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PRC target in Rafah, northern Gaza strip, burns after being hit by IAF

There has been a serious terrorist attack in the south of Israel, north of Eilat. At least 40 injured, some critically. 7 dead. Civilian buses and cars were fired upon by at least 20 terrorists armed with various weapons, including RPGs, and IDF forces were attacked when they arrived to assist.

Apparently the terrorists originated in Gaza, and crossed into Israel via the porous Egyptian border. IDF and security forces have engaged the terrorists, but at this time it’s possible that some have still not been caught. Live updates can be found at Israel Matzav, The Muqata, Challah Hu Akbar, and Israellycool.

The IDF has said that they don’t think Hamas is directly responsible. The IAF has already struck targets belonging to the ‘Popular Resistance Committees‘ (PRC, a Hizballah-linked group) in Gaza, killing 6 including two of its leaders.

The shooting is still going on. The Muqata reports that an Israeli was seriously wounded 300 meters from a press conference held by Ehud Barak, by shots fired from across the Egyptian border!

Barry Rubin provides context:

This isn’t just another terrorist attack—it’s a major escalation, a new phase in the Arab-Israeli conflict in two ways. First, it is the bitter fruit of the U.S.-backed downfall of the government of President Husni Mubarak in Egypt, opening the Egypt-Israel border as a new front in the war. Second, it is probably the first successful al-Qaida attack on Israel. (The Palestinian Popular Committees, a Gaza-based al-Qaida affiliate is the prime suspect.) …

For more than 30 years the Egyptian government ensured peace along the desolate border between the two countries. In the post-Mubarak phase–as I warned back in February–the successor regime is not so committed to the Egypt-Israel peace. Military discipline has slackened and terrorist groups are increasingly operating in the Sinai penninsula. The natural gas pipeline to Israel is bombed every time it is put back into operation. A current Egyptian operation is intended to clear out terrorists affiliated with al-Qaida, from north Sinai.

The initial phase was marked by virtually free smuggling of arms, weapons, and money into the Gaza Strip for the Hamas regime there. The Mubarak government, though its efforts were imperfect, had kept the flow of munitions limited, making it harder for Hamas to renew full-scale warfare against Israel. Now, a new conflict could break out any time as Hamas is better-armed and more confident. The old Egyptian government looked at Hamas as a threat; the forthcoming Egyptian government will look at Hamas as an ally.

But while the media will no doubt attribute this attack to al-Qaida groups–and that might be accurate–this is far from the only problem. Hamas would no doubt cooperate with cross-border attacks on Israel from Egypt, as would the powerful Muslim Brotherhood which might well provide 30 to 40 percent of the members in the next parliament.

One should also remember the old strategy of the PLO in the late 1960s and in the 1970s: create waves of attacks on Israel’s borders, provoking Israeli retaliation and mass enthusiasm for war with Israel; then push Arab states into the war for what is hoped to be a full-scale showdown.

Have no doubt. This is not just an isolated incident but the opening of a new phase. It will get worse. At a minimum, Israel will have to devote a lot more of its limited resources to guarding the Egypt-Israel border. An important question is how decisively will the Egyptian military react and how supportive of the attack will be Egyptian public opinion.

Given U.S. policy, nothing can be expected from Washington except words of dismay. The Egyptian regime will assure everyone that it is committed to the peace treaty and will take strong action. But what will happen when the military hands over power to a parliament with an Islamist-far left majority in a few months? Anyone want to hand over Israel’s West Bank border to sovereign Palestinian control?

Just another incident, today very painful, but it will soon become just a dull ache as it joins the string of murders and pogroms against the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel going back at least 100 years. Except for the families of the victims, of course.

I am thinking that this will stop only when outside support for the vicious creatures that commit these atrocities ends — the direct support that comes from much of the Arab and Muslim world, and the indirect support and encouragement (although of course they would deny it) that is provided by the worldwide demonizers of Israel.

Meanwhile, congratulations to the IDF for killing the terrorists and their commanders.

