14-Dec-17: Understanding what happened after Wednesday night's Gazan rocket attack on Israel

Haaretz says (rather blandly) three rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel yesterday (Wednesday): 

Two were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system and one fell into an open area as alarm sirens sounded in southern Israeli districts and cities including Sderot. Magen David Adom emergency responders said that a 30-year-old man wounded his leg while running for cover, and two others were being treated for shock. The rocket fire on Israel from the Gaza Strip Wednesday evening is returning the residents of the Gaza border region back to a state of tension they haven’t experienced since Operation Protective Edge over three years ago. No less [sic] than 15 rockets have been fired into Israeli territory since U.S. President Donald Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem, and although the Israel Defense Forces has been showing restraint, it will have a hard time holding back for much longer. 

Others say there were four, not three, and the difference points to something significant:

On Wednesday night, four rockets were fired from Gaza at southern Israel. Two of them were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, a third struck an open field and the fourth fell short of the border and hit a school in the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli officials... [Times of Israel, today]

So that's five Arab-on-Israeli attack rockets intercepted in mid-air and brought down by the amazing, life-saving, defensive Iron Dome system so far this week. 

As far as we know, neither Haaretz nor any non-Israeli news source has drawn attention to how yet-another Fell Short rocket dispatched on its murderous path towards Israel failed to cross the border and fell onto the heads of hapless Gazan Palestinian Arabs.

This time it struck a school according to Israeli assessments:

Beit Hanoun’s Ghazi al-Shawa public school, according to Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Defense Ministry liaison with the Palestinians.

Given the late-night hour, it was probably empty of students. But who really knows? And just imagine the reaction if it was an Israeli attack that view up a Gazan (almost certainly meaning UNRWA) school. Does anyone think The Guardian (which has a documented interest in Gazan schools being attacked) will give its readers any insight into this latest school bombing.

Fell Shorts are never reported by the terrorist regime in Gaza. If they did, they might have to own up to the utter contempt they have for harming their own side. Fell Shorts are very rarely reported by major news agencies.

By way of response, Israel this morning (Thursday) imposed a closure of its Gaza crossings:

Israel announced the closure of its Gaza border crossings on Thursday in response to daily rocket fire from the enclave over the past week after US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital stoked Palestinian anger. [Reuters, this morning]

An Israeli source adds:

The army said the Kerem Shalom Crossing, from which goods enter and leave the Strip, as well as the pedestrian Erez Crossing would be shuttered beginning on Thursday, in light of “security events and in accordance with security assessments.” It was not clear when the crossings would reopen, the army said. A military spokesperson said that in “humanitarian cases” Gaza residents may be allowed to pass through the Erez Crossing, but that this would be contingent upon approval from Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Israel’s chief military liaison to the Palestinians, known formally as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). [Times of Israel, today]

CNN's reporting on this ["Israel closes Gaza border crossings", CNN, today - archived here in case they change the text] maintains CNN's not-exactly-stellar record for perspective and fairness:

The Israeli military said it will close border crossings into Gaza beginning Thursday until further notice "due to the security events and in accordance with security assessments."
The crossings being closed, Kerem Shalom and Erez, are the only two on the Israeli border left. Israel has closed border crossings when tensions are high, some which have not been reopened to date. The territory is also under a naval blockade by the Israeli navy. Kerem Shalom is the crossing point where goods and supplies are brought into Gaza; Erez is the point where people cross. Shutting the two points effectively cuts off Gaza from the rest of the world by land, save for its small Egyptian border, which is generally closed. The territory is also under a naval blockade by the Israeli navy.

(Yes, Israel's navy gets mentioned twice. There's something about sailors in uniform.)

CNN has an interesting way of looking at this. Gaza, which everyone knows views Israel as its sworn enemy and which is busily attacking Israelis with rockets and tunnels at this moment, is shut off "from the rest of the world" by Israel closing its border this morning. Oh, "save for its small Egyptian border" which is "generally closed".

The word agitprop was invented for silliness of this CNN sort.

01-Jul-15: ISIS violence, terror and chaos rage on Israel's southern flank

Scene of the Cairo assassination of Egypt's state prosecutor
on Monday [Image Source]

Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has grown steadily more restive in the past two years. We have posted dozens of times during that period [see "Sinai"], tracking the crescendo of Arab-on-Arab violence and terrorism that has exacted a steady toll of lives in the desert as well as in Egypt's cities. Today, in Egypt and in its capital city, Egypt is at war.

Just two days ago, on Monday June 29, 2015, Hisham Barakat, who had served as Egypt's state prosecutor since July 2013, was killed when his secure motorcade was hit by a bomb blast in the capital Cairo [source: Aljazeera]. Barakat's appointment had come very soon after Egypt's military removed the country's elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi. In the course of the past two years, Barakat was responsible for a series of legal measures directed at reducing the power of the Islamists, including freezing the assets of 15 prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and ordering the arrest of the group's Supreme Leader leader, Mohamed Badie.

We showed Badie embracing Hamas arch-terrorist Khaled Meshaal back in January 2012. Badie was charged with inciting violence outside the Republican Guard headquarters where 51 people were killed.

Deposed president Morsi, along with hundreds of his supporters, have since been sentenced to death by Egypt's courts in a series of mass trials. Barakat also oversaw the court acquittal of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

There's some background to the events of the past few days. During May 2015, ISIS' Egyptian affiliate urged its followers

to attack judges, opening a new front in the world's most populous Arab state. Earlier in the same month, three judges were shot dead in the northern Sinai city of al-Arish... [Aljazeera] 

Then, right after Monday's assassination in Cairo, a visibly infuriated Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, publicly pledged to escalate the battle against the Islamic "militant" terrorists. An AFP report published yesterday captured some of the anger and rising threats:

"The arm of justice is chained by the law. We're not going to wait for this. We're going to amend the law to allow us to implement justice as soon as possible," Sisi said in a televised speech surrounded by Barakat's mourning relatives. "Do courts in these circumstances work? Do these laws work? They work with normal people," said Sisi, shaking a clenched fist for emphasis. Hundreds of policemen and soldiers have been killed since Morsi's ouster by militants based in the sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula... At least 1,400 people, most of them Morsi supporters, have been killed in a police crackdown on protests. Meanwhile, thousands of people, mostly Islamists but also including secular dissidents, have been jailed and hundreds sentenced to death. Morsi himself has been sentenced to death... Outside the mosque where the funeral was held, a crowd of 50 protesters chanted: "The people demand the execution of the Muslim Brotherhood." Inside, Justice Minister Ahmed al-Zind, a recently appointed hardliner, told judges to avenge Barakat's killing. "The ball is now in the judges' court. Take your revenge using the law. Effective, swift law that doesn't take five years." Politicians and pro-Sisi media -- virtually all the channels and newspapers in Egypt -- have called for an even harsher crackdown on Morsi's Brotherhood and militants. ["Egypt's Sisi pledges tougher laws after prosecutor killing" | Agence France-Presse, June 30, 2015]

Instead, what they got today was one of the most dramatic of those Sinai days. It's an ongoing situation that is worrying at multiple levels. A brief Reuters report today ["Death toll in North Sinai militant attacks rises to 70: sources", July 01, 2015] summarizes the carnage.

