Israel will not fight back after 11 Palestinian missiles, 6 Grad rockets injure 23 civilians

Prime minister Ehud Olmert, defense minister Ehud Barak and chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi decided at a special conference Friday evening, Nov. 14 to refrain from responding to the Palestinians’ 10-day missile blitz from Gaza. The ministers met after 6 Grad rockets hit Ashkelon and 11 missiles battered Sderot during the day. One of the 23 casualties was an 82-year old woman wounded by flying shrapnel in Sderot; the rest shock victims.

The assault damaged homes and parked vehicles, forcing tens of thousands of inhabitants in the towns and villages around the Gaza Strip to spend hours in shelters or under cover. Fifteen kilometers from Gaza, Ashkelon town hall opened the public bomb shelters, while the city of Ashdod to the north ordered the shelters prepared.

In the morning, an Israeli air strike hit one of the missiles teams in northern Gaza, injuring four Palestinians, but the missile assault continued regardless.

Thursday night, the Palestinians fired five missiles, including two Grad rockets, against Ashkelon, Sderot, Netivot and Or Haner.

Cabinet ministers and oppositions lawmakers alike call for comprehensive military action to halt the blitz which is again disrupting the lives of almost half a million distressed citizens.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Hamas‘ control of the Gaza Strip is now virtually complete.

Since the summer, the Islamic militants have silenced and disarmed their remaining opponents, filled the bureaucracy with their supporters, and kept Gaza’s economy afloat, even if just barely, despite a 16-month-old international embargo and border blockades by Israel and Egypt.

With nothing in sight to weaken Hamas‘ grip, the political split between Gaza and the West Bank - the two territories meant to make up a future Palestinian state - looks increasingly irreversible.

That conclusion was also reached by the International Crisis Group, an independent think tank, in a September report describing Hamas‘ ascendancy, and the split is one of the main obstacles to U.S. efforts to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

It weakens moderate President Mahmoud Abbas in the negotiations because he isn’t seen as speaking for Gaza. Israel, Abbas and the international community don’t want a deal that leaves out the 140-square mile Gaza Strip’s and its 1.4 million Palestinians. And it’s unlikely Israel would give up the West Bank as long as Hamas is in charge in Gaza.

Undisputed rule has also improved Hamas‘ leverage ahead of power-sharing talks with Abbas‘ Fatah movement in Cairo later this month.

Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas leader, said his movement is eager to reconcile with Abbas. “If there is no pressure from the United States and Israel (on Abbas), we can build a good national unity government,” Yousef said.

However, in previous negotiations, the militants showed little willingness to give up any of their power and are unlikely to do so now.

Instead, the failure of this round of talks could set the stage for a new round in the Palestinian power struggle.

Compounding Abbas‘ troubles is a dispute with Hamas over whether Palestinian law allows him to remain in office after Jan. 8, when Hamas says his term officially ends. Abbas, relying on an amendment that was never fully ratified, claims he can stay on another year. Hamas, citing Palestinian law, is set to appoint its own man, Deputy Parliament Speaker Ahmed Bahar, as president in January.

Abbas would be hard put to portray the Islamists as usurpers of power when his own legal status is in question.

“Starting in January, no one is legitimate,” said analyst Ghassan Khatib, a former Cabinet minister in the West Bank. “And when everyone is equal in being illegitimate, the advantaged party is the one that has the strength on the ground.”

That party is Hamas, which defeated thousands of forces loyal to Abbas in a five-day blitz in June 2007.

“We believe that Hamas is going ahead with its plan to sever Gaza from the West Bank and to build its own regime,” said former Deputy Prime Minister Azzam Ahmed of Fatah. “We believe they are succeeding.”

One reason they are succeeding is the situation on the ground. Gaza City’s streets are cleaner and safer than before the takeover. Despite budget shortages, Hamas has fixed traffic lights, paved some streets and opened a new children’s hospital, and claims to have imposed law and order after the chaos that often dogged Fatah rule.

It has also been careful not to push an overtly Islamic social agenda. For example, officials have suggested to female reporters covering Gaza’s parliament that they wear head scarves, but those who don’t are not shunned.

Still, one-party rule has made dissenters reluctant to talk openly, especially after hundreds of Fatah activists were rounded up over the summer.

Hamas now controls every aspect of daily life, from screening visitors at a new border checkpoint to running what the International Crisis Group described as a network of paid and volunteer informers.

