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Earlier today a Grad missile — a relatively large, accurate weapon — hit the center of the city of Be’er Sheva, injuring one person. Residents were told to go to bomb shelters in anticipation of more attacks. Yesterday, another one struck Ashdod. Saturday, a total of 49 mortar shells hit southern Israel. And just moments ago today, a bomb placed next to a busy bus stop in Jerusalem exploded, killing at least one person and wounding 50 others.

There have also been other instances of Qassam rockets and mortars falling in Israel in the last few days that I haven’t bothered to list, at least 16 today (according to IDF Spokesperson). Each one of these constitutes an act of attempted murder.

This comes after the vicious murder of five members of the Fogel family two weeks ago.

The usual suspects will say that there’s a ‘cycle of violence’, since Israel has been bombing Gaza on and off to destroy tunnels under the border fence, tunnels that Hamas is digging in order to infiltrate Israel to kidnap soldiers or perpetrate terror attacks. And yesterday, IDF fire directed at a rocket launching team also killed several civilians that were in the area (one could ask why rockets were launched near civilians, but you know the answer to that).

Except in the upside-down world of Arab terrorism in which Israel’s very existence is a provocation, there’s no ‘cycle of violence’. So what’s behind the recent escalation?

There are various theories, such as that with the rest of the Arab world aflame the Palestinian Arabs are trying to focus attention once again on their ‘plight’. Or that it has something to do with the ongoing struggle between Hamas and Fatah.

I think the object is to provoke Israel into a reaction, so that the Palestinians can ask for a UN response, either politically — to further their bid for  unilateral declaration of statehood — or even militarily, following the model of Libya, where the UN called for action to ‘protect’ Libyan civilians.

[Incidentally, the way the US jumped to do the UN’s bidding without even a Congressional resolution was shocking.  Keep in mind that we don’t even know who we are supporting there, what we will do if Qaddafi is removed, etc.]

The Arab strategy now seems to be to get the world to give them the land that they are not willing to negotiate with Israel for. In this sense, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are actually cooperating, where Hamas is playing the ‘bad cop’ and the PA the good one. Once they succeed in prying loose Judea, Samaria and as much of Jerusalem as possible, then they’ll continue the struggle between them. My guess is that if the IDF leaves the territories, it won’t take long for the well-motivated Hamas to push aside the US-funded and trained, but uninspired, PA forces.

Even if Hamas were to vanish into thin air, a UN-approved unilateral declaration of statehood would be a bad thing. In its long history of terrorism, Fatah has murdered more Israelis than Hamas. Since it was adopted in 1974, the PLO’s ‘phased plan‘ for the elimination of the Jewish state has been reaffirmed many times. Yasser Arafat referred to it until at least 1998. The plan is usually summarized as follows:

1. Through the “armed struggle”, to establish an “independent combatant national authority” over any territory that is “liberated” from Israeli rule. (Article 2)
2. To continue the struggle against Israel, using the territory of the national authority as a base of operations. (Article 4)
3. To provoke an all-out war in which Israel’s Arab neighbors destroy it entirely (“liberate all Palestinian territory”). (Article 8)

The plan has never been dropped, and in the platform produced by the sixth Fatah conference in 2009, the importance of “armed struggle” was stressed, and it was decided that Fatah would never recognize Israel as a Jewish state nor give up the “right of return.”

We can argue as to whether phases 1 and 2 have already been completed, but it’s clear that any expansion of Arab-controlled territory adjacent to Israel will be a strategic advantage for the Arabs — especially if this can be accomplished without agreeing to any of Israel’s security requirements. This is exactly what they will get with a UN-approved unilateral declaration of statehood.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, terrorism

Dirar Abu Sisi, Hamas engineer abducted from the Ukraine

News item:

Tel Aviv – Israel is holding a Gaza engineer kidnapped in the Ukraine, Israeli media reported Monday after an court partially lifted a gag order on the case.

Senior Palestinian engineer, Dirar Abu Sisi, 42, was reportedly kidnapped by Israeli secret agents from a train several weeks ago.

Media reports Monday were allowed to confirm that he was being held by Israeli authorities, but not the details of his capture, after a Sunday ruling by a court in Petah Tiqva, east of Tel Aviv. — Monsters & Critics

Abu Sisi is said to have been born in Jordan and received a doctorate in Electrical Engineering in the Ukraine, where he married a Ukranian woman. He has six children.