Today's news reports suggest the Islamic "militant" terrorists mounted a cluster of simultaneous attacks on Egyptian army targets across the northern Sinai during the morning hours, producing a blood-bath.

Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, the ISIS affiliate in Egypt [click here for our previous posts about the havoc they have brought to the region] claimed responsibility for the attacks. Their version, not contradicted by anyone at this stage as far as we know, is that they hit some 15 army and police positions, and executed three human bomb attacks. Two of those targeted military checkpoints; one hit an officers' club in El-Arish.

A Times of Israel report says "the attackers on Wednesday used mortars, rocket-propelled grenades as well as assault rifles. Two of the checkpoints, which were apparently located in close proximity, were completely destroyed." Other reports say the terrorists succeeded in seizing Egyptian soldiers and are now holding them captive for what we presume will be barbaric purposes that have become sickeningly familiar. They also seized Egyptian army weapons and armoured vehicles.

Kerem Shalom Crossing: In April 2015, 523 laden trucks passed through
and crossed into the Gaza Strip each day, on average. It was shut down today
because of the nearby Arab-on-Arab carnage. [Image Source] 

Not surprisingly, the IDF has been "closely monitoring the border area with Egypt and Gaza in light of the events". Israel's Ministry of Defence took the decision some hours ago [source] to shut down Israel’s border crossing into the Gaza Strip and another into Egypt, with immediate effect:

Gates at the Kerem Shalom crossing were closed, cutting off the main conduit for goods transferred from Israel to Gaza by hundreds of trucks every day. In addition, the Nitzana border crossing, used by commercial traffic moving between Israel and Egypt via Sinai, was also closed. The Taba border crossing, used by pedestrian travelers visiting Egypt in the less-restive southern Sinai peninsula, was still open during the early afternoon. [Times of Israel, today]

Inside Egypt, there's considerable related violence underway this evening. Just in the past hour:

Egyptian security officials say special forces killed nine members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, including a former member of parliament, during a raid on a Cairo apartment... [source]

23-Nov-14: Partial reporting from the lethal Gaza border

The BBC has a major story to tell at this hour:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30166957

A cold-blooded attempt by trigger-happy IDF soldiers to raise the body count? Maybe. But why does the BBC not also report the additional, highly relevant bit that Israeli news channels have been reporting since early this morning?  That two Palestinian Arabs — one armed with a grenade — were detained near the Kerem Shalom crossing (on the Israel/Gaza border) after infiltrating into Israeli territory just a short time before.

Times of Israel knows it. The Jerusalem Post knows it. For crying out loud, even the Palestinian Maan News Agency knows it.

But the BBC makes no mention of it at all.

23-Nov-14: Who cares about rebuilding Gazan lives?

Kerem Shalom crossing seen from the Israeli side, August 2014
More than an ordinary stream of trucks; a lifeline [Image Source]

If you have not already seen our post from earlier today (including video) of Hamas trumpeting the tunnels they are busy digging and/or repairing in order to murder more Jews ["23-Nov-14: Gaza's wealth and where it is - and is not - going"], please do that before reading on. It's at the top of the list of messages Hamas is delivering to its captive population and the larger Arabic-speaking world.

Back? OK, so if it's not the thugs of Hamas (and it is surely not), who is taking seriously the need of the Palestinian Arab Gazans for repaired houses and a better life? From the Jerusalem Post:

Under an arrangement reached last month to ensure that building materials needed to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed in the seven-week Operation Protective Edge are not diverted to build terror tunnels or manufacture rockets, the UN is to present Israeli engineers with construction plans, and the engineers will determine how much cement is needed. That cement then will be allowed into Gaza in stages, to enable inspection to ensure that it is being used for the designated purpose. If it is determined that the cement is being stolen and used for other purposes, the supply will stop. A recent assessment conducted by the UN found that more than 100,000 homes in Gaza remained damaged or destroyed. The first batch of construction materials since the Gaza military operation in the summer entered the Strip from Israel in September... ["25,000 Gazans to get access to construction materials to rebuild homes", jpost.com, November 22, 2014]

Keep in mind the mentality of the parties concerned.

• Israel fights the Hamas regime because of the jihadists' rockets, terror tunnels and single-minded desire to kill as many of us as possible. The fight that it fights can, given the circumstances, be devastating. (It's hard for us to see the logic of Israel doing less than that.) But at the same time, and with essentially the same goal in mind, Israel permits a steady flow of goods, services and electrical energy to traverse its roads and borders even while the Gazans are firing rockets into Israeli towns. Israeli repair crews, for instance (among many instances) risked their lives worked on fixing the high-voltage cables running into Gaza [see report] even while those Gazan rockets were being fired at them in August. Those cables had been put out of action by Hamas/Islamic Jihad Gazan rocket fire.
• The Hamas inner circle systematically fails to provide anything close to a livable environment for the people they dominate. They consistently point to other parties (always other parties) who they say are responsible for almost everything, even including Gaza's own security. But - and this is mostly unknown to the Gazans themselves - when their own wives, children and close family members need the best possible, most conscientious and professional medical care, to which Zionist entity do they run (with not the slightest sign of embarrassment)?

Who cares about rebuilding Gazan houses and lives? Who cares about the Gazans?

According to the most recent daily report filed by the people at COGAT, Israel supervised the entry across its Gazan border of 1,014 people that day (last Monday), as well as the entry of 274 trucks carrying 7,335 tons of goods for the people of Gaza. An additional 94 semi-trailers that had been authorized and scheduled by the Israeli side (this has consistently happened over the years, as we know from visiting the crossings) simply did not show up. Requests for a entry/crossing permit from the Israelis is seen by the Hamas side as part of a war strategy, and dealt with accordingly, consequences be damned. Some 600 kg of Gazan fish were trucked through Israel to the towns of the Palestinian Authority the same day.

And there is some additional somewhat startling background, here: "Egypt tightens closure on Gaza as Israel eases it" [Ynet, yesterday].

A strange form of warfare, no? But it tells a reasonable person something about the relative values of the human societies on the two sides.

02-Nov-14: In Gaza, puzzlement all over again

Essential goods cross over from Israel to the Gaza Strip

in August 2014 [Image Source]

In Gaza, they're evidently at a complete loss to explain some recent developments:

ISRAEL CLOSES TWO GAZA CROSSINGS WITHOUT MENTIONING ANY REASON | Israel will on Sunday close down Gaza's only functioning two crossings, namely Kerem Shalom and Erez. Israeli authorities had told the Palestinian side that they would close down Kerem Shalom, Gaza's only functioning commercial crossing, on Sunday, even without mentioning any reasons, Mounir al-Ghalban, the head of the Palestinian side of the crossing, told Anadolu Agency. He added that Israeli authorities did not mention a date for reopening the crossing, warning against the effect of the crossing closure on Gaza's foodstuff supplies. Israeli authorities will also close down Erez Crossing in northern Gaza, al-Ghalban said. He added that only Palestinians on emergency would be allowed to cross between the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank through the crossing. [Daily Sabah (a Turkish publication), yesterday]

No reasons? We can help. Here's a little fresh background via Ynet:

Gaza cut off from the world as Israel, Egypt close border crossings | Ynet - Saturday | The Gaza Strip will be completed isolated from the world starting Sunday after Israel decided to close both the Kerem Shalom and Erez border crossings and Egypt has accelerated its plans to create a buffer zone on the Sinai-Gaza border. According to the Arabic Sky News channel, the evacuation of the border area to create a buffer zone was sped up after satellite images showed hundreds of tunnels remaining in the area, even after an intense Egyptian campaign to eliminate them.
While the Egyptian army has managed to destroy 1,500 smuggling tunnels, satellite images exposed hundreds of additional tunnels - some in Rafah mosques, bedrooms and shops. The establishment of a buffer zone in Rafah - a strip of land 14km long and half a kilometer wide - started following a terrorist attack in Sinai that led to the death of 33 Egyptian soldiers. The army began its work on the buffer zone by quickly evacuating and destroying 800 homes, compensating the residents... The Qatari TV network affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood quoted residents and activists who claimed this was the "Egyptian equivalent of the Nakba in '48." Egyptian state media, on the other hand, focused on the citizen's understanding of the operation. Al-Aharam newspaper wrote that evacuated residents were "standing by the state after the terrorists made their lives hell." The rocket fire from Gaza to Israel on Friday is viewed by Israel as the first blatant violation of the ceasefire by Hamas. It led to the decision to close both of the border crossings from Israel to Gaza - Kerem Shalom at the south of the Strip, used to transfer goods, and Erez in the north of the Strip, through which people pass - as a way of pressing Hamas and making it clear to Gazans what is the price of rocket fire.

Kerem Shalom a year ago: trucks laden with goods for
Gaza, lined up and waiting to be received [Image Source]

A pity Daily Sabah doesn't keep its readers more updated on the strategic value of Kerem Shalom to the long-suffering ordinary people of the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip. They might for instance have shared this story with them: "First trucks with reconstruction supplies enter Gaza" [Times of Israel, October 14, 2014]. Or this, if they prefer a Palestinian media source: "Reconstruction material enters Gaza via Kerem Shalom" [Ma'an News Agency, October 30, 2014]. Then again, if they did give proper coverage of what outsiders like the Israelis wish they could do more of for the Gazans, they might have to include a line like this one:

"On the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, PA and UN officials are overseeing the shipments to ensure they do not fall into the hands of Hamas, the IDF’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories said." [Times of Israel]

Or this explanation from Associated Press:

"The United Nations, in turn, devised a system under which Israel would gradually ease a ban on selling building materials to Gaza, with U.N. monitors keeping track of shipments in Gaza to make sure they are not diverted by Hamas for military use." [AP, October 22, 2014]

So Hamas is meant to get none of the incoming materials. They are intended for the Gazan people. Comprehending this might take the Daily Sabah people and their readers some way towards understanding why (a) the thugs of Hamas have no problem firing more rockets into Israel, and (b) Israel wants Gazans to understand that Israel-bound rockets fired by Hamas rocket-men from the alleys where they live come at a price.

15-Sep-14: Diplomatic incident on Israel's Gaza border involving semi-trailers

We see from his Twitter account that Australia's energetic ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma, is paying a visit to Kerem Shalom, the optimistically-named 'Vineyard of Peace' terminal through which goods-laden trucks pass between the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and Israel.

Ambassador Sharma writes:

Kerem Shalom: 400 trucks/day to/fm Gaza. Closed only 2 days of 50-day conflict. Amazing job in v difficult condn's. pic.twitter.com/lRNzq0S1ma
— Dave Sharma (@AusAmbIsrael) September 15, 2014

Amazing is a word that actually applies well to the actions of any public figure willing to acknowledge the fundamental fairness of Israel's conduct in its war against the forces of darkness and barbarism rooted in miserable Gaza.

Australian ambassador
at Kerem Shalom today
[Image Source: Twitter]

With the smallest degree of fanfare, Sharma - born in Canada and Australia's youngest-ever ambassador at the time he was appointed - has been quietly conveying appreciation for aspects of life here that get little exposure.

A year ago, for instance, he penned an article ["Israeli compassion amidst the atrocities"] for the Times of Israel in which he focused on the very substantial good being done for fleeing, often grotesquely injured, Syrians - victims of one of the largest current instances of Arab-on-Arab savagery - in one of Israel's periphery towns:

At Ziv Hospital they get the best medical care on offer to any Israeli, from surgeons and physicians who are quite literally the best in their field, having authored textbooks on the treatment of injuries from armed conflict... Ziv Hospital is a profound example of humanity and decency at its most compelling. It is Israel at its very best, and a side of Israel that the world too rarely sees or acknowledges. With all the tales of human woe and misery that continue to emerge from Syria, such small stories of hope should be cherished. [Dave Sharma, Times of Israel, August 28, 2013]

And did we say energetic? Last month, the Australian diplomat took a spill while participating in a bike ride in the Judaean Hills. This afforded him an inside look at a different Israeli medical facility:

My first visit to Hadassah Hospital, courtesy of nasty spill on bike whilst riding hills nr Jerusalem this morning. Great ride until then!
— Dave Sharma (@AusAmbIsrael) August 29, 2014

If the diplomatic corps working in Israel were made of this kind of material, Israel's foreign relations might have a different look to them.

