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PrintDecember 17, 2007
Rocketing Israel
Last Wednesday, continuing their seven year daily destructive rocket carnage towards Israel, Arabs in Gaza fired:
A Qassam barrage hit the western Negev Wednesday, as Palestinians fired 18 Qassam rockets at Sderot. One girl was lightly wounded in the leg by shrapnel, and several other people suffered shock.
Both the Islamic Jihad's al-Quds Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committees' Salah al-Din Brigades claimed responsibility for the rockets
And the next day, during Gazan daily bombing of the southern civilian Israeli town of Sderot and the Negev desert area:
A rocket fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza on Thursday struck near a synagogue in the Israeli town of Sderot, injuring a woman and damaging a home, an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman said.The rocket was one of at least five that hit the area Thursday
Yesterday in Israel, a rocket from Gaza
[W]ounded a 2-year-old boy in a community on the Gaza-Israel border, Israeli police and rescue services said Sunday.
The toddler was hit by shrapnel and taken to hospital, and his mother was being treated for shock, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
On and on and on, ad nauseum, ad destructium.
Arafat launched his intifada war against Israel at the end of the negotiations of an Israeli-Palestinian road map peace process in 2001. As a result of this peace process, in just 2007 alone:
As of the end of November 2007, there has been a total of 2,383 identified rocket hits in and around the western Negev settlements, with the southern city of Sderot as a priority and drawing 45% of the rockets which landed on inhabited areas.
This guerrilla type warfare by the Gazans:
allows them to disrupt the life and rend the social fabric of the civilian population living with range, to bypass the security fence Israel constructed in the Gaza Strip and to create a kind of balance of terror to hamper the Israeli security forces' counterterrorist activities. That strategic conception was primarily inspired by Hezbollah's Lebanese model , which was regarded as successful before the Israeli withdrawal from the security zone and during the second Lebanon war. Syria and Iran support the terrorist organizations' efforts to copy the Lebanese model in the Palestinian Authority with know-how, training and the purchase of standard rockets.
Since 2001 rocket fire has been directly responsible for the deaths of ten Israeli civilians , nine of them Sderot residents. In addition, 433 individuals have been wounded, the overwhelming majority of them civilians, and during the past year and a half more than 1,600 instances of stress were reported. Mortar fire has been responsible for the deaths of ten individuals, eight civilians and two IDF soldiers . Of the 150 wounded, 80 were civilians and 70 soldiers.
In addition to the physical injuries and deaths:
The continued attacks have an accumulated psychological impact on the population and destroy the sense of security previously had by more than 190,000 people, who now live under the potential threat of daily rocket and mortar shell attacks . They also disrupt the routine of daily life in all the western Negev settlements, cause residents to move away (especially from Sderot), and expose the political echelons and the IDF to harsh criticism. The continuing fire hampers efforts to advance a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians by creating a situation of constant rocket fire and constant Israelis countermeasures.
Despite these problems most of the Sderot residents are determined to remain in their homes and refuse to leave.
Some of the Israeli countermeasures consist of quick forays into Gaza, from which Israeli withdrew over two years ago, to try to take out the terrorists and the rocket launchers. Unlike the Arabs, who consider all of Israel enemy territory and deliberately strike civilian areas, the Israelis try to limit their strikes to military targets and individuals. Knowing this, the Arab terrorists purposely launch their rockets from schools, hospitals and other civilian sites; they live and mingle in apartments and civilian areas, not in a separate military community.
In light of the increased rocket and other terrorist attacks and weapons smuggling into Gaza, to protect itself Israel has closed its borders with them; allowing Gaza to import and export essential items only.
While remaining fairly silent on the continuing terrorist attacks on Israel's civilian population by Arabs and despite denying the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) access to its captured Israeli soldier hostages, a gross violation of international law, the (ICRC) has harshly condemned these Israeli protective defense measures, recently complaining:
"The measures imposed by Israel come at an enormous humanitarian cost, leaving the people living under occupation with just enough to survive, but not enough to live a normal and dignified life," said Beatrice Megevand Roggo, the Red Cross' head of operations for the Middle East and North Africa.
However the ICRC is not a neutral organization; for instance, joining with its Moslem nation counterpart, the Red Crescent Society, both refused to co-operate with their Israeli equivalent, Red Shield of David, objecting to the six pointed star, until Israel substituted a less Jewish symbol. But still the former two's attitude towards Israel is not one of co-operation or neutrality.
As noted here ,yesterday the Arabs certainly are able to live their ideal of "a normal and dignified life" when
Tens of thousands of Palestinians participated in a main rally organized by Hamas in the center of Gaza City in what was seen as one of the movement's biggest shows of force. Shouting, "We won't recognize Israel," the Hamas supporters burned Israeli flags and chanted slogans against the US. The rally was held in the same square where thousands of Fatah supporters attended a memorial for Yasser Arafat last month.
And of course the rights of Israelis "to live a normal and dignified life," free from constant rocket attacks or fear of being blown up in their homes, schools or restaurants are, as judged by the shrieking silence of the ICRC and its cohorts, is at best, irrelevant.
