Tag Archives: Hamas terror

Jul 13 2014

Hamas rockets are now hitting almost all of Isreal


First Hamas rocket hits Nahariya. All parts of Israel within range from Gaza on Day Six of IDF operation

Re-Post from DEBKAfile Special Report July 13, 2014, 7:30 PM (IDT)

Nahariya, a small resort town 15 minutes drive from the Lebanese border, Sunday, July 13, had the unwanted distinction of being the northernmost Israeli town to be hit by a Hamas rocket from the Gaza Strip. The rocket traveled 172 km to land harmlessly outside the town – more than twice the distance from Gaza to Tel Aviv, which took its second round of Hamas rockets in two days. Mayor Jackie Sabag of Nahariya said he had fortunately not taken the advice of the Home Command to shut the city’s shelters after rockets were fired Friday and Saturday from Lebanon.

Nahariya, frequently blasted by Hizballah Katyushas in the past, can now “boast” it was targeted by Hamas as well.
Sunday, Day Six of Operation Defensive Edge, saw another first: an Israeli ground incursion of the Gaza Strip. An sea commando Shayetet 13 unit landed in the western Gaza Strip to raid a cluster of rocket launchers. It was forced to retreat under heavy fire after four commandos were lightly injured. The target was then hit by the unit’s air cover.
By sundown Sunday, 65 Palestinian rockets had been fired into Israel – 12 shot down by Iron Dome – and more were on the way. The last salvo covered a long swathe from Rishon Lezion, through Tel Aviv and its satellite towns, including the big port of Ashdod and Hadera, as well as Israeli locales bordering on Gaza.
An early rocket directed at Ben Gurion airport hit Modiin.

The only casualty was a 16-year old Israeli boy, who was seriously injured in Ashkelon by falling rocket shrapnel.

From Saturday night, the IDF conducted 130 air strikes. The Palestinian death toll continued to climb, reaching 170, despite IDF efforts to avoid civilian casualties when aiming at “terrorist” chiefs.

Several thousands of residents in northern Gaza have heeded IDF warnings by leaflets to evacuate their homes temporarily for their own safety, ahead of an imminent major Israeli operation against the rocket launchers and weapons stores maintained by Hamas in residential areas. The IDF calculates that 40 percent of all Hamas-Jihad Islami rockets were fired from northern Gaza.
UNWRA in the Gaza Strip opened 10 schools to accommodate the refugees, who continued to pour in, in the face of insistent Hamas calls not to leave their homes.

As the Israeli security cabinet conducted almost daily emergency sessions with army chiefs to determine their next steps, two controversies consumed the attention of Israeli media and the pundits: One revolves around the wisdom of sending ground troops into the Gaza Strip to finish the job of destroying Hamas-Jihad missile capabilities, or opting for half a cake, meaning a ceasefire – any ceasefire – if one becomes available. It is commonly agreed that a premature ceasefire would only hold up until Hamas decides to launch its next rocket blitz.
The last time it took eighteen months. The next one is predicted for six months time.

Estimates on the accessibility of a ceasefire are also constantly tossed back and forth.

debkafile’s Middle East sources, after examining the options, have concluded that, in the present situation, a truce is way out of reach. Israeli officials, when asked, said Sunday that no serious framework had developed.
In some Western diplomatic circles, there is talk of resuscitating the 2012 truce negotiated – or rather, dictated – by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – since retired; Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi – since ousted and jailed; Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan – rejected by both sides; and the emir of Qatar – deposed.

Not only have most of those figures come and gone or lost their clout, but the Middle East has undergone fundamental political, military and strategic change from end to end.
As things stand now, Qatar is no longer as rich as it was and, for Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the leading Sunni powers in the region, the Muslim Brotherhood is their archenemy, and neither would be eager to rescue MB’s offshoot Hamas from the cycle of turbulence in conjured up in the first place by kidnapping and murdering three Israeli teenagers last month.
Undeterred, US Secretary of State John Kerry was due to discuss ways to end the Gaza violence with UK, French and German foreign ministers in Vienna Sunday on the sidelines of the nuclear talks with Iran.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague talked by phone to Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman Saturday.

Last week, Middle East Quartet Special Envoy Tony Blair met Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in Cairo, and German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier is expected Tuesday for talks with Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who has been trying without much success to make himself relevant to the crisis.

All these well-intentioned emissaries will be told that Israel will stop bombing when Hamas stops shooting.
They will also find Hamas a very hard nut to crack.
Contrary to some reports that the Palestinian Islamist extremists are ready to crawl to bring Israel’s air assaults to an end, Hamas leaders are in fact far from dissatisfied with what they have achieved so far:

1) They have managed to keep more than 5 million Israelis caged in or near air raid shelters for the second week in a row.
2) They have not cracked under more than 1,340 air strikes in six days and their command structure and operatives remain fully functional.,
3) Although the conflict is asymmetrical, Hamas has made it a standoff with neither side able to claim the upper hand.
4) The Hamas kidnappers who murdered the three Israel boys are still at large.

