacker rams car into Israelis

Times of Israel reports that an IDF soldier was lightly injured this morning (Thursday) in a vehicle-ramming attack at a road Junction between Tapuah and the Palestinian Arab town of Hawara. He received emergency treatment at the scene from IDF medics before being taken by ambulance to Belinson Hospital, part of the Rabin Medical Center complex, in Petach Tikvah.

The IDF force, from the Givati battalion, was patrolling Route 60 and according to Ynet had stopped to conduct security checks of Palestinian Arabs. The attacking driver was shot dead at the scene, according to the army. Reports say he was a Palestinian Arab of 22, Hassan Bazur. No further details at this stage, but as observers of the passion for blood and death in their society know, he is being turned into a martyr via posters and celebrations as we type these words.

Hawara (or Huwwara), near Nablus, has seen multiple Arab-on-Israeli stabbings and vehicle ramming attacks in the past three months of violence.

29-Dec-15: Gaza and what manipulative, highly-politicized foreign aid can buy

The red carpet is constantly out for visitors to Shujaiyeh
neighborhood, Gaza City. This non-Photoshopped photo is from nearly
a year after the destruction [Photo Credit: Dan Cohenvia 972Blog]

Gazan suffering. It's a vastly potent issue that drives much of the passion on the Palestinian Arab side.

With bitter wintery weather setting in fast, why are so many Gazan Palestinian Arabs still waiting for homes destroyed in 2014's summer battle with Israel to be reinstated and/or replaced?

Some digging around by reporters for the Wall Street Journal today offers surprising insights: "Politics Slows Rebuilding in War-Ravaged Gaza Strip | Political differences among Gulf Arab states play large role in who gets aid" [Rory Jones and Abubakr Bashir | Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2015]

It frames the question in terms of the very different fates experienced by a pair of Gazan brothers and their two adjoining residences. They are Abdelraziq Harara, 53, and and Jihad Harara, 65, two Palestinian Arab everyman-like unknowns who happen to have lost their neighboring Gaza homes in the storm of war that swept over them in July 2014. That's when the densely-populated Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City became the center of fierce fighting involving the terrorists of the rocket-rich Hamas regime and the IDF. More than 140 Hamas rockets had been fired in the general direction of Israel from the Harara brothers' neighborhood in the 12 days commencing July 8, some of them reaching well into Israel's centers of population in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and .

Open-air prison? [Source]

Israel's patience got stretched thinner and thinner. Then it ended. At that point, Israel took some extraordinary preliminary measures before commencing a much-needed counter-offensive. Starting on July 16, 2014, and with the intention of minimizing the loss of civilian lives, the IDF

by means of leaflets, loudspeaker announcements, telephone calls, text messages and radio messages, told the residents to leave and relocate in central Gaza City until further notice... By 19 July, OCHA reported that while the majority had not left their homes,and ignored the warnings, up to half had gone as bombardments intensified. Israel condemned Hamas for using "human shields". According to Amnesty International, the UNRWA shelter facilities were overflowing and many of the residents had nowhere to go. Residents interviewed later also cited confusion due of lack of electricity and communications. The official Israeli view was that Hamas had compelled residents of Shujai'iya to stay behind in the face of IDF warnings to evacuate prior to the IDF assault, holding civilians as "hostages".Jordanian-Palestinian politician Mudar Zahran wrote that a Gaza medical worker had told him "Hamas militants blocked exits, shot people as they were running and forced the rest to return to their homes and get bombed". [Wikipedia]

Serious air, tank and mortar fire began on the night of July 19, 2014. Then shortly afterwards, Israeli ground forces entered the neighbourhood. Much destruction ensued.

Concentration camp? [Source]

Fast forward to today's WSJ analysis.

While Abdelraziq Harara's house is almost completely rebuilt, the immediately-adjacent lot, where his brother Jihad Harara's house once was, remains desolate. Same street, same family, completely different outcome. Why? As the WSJ article makes clear, the answer is: very poorly managed money, and the cynical manipulation this makes possible.

Soon after the end of the 2014 fighting, foreign donors were convened in Cairo for a one-day hand-over-the-money conference aimed at raising enough money to reverse the damage suffered by the Gazans. We noted here ["27-May-15: The cheque for Gaza is in the mail, or whatever"] that

the fund-raiser was an incredible success. The organizers had hoped to raise $4 billion, but ended with pledges to Gaza of an incredible $5.4 billion,.. And you have to take your hat off in recognition of the donors' selfless generosity. Some of them may be astronomically wealthy but let's give credit where it's due: they really wanted to help. Their fraternal ties to the Arabs of the Gaza Strip provided a powerful incentive to do the right thing. As we noted, major pledges of funding came from Qatar ($1bn). Saudi Arabia ($500m), Turkey ($200m), United Arab Emirates ($200m), the European Union ($568m), the United States ($212m) and the United Kingdom ($32m).

