ASHKELON, ISRAEL—The air is thick with sirens and every few hours a concussive boom tells you why — another Palestinian rocket punched through Israel’s less-than-impervious “Iron Dome,” spreading fear, if not drawing actual blood, in this coastal city that knows the drill so well.
They’ve seen this movie before here in Ashkelon. In 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010, this sleepy town of 120,000 — whose claims to fame include the world’s biggest desalination plant and a brewery cranking out sorrow-drowning Carlsberg and Tuborg by the truckload — has drawn the rockets of Gaza, just 13 kilometres south.
For Ashkelon, the movie doesn’t always end in war. But this time another rumble can be heard — the ominous thunder of flatbed military trucks heaving with payloads of Mark II Merkava tanks heading south on Route 4. The Israel Defense Forces buildup is proceeding apace for what could soon be a multi-pronged invasion of Gaza.
We’ve seen that movie before, too. Multiple times. The 2006 war began with the rocketmen of Gaza and a crushing response from Israeli artillery. One of those shells took out a Palestinian family on a beach picnic and Hamas and friends answered with the audacious raid ending in the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Then came a bloody IDF ground invasion, and soon thereafter, Hezbollah jumped in, raining deadlier rocket hellfire from the north. Thus was the Second Lebanon War born.
But that’s where the script ends, as five days of withering Israeli aerial bombardment bring re-election-seeking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to an unprecedented tipping point — does he really want to go all in, inviting the full wrath of the Arab Spring that surrounds him?
Thus far the diplomatic cover is extraordinary, including an overt signal from Washington that U.S President Barack Obama will merely watch from afar. “The Israelis are going to make decisions about their own military tactics and operations. What we want is the same thing the Israelis want, which is an end to the rocket fire coming out of Gaza,” the White House deputy national security adviser said Saturday.
That apparent green light sparked another round of tub-thumping from Netanyahu’s hawkish inner circle. Interior Minister Eli Yishai later pronounced that “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for 40 years.”
Yishai’s remarks followed a day in which the Israel bombarded Hamas-ruled Gaza with some 300 airstrikes, expanding the target list to include the militant Islamist group’s political offices, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s now-flattened three-storey headquarters.
Hamas officials said a building used by Hamas and foreign media outlets for broadcasts was bombed, according to the Associated Press.
The onslaught brought the reported death toll in Gaza to 48 since the strikes began, including 15 civilians. Three Israeli civilians have been killed thus far from a barrage of some 500 Palestinian rockets since the beginning of what the IDF calls Operation Pillar of Defense. Iron Dome batteries had intercepted 246 of the projectiles as of Saturday evening, Israeli officials said, including another rare longer-range rocket bound of Tel Aviv.
Israel has authorized the mobilization of as many as 75,000 reservists and many of them could be seen reporting for duty in various locations south of Ashkelon as night fell. A soldier manning a flying checkpoint just north of Erez, the main crossing to Gaza, prevented the Toronto Star from continuing south, saying, “It’s not just dangerous. It’s a closed military zone.” Asked whether an invasion was imminent, the soldier shrugged, “I hope not.”
Hamas is detaining 22 foreign nationals trying to exit the Gaza Strip, one of them being a Canadian, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
In Egypt, meanwhile, frantic diplomatic efforts toward a ceasefire continued, including meetings involving Qatar, Turkey and exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal. The Arab League met separately, drafting a tentative plan to send chief Nabil Elaraby and a team of Arab foreign ministers to Gaza on Sunday.
Israelis, meanwhile, continued to rally around their flag, galvanized by collective determination to rid Gaza of the capacity to threaten the previously untouched cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with rocket fire. Only a few lone voices, thus far, are daring to awaken the memory of just how often Israel wins the ground war, only to lose the larger war of global opinion, when major conflict erupts.
Analyst Chemi Shalev, writing late Saturday in Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, was one such voice in the wilderness, concluding that even with sympathetic sounds from world leaders and a small army of Israeli spokespeople working social media, “It’s all downhill from here.”
The “inevitable bottom line,” wrote Shalev, is that the continuing occupation of the West Bank “prevents Israel from maintaining the higher moral ground for any length of time.
“No matter how despicable the specific group Israel is fighting against, how villainous his deeds or how depraved his ideology, the ‘David versus Goliath’ scenario inevitably kicks in, and it is Israel, much to its surprise, that is once again cast as the giant brute imposing his will.”
Clarification: The article states that in June 2006 an Israeli shell killed a Palestinian family on a beach picnic. An Israel Defence Forces probe cleared itself of any responsibility and suggested that a Hamas explosive was the likely cause. Subsequent investigation by Human Rights Watch disputed those findings and called for an independent investigation. Israel rejected calls for an international inquiry.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Mitch Potter
They’ve seen this movie before here in Ashkelon. In 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010, this sleepy town of 120,000 — whose claims to fame include the world’s biggest desalination plant and a brewery cranking out sorrow-drowning Carlsberg and Tuborg by the truckload — has drawn the rockets of Gaza, just 13 kilometres south.
For Ashkelon, the movie doesn’t always end in war. But this time another rumble can be heard — the ominous thunder of flatbed military trucks heaving with payloads of Mark II Merkava tanks heading south on Route 4. The Israel Defense Forces buildup is proceeding apace for what could soon be a multi-pronged invasion of Gaza.
We’ve seen that movie before, too. Multiple times. The 2006 war began with the rocketmen of Gaza and a crushing response from Israeli artillery. One of those shells took out a Palestinian family on a beach picnic and Hamas and friends answered with the audacious raid ending in the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Then came a bloody IDF ground invasion, and soon thereafter, Hezbollah jumped in, raining deadlier rocket hellfire from the north. Thus was the Second Lebanon War born.
But that’s where the script ends, as five days of withering Israeli aerial bