For thirteen and a half years, I never had to clip Tig the First’s claws, because he never scratched. From time to time I’d don a pair of gloves and he would know it was no-holds-barred playtime. He loved it.

For eleven years, I could not clip Tig the Second’s claws, because you couldn’t really do anything to him without a struggle. The last time I had the vet clip his claws while Tig was conscious, it was in New Jersey (over six years ago), and there was the vet, his assistant, and me. Tig was wrapped in a towel. He got two out of the three of us. After that, I only let them clip Tig’s claws if he was going to be unconscious for something else.

Well. Today, I picked up Tig3.0, put him on the bathroom counter, picked up a plain old nail clipper, and clipped his claws. My biggest problems? Finding the thumb claws and getting Tig to stop licking me or playing with my necklace.

As a reward for getting his claws clipped and behaving, he got a rolled-up paper wad to play with. And as a reward for my readers, here’s another picture of Tig expressing his Computer Fu. The Force is strong within him.

Yesterday, he changed my email display from date order, descending, to day order, threaded. And flagged another message as important. I have no idea how he’s managing to do so many things just by stepping on my keyboard at random. I begin to think it isn’t random, and that I’m in big trouble in the future.

And here we go. Buried in the middle of an article about an Israeli guard who committed suicide while Sarkozy was boarding his plane to leave Israel, we have this description of the Palestinians violating the truce:

Earlier, Palestinian militants fired three homemade rockets into southern Israel, the first such attack since a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza militants took effect last week.

Israel condemned the attack as a “gross violation” of the truce, but did not say whether it would retaliate.

The barrage wounded two people and capped a day of violence that presented the truce with its first serious test.

Note how the AP won’t call it a violation of the truce, but insist on using an unnamed Israeli spokesman calling it a violation. The truce wasn’t violated, even though three rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel in the last few hours.

As for whether or not Olmert will declare the cease-fire to be over… still waiting.

Check out the headline:

Rockets hit Israel, which says truce broken

Gee. The truce says no launching of rockets. Rockets were launched. Is the truce broken? The AP doesn’t know. It has to say that Israel says the truce was broken. Yet another example of your anti-Israel media bias. And we also have the AP carrying the terrorists’ justification for launching the rockets.

Police say three Palestinian rockets have hit southern Israel and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office says the cease-fire that took effect last week has been broken.

Islamic Jihad militants in the Gaza Strip says they carried out the attack to avenge an Israeli military raid that killed one of their fighters in the West Bank early Tuesday.

Israel’s national rescue service says two people were lightly wounded in the rocket barrage.

The West Bank is not formally part of the truce. But Islamic Jihad says it “cannot keep its hands tied” when its “brothers” in the West Bank are being targeted.

However, the Gaza Strip’s ruling Hamas group says it remains committed to the truce.

Notice how it carries both the Hamas and PIJ excuses.

It. Doesn’t. Matter.

The truce was broken the second those rockets headed towards Israel. (Actually, it was broken the second Hamas refused to stop smuggling, but we’ll ignore that for now.) The AP can’t bring itself to say so? Why is that?

Gee. Wonder who wrote that piece. There’s no byline. But I’m betting it wasn’t an Israeli.

The truce is broken for the third time. The first was Hamas’ refusal to end smuggling. The second was a mortar fired early this morning. And now rockets are being fired at Sderot.

Ceasefire shattered? Residents of Israel’s south were rattled to hear the ‘Color Red’ rocket alert sirens blare throughout their towns twice on Tuesday evening as two Qassam rockets crashed in near Sderot.

No injuries or damage were reported.

Will Olmert declare the truce over?

I don’t think he will. That’s how low things have sunk. However, Hamas has achieved its goals. Its allies are trying to get the world to grant legitimacy to the terrorist group.

Top diplomats skirmished on Tuesday over whether to engage the Palestinian Islamist Hamas group now that it has arranged a truce with Israel in Gaza.

At an international donors conference called to strengthen Palestinian police, Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa said he believed the ceasefire in Gaza would hold, and voiced support for more negotiations between Palestinians and Israel .