Successful as it all seemed to be, seriously negative signs were not hard to find even then. We suggested what this meant for Gaza's teeming masses and the desperately-needed cash that seemed to have been raised:

[T]he United States which pledged $277 million has handed over 84% of that. The European Union promised $348 million, and 40% has shown up so far which, compared with the Arabs, is not too shabby... [On the other hand] Qatar is spending tens of billions of dollars on getting ready to host the 2022 FIFA soccer World Cup. Of the $1 billion it pledged to its Gazan brothers, it has delivered 10 percent. The Saudi Arabians have produced just one-tenth of the $500 million they promised. Turkey pledged $200 million and has sent $520,000. Kuwait, not to be outdone, also pledged $200 million - and has not sent a penny. The unimaginably rich United Arab Emirates said it was giving $200 million; the World Bank says it has no data for how much arrived... ["27-May-15: The cheque for Gaza is in the mail, or whatever"]

With due modesty, it turns out we were right. As today's WSJ piece, written 14 months after ours. demonstrates, a mere

$1.2 billion of the $3.5 billion has been delivered, with Gulf states dispensing only about $170 million. Like other donors, Gulf governments have attached conditions on how their aid money is spent, according to Palestinian, United Nations and World Bank officials. “Donors have different requirements and priorities,” said Bashir Rayyes, who coordinates the Gaza aid effort for the United Nations and reports to the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank. Chief among these differences is their views about Gaza’s rulers. While Qatar supports Hamas, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have grown more aggressive in recent years in their opposition to Hamas... [Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2015] 

Gas chamber? [Source]

There's a self-serving quote in the article from a Hamas politburo member, an Islamist regime insider by the name of Ziad al Zaza:

"Each one of these countries wants a say in Gaza... We will never allow anyone to have a say in Gaza except the Palestinians."

Zaza, who knows how these things work, is a former Hamas deputy prime minister and finance minister. Other than his last three words, we think he ought to be believed... and the homeless of Gaza ought to be pushing him out of power as fast as they can.

Here, paraphrasing the WSJ team's findings, is what's known now about how certain super-wealthy Arab countries are playing their Gaza "relief aid" hand:

• Qatar, encouraged by Hamas to do this, has set up its own foreign-aid office in Gaza. In this way, it hires contractors and laborers directly to carry out road, school and home reconstruction. Still, it has managed to spend only a fraction of the $1 billion it pledged in Cairo.
• Saudi Arabia, for its own reasons, has no interest in seeing Hamas benefit from aid. So its funds are channeled via UNRWA. And, if you're wondering, it too has delivered just a tiny part of what it promised in Cairo last year.
• United Arab Emirates is sending some of its aid money to Gaza via Mohammed Dahlan, who was a powerful (and phenomenally wealthy) figure under Yasser Arafat. It's calculated to cause problems. Hamas see Dahlan as a rival. Fatah insiders say he has been trying to overthrow the Palestinian Authority's president Mahmoud Abbas. Just the right guy.
• Kuwait is also bypassing Hamas, and said to be sending its contribution via the Palestinian Authority. So how much have they already sent? According to the WSJ, oh, about exactly zero.

Qatar's man in Gaza gives the whole messy affair some revealing context:

Ahmad Abu Rass, who heads the [Qatari government] office, said Doha [the Qatari capital] won’t shell out more cash in Gaza until other donors step up efforts to fulfill their pledges. A half-hearted aid effort only sows more despair among Gazans and sets the stage for another round of fighting, making any aid a wasted investment, he said. [Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2015] 

Let's say that differently: no foreign aid serves Hamas better than foreign aid that never arrives. That's because Hamas has no interest at all in aiding its people - only in leveraging their plight for malevolent Islamist purposes. 

As poorly understood as this is by large parts of the mainstream media and by foreign governments (which it certainly is), ordinary Gazans comprehend it in practical and down-to-earth ways:

Abdelraziq said he and other displaced Gazans would take cash from Israel if it meant living in their own homes again soon. They don’t care about politics, he said... As Qatar’s maroon-and-white flag flew above a completed house nearby, [his still-homeless brother] Jihad said he had no control over what country aided him or why. He just hoped the money would come soon. “If the Israelis built the house, I’d fly the Israeli flag.” [Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2015] 

Not exactly what Hamas wants people to hear.

But then the messaging of its dominant fat-cats ["23-Nov-14: Gaza's wealth and where it is - and is not - going"] has always been strong on blunt threats and on real and threatened terror/fear - and considerably lighter on the basic business of taking care of the people they rule.

By the numbers. Source: WSJ

(The revealing WSJ graphic - note that we we removed a small part of it to simplify the message - sums up the Arab "largesse", contrasting it sharply with aid from Western sources.)

Describing accurately and fully how this works is a rare and tricky thing. Complex, often interwoven interests affect and are affected by it. That trickiness contributes to spiraling hyperbole - the need to reach for ever more evocative ways of depicting it, and never mind how outlandish or fact-free. The headlines we included in the screen shots above hint at the creative spirit behind much of the failed reporting and the supremely irresponsible rhetoric.