Hamas has seized opportunities to neutralize opponents.

A July bombing blamed on Fatah gave Hamas a pretext for shutting dozens of offices of Fatah and related associations. Hamas policemen guard the now empty former Fatah headquarters.

“Everything has been taken over and there is nothing left for Fatah in the Gaza Strip,” said Hazem Abu Shanab, a Fatah spokesman who spent nearly two months in Hamas custody after the July blast.

The bombing also provided the grounds to go after one of Hamas’ last armed rivals, the Fatah-allied Hilles clan. In August, Hamas defeated Hilles fighters in a clash, sending dozens into exile and arresting others.

Ahmed Hilles, 24, a mechanic, said he was ridiculed in Hamas custody. “They told us we were defeated,” said Hilles, adding that he believes Hamas is now too powerful to fight.

Strikes by teachers and health workers, called by West Bank union leaders in August in an apparent attempt to pressure Hamas, have backfired. Hamas fired thousands of the teachers, replacing them with university graduates, and forced most doctors back to work.

Not all the new teachers are necessarily Hamas loyalists, but even those without political ties feel increasingly indebted to the Islamists.

“I am not a Hamas member, but I think they have done many good things since they took over,” said Abu Khaled, 35, a newly hired math teacher.

Economically, Hamas is surviving.

International sanctions can’t block the inflow of money from Iran and donations from Muslims worldwide. At the same time, Abbas, Israel and the international community don’t want to push Gaza over the brink by fully enforcing the embargo.

“The embargo is working, but not to the extent that we want it to work, and not to the extent that everybody is keeping up the pressure on Hamas,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron.

Abbas, for example, continues to pay the salaries of some 70,000 civil servants in Gaza, in exchange for staying loyal and refusing to work for the Hamas government. Such loyalty, and with that Abbas’ main link to Gaza, would likely disappear if the money stopped coming.

Yet the salaries help prop up Gaza’s economy, and thus Hamas rule.

In addition, Hamas has about 20,000 people on its payroll, and Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh last month cited a monthly operating budget of $20 million. The money is scraped together by smuggling cash, laundering money and stepping up tax collection. There’s even enough left over for occasional unemployment payments.

Gazans are also feeling safer these days because of a cease-fire that has stopped Israel’s attacks on wanted militants in Gaza and salvoes of Palestinian rockets on Israeli border towns. Israel agreed to the truce in June despite concerns that Hamas would use it to bring in more weapons, and has eased the blockade, allowing in more trucks carrying food and humanitarian supplies.

Life is also made more bearable by the unhindered influx of goods, from weapons to food and medicines, through dozens of Hamas-supervised smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

For example, the underground trade has brought down the price of a pack of Marlboro cigarettes to $3, down from $8.30 a year ago.

Politically, through, the future looks gloomy, the International Crisis Group said.

“Reversing the drift toward greater Palestinian separation, both political and geographic, will be a difficult and, at this point, almost hopeless task,” said the think tank, which specializes in areas of conflict and has been monitoring the rise of Hamas in Gaza.

“In Gaza, new realities are taking hold,” it added. “Prospects for reconciliation, reunification and a credible peace process seem as distant and illusory as ever.”

KARIN LAUB
Associated Press writers Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City and Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah contributed to this report.

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In third such incident in three days, soldiers open fire at three Palestinians carrying Molotov cocktails northwest of Ramallah, injuring one of them. Palestinian sources say 19-year-old man died of his wounds at hospital.

Third Palestinian killed in three days: A Palestinian holding a Molotov cocktail was shot Wednesday night by an IDF force in the village of Kufr Malik, northwest of the West Bank city of Ramallah. The Ramallah hospital reported that the man died of his wounds.
Two other Palestinians carrying Molotov cocktails were killed by IDF soldiers in the past three days.

The army reported that a force belonging to the Kfir Brigade spotted three Palestinians, two of them about to hurl incendiary bombs. The soldiers fired at them, identifying a hit. There were no injuries among the soldiers.
Palestinian sources reported that the man killed was 19-year-old Aziz al-Haj, who was shot in his leg and was left to bleed for a long time before being rushed to the Ramallah hospital, where he died of his wounds.