A few words about what the existence and daily reality of Kerem Shalom means in the ongoing reality of a rocket-rich, armed-to-the-teeth Gaza on a perpetual jihadist-war-footing. We visited Kerem Shalom in September 2012, took a close look at the two-way traffic passing through it, and wrote here ["28-Oct-12: What lies behind ongoing efforts to paint Gaza as a region under Israeli siege?"] about the powerful but misleading 'Poor Gaza is a victim of Israeli cruelty' meme that distorts much of the media discussion about what does and does not happen down there. 

Another of our posts ["4-Mar-13: Trucks filled with food and essential goods are lined up outside Gaza. Would it surprise you to know the role that money plays in this?"], points to how the inner circle of Hamas fat cats have done stunningly well via the restrictive importation policies over which they preside and the wealth it generates for them. The price is, of course, paid by the largely impoverished Gazans living under the Hamas jackboots.

It turns out, when you look more closely than most journalists and analysts do, that in fact a good deal of the daily pain experienced by Gaza's ordinary Palestinian Arabs is a direct function of money-centred decisions made by Hamas insiders. Lovers of simple black-and-white oppressor -v- oppressed narratives 'explaining' the Israel/Arab conflict have difficulty accepting this, But life is messy and usually made up of shades of grey. What can you do? Thankfully, decent men like Dave Sharma help us remember that.

10-Jul-14: Thursday: Israeli life in the terrorists' crosshairs

At the Highway 5 security checkpoint today: sappers take
the suspect's car apart [Image Source: Ynet]

This is a continuation of our earlier Thursday post.

• There have been many rocket attacks on Israeli cities and towns today - more than we can track and recount here.
• 3:00 pm: Signs that a serious terrorism attack has been foiled: A short time ago, Ynet reported that two Palestinian Arabs driving on one of Israel's major central arteries, Highway 5, in possession of "a makeshift explosive device", were detained at a security checkpoint and arrested today (Thursday). The suspicion is that he was en route to conduct a terror attack against Israelis. They found a gas cylinder with electrical wires protruding from it in the vehicle. "Sappers were alerted to the scene and security forces closed down the checkpoint." Times of Israel adds that explosives were found in the vehicle.
• 4:50 pm: The IDF, quoted by Times of Israel, says "84 rockets slammed into Israel since midnight, and 12 were intercepted by the Iron Dome. Six others were fired from the Gaza Strip but did not reach Israeli soil." We call that last category Fell Shorts, and have learned over the years that they sometimes kill Gazan Palestinian Arabs but are never reported in the mainstream media. GANSO, the European-funded service oriented to the needs of foreign workers in the Gazan NGO industry, reports Fell Shorts quite frequently. But Operation Protective Edge underway, and in accordance with their fairly obvious anti-Israel sentiments and pro-Hamas-regime bias, they have stopped reporting them, at least for now.
• 5:45 pm: Tzeva Adom in Sha'ar Hanegev region, and a home is reported to have been hit [Ynet]. Times of Israel says the home took a direct hit and has a photograph of the damage.
• 6:00 pm: Tzeva Adom sirens just now have brought Jerusalem to a stop. One Twitter report says four incoming rockets, two of which were intercepted by Iron Dome. UPDATE: Lazar Berman's Times of Israel update says the two rockets that were brought down by Iron Dome were intercepted over the village of Abu Ghosh which stands astride the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Highway just a kilometer from the entrance to the capital.
• 6:25 pm: An Arabic website has a brief video clip [here] recording either a rocket or a post-intercept rocket fragment impacting and exploding in a village near Ramallah, which is just a few kilometers north of Jerusalem. More details soon. 
• 6:30 pm: The Rotter,net site has an Arabic video clip [here] capturing the enthusiastic cheers of Arabs congregating outside the Damascus Gate (we know it as Sha'ar Shechem, in Hebrew) entrance to Jerusalem's Old City as the incoming rocket siren is being sounded across the city. For those of us building our families and our lives in this wonderful city, their joy is blood-chilling.  
• 6:30 pm Update: Many more rocket attacks in the south during the past half hour.
• 6:55 pm Rocket alerts (multiple) in Ashkelon
• 7:15 pm: Yoni Alper's (Hebrew) Facebook site is reporting that in Gaza, they're selling their people the message that in Jerusalem there are now some 30 wounded resulting from the cluster of rockets that descended on the nation's capital city a little over an hour ago. Assuming this is a form of psychological warfare, we're neither confirming nor denying the accuracy of what they say in Gaza. But Alper's headline (translated from שקרים בע"מ) is "Lies Incorporated".

Cameron Cardow cartoon from November 2012 [Image Source: The Cagle Post]

• 7:55 pm: A barrage of Gazan rockets has rained over many of Israel's southern communities in the past half hour. Ynet's bulletin reports them crashing into Be'er Sheva just now, with several people treated for shock; at 7:53 pm Tzeva Adom in Yavne, Lod, Ramla, Ness Ziona; at 7:49 Tzeva Adom in Rishon Lezion, Holon, Bat Yam; at 7:45 pm Tzeva Adom in Eshkol region; at 7:42 pm, initial reports of four people injured following rocket fire on Be'er Sheva; at 7:39 pm, Tzeva Adom throughout southern Israel; at 7:36 pm, Tzeva Adom in Mitzpe Ramon and Yeruham, desert communities located far from Gaza. More details to come.
• 7:58 pm: According to Ynet, the Iron Dome system has just now intercepted six rockets in the air over central Israel's Gush Dan region, which is where Tel Aviv is.
• 8:00 pm: Ynet says a barrage of some 20 long-range rockets was fired into the Negev from Gaza in the past minutes. We're waiting now for updates on what is happening in those Negev communities.
• 8:05 pm: Again from Ynet: Hamas is boasting of having fired 10 powerful long-range Grad rockets at Be'er Sheva. No confirmation at this stage.
• 8:10 pm: Times of Israel, in a despatch time-stamped 7:47 pm, reports that "Sirens blare in the Dan region, including Bat Yam and Holon, and in the city of Rishon Lezion. The Iron Dome intercepts at least one rocket."
• 8:42 pm: A Channel 2 (Israel) TV news report just now, which is running in the background as we work, makes the point that the blunting of the Hamas long-range rocket attacks via the Iron Dome system makes it essential, in Hamas eyes, that they pull off a showcase terror attack directed at Israelis. (No one reading this blog needs us to speculate for them on the specifics of what is conveyed by that idea.) 
• 8:45 pm: And while we're on the subject of massive terrorist actions, a reminder of what the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas, president of the "peace partner" Palestinian Authority, has been saying to the Arab world. This is from an AFP report yesterday:
  Headline: "Abbas: Israel committing 'genocide' in Gaza". Here's the text: "Agence France Presse | RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas accused Wednesday Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza during its military campaign which has so far killed 43 Palestinians. "It's genocide - the killing of entire families is genocide by Israel against our Palestinian people," he told a crisis meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. "What's happening now is a war against the Palestinian people as a whole and not against the (militant) factions. "We know that Israel is not defending itself, it is defending settlements, its main project," said Abbas."
• 8:56 pm: Channel 2, reporting from Ashdod, has just shown live video of what they estimated to be 9 incoming rockets, 7 of which are destroyed in mid-air by the Iron Dome system. It adds that a vehicle took a direct hit, and a person in the car is badly hurt (thankfully, that appears to have been refuted in the meantime). Times of Israel says there were no fewer than 20 rockets in the barrage just now, and 9 were stopped by Iron Dome. [Israel's Channel 2 can be accessed on-line via this link.]