Understanding why so much misery goes on for so long in Gaza despite the phenomenal sums of money that have been channeled into countless relief efforts, special funds and emergency humanitarian appeals, remains Mission Almost-Impossible. Chronic distortion of facts is an essential part of the whole sad and endless process.

27-Dec-15: Sunday, the Arab-on-Israeli violence continues

Police security checkpoint in Jerusalem's Old City [Image Source]

It's Sunday mid-afternoon here: a bright, sunny, mild and violent day. Some of the day's events since our morning post:

• During the morning, a Palestinian Arab woman tried to stab an Israeli near Ma’ale Shomron, an Israeli community west of Nablus. She was stopped with no injuries to anyone. She is said to be from the nearby Palestinian Arab village of Azzun. [Times of Israel, December 27, 2015] 
• A separate incident: a Palestinian Arab woman was stopped at the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and found to be in possession of a knife. She is under arrest, and alive.
• A Palestinian Arab man was arrested by Israel Police officers patrolling the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City this afternoon. Asked to show identification,  Times of Israel says he instead drew a blade that had been secreted in his clothing. The officers relieved him of the weapon and took him into custody, alive. Palestinian Arab sources say he is from the Ramallah area. No one was injured, and there are no names or other identifying details at this stage. 
• In Hawara, a village south of Nablus, the day's fifth (so far) Arab-on-Israeli terror attack saw two Arabs approach a gas station near the IDF checkpoint. Israel National News says they suddenly stabbed one of the soldiers stationed there, inflicting moderate knife wounds to his limbs. Other security personnel opened fire and killed the attackers at the scene. The second soldier was lightly wounded in the fire. Both Israelis received emergency treatment at the scene and were then evacuated to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. The Palestinian authorities say the attackers were aged 17 and 23.

27-Dec-15: Saturday's violence

Some background on two more Arab-on-Israeli attacks that marred the Sabbath day that ended last night.

IDF Square Jerusalem [Image Source: Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons]

In Jerusalem, at Kikar Zahal (IDF Square) close to the Old City's Jaffa Gate and a couple of minutes' walk from Safra Square, the compound where the municipality is headquartered, a Palestinian Arab aroused suspicions on the part of police officers who, in the words of Israel National News,

"approached him to investigate... At that point the terrorist whipped out a knife and tried to stab one of them, but the officers beat him to the draw and shot him, killing him at the site."

Haaretz adds that the would-be knife attacker "is mentally disabled" in the words of family members. It identifies him as

26-year-old Mussab Mahmoud Al-Razali from East Jerusalem. His uncle told Palestinian news agency WAFA that his nephew suffered from severe mental disabilities and even studied at the Nur Special Needs School.

The Huwara attack vehicle (via social media)

He attracted attention because "police noticed him following a pair of Jewish worshippers". Saturday morning is a time when thousands of Israeli Jews, as well as visitors, walk through Jaffa Gate to the Old City's Western Wall plaza. It's a route that gets heavy police attention because of the attraction it seems to hold for murder-minded jihadists.

Later in the day, a cluster of soldiers manning at a checkpoint near the Arab village of Huwara in Samaria came under vehicle-ramming attack. One, a young serviceperson of 20, was injured in the attack and taken to hospital with a suspected broken leg. Others opened fired and hit the Palestinian Arab attacker who later died of his injuries. Haaretz says his name is Maher al-Jabi, a male of 56.

News consumers who rely on the Arab news media will get the story more or less back-to-front as the headlines of two reports typical of the genre ["Palestinian dies from injuries in car ramming near Nablus" - Al Bawaba; "Another Palestinian shot dead by Israelis at Nablus checkpoint" - Press TV Iran] make clear. Ditto The Columbus Despatch which spins a syndicated Associated Press report with its own creative headline ["2 Palestinians killed in clashes"]

27-Dec-15: Sunday morning knifing outside Jerusalem transit hub

Scene of this morning's terror attack

Sunday morning, unlike much of the world but in common with the entire Middle East, is a busy time in Israel. It's the start of the working week . For many IDF and security personnel, it's when they make their way back to base after a weekend off. In and around the various central bus stations across the country, it's the peakest of peak hours.

Around 6:40 this morning (Sunday), a Palestinian Arab assailant, armed with a knife, launched a stabbing attack on a young IDF service man, inflicting stab wounds to his upper body. Times of Israel reports that he received emergency treatment at the scene - on Hazvi Street, adjacent to Jerusalem's Tahana Merkazit or Central Bus Station and just a block away from the Magen David Adom ambulance station. He was rushed to Hadassah Ein Karem where it was reported that the 21 year old is in stable condition.

The attacker was fired on by a security guard who may or may not have hit him but did manage to subdue him until police arrived. We don't know his identity yet, or his age or home town, but the 'hero' posters which emerge from the Palestinian Arab martyrization industry should be taking care of that as we write these words. Meanwhile he's in police custody and being interrogated.

As often as such terrorist attacks happen, no one living in their midst gets used to them. There's reason to be concerned that this will not be the last such assault of the day.