Three wanted Palestinian terror suspects were arrested by the IDF in the West Bank on Wednesday night.
Two of the suspects were detained in the Nablus area and the third was arrested near Bethlehem. They were all taken in for questioning by the security forces.
Muhammed al-Ramahi, 17, was critically wounded on Wednesday evening after being shot by IDF troops in the Jilazun refugee camp near Ramallah. He was evacuated by Palestinian paramedics to the Ramallah hospital, but died of his wounds in the late evening hours.
The army said the soldiers opened fire after the youth hurled a Molotov cocktail.
The incident occurred in close proximity to where 16-year-old Abdel Rahman Badwi was killed on Tuesday under similar circumstances. Badwi and two other youths had been pelting Israeli cars with rocks and, the army said, Molotov cocktails.

Thousands attended Badwi’s funeral on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority continues to maintain that the incidents are not part of a renewed intifada, and accuses the IDF of creating provocations.

A PA official from Ramallah told Ynet that the army was conducting patrols in the refugee camp with no apparent reason, and this in turn provokes youths to attack the troops – a phenomenon which has faded in recent years.

Joseph Puder - FrontPageMagazine.com

Dean Acheson, the American statesman and President Truman’s Secretary of State, was quoted as saying: “No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.”  Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, Israeli leaders have sought to appease the Arab-Palestinians with various concessions.  The current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has gone a step further and is determined to create a Palestinian State.

In order to be “inoffensive,” Olmert released an additional 200 Palestinian terrorists this week from Israeli prisons, some with Israeli blood on their hand.  The recipient of these good will gestures, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority President and Fatah leader, is committed to Israel’s disappearance as a Jewish State.

President George W. Bush, like his predecessor Bill Clinton, has become a victim of the “legacy seeking mania” – trying to be a peacemaker in the intractable Middle East conflict. Except that in America’s case, being “inoffensive” to the Palestinians who seek to expel America’s interests from the region places Israel’s freedom on the line.

Since Oslo neither the Israeli governments nor the U.S. administrations have understood the simple truth that the Palestinian struggle against Israel is not about land, it is an armed struggle that aims to replace Israel with an Arab Islamic terrorist state that would undermine American and European interests in the region.

The 1937 Peel Commission offered the Palestinian leadership a significant portion of Palestine for a state, and they rejected it.  Through the years, other offers have been made, and the Palestinian leadership has opted for war and violence instead.  Under the Peel Commission, the Arab-Palestinian share of Western Palestine would have been larger than the landmass proposed in 1947 by the U.N. Partition Plan, and the Partition Plan would have given the Palestinians more land than they would have had under the Armistice Lines of 1949, following Israel’s War of Independence.  Subsequent agreements including the Oslo Accords, Camp David II Summit (with Arafat, Barak and Clinton) and current negotiations between Olmert/Livni and Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) and Abu Ala, have involved gradually shrinking landmasses.

The reasonable assumption is therefore simple: if the Palestinians refused settlement when they could have had 82% of the land under the Peel Commission, why would they now settle for a tiny portion of land that is seemingly ungovernable and without any natural resources? The answer is, of course, that they did not settle for the favorable Peel Commission recommendations of 1937 because they rejected the idea of a sovereign Jewish homeland, however small and untenable, and continue to refuse to accept the idea of a permanent sovereign Jewish State today.

At the June 1974 Palestinian National Council (PNC) in Cairo, the PNC inaugurated the “Phased Plan,” a strategy that called for the liberation of all of Palestine (in effect the land of Israel) through both armed struggle and diplomatic double-talk.  A Palestinian state would therefore be a base of operation to dismantle the Jewish State.  Such a state would be a haven for assorted jihadist terror groups, including al-Qaeda and would work closely with Hezbollah operatives.  In Hamas-governed Gaza, this is not merely a possible scenario, but a living reality.

Any future Palestinian state would be unstable and violent at best.  The Fatah controlled gangs would clash with Hamas armed gangs not over ideology as much as over turf and profits.  Again, this is not a guesstimate but a present reality.  Egypt, Jordan, Saudi and Arabia would each seek to control such a state, while Shiite Iran would try to create a second Hezbollah in Gaza if not in the West Bank – all of which would eventually lead to regional wars, increased terrorism and possibly nuclear war.  Iran, moreover, would use jihadist elements in Gaza and the West Bank to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and replace it with a jihadist regime.

