Once again, those brave warriors of Islam have gone underground for fear of being executed by Hellfire missile. Funny how they keep on saying that death by martyrdom is their noblest cause, and when Israel offers it up, they run and hide and say, “Uh, well, we need to fight the enemy! Our deaths will not serve that purpose!”

Uh-huh. You can fight the “enemy” when that enemy is a car full of civilians, but it’s quite another thing when you have to face an armed and alert IDF. Asymmetrical warfare goes both ways.

And it doesn’t look like the IDF will be backing off anytime soon.

“A major transformation had taken place. We are now in the midst of a process of reshaping the rules of the game, moving toward stabilization. Operation “First Rain” is a part of that process,” Ziv said. Major General Ziv is expected to retire in coming months, after two-and-a-half years as Head of the operations branch.

Referring to the operation in Gaza, ziv said that “the objective of the operation is to send a message through that the rules of the game have changed in the wake of the disengagement… the unbearable ease in which rockets are being fired into Israel, under the assumption that Israel will restrain its response, is ungrounded.,” Ziv said.

“Under the new rules, rocket launchings or attacks on Israel from any place in the Strip are forbidden. As long as the children of Sderot cannot sleep, no one will sleep in Gaza.”

Ziv believes that the Palestinian Authority must decide if it assumes responsibility over its own fate, or stay a prisoner of Hamas.

“All IDF operations in the pullout’s aftermath are grounded on the principles of respect and deterrence. As long as the PA will act as a sovereign entity and prevent the launching of terror attacks from Gaza, we will make the maximum effort to respect its autonomy. However, as long as terror continues, we will adhere to the deterrence policy,” Ziv stressed.

This time, I think they mean it.

The number of deaths by terror is down significantly, again, in the past year. What’s different this year?

The fence. Although Ha’aretz thinks there are other significant factors involved. (Actually, I’m agreeing with that.)

Factors contributing to the decrease in violence include the continued construction of the West Bank separation fence, the implementation of the disengagement plan and the calm that most of the Palestinian organizations have declared, a Haaretz investigation has found.

Since September 29, 2004, 425 Palestinians have been killed in the intifada, an average of 35 a month. In that time, 56 Israelis and foreigners have been killed, an average of five fatalities a month.

In the fourth year of the intifada, by contrast, an average of 11 people a month were killed on the Israeli side. The second, and most violent, year of the intifada saw an average of 36 deaths a month on the Israeli side and 88 on the Palestinian side.

[...] There have been six suicide bombings in the past year, killing 14 Israelis. Since September 2004, Palestinians have also fired about 1,450 mortar shells and Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip.

[...] Since the intifada began, 144 suicide bombings having been carried out in Israel, according to the defense establishment. Some 515 IDF soldiers, Israeli civilians, foreigners and Palestinians have been killed in these attacks, and another 3,300 have been hurt. In the past year, only six such attacks have been carried out, four of which were within the Green Line. Therefore, only 25% of the Israelis killed this past year died in suicide bombings.

According to IDF figures, the number of terror attacks and violent incidents in general - including the firing of mortar shells, rockets, anti-tank missiles and grenades, and stabbing - this year was the lowest since fighting commenced five years ago.

Of course, next year’s statistics will not include attacks on Jews in Gaza. The larger question is: What will the statistics be like a year from now?

Finish the fence, and they’ll keep improving.

Yossi Klein Halevi, one of the architects of the failed Oslo Accords, writes an open letter to the palestinians that will do, well, nothing:

During my journey into Islam in Gaza, I met General Nasser Youssef (who at the time of our meeting was head of one of the Palestinian security forces and is now the PA Interior Minister). At one point during our conversation, I asked the general to describe his vision of the relations between a Jewish state and a Palestinian state after we signed a peace agreement.

Let’s assume, I said, that Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, uproots the settlements and redivides Jerusalem: What then? He replied that, once the refugees begin returning to the area, so many would gravitate to those areas in Israel where their families once lived, that eventually we would realize there was no need for an artificial border between Israel and Palestine.

The next step, continued the general, was that the two states would merge. “And then we’ll invite Jordan to join our federation. And Iraq and Syria. Why not? We’ll show the whole world what a beautiful country Jews and Arabs can create together.”

But, I asked the general, aren’t we negotiating today over a two-state solution? Yes, he replied, as an interim step. And then he added, “You aren’t separate from us; you are part of us. Just as there are Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs, you are Jewish Arabs.”

He confronts Arab anti-Semitism. Again, the result will be: Nothing.

Instead, you have developed what can be called a “culture of denial,” that denies the most basic truths of the Jewish story. According to this culture of denial, which is widespread not only among your people but throughout the Arab world, there was no Temple in Jerusalem, no ancient Jewish presence in the land, no Holocaust.

Nowhere is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as popular as in the Arab world, which has also become the international center for Holocaust denial.
The real problem, then, is not terrorism, which is only a symptom for a deeper affront: your assault on my history and identity, your refusal to allow me to define myself, which is a form of intellectual terror.

IN YOUR society’s official embrace, through media and schools and mosques, of the culture of denial, you have tried to reinvent us, to redefine us out of our national existence.

Someobody’s eyes have been opened. Pity it doesn’t mean anything.