Technorati Tags: Israel, terrorism

Damage in Palestinian refugee camp, Latakia, Syria

News item:

(Reuters) – An assault by Syrian security forces on a Palestinian refugee camp in the coastal city of Latakia amounts to a crime against humanity, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization said.

“The shelling is taking place using gunships and tanks on houses built from tin, on people who have no place to run to or even a shelter to hide in,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PLO secretary general, told Reuters. “This is a crime against humanity.”

Abed Rabbo should ask himself why these people are living in camps, in houses of tin, where erstwhile PLO ally Bashar al-Assad can shell them.

It’s not a secret that the Arab world has done its best to keep the descendents of the 1948 refugees unassimilated, as miserable as possible and as hostile to Israel as possible in order to use them as both diplomatic and military weapons against the Jewish state. And they are miserable indeed, in many cases lacking citizenship and basic rights to education, employment, etc. in their host countries.

No Israeli negotiator will agree to allow an influx of millions of hostile Arabs as part of a ‘peace’ agreement, because it would simply be the end of Israel (and probably the end of many of its Jewish inhabitants). In fact, the insistence on this is one of the reasons that I and others argue that the PA is not serious about negotiations today.

The existence of the refugees is a ‘fact on the ground’ that can’t be ignored. This, combined with ‘honor’ and the belief that if they struggle long enough they will ultimately win, has made the issue one that the Arabs will not compromise on.

Let’s look at just a couple of examples of Arab attitudes toward these Arab refugees.

The Arab League Peace Initiative (also called the ‘Saudi Initiative’ after a previous version proposed by the Saudi monarch) includes the following demands regarding the refugees and their descendents:

Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194. [sec. 2-II]

…the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries. [sec. 4]

The Arab nations have always understood resolution 194 as calling for the ‘return’ of refugees to Israel, although most Western authorities think that it does not. Section 4 makes it clear that there is no other option for them: the host countries (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Hamas-run Gaza and the Palestinian Authority) would not be considered an acceptable permanent destination for the refugees.

Last October, after a vicious struggle in Lebanon between radicals in a Palestinian refugee camp and the Lebanese army, a UNRWA official dared to say the unsayable:

Speaking at a National Council for US-Arab Relations conference [in October 2010], [Andrew] Whitley, who heads United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said that Palestinian refugees needed to start “debating their own role in the societies where they are rather than being left in a state of limbo where they are helpless.”

The UN official added that the Palestinian refugees must not be allowed to preserve the cruel illusions that perhaps they will return one day to their homes.”

“We recognize, as I think most do, although it’s not a position that we publicly articulate, that the right of return is unlikely to be exercised to the territory of Israel to any significant or meaningful extent,” he said, adding that “It’s not a politically palatable issue, it’s not one that UNRWA publicly advocates, but nevertheless it’s a known contour to the issue.”

Ben Cohen tells us what happened:

Whitley’s candor has cost him his job and, it would seem, his dignity too. Angrily criticized by everyone from Hamas to the Jordanian government, Whitley was compelled to recant in a letter to UNRWA’s spokesman, Christopher Gunness. His tone is so supine and humble that the reader is bound to wonder if these words are actually Whitley’s, or whether they were authored, in the manner of the KGB, by someone else. “I express my sincere regrets and apologies over any harm that my words may have done to the cause of the Palestine refugees and for any offence I may have caused,” the letter says. It ends thus: “The Agency is at liberty to use my statement in whatever ways it sees fit. There is no need for a reply.”

Little has changed since 1967, when Israel tried to build permanent housing for refugees after it got control of the territories. The program was aborted due to pressure from the UN and terrorism from the PLO:

What is perhaps surprising is that the United Nations also opposed the program, and passed harsh resolutions demanding that Israel remove the Palestinians from their new homes and return them to the squalid camps. For example, UN General Assembly Resolution 31/15 of Nov. 23, 1976:

Calls once more upon Israel:

(a) To take effective steps immediately for the return of the refugees concerned to the camps from which they were removed in the Gaza Strip and to provide adequate shelters for their accommodation;

(b) To desist from further removal of refuges and destruction of their shelters.

