Hamas is targeting Israel every which way it can.
Hamas targets the border crossings, thus making sure that Israel keeps them closed—because it’s been proven time and time again that Palestinians don’t care if civilians die as a result of their actions.
Only nine days ago, the government declared the Gaza Strip “hostile territory” in an attempt to up the pressure on Hamas to end the rocket attacks. But Hamas’ response has been the opposite; the shooting has only intensified.
Terrorist groups in Gaza, including Hamas’ military wing, have also increased efforts to carry out attacks inside Israel.
Most of the 54 mortars fired Wednesday landed near the Sufa crossing terminal. The mortars fired Thursday by Hamas militants targeted crossing points at Eretz and Kerem Shalom. There has also been a great deal of intelligence on Hamas’ plans to target the crossing points into Gaza.
As such, a paradox has emerged in which the Israeli government, the U.S. and Fatah believe that by exerting greater pressure on the Gaza Strip’s residents, the people will overthrow the Hamas regime there, while the Islamic group is doing its best to shut down the crossings – perhaps assuming that if the civilians suffer more, they will side with Hamas.
Senior Hamas officials deny that they intend this. Ismail Haniyeh says Hamas is interested in opening the crossings, but he was hard-pressed to explain the obvious attempt by Hamas militants to destroy the crossings.
“The military wing decides its targets in an effort to bring an end to the siege over the Strip,” he told Haaretz.
Hamas is also trying to conduct mass murder via suicide bomber as well, and only the intensity and luck of the IDF is stopping them. And oh yeah—those “humiliating” checkpoints:
IDF soldiers arrested two Palestinians at the Bir Zayit checkpoint on Thursday night after finding two explosive devices in their car during a routine check.
These are the same checkpoints the world demands Israel dismantle.
And of course, the near-daily rocket barrages continue.
A Qassam rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit a house in the Shaar Hanegev Kibbutz on Wednesday, causing no injuries.
In light of all these events, every Arab nation is demanding that Israel make “good-will gestures” by releasing prisoners and easing checkpoints. Not a single one of them has demanded that the Palestinians stop trying to murder Israelis. The conclusion is obvious: They don’t want the violence to end.
This upcoming peace conference is a bigger sham than Michael Jackson’s marriages.
Fascinating. One day Abbas demands israel stop harassing the Palestinians of Gaza, and a few days later Olmert is releasing terrorists from Israeli prisons to support this same Abbas — who said yesterday that it shouldn’t take more than six months after the upcoming peace conference to finalize a deal on a Palestinian state.
May I suggest that Abbas be designated the next targeted assassination? It’s the only way to save Olmert from himself.
Haniyeh is no threat at all by comparison.
Abbas is no friend of Israel, but he isn’t an outright enemy either. Now, Israel has been trying to make friends with everyone possible, so as to limit the effectiveness of Hamas and other terrorists, but this policy — I think — has been limited in it’s success.
What I say next gives me no pleasure;
When dealing with bullies and the like, only one policy has been found to work: force. That’s the only policy that can be successfully applied when dealing with tryants or bullies. So, Israel should choose a target and hit it hard.
I’m not a leader of Israel, and this ends my competence. But Israel will grow weaker each day they sit still; Notice now they are having trouble getting recruits, this is new and is a function of past erosion.
And the way to end this erosion is to choose a battle, and win it big.
Could be to hit Iran, could be to the Syrian leadership (long overdue,) and just tell the rest of the world to shove it.
What will this achieve? It will stop the small erosions. (And, if Assad is the choice, a lot of people in Lebanon will breathe easier and silently thank Israel! And that’s not bad.)
And it will cause the people who hate Israel to pause. To recalibrate.
I repeat I am not an expert but I do remember that Israel needs water and I recall that an important waterway was ‘temporairily’ diverted several years ago, and that Israel, under pressure from Clinton’s man Baker, allowed this diversion, which has subsequently become permanent.
I have a roomful of blades that run 24×7 doing economic and political predictions and if you plot his responses to violence, you’ll see that he is a lot more willing (now!) to apply a military solution than he was when he first came into the office. So don’t criticize Olmert too much. He’s learning.
Oh, sorry. Baker was Secretary of State to Bush-1.
I was going to look up the water diversion incident before I wrote these remarks but couldn’t place the name of the waterway.