Under the 1933 Montevideo Treaty, a state must satisfy four specific requirements: It must have a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into peaceful relations with other states.  The Palestinian Authority under Abbas does not satisfy any one of these requisites.  While it has “permanent residents,” it has also a large portion of unsettled refugees.  And it certainly does not have “a defined territory” as evidenced by its official maps. Its display of all of Western Palestine is indicative of its intentions to undermine the Jewish State.  As to a “government,” Abbas is running a gang rather than an acceptable government; it lacks legitimacy, as large portions of the Palestinians do not accept him as the leader.  The fourth criterion is absolutely clear- it lacks the capacity to live in peace with its neighbor - Israel.

As we approach our elections in the U.S., it is imperative that we hear the presidential candidates reject the current futile negotiations for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The only reasonable solution to the Palestinian’s plight is to have Jordan negotiate with Israel over borders, and absorb the Palestinian territories and people in a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation.  American interests and Israel’s freedom are at stake, and to paraphrase Dean Acheson’s words: being “inoffensive” towards a Palestinian terrorist state would destroy the oldest, most vibrant democracy in the Middle East.

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By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM - Israel’s prime minister pledged to free more than 150 Palestinian prisoners in a meeting Wednesday with President Mahmoud Abbas, a gesture meant to energize their sluggish peace talks.
The release could also boost the prestige of the embattled Palestinian leader, whose Fatah movement is engaged in a tense power struggle with the militant Islamic Hamas.
The meeting at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s official Jerusalem residence was the first since the Israeli premier announced last week that he would resign next month because of corruption investigations against him. Palestinians have been seeking assurances that peace talks, started with great fanfare at a U.S.-sponsored conference last November, would continue despite Israel’s political turmoil.

Olmert says he is determined to press ahead with peace efforts as long as he is in office. Because of Israel’s complicated political system, his term could extend into next year.
The Olmert-Abbas summit came on the day Israel freed five Palestinian prisoners as part of its exchange with Hezbollah guerrillas to bring back the bodies of two soldiers captured in 2006.

With Hamas demanding freedom for several hundred prisoners in exchange for Sgt. Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier also captured in 2006, Abbas needs to show his people that he can win freedom for prisoners in Israeli jails by peaceful means, as opposed to the militants’ tactics of attacks and abductions.
However, the modest numbers Abbas achieved were not likely to prompt celebration among Palestinians or reduce Hamas’ influence. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that on Aug. 25, “more than 150″ prisoners would be freed, out of about 11,000 held by Israel.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said prisoners would be released this month “as a confidence-building measure, as a gesture of good will.”
But it was seen highly unlikely that Olmert would agree to a key Abbas demand: freedom for Marwan Barghouti, the highest Fatah official in Israeli custody, who is serving multiple life terms for involvement in deadly attacks on Israelis. Israeli officials said only that Olmert did not commit to specific names.

Barghouti is also said to be on the list of prisoners Hamas wants released in exchange for the soldier it is holding, but Israel is unlikely to give that kind of boost to the Islamic militants, who do not recognize Israel and have sent dozens of suicide bombings to attack Israelis.

Over the past week, tensions have flared again between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah, starting with a bombing in Gaza that killed five Hamas militants and a girl. Hamas reacted with mass arrests of Fatah loyalists and Fatah hit back with arrests in the West Bank. Then over the weekend, Hamas launched an assault on a Fatah stronghold in Gaza City, an operation that ended with 11 dead, dozens wounded and about 90 Fatah fugitives fleeing Gaza for the West Bank.

On Tuesday a Hamas official hinted darkly of a Hamas uprising similar to its sweep through Gaza last year, when it expelled Fatah forces and took over the territory.
After nightfall Palestinians fired a rocket at Israel from Gaza, the military said, in violation of a June 18 cease-fire. It exploded harmlessly in a field.
Israel is trying to stay out of the internal Palestinian conflict, but it is negotiating with Abbas while boycotting Hamas as a terror group.
Some Israelis have hinted that Barghouti, who had broad contacts with Israeli doves, might be freed someday — but probably in the context of significant progress toward a peace accord. Israel’s official position is that Palestinians convicted in fatal attacks cannot be freed.
However, it has made exceptions, most recently three weeks ago when it released Lebanese prisoner Samir Kantar as part of the Hezbollah deal. Kantar was convicted of the 1979 killing an Israeli father, his daughter and a policeman.
Erekat said Abbas asked for release of imprisoned politicians, including Barghouti, as well as hundreds who have served more than 20 years in prison, women and minors. But Erekat said the criteria were not agreed on at the meeting.