But he said reconciling the Palestinians in Hamas-run Gaza and the Western-backed government of Mahmoud Abbas was critical for peace and the international “veto” on this had to be lifted.

To her credit, Condi Rice said no.

“You cannot have peace if there is not a partner who respects the right of the other partner to exist,” she said, in an apparent reference to Hamas.

On the other hand, there’s still time for her to change her tune. She is, after all, one of the people who forced Israel to allow Hamas to run in the elections that brought Gaza to where it is now.

Holy crap! The AP noticed the truce violation, and even called it such. And get this—they didn’t call Israel’s killing of a “ticking bomb” terrorist a violation. What’s wrong with the editors?

Palestinians fired a mortar into southern Israel in the first violation of a fragile truce between Israel and Gaza Strip militants, the military said Tuesday.

No casualties or damage were reported in the attack, which took place around midnight Monday, and troops did not retaliate, the military said. No militant faction immediately took responsibility.

[...] Early Tuesday, Israeli troops killed a senior Islamic Jihad commander in a raid in the West Bank town of Nablus.

[...] In Germany, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad condemned the operation. Fayyad, whose government is trying to negotiate a peace deal with Israel, has said continuing military operations are undermining his efforts to restore law and order in the West Bank.

[...] In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum accused Israel of trying to sabotage the truce.

“The resistance factions in the West Bank have the full right to respond to this crime,” Barhoum said.

Yes, those quotes say that Israel violated the truce. But here’s the difference: The AP used a direct quote, and did not editorialize in the copy, using phrases like, “Israel’s actions threatens the shaky truce.”

That article is timestamped 6:48 ET. We shall see what happens on the updates, and pay particular attention to our pal Ibraham Barzak’s version. Just wait for it.

Jonathan Spyer explains the untoward interest the West has in Shebaa Farms:

In the wake of the recent Doha agreement, the US is keen to bolster the position of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and the March 14 movement of which he is a part.

The Cedar Revolution, and the Saniora government which resulted from it, is considered by the US administration to be one of its most significant diplomatic achievements in the region.

Doha stipulated the creation of a new cabinet in Lebanon that would include opposition (i.e., Hizbullah and allied) representation. The US is evidently concerned about preserving the standing of Saniora and March 14 in the ongoing Lebanese political standoff.

This concern, it is understood, is shared by Sarkozy, who is considered a moving force behind the current initiative. The government of Israel is apparently willing to adopt a newly conciliatory stance on the Shaba farms in order to play its role within this process.

Rice, in Beirut, expressed her concern at Hizbullah’s prominence in Lebanon and said that the administration intended to address the “real reasons and underlying causes” of this. When asked to define these, she said, according to a report in the Beirut Daily Star, that the issue of the Shaba farms must be resolved “within the context of [UN Security Council] Resolution 1701 rather than Resolution 425.”

So how does this strengthen the March 14 forces?

The US administration wants to bolster Saniora and simultaneously remove the rationale for Hizbullah’s continued bearing of arms. Hizbullah currently uses the Shaba farms as its central rallying cry; hence, the apparent idea is to induce Israel to cede the farms, probably to UN control. This, it is expected, will simultaneously remove Hizbullah’s reason for maintaining its armed capacity - and enable Saniora to pose as the “liberator” of Shaba.

The idea is likely to backfire. First of all, while Hizbullah has declared itself opposed to the idea of placing the Shaba farms under UN jurisdiction, this will not prevent it from declaring any Israeli withdrawal as its own achievement, a delayed result of the shock and fear - and subsequent flexibility - induced in Israel by the 2006 war.

Israel, apparently wishes to be seen as aiding the forces of good. And that explains what perplexes Emanuele Ottolenghi:

That means there is nothing to negotiate on the matter–it is not for Lebanon to stake a claim on the Sheeba Farms and it is not for Israel to return the Sheeba Farms to Lebanon, given that according to the UN Israel has complied with Resolution 425 in full. It stands to no reason that Olmert should concede on this point. The Sheeba Farms issue has been settled for eight years, and reopening it means giving in on a pretext that Hezbollah has exploited far too long to justify its blatant violations of UN resolutions, Lebanese law, and the Taif agreements. So why is Olmert offering what Israel should keep?