More information is here:

In Gaza, fellow engineers and neighbors described Abu Sisi as a Hamas supporter, pointing to his senior position. He served as the deputy head of the electric power station and posts are traditionally staffed by Hamas loyalists…

Veronika Abu Sisi said the family decided to return to Ukraine after life in the Gaza Strip became unsafe for their three daughters and three sons and her husband flew to the Ukraine to apply for citizenship in January.

Several questions immediately pose themselves:

• Was Abu Sisi worried about Israel, or about Hamas? Why was it ‘unsafe’ for him to stay there?
• Why did Israel take the not-inconsiderable risk of sending agents to the Ukraine to abduct him?

Abu Sisi’s wife said that

the Israeli secret service Mossad carried out the abduction in order to sabotage a key electric power plant in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip where he worked as a senior manager. “I don’t suspect it, I am sure of it,” [Veronika] Abu Sisi told the AP in a telephone interview. “My husband was the heart of the only electric station in Gaza, or rather its brain. It’s a strategic object and they wanted to disable it.”

This is nonsense. If Israel wanted to disable the power plant, which is very unlikely, it could be done with one helicopter-fired missile.  The case of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Hamas operative assassinated in Dubai, illustrates the risk of a covert operation. Even if Ukrainian authorities cooperated, it would be expensive and politically dangerous. Given this, we can conclude that Israel was very anxious to get its hands on Abu Sisi.

What is really behind this? Here are some possibilities:

1. Abu Sisi is involved in the transfer of weapons — perhaps even chemical, biological or radiological ones — from Iran to Gaza.
2. Abu Sisi is involved in development of weapons by Hamas itself.
3. Abu Sisi has detailed information about Hamas’ offensive and defensive plans and fortifications.
4. Abu Sisi has information about the location of Gilad Shalit.
5. Abu Sisi has defected and is cooperating with the Mossad. In this case the abduction and detention is a smokescreen and he will be returned to the Ukraine or another ‘safe’ place after he has told them what he knows.

I don’t know which of these alternatives or something else is true. At some point we may find out, and I think the facts will prove very interesting indeed.

Technorati Tags: Abu Sisi, Israel, Hamas

Yesterday (“Cycle of stupidity at LA Times“) I quoted an editorial in that birdcage-liner thus:

Anyone who follows the news is familiar with how this cycle works. It might begin with a Palestinian child dying while stopped at an Israeli army checkpoint on his way to the hospital.

I suggested that the story of the Palestinian child was probably made up. But as a matter of fact, a Palestinian child did die recently:

Mohammed Nabil Taha, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy, died this week at the entrance to a Lebanese hospital after doctors refused to help him because his family could not afford to pay for medical treatment.

Taha’s tragic case highlights the plight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live in squalid refugee camps in Lebanon and who are the victims of an apartheid system that denies them access to work, education and medical care…

Can anyone imagine what would have happened if an Israeli hospital had abandoned a boy to die in its parking lot because his father did not have $1,500 to pay for his treatment? The UN Security Council would hold an emergency session and Israel would be strongly condemned and held responsible for the boy’s death…

Last year alone, some 180,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip entered Israel to receive medical treatment. Many were treated despite the fact that they did not have enough money to cover the bill.

In Israel, even a suicide bomber who is only (!) wounded while trying to kill Jews is entitled to the finest medical treatment. And there have been many instances where Palestinians who were wounded in attacks on Israel later ended up in some of Israel’s best hospitals.

— Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post

Here’s another ironic coincidence:

IDF forces and local paramedics helped save the life of a Palestinian woman and her newly born infant Wednesday, at the settlement where Fogel relatives are sitting Shiva for the five Israelis brutally murdered last week.

Just as IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz arrived in Neve Tzuf to offer his condolences, a Palestinian cab raced towards the community’s entrance. In it, soldiers and paramedics discovered a Palestinian woman in her 20s in advanced stages of labor and facing a life-threatening situation: The umbilical cord was wrapped around the young baby girl’s neck, endangering both her and her mother.

The quick action of settler paramedics and IDF troops deployed in the area saved the mother’s and baby’s life, prompting great excitement and emotions at the site where residents are still mourning the brutal death of five local family members. — YNet

Ironic indeed. But here’s a ‘coincidence’ that’s not ironic at all:

One day before the terror attack in the town of Itamar in which five members of an Israeli family were murdered in their home, PA TV broadcast a program honoring Ahlam Tamimi, the woman accomplice who drove the suicide terrorist to the Sbarro pizza restaurant in August, 2001. 15 people were murdered in the attack, 7 of them children.