Tonight in Ashdod: impact site of one of the rockets [Image Source: Ynet]

Ashdod: A residence took a hit tonight [Image Source: Ynet]

• 10:20 pm: In the midst of one of the most serious outbreaks of fighting in a generation, official Israeli channels presided yesterday (Wednesday) over the delivery into Gaza via overland crossing from Israel of 94 freight truck loads of a variety of vital goods along with 106 tons of gas [source]. These were delivered through the Kerem Shalom Crossing. Arrangements like these are a mostly-unpublicized daily matter, managed by COGAT on the Israeli side, and the Coordination and Liaison Administration on the Gaza side. What's COGAT? "The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Unit is subordinated to the Minister of Defense and is part of the General Staff. The unit carries out and implements civilian policy of the Government of Israel in the West Bank and vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip in coordination and conjunction with the Prime Minister's Office, other government ministries, the security forces and the IDF General Staff." Yesterday's delivery (including 1,200 tons of food, 290,000 litres of fuel) was smaller in scope than the average traffic into Gaza (as we noted in this post a while back: "4-Mar-13: Trucks filled with food and essential goods are lined up outside Gaza. Would it surprise you to know the role that money plays in this?" But on the whole, we think it's not so shabby given the way the rockets were whizzing by overhead and the general circumstances.
• 10:30 pm: Flights into and out of Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv are, says Ynet, "experiencing delays due to changing IAF directives on the closure of Israeli air space. "We call on the public to check for updates from their airline," the Israel Airport Authority said."

Writing this from a Jerusalem hospital ward where a sick relative is being cared for. Taking a short break now.

6-Mar-13: The goods crossing on Israel's Gaza border: A postscript from a Palestinian Arab source

Steel for building construction makes its way from Israel to Gaza.
We snapped this picture at Kerem Shalom six months ago.

While we await a clearer view of what has been happening at the Kerem Shalom crossing on Israel's Gaza border, here is a Palestinian Arab update from a non-Hamas source:

Israel reopens Gaza crossing  | Maan News | Published March 5, 2013 at 22:22 | GAZA CITY (Ma'an) - Israeli forces reopened the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing with Gaza on Tuesday, after a week-long closure, a Palestinian official said. Palestinian Authority official Raed Fattouh told Ma'an that the crossing will operate regularly on Tuesday, with 390 truckloads of goods set to enter Gaza and one truck of flowers to leave. Israel closed the commercial crossing last Tuesday after a rocket was fired from Gaza toward Ashkelon in southern Israel, but agreed to reopen it Monday. A dispute between Hamas and the company operating the crossing further delayed its opening. Officials in Gaza told Ma'an that Hamas dismissed the company in charge of the terminal after a dispute over the collection of customs revenue. The officials told Ma'an that Hamas wants to keep the taxes, which are usually paid to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Truck drivers at Kerem Shalom told Ma'an that rivalries over control of the crossing were impeding their work.

For background see our post from yesterday: "4-Mar-13: Trucks filled with food and essential goods are lined up outside Gaza. Would it surprise you to know the role that money plays in this?"

The terrorist leadership of Gaza's branch of the Moslem Brotherhood gains literally nothing from a situation in which its people have interrupted access to food, water and electricity. So the bottom line is that for now, hundreds more goods-laden trucks on a daily basis will continue to roll into Hamas-controlled Gaza, providing the residents there with the means to stay alive but only until the next Hamas-engineered interruption.

4-Mar-13: Trucks filled with food and essential goods are lined up outside Gaza. Would it surprise you to know the role that money plays in this?

Some months ago we snapped this shot of a small forest of state-of-the-art refrigerators at Kerem Shalom,
awaiting trans-shipment into the 'open concentration-camp' Gaza Strip

The Gaza Strip, tightly ruled by the terrorist Hamas organization for the past seven years, depends on the import of a wide range of goods for its existence. 

Hamas has invested close to zero in economic infrastructure and means of production for reasons that are obvious to people who understand what terrorist organizations exist to do. Thus, since Gaza no longer has an airport (see "Gaza airport destroyed by scavengers"), imported goods arrive via three land routes: (a) the border-crossing with Israel, (b) the border-crossing with Egypt and (c) a vast network of tunnels from Egyptian Sinai.

The sole crossing for the goods that pass in both directions between Gaza and Israel is Kerem Shalom, the 'Vineyard of Peace'. But it's not especially peaceful. 

This is where, in June 2006, infiltrators from Gaza tunneled under the border and attacked an IDF patrol, killing two soldiers, wounding three others, and kidnapping Gilad Shalit whom they then illegally and cruelly held hostage for five years. Last August (2012), armed terrorists ambushed an Egyptian military base in Sinai close to Kerem Shalom, killed 16 Egyptian soldiers there and commandeered two Egyptian armored cars with which they forced their way across the border into Israel via Kerem Shalom. In the ensuing firefight with an IDF contingent, six of those attackers were killed and, fortunately, all the Israelis were uninjured.

A measure of the important role Kerem Shalom plays in the life of Gaza is that, during 2012, an average of 250 filled truckloads of goods passed through en route to the Gaza Strip daily according to Wikipedia (though the IDF says 300). 

For the past six days, Kerem Shalom has been closed. This was Israel's non-violent response to last week's rocket attack on Ashkelon [see "3-Mar-13: The terrorists of Gaza keep trying to destroy the electric power station that feeds them"] as well as to a sniper attack on Friday in which the personal military vehicle of the Gaza Division's Northern Brigade was hit. Then yesterday (Sunday) the head of COGAT said Kerem Shalom, as well as the Rafah Crossing which is for people, not goods, would re-open on Monday morning i.e. today. COGAT is a key IDF unit that is responsible for responsible for implementing the Israeli government's policies in Judea, and Samaria and in relation to Hamas-controlled Gaza 

But Kerem Shalom did not open this morning and the reason throws some light on how Hamas operates. 