Jul 13 2014

Israeli Air Force Smashing Hamas to Pieces


The IAF should keep this up until all the targets all gone!

Jul 12 2014

Netanyahu has a plan: put the IDF in control of West Bank security


An interesting idea Hamas with political control and the IMF for security but I think it is unsellable and unworkable so there must be more to this.

Re-post from DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis July 12, 2014, 12:58 PM (IDT)

For five days, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon opted to confront Hamas rockets with Israel’s air force alone, without the IDF at large. They were not even willing to approve a small-scale raid by special forces for pinpointing a few key targets, as a pretext for helping Netanyahu deny widespread allegations that he is again running away from full-scale military action.

Early Saturday, July 12, saw a few hours respite from Palestinian rocket fire before the first sirens starting wailing again in the western Negev and central Israel.

The rockets fired during this week came in an ever widening arc. Israel air strikes wrought heavy surface damage to the Gaza Strip, but scarcely scratched its rocket capabilities.

Friday night, air strikes hit 60 Palestinian targets, mostly buried missile launchers and arms stores, one cached in the Nuseirat mosque, which was razed except for the minaret, and others in a school and three multistory buildings. Before they were bombed, civilians were warned to get out of harm’s way.

The IDF spokesman reported 10 “terrorists” killed, including rocket team leaders. The Palestinians report their total death toll had climbed to 121 and 900 injured.

Israel reported 750 Palestinian rockets launched in five days, with no fatalities, and 82 people injured, many of them suffering the effects of shock.
Five days after Operation Protective Edge was launched to terminate the Hams rocket offensive, it was beginning to be blunted by the fading prospect of ground action. The decision for the time being not to launch ground forces into the Gaza Strip to finish the job, by reaching the thousands of rockets concealed by Hamas and Jihad Islami underground was evident from the news leaking out of the security and policy cabinet meeting held in Tel Aviv on Friday, July 11, and the words of Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz – “We stand ready for all possible action and await nothing more than a political decision.”

They reflected Netanyahu’s decision to hold off on a ground incursion, so long as Iron Dome batteries shoot rockets down before they hit population centers and cause fatalities, and Israelis remain remarkably obedient to the Home Command’s rules for keeping safe.

The prime minister exercised the same sort of restraint in meting out punishment to the same Hamas for abducting and murdering the three Israeli teenagers, Gil-Ad Shear, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach, whose bodies were discovered in a Palestinian West Bank village on June 27.

In the space of weeks, therefore, the Palestinian Islamist organization has twice got away with barbaric acts of terror without having to endure the full might of Israel’s armed forces.

This is consistent with the policies Netanyahu has pursued for five years.

In his televised news conference Friday, the prime minister publicly admitted for the first time the presence of al Qaeda forces around Israel’s borders – to the east, in Iraq and Jordan; to the north, in Syria and Lebanon; and to the south in the Gaza Strip and Sinai.

Although, he seemed to lump Hamas in with the looming Islamist menace, Netanyahu’s answers to reporters’ questions turned abruptly at this point to the issue of Judea and Samaria, left open by the breakdown of the umpteenth round of Israel-Palestinian peace talks earlier this year.

He stressed that in the current circumstances, it was incumbent on Israel to retain its armed forces in the West Bank. If Hamas was permitted to move in, it would “create 20 new Gazas on the West Bank,” he warned.

It may therefore be determined that the Netanyahu government has sketched in the lines of the end-game for Operation Protective Edge: Israel will abstain from a ground incursion and crushing Hamas rule of the Gaza Strip, but will claim in return international-Palestinian and pan-Arab sanction for the IDF to be assigned responsibility for the security of the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria.

This plan was behind Netanyahu’s comment Friday that the round of conversations he held with world leaders were “good” after which he pledged that “no international pressure would prevent us from acting against a terrorist organization aspiring to destroy us,” and “We will continue to defend our home front, the citizens of Israel, with resolve and prudence.”
What the prime minister appeared to be driving at was this: Israel would eradicate a major portion of Hamas’ military resources in Gaza but leave it in power – enfeebled and surrounded by Iron Dome batteries. IDF security control of the West Bank would be internationally accepted as the regional protector for holding al Qaeda belligerency back from swarming out of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

Netanyahu’s plan provides Israel with an exit strategy from the Gaza operation, without requiring a ceasefire, which Hamas has anyway flatly refused to accept, except on ridiculously tall terms. But he will find his plan hard to sell outside Jerusalem.