One week before the terror attack in Itamar, PA TV honored another accomplice to a suicide attack. Fahami Mashahara drove a suicide bomber to Gilo in Jerusalem in 2001 who killed 19 and injured more than hundred. His daughter was invited to perform a song on PA TV…

Visiting Tamimi’s home, the PA TV crew interviewed her relatives, who expressed their longing for her and their hope for her release. The PA TV camera focused on a certificate awarded by Fatah to the terrorist accomplice, calling her “the heroic prisoner.”

PA TV honors Sbarro attack driver Ahlam Tamimi (courtesy Palwatch.org)

The award is decorated with photographs of Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, the Fatah logo, and a photograph of Tamimi herself.

Mahmoud Abbas says that the PA does not engage in incitement:

RAMALLAH: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday rejected Israeli accusations that the Palestinian Authority (PA) allows incitement against Israel in its mosques and schools…

On Sunday, Netanyahu said that “alarming incitement in Palestinian schools, mosques and media” had prepared the ground for the Itamar attack that led to the killing of five members of a Jewish settler family. [my italics]

Abbas said that there is no incitement. He added that the Palestinian Ministry of Waqf and Religious Affairs has decided that all mosques should deliver the same sermon, distributed by the ministry.

But… he didn’t say TV! Gotcha!

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs

The Usual Suspects, from the Israeli ‘peace camp’ to anti-Israel academics like Stephen Walt, have responded to the shocking murders in Itamar in the following general way:

Yes, it was horrible, one really shouldn’t cut the throats of little babies. But fundamentally it is the fault of ‘settlers’ for living in illegal settlements built on Palestinian land.

Yes, it looks bad for the Palestinians, if of course it turns out that Palestinians did it, but settlers resort to violence as well and violence breeds violence.

Yes it’s unfortunate for the surviving members of the family. But the most important bad thing that has come out of it is that Israel is responding by permitting more construction in settlements, and that damages the ‘peace process’.

I’m not going to quote or link to the people who say these sort of things. Look anywhere and you’ll find it, and far worse.

Let’s pretend that many of the people who say things like this are not actually thinking “good, they had it coming, maybe now they’ll get out.” Let’s pretend that they do not hate ‘settlers’ like those of Itamar.

[An aside: the same people who would call the residents of Itamar ‘religious fanatics’ for wanting to live in the Land of Israel often call for legitimizing Hamas, which, for religious reasons, would like to kill them.]

Even if we give these people the benefit of the doubt, what they are saying is nonsense:

Repeating over and over that settlements are illegal does not make it true. Itamar, which is built on state land, not ‘Palestinian’ land, is as legal as Tel Aviv. Until the ‘secure and recognized borders’ of UNSC resolution 242 are established, Jews have a right to live anywhere in the area of the League of Nations Mandate.

The ‘peace process’ is a scam, which cannot possibly bring peace. Based wholly on wishful thinking by the Israeli ‘peace camp’ and the provably false assumption that the PLO would respond to a sufficient amount of land and other concessions by ending its project to destroy Israel, depending on willful blindness toward the security considerations of proposed withdrawals, and cynically used by the Arabs to weaken Israel, the process that began with the Oslo agreement is probably the worst mistake made by any Israeli government since 1948.

‘Settler violence’ is a joke. Most of it didn’t actually happen, some of it is really self-defense, and some is childish vandalism. It is strongly opposed — and perpetrators punished — by the Israeli government, unlike the way terrorism is encouraged by the PA. There is no comparison.

Construction within existing settlements would not prejudice peace (if of course there was peace to be had). No additional land is being taken, and a fortiori, no ‘Palestinian’ land is expropriated. In this case, not only is the proposed construction within existing settlements, but they are settlements in the blocs near the Green Line that are expected to remain part of Israel in any possible peace agreement.

The terrorism and the incitement send a strong, clear message: the leaders and rank and file of Palestinian Arabs want the Jews out of the Land of Israel, and are willing to do bloody murder for their cause. After about 100 years, one would think the message would have been received by now.

Those who would like to see Israel replaced by an Arab state will not be moved by my arguments. But I invite those who still insist that the ‘peace process’ is worth pursuing, that it will lead to to a peaceful two-state solution, to take this occasion to wake up and smell the unmistakable smell of coffee.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Itamar