As Haaretz reports today (see "Israel accuses Hamas of keeping Gaza crossing shut"), 65 fully-laden trucks (but COGAT says 70) pulled up on the Israeli side of the border this morning but found that the Palestinian Arab contractor who holds the franchise for operating the Gazan side was AWOL and no one was there to open the crossing from the Palestinian side, according to IDF spokesperson Guy Inbar:

Hamas instructed the contractor that his services would no longer be needed that that it planned to "take over" management of the crossing.... [The] coordinator of government activities in the territories, on Monday spoke with high-ranking Palestinian Authority officials to brief them on what was happening at the Kerem Shalom crossing. Replacing the contractor on the Gaza side violates the security status quo that has allowed the Kerem Shalom border crossing to operate... The contractor’s failure to show up stems from Hamas' attempts to replace the Palestinian Authority's fanchisee with one of their own, in an attempt to gain control of operations at the crossing and increase its profits... The crossing remains closed and goods are not being transferred to the Palestinian side [Haaretz]

According to Ynet's report, Nahed Shuhaiber is the franchisee who until yesterday operated the the Palestinian Arab side of the Kerem Shalom crossing in the name of the Palestinian Authority. Times of Israel says Shuhaiber had held this right for years and was "at odds with the Hamas leadership in Gaza". He was told by Hamas officials, according to Ynet  that his rights were being ended forthwith and that starting Monday morning, the new concessionaire would be Muhisan Sharafi. UPI names Sharafi as a Hamas official.

It's well known that Israel and its defense establishment, as a matter of policy, do not work opposite any Hamas-related entity.

For a non-Hamas, Palestinian Arab view, the Maan News Agency reports tonight ("Hamas closes Gaza crossing")

The Hamas government in Gaza closed the Kerem Shalom crossing on Monday, despite the fact Israel had agreed to reopen it after a one week closure.... The border remained closed on the Palestinian side. Officials in Gaza, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the issue, said the Hamas government in Gaza has fired the company that operates the terminal after a dispute over the collection of customs revenue. The officials told Ma'an that Hamas wants to keep the taxes, which are usually paid to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Hamas has decided to appoint a new company to run the terminal, they said. Truck drivers at Kerem Shalom told Ma'an that rivalries over control of the crossing were impeding their work, adding that they hoped the terminal would reopen soon. [Maan]

We visited the facility five months ago. In a blog post "2-Oct-12: Gaza and the perils of Arab solidarity", we wrote:

If you get to see the Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings from up close as we did last week, you can hardly fail to be impressed by the massive (that's the correct word) humanitarian efforts Israel has made to open the gates of Gaza to an almost unlimited range of goods - in both directions. The capacity of Kerem Shalom (after a heavy Israeli investment funded by us ordinary Israeli taxpayers) to serve as a two-way gateway is vast - and greatly (and deliberately) under-utilized by the Gazan Palestinian Arab regime.

We also noted how the inner circle of Hamas fat cats are doing stunningly well from the restrictive importation policies over which they preside and the wealth it generates [see "How Many Millionaires Live in the "Impoverished" Gaza Strip?"]. The price for this is, of course, paid by the largely impoverished Gazans.

It turns out, when you look more closely than most journalists and analysts do, that much of the daily pain experienced by ordinary Gazan Arabs is a direct function of money-related decisions made by Hamas insiders. (We know how difficult it may be for lovers of simple black-and-white oppressor -v- oppressed narratives 'explaining' the Israel/Arab conflict to accept this, but life is messy and usually made up of shades of grey. What can you do?) 

For evidence of how well this pays off for some of them, take a peek at "Hamas chief flexes muscles – literally" and the related, and impressive, photo essay of one Hamas senior leader's rather indulgent lifestyle. Here's a taste.

Khaled Meshaal works out in a private gym in a fancy part of his new
hometown of Doha, Qatar. Photo: Kate Geraghty [Image Source]

29-Oct-12: Gaza: Not entirely what you might have expected

We spent some hours last month visiting the two (very) active Israel/Gaza crossings to see for ourselves what happens there, and taking pictures. This small forest of fridges awaiting shipment into Gaza from Kerem Shalom. 

Those round-the-clock rocket attacks on Israeli civilians by the armed terrorists hordes of the Hamas-controlled statelet (twenty or more, just today) might be causing some of us to develop a negative view of the Gaza Strip. That would be a great pity.

So here, courtesy of a major article ["Gaza: A Way Out?"] by Nicolas Pelham in the current edition of the NY Review of Books, are some aspects of Gazan life that you might not be expecting.

• Propelling Gaza’s economy, Arab governments across the region, like Qatar’s, have been shifting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money from the PA to Hamas, signaling what may be a historic shift in Palestinian politics.
• Thanks to Gaza’s supply lines to Egypt, its GDP outpaced by a factor of five that of Hamas’s Western-funded rival, the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. 
• While international donors failed to deliver $4.5 billion in promised aid for reconstruction in protest at Hamas’s continued rule, tunnel operators have ferried in 7,500 tons of steel rods, cement, and gravel daily, supplying 90 percent of the enclave’s construction materials. According to World Bank figures, construction starts in the first half of 2011 grew by 220 percent.
• Even when they are open for business, however, the tunnels have their downsides. Some two hundred workers have been killed, many of them children, who are preferred, as in Victorian mines, for their slight frames.
• The economic effects have been remarkable: after notching 6 percent growth in 2008, the Gazan economy grew by 20 percent in 2010 and a whopping 27 percent last year; unemployment in the formal economy fell to 29 percent, its lowest in a decade and an improvement of eight percentage points in a year. 
• A recent International Labor Organization report cited the emergence of 600 “tunnel millionaires”; many of them, seeking somewhere to park their profits, have invested first in land, and then in hundreds of luxury apartment buildings. [We blogged about this phenomenon - see "30-Aug-12: How close to hell is Gaza? Depends whom you want to believe"]
• After three summers of zealous patrols, the [Hamas] morality police withdrew from the beaches and began to let shopkeepers again garb unveiled mannequins in mini-skirts. 
• Hamas licensed and sometimes invested in upscale beach resorts along the coast; last year Palestine’s most luxurious hotel opened, replete with a cocktail bar that is somewhat hopefully awaiting an alcohol license.
• In its rush to join the haves, Hamas began forgetting its former constituency of have-nots. Haniya’s government assigned only $14 million of its $769 million budget in 2012 to welfare. 
• For the first time shantytowns are cropping up on the outskirts of Gaza City. 
• In the shanty next to an abattoir, the only meat homeless Gazans can afford for Islamic festivities is a crippled horse bought from a knacker’s yard, slaughtered in the sand outside their shacks and fried in discarded wheel-hubs.
• Hamas’s dependence on smuggling has underlined its continued illegitimacy in the eyes of much of the world.
• So great is the demand that Gazans complain builders have to be booked months in advance, and decorators are never available. 
• The UN, which previously warned that Gaza faces an imminent humanitarian crisis, has now concluded that it may be years off...
• The tunnels double as portals for smugglers trafficking drugs and weapons, and may, as Cairo alleges, offer Sinai’s militants an escape hatch from Egyptian patrols.
• The geyser of aid money has bought the new donors influence. The new Gaza offices of the IHH—the Islamist charity in Turkey that spearheaded the 2010 aid flotilla to Gaza intercepted by Israel—dominate Gaza City’s Katiba Square, newly grassed with turf hauled through the tunnels. The Islamic University has added Turkish to its curriculum. 
• A new town funded by the United Arab Emirates will provide spacious free housing for 11,000 Gazans rendered homeless by Israeli offensives. The UN calls them “shelters” to avoid the impression that it is resettling refugees in suburban apartments. [Read the whole article here.]