Similarly, UNGA Resolution 34/52 of November 23, 1979 declared that:

measures to resettle Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip away from their homes and property from which they were displaced constitute a violation of their inalienable right to return;

1. Calls once more upon Israel to desist from removal and resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and from destruction of their shelters;

Perhaps thanks to this support from the UN, the PLO began threatening to kill any refugee who would move out of the camps. After a few such attacks, the build-your-own-home program died, and that is why there are still Palestinians [in] refugee camps in Gaza. — CAMERA

Truly, Abed Rabbo is right. The condition of the refugees is a crime against humanity. And the Arabs are guilty of it.

Technorati Tags: Latakia, Palestinian refugees, Israel

A few of the 80,000 Palestinian Authority 'security' forces

News item:

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy is promoting a bill to suspend U.S. assistance to three elite Israel Defense Forces units, alleging they are involved in human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Leahy, a Democrat and senior member of the U.S. Senate, wants assistance withheld from the Israel Navy’s Shayetet 13 unit, the undercover Duvdevan unit and the Israel Air Force’s Shaldag unit…

Leahy, who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee’s sub-committee on foreign operations, was the principle [sic] sponsor of a 1997 bill prohibiting the United States from providing military assistance or funding to foreign military units suspected of human rights abuses or war crimes. The law also stipulates that the U.S. Defense Department screen foreign officers and soldiers who come to the United States for training for this purpose.

Leahy wants the new clause to become a part of the U.S. foreign assistance legislation for 2012, placing restrictions on military assistance to Israel, particularly to those three units.

The article continues that Israel’s Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak came to the US to try to talk him out of it:

Barak, who met with Leahy privately, was quoted by [a] senior Israeli official as telling the senator: “The difference between Israel and terror groups or other countries in the Middle East is that we give an accounting and there is monitoring.”

Barak also said the IDF had a strict judiciary with broader powers than the judiciary in the United States armed forces. [He] was also quoted as telling Leahy that the IDF military advocate general is not subservient to the military command, but rather to the attorney general, and has complete autonomy.

“If a Palestinian is injured, he can approach the High Court of Justice,” Barak said. “The investigations undergo judicial review that is independent of commanders. There are dozens of hearings every year that are based on Palestinians’ complaints against soldiers. They reach the highest and most independent authorities,” he said.

I hope Barak said a bit more than that.  I hope he said that “the difference between Israel and terror groups” and countries like Syria, is that Israel is neither a terrorist militia whose goal is to kill as many enemy civilians as possible nor a totalitarian dictatorship whose favorite political tool is murder.

He might also have mentioned that during the  month of July alone, the aforesaid terror groups launched 17 rockets and one mortar shell from Gaza into Israel. Gaza-based terrorism also included one “small arms shooting” and one explosive device planted on the border fence. In Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem last month, there were 32 firebombs thrown (8 of them in Jerusalem) and 1 explosive device placed.

No one was injured in July, although in the month of June two Israelis were stabbed and one burned by a firebomb. Note that all of these incidents can be described as attempted murder. The internal security service (Shabak) calls the number of incidents in July “a rather low figure.” One of the reasons it’s low is that the units Leahy dislikes often intercept terrorists before they can carry out their missions.

Of course if you or a loved one is burned by a firebomb or perforated by shrapnel from a rocket, it’s not a low figure. But that’s what happens when you frustrate a people who really deserve a state of their own.

But the Palestinian pre-state is out of money. The LA Times reports,

After earning international praise over the last two years for its financial reforms, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is facing its worst cash crunch in years, just as it hopes to prove to the United Nations that it deserves recognition as an independent state.

Palestinian banks, which lent the authority about $200 million to cover shortfalls, have stopped making new loans. Donations from the Arab world have plummeted in recent months. To conserve cash, the authority, which is facing a $35-million monthly shortfall, said it will have to slash yet-unspecified expenditures and services.

In response to possible salary cuts, anxious public employees, including 80,000 security personnel, are threatening to walk off the job if not paid. Banks that once rushed to make home loans to authority employees have begun rejecting applications from government workers as too risky.

80,000 ‘security’ personnel. That’s about one security person for every 20 Palestinians. They should be very secure. But more important, this shows that there simply isn’t an economy in the normal sense — there’s only an enormous international dole, mostly from Europe and the US, neither of which can afford it these days.

Despite its fiscal problems, the PA is determined to meet its most important obligations. The following is from a report presented to the US Congress by the Palestinian Media Watch group in July:

New PA law enacts payment of monthly salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons:
A law signed and published in the official Palestinian Authority Registry in April 2011 puts all Palestinians and Israeli Arabs imprisoned in Israel for terror crimes on the PA payroll to receive a monthly salary from the PA. [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 15, 2011] This new law, called PA Government Resolution of 2010, numbers 21 and 23, formalizes what has long been a PA practice.

Recipients of the monthly salary:
The PA has defined by law which Palestinians would be considered “prisoners”:
“Anyone imprisoned in the occupation’s [Israel’s] prisons as a result of his participation in the struggle against the occupation.” [Ch. 1 of Law of Prisoners, 2004/19,passed and published by the PA Chairman and Government, December 2004. The Prisoners’ Centre for Studies, www.alasra.ps, Accessed May 9, 2011]

According to the PA definition, more than 5,500 Palestinian prisoners serving time for terror-related offenses are recipients. [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 14, 2011] Palestinian car thieves in Israeli prisons will not receive a salary, but every terrorist in prison including murderers are on the PA payroll. The salary goes directly to the terrorist or the terrorist’s family, and prisoners receive salary from the day of arrest. [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 15, 2011]

Hamas and Fatah terrorist prisoners receive monthly salaries:
“The PA’s Ministry for Prisoner Affairs said that its policy had always been to pay salaries to prisoners and their families ‘regardless of their political affiliations.’” [Jerusalem Post, May 20, 2011].

Total amount that the PA pays in salaries to prisoners monthly:
Total: 17,678,247 Shekel ($5,207,000) a month, based on May 2011. [Life and the Market, supplement to Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 19, 2011]

Terrorists in prison receive higher average salary than PA civil servants and military personnel

The families of ‘martyrs’ get paid as well.

So let’s get this straight:

• Sen. Leahy wants to cut aid to Israel insofar as it supports operations to frustrate Palestinian Arab terrorists, who have not stopped trying to kill Israelis — even while they are allegedly on ‘good behavior’ during the run-up to their UN statehood bid.
• The PA received about $600 million from the US last year. More than $5 million is being paid to imprisoned terrorists every month as a ‘salary’ for their contribution to the ‘struggle’.
• Even Hamas members and the families of suicide terrorists are paid!

How about cutting aid to the PA instead?

Update [17 Aug 2011 1051 PDT]: Leahy’s office says the following:

“He has not proposed legislation to withhold U.S. aid to units of the Israel Defense Forces,” [Leahy spokesman David] Carle wrote in an e-mail to Politico. Rather, Carle wrote, the Leahy amendment “applies to U.S. aid to foreign security forces around the globe and is intended to be applied consistently across the spectrum of U.S. military aid abroad.” — JTA

This is supposed to be a ‘denial’ of the report, but all it says is that the amendment may include units in other countries as well.

Technorati Tags: Sen. Patrick Leahy, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Terrorism

Dan Margalit is a well-known Israeli print and TV Journalist who has been around for a long time. He is not a ‘leftist’. In today’s online edition of Israel Hayom, he discusses the possible consequences of the success of a UN General Assembly resolution for Palestinian statehood.

The bid will earn an American veto in the Security Council but will get a majority in the General Assembly…

Will they obtain full membership in dozens of U.N.- affiliated groups, and will they be empowered to take Israel to the International Court in the Hague or harass Israel in the International Telecommunications Union?

Margalit suggests that Israel should agree to Palestinian preconditions to place them in a position where they cannot refuse negotiations. This will expose the PA as being uninterested in a negotiated peace:

Should Israel give up its justified stance that it has the right to be recognized as a Jewish state? This would allow it to tear the mask from Abba’s face and prove that he is not interested in negotiations but only in a unilateral U.N. declaration. It would prove that he is disregarding both Barack Obama and the New York Times which both called on him to refrain from such a move.

In my opinion this is a worthwhile diplomatic gamble. Three years ago Dan Meridor gave Ha’aretz his Camp David journals for publication. They clearly prove that Yasser Arafat torpedoed the Israel-Palestinian agreement and not Ehud Barak. When the protocols of their meetings are made public, it will also emerge that it wasn’t Ehud Olmert who subverted the agreement in 2009 but Abu Mazen. That is what will happen, to my sorrow and to the delight of the extreme right, if Netanyahu gives Abu Mazen a little more rope. The world will then see, for the third time in a dozen years, that the Palestinians’ diplomatic behavior pattern hasn’t changed. [my italics]

Bad idea.

Margalit demolishes his own argument in the last sentence: if the world hasn’t learned the ‘diplomatic behavior pattern’ of the Palestinian Arabs yet, it is not capable of learning.

Why should yet another concession — in this case, giving up the demand to recognize the most essential part of our national identity — be required in order to establish Israel’s bona fides as a peace-loving state?

Didn’t Camp David and the withdrawal from the Sinai — which included the almost-forgotten expulsion of Jews from Yamit — show that Israel was prepared to make sacrifices for peace? Didn’t the withdrawal from southern Lebanon show that Israel was not interested in expanding its territory by military means? Didn’t Oslo show that Israel was prepared to take risks, like bringing Arafat and the PLO terrorists back from exile and turning over much of Judea and Samaria to their rule? Didn’t the withdrawal from Gaza, in which Jews were forcibly removed from their homes, make this clear yet again?

Every one of the Israeli withdrawals or concessions that I mentioned had disastrous consequences, even the Camp David treaty with Egypt — we are just beginning to see the results of that one. Isn’t it time to say “enough already” and expect the Arabs to make some compromises?

The problem is that ‘the world’ — which in this case means the Muslim world plus a Europe dependent on Arab and Iranian oil, plus the ever-present antisemites, plus Barack Obama who wants to realign the US closer to the Muslims, plus the Left which is obsessed with its postcolonialist ideology, plus Russia which wants to reduce US influence in the Middle East, etc. — wants to see Israel out of the territories and a ‘Palestinian’ state established, and has very little (if any) concern for Israel’s security.

So ‘the world’ cannot ‘learn’ about Palestinian duplicity because it simply does not care. The facts about what happened at Camp David in 2000 are there for everyone to see, not only in the words of Dan Meridor but also those of Dennis Ross, the US’s top negotiator. Even Bill Clinton has publicly said that Arafat torpedoed the negotiations. No lessons have been drawn from this — even those who admit it blame Arafat personally, despite the fact that his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, holds exactly the same position.

Unfortunately, Israel is rarely able to take back a concession. We won’t see Yamit or Gush Katif repopulated by Jews, nor is the PLO likely to go back to Tunis. Every concession is ‘pocketed’ and demands are ramped up from there.

Some concessions are physical and some ‘merely’ ideological. For example, Israel chose to not defend the right of Jews to live anywhere between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and today it is a commonplace to hear Judea and Samaria referred to as the ‘Palestinian’ territories. But Jews lived in the Old City of Jerusalem, in Hebron and Gush Etzion, on land they legally purchased before they were expelled by force and in some cases, murdered. What happened to take away their right to live in those places?

The definition of Israel as a Jewish state is of huge significance, and the Arabs are quite aware of it. It must not be given up to satisfy a ‘world’ which will not be fully satisfied by anything short of the end of the Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Dan Margalit, Palestinians