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I just finished publishing the War in Gaza Update #18. As with the prior updates you will find news, features and analysis about the war. You should expect that it will be edited and updated a number of times before the next one comes out.

A few thoughts to share with you. As you read the news you’ll see all sorts of reports based upon information that was given by eyewitnesses. I would be very careful as to what you accept as being factual. Some of the reports about what types of military ordinance are being provided by civilians. I can’t help but wonder if they have some sort of training that has provided them with the ability to identify these items or if they are merely guessing.

I am willing to bet that in many cases they are guessing. They may consider it to be an educated guess, but misinformation of this type is very dangerous. Read between the lines and consider carefully what you are being fed.

Gaza’s terrorists are committing war crimes:

Cleared for publication: One of the mortar shells fired from northern Gaza at the Eshkol Regional Council Tuesday contained white phosphorus.

The council’s security director, Nikki Levy, said that “the potential danger of using such a rocket is enormous. It is far more dangerous than other Qassam rockets and mortal shells. This is an escalation in the type of explosives the Palestinians use on civilians.

Shall I predict for you the reaction of the anti-Israel side? “Good. About time their own weapons were used on them.”

[snip] I was tired and misread the story. This wasn’t a Lebanese-fired shell (first sentence corrected, rest deleted.) It was from Gaza. Iranian-supplied. So the Iranians are supplying Israel with chemical weapons.

No truce. Not until Hamas is beaten down a lot farther, Olmert.

If Thomas Friedman thinks that Israel only needs to teach Hamas a lesson, Dore Gold provides some numbers that would make him reconsider. (Friedman actually would never reconsider, being resistant to learning from past mistakes.)

Admittedly, there were rocket attacks on Israel before the Gaza pullout (the first Qassam rocket was fired in 2001). However, the scale of the attacks totally changed after the withdrawal. Rocket attacks increased by 500% (from 179 in 2005 to 946 in 2006).

The range of Hamas’s rockets also increased following the withdrawal. Locally manufactured Qassams, which could reach targets seven kilometers away, gave way to Grad/Katyusha rockets supplied by Iran that can hit as far as 20 kilometers. These were first used in 2006. During 2008, rockets with a 40-kilometer range came through the Gaza tunnels and into Hamas’s weapons cache.

At the same time that the tunnels facilitated weapons smuggling, they also allowed hundreds of Hamas operatives to leave Gaza for Egypt, where they caught planes to Iran and underwent military training with the Revolutionary Guards at a base outside of Tehran. When Israel controlled the Philadelphi Route, its special forces waged a constant battle and kept the number of tunnels low. But by 2008, with Israeli access to the Philadelphi route cut off and measures against the tunnels halted, the number of tunnels proliferated into the hundreds.

And of course, Israel surrendered control of the Philadelphi route in the name of peace. So the lesson then?

But the crisis over the Philadelphi Route has taught Israel a bitter lesson about relinquishing critical territory: It was a cardinal error to leave this strategic zone at the perimeter of Gaza, even if Israel wanted to get out of the Strip in its entirety. Israeli leaders including Yitzhak Rabin have warned that Israel must never leave the Jordan Valley, the equivalent perimeter zone in the West Bank.

Ariel Sharon saw the Jordan Valley as an integral part of Israel’s claim to “defensible borders,” a term used by President Bush in an April 2004 letter to Israel, that was overwhelmingly backed in special legislation by bipartisan majorities in both houses of U.S. Congress during June 2004. President-elect Barack Obama publicly recognized Israel’s right to “defensible borders” at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference last year.

The strategic stakes involved in this issue are enormous. Were Israel to be stripped of the Jordan Valley, it would undoubtedly face a massive escalation of weapons smuggling into the West Bank. Should the scale of the smuggling reach the same proportions as in Gaza, it is doubtful that even the Jordanians, motivated by the best of intentions, could bring it to a halt. Moreover, a steady stream of weapons smugglers and Islamist volunteers crossing the kingdom would undermine Jordanian security.

Dr. Gold understands something that Thomas Friedman does not. Israel cannot trust its security to others.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.