Imagine that. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are worrying themselves sick about how to keep their families and homes safe from indiscriminate rocket firing. Meanwhile the fat-cat Hamas clique in Gaza City lose sleep over how to conceal the shiny new housing their people have acquired. The really horrible nightmare scenario from their standpoint is that people might start to think the lives of the Gazans have become materially better.

You can easily see how desperate this makes them. And as desperate people famously living in "an immense concentration camp", an "open air prison", what else is there for them to do other than to do terrorism? They can hardly be blamed for that, right? 

28-Oct-12: What lies behind ongoing efforts to paint Gaza as a region under Israeli siege?

We snapped this during a September 2012 visit to the Kerem Shalom crossing. A truck laden with
steel reinforcing rods for construction purposes leaves Israel and enters the Gaza Strip. Reports that Israel
prevents the entry of construction materials continue, despite the abundant evidence that disproves it.

We have commented here time and again about the persistence of the quiet inaccurate notion that Gaza is a region under siege. Over the past several years, we have seen campaigns that blame Israel for the shortage or absence or unreliability of electricity in the Hamas-controlled mini-state ["21-Jan-08: Electric wars - a sad tale of two realities"]. We have seen Gaza described as a huge open-air concentration camp ["30-Jul-10: Once again, from the world's largest 'prison camp'"]. Gaza's children have been portrayed as starving, uneducated, deprived of medical care and oppressed ["30-Aug-12: How close to hell is Gaza? Depends whom you want to believe"] and the blame for all of it is laid at the feet of Israel.

Perhaps things will get a little better now, in the wake of the flying visit to Gaza this past week by one of the world's wealthiest individuals, the Emir of Qatar.

Haniyeh: Qatar visit breaks Gaza siege

Published in Maan News Tuesday 23/10/2012 (updated) 25/10/2012 11:12    GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday said the visit of Qatar's emir to the Gaza Strip had helped lift Israel's blockade of the enclave. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani on Tuesday was the first head of state to enter Gaza since 1999 in a visit that broke the isolation of its rulers Hamas.  "You are today, by this visit, declaring the breaking of the unjust blockade," Haniyeh told the Qatari leader in a speech at the site of a new town to be built with Gulf money. "Today we declare victory against the blockade through this historic visit," he said. "We say thank you, Emir, thank you Qatar for this noble Arab stance ... Hail to the blood of martyrs which brought us to this moment." [More]

That visit, and the huge financial gift that Qatar says it is going to hand over, represents a potentially important turning point in the way Gaza is perceived. Two of the more influential writers at Haaretz, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, offered an analysis in the newspaper's Friday edition that has not gotten the exposure we think it deserves.

Myth of a siege
Haaretz - Oct.26, 2012 | 2:05 PM
Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff

For a moment last weekend, a small ship called Estelle shook up the international media. Once more a handful of peace activists demonstrated the brutality of the Israeli occupation, which is denying food to the starving residents of Gaza. And if that were not enough, after the forcible interception at sea, the hard-hearted Israeli government threw the pursuers of justice, among them a few Israelis, into jail.
The trouble with this story is that the activity to remove the supposed siege is not compatible with the facts on the ground − to put it mildly. The siege of Gaza has long since become a myth, promoted by the Hamas government with the aid of a few left-wing international organizations. In practice, the festive declaration on Tuesday by the Hamas prime minister that the siege has ended − during the visit by the Emir of Qatar − let the cat out of the bag.
Still, the activists’ spin made its way successfully into the international media. After the interception of the Estelle, CNN reported this week that the Israeli siege of Gaza has been going on for the past five years. The simple truth is that there is no longer an Israeli siege of Gaza.
Restrictions remain on exports from Gaza and on the free movement of people from Gaza to the West Bank (20,000 people a year move from the Strip to the West Bank). Gaza does not have an active airport or maritime port, and Israel blocks ships from docking there. Gaza has only a land crossing to Egypt and a limited crossing to Israeli territory. But a siege, in the plain sense of the term, does not exist.
Under pressure of the Mavi Marmara affair in May 2010 (when nine Turkish activists died after the Israeli navy boarded the ship), the Israeli government revised its policy and greatly eased the entry of goods from the West Bank into Gaza. There is currently no shortage in Gaza of food or construction materials. Gazans can enter Egypt through the Rafah crossing, and from there proceed to any destination in the world.
In fact, an average of 1,200 people a day are doing just that, according to statistics released by the Hamas government itself. Those who are prevented from crossing officially by the Egyptians (for security and other reasons) cross through the tunnels. This is no longer a tough trek between Palestinian Rafah and Egyptian Rafah through a dark, narrow tunnel. A taxi service, effectively a form of public transportation, now plies the Gaza-Egypt route via the tunnels.
The markets are overflowing with fruits, vegetables, the latest iPhones and much more. A major real-estate boom is underway in Gaza, and the projected growth rate for 2012 is 9 percent, according to the World Bank. (By comparison, the probable growth rate in the West Bank will be 5 percent.) For the first time in years, West Bank residents who are asked about this in opinion polls claim that they are economically less well-off than the Gazans (though they are wrong).
Israel allows almost free entry of goods through the Kerem Shalom crossing, apart from those which Hamas itself doesn’t want as it hopes to keep the tunnels flourishing and because the price of some goods from Egypt is cheaper.
This week’s visit by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, was a historic occasion. A Hamas honor guard awaited him on the Palestinian side as he arrived via Rafah. He dedicated a huge rehabilitation project worth $400 million − a donation the likes of which the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank can only dream about. If even Haniyeh is talking about the end of the siege, maybe it’s time for left-wing activists from Israel and abroad to stop engaging in cheap PR stunts.