Israel wants to be regarded as helping the West, so Olmert is willing to re-open this issue. Spyer explains why it won’t work.

There were those after May 2000 who assumed that once Israel had abandoned the security zone, the former aspect of Hizbullah’s identity would take precedence over the latter. This, of course did not take place. Should Shaba be ceded, Hizbullah already has a list of subsequent “grievances” against Israel that will be used to justify further “resistance.”

Hezbollah will simply provide a new grievance against Israel to excuse its continued terror, just as it has done since 2000. The terror attacks that Israel absorbed from Hezbollah since 2000 and its blind eye towards Hezbollah’s growing threat, essentially negated any benefit - moral or strategic - that it should have gained from withdrawing from Lebanon. It’s a lesson that Hezbollah has learned well.

If Israel reopens the issue of Shebaa Farms now, in the future the world will then lean on Israel to satisfy each succeeding grievance, thereby ceding moral, legal and strategic ground to Hezbollah in the vain hope that these sacrifices would eliminate Hezbollah’s raison d’etre and transform it into a legitimate political movement. But each concession will grant Hezbollah new legitimacy until Israel is forced once again to war with the terrorist group minus the advantages it ceded over the years.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

From Ethan Bronner’s Israel in the Season of Dread:

Mr. Sara’s use of the word “calm” (”regiah” in Hebrew) was telling. No one quite knows what to call the current accord. Many use the Arabic word “tahadiya,” which is what Hamas has chosen; the word means not quite a truce, not quite a cease-fire, but some temporary cessation of hostilities.

Later on Bronner quotes a famous former Prime Minister who can’t seem to avoid the limelight, though he seems to miss the obvious:

Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, who has spent part of the past year as an international envoy to the Palestinians, said on Thursday that it could be very hard for everyone involved to gain a grasp on this conflict.

“The view of what is happening here tends to lurch between unjustified optimism — pretty rare, actually — to unnecessarily bleak pessimism, which is more common,” he said in a conversation in his Jerusalem offices. “There is a cease-fire now and both sides think the other’s commitment is tactical rather than strategic.”

Given that Hamas itself by the way it defines the “ceasefire” deems it temporary, it’s not an Israeli perception is it?

And of course Blair (not to mention Bronner) seem blissfully unaware that indeed, Hamas is violating the terms (not just the spirit) of the recent ceasefire. Noah Pollak writes:

How are Ehud Olmert’s various diplomatic gambits going? Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet — he was against the Hamas cease-fire in the first place — tells Haaretz that both arms smuggling and terrorist training in Gaza have increased since the cease-fire took effect.

Not all that surprising considering the Haniyeh said that smuggling would continue:

According to a Reuters report, Haniyeh - speaking to worshipers ahead of Friday prayers in Gaza City - said: “We cannot talk about stopping smuggling because it is something beyond our ability as a government and we did not give a commitment in this regard.”

Haniyeh added that Hamas would not force other organizations in Gaza to abide by the truce, but added that they had nevertheless agreed to it voluntarily.

As if Hamas didn’t have the ability to police its own borders. It isn’t a “perception” that Hamas will not keep all the terms of the ceasefire, it’s the reality.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Gee, that’s a surprise. (Note: Edited Tuesday morning; Ynet corrected the date the mortar was fired.)

A mortar fired by Palestinian gunmen in Gaza early Monday morning landed in Israel’s western Negev region.

The shell landed in an open area in close proximity to a community, but no injuries or damage were reported.

The incident was the first breach of the ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and armed Palestinian groups in the Strip, which went into effect Thursday morning.

There will be no consequences. None at all. If I were Ehud Olmert, I’d set the clock back to zero and tell Hamas it starts over again. But no, the Israeli leadership has no spine, and won’t even mention this breach of the agreement.

And of course, no mention of the breach of the agreement on the wire services. Funny how that always happens. But if an IDF soldier so much as looked across the border, they’d be screaming about Israel breaking the truce.

Same old stuff, different day.