Given its usefulness to those who propagate it, we're not expecting the powerful 'Poor Gaza is a victim of Israeli cruelty' meme to go away anytime soon. But we do expect that more people will become sensitive to the cold-blooded manipulation by ideologically motivated media and political figures that keeps it alive.

7-Jan-10: Gazans remind us again of their warm wishes

Far from everyone's attention, two additional explosive projectiles arrived in Israel in the last hour, close to the optimistically named Kerem Shalom crossing (kerem means vineyard, and shalom means peace) courtesy of the Gazan Palestinian Arabs.

Fortunately there are no reports of damage or injury.

This, of course, is the opposite of what the terrorist thugs aim to achieve.

UPDATE 7-Jan-10:

It's now mid-morning, Thursday.The tally has risen to seven mortars so far. 3 exploded in various parts of Israel's Negev region close to the Gaza Strip. 3 more landed near Kerem Shalom. And one failed to cross the Gaza border, presumably landing on top of some hapless Gazans.

No reports of injuries at this stage. Israeli authorities have now closed down the Kerem Shalom crossing point. The immediate effect, plainly one that serves the thuggish regime in Gaza if past performance is a guide, is that dozens of trucks laden with aid on the road into Gaza from Israel are now left standing and waiting. These would be the trucks and the humanitarian aid that some of Israel's more shrill critics claim don't exist.

The claim for instance that "the beleageured people of Gaza, who have been cut off from aid by Israel... in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks" are suffering makes some sense only if you ignore the fact that the crossing point through which the trucks pass is precisely the target of Gazan missiles like today's.

24-Dec-08: In southern Israel, it's raining rockets

For its own good reasons, the Hamas regime is fully engaged in a strategy of steady terrorist escalation against Israeli civilians. The result is that today, the first really cold and rainy winter day of the season, has been violent and deeply worrying.

The New York Times version of today's turbulence along the southern border of Israel with Gaza says that the terrorists of Gaza

"...increased the range and intensity of their rocket fire against Israel Wednesday as the Israeli security cabinet weighed options that include broader military action or efforts to renew a truce that recently expired. More than 60 rockets and mortars were fired at southern Israel by the afternoon... [They] slammed into the Israeli border town of Sderot, the yard of a house and a water park in the coastal city of Ashkelon, an Israeli factory at Nir Oz near the Gaza border, and hit a house outside the Western Negev town of Netivot. The strikes caused extensive damage and widespread panic among the residents... Scores of adults and children were treated for shock, the emergency medical service said."

Tonight's television news programs are reporting that, while Israel's military is primed and ready to intervene and silence the rocket launchers, and now has a green light to go ahead from the Israeli cabinet, efforts are still underway to try to avoid the bloodshed that will inevitably follow once the IDF is unleashed.

UPDATE Thursday 25-Dec-08 8:00am: The Jerusalem Post summary of yesterday's Hamas mayhem says: "The IDF received the green light Wednesday for a series of operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, after more than 60 mortar shells and Katyusha and Kassam rockets pounded the Negev. The barrage hit communities throughout the south, reaching as far north as Ashkelon and as far south as Kerem Shalom. At least two Grad-model Katyusha rockets were fired into Ashkelon on Wednesday, and a Kassam with extended range hit Netivot.... The terrorists hit close to educational facilities and homes. Nearly 60 people, almost half of them children or teenagers, were treated for emotional trauma and anxiety.

Haaretz now says Wednesday's toll was "more than 80 rockets and mortar shells into Israel".

25-Jun-06: A Real Shooting War

A report by Haaretz correspondent Avi Issacharoff this morning says that Fatah and Hamas agreed last night on a number of policy issues, including (in Haaretz's words) limiting "resistance" operations against Israel to territories occupied since 1967.

Without getting into an analysis of what self-serving "joint" declarations of this sort mean in reality, we can simply observe that there's a long history of mischief and media ignorance that surrounds the whole subject. A fairly typical indication can be gotten from what's happening this morning on Israel's border with Gaza.
Taking a temporary break from bombarding kindergartens, schools and shopping centers, gunmen of the Gaza "resistance" crossed into Israel early this morning, evidently via a tunnel. Haaretz says the Gazan terrorists split into three groups. One of them fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli tank, injuring three soldiers. A second fired a missile into an IDF pillbox in the Kerem Shalom area; and a third blew up an armored personnel carrier which was empty at the time. (We have posted an agency picture of the area above). Kerem Shalom, also the name of a kibbutz in the area, is Hebrew for "vineyard of peace". At least three of the gunmen are now dead following an exhange of fire with Israeli forces.

Nothing happens faster in the Middle East than the claiming of credit when Israeli targets are attacked, so Izz a Din al Qassam, which is one of the acknowledged (as distinct from unacknowledged) affiliates of Hamas, and the so-called People's Resistance Committees (PRC) which are also part of Hamas, and something relatively unknown called the Islamic Army, are all out there with press releases and candies.
The IDF says it has now warned "Palestinian security units to evacuate the Philadelphi Route along Gaza's southern border with Egypt in the Rafah area, saying Israeli military units were to enter" according to Haaretz. Yediot points out:

Since the IDF pullout from Gaza, soldiers foiled attempts of dozens of terror cells to carry out a terror attack on the border fence in the Strip. The cells attempted to place an explosive device or fire at forces patrolling the area. In most cases, the cells were spotted in time by IDF soldiers, sometimes with the assistance of the Israel Air Force. IDF sources noted that in spite of the fact that attacks were foiled and the difficulty terrorists have encountered when trying to carry out attacks. So far, more than 50 terrorists were killed on the border fence.

Our predictions:

• No foreign media report will connect the Fatah/Hamas tale of confining "resistance" to occupied territory. If they did, they would need to acknowledge that all of Israel is occupied in the eyes of the terror groups, and that Kerem Shalom and the entire border between Israel and Gaza is neither occupied nor disputed.
• If and when Israeli forces cross into Gaza to neutralize those who carried out this morning's attack, the photo coverage will be of Gaza mothers and children and of destroyed buildings. A balanced context (the months of endless missile barrages fired into Israeli civilian communities; Israeli civilian casualties and property damage on a daily basis; a co-ordinated military-style attack this morning on territory that no one considers disputed; a history of Egyptian forces, who are permanently present in the immediate vicinity of Kerem Shalom, turning a blind eye to terrorist tunnels and deployment) will be entirely absent.

We'll be happy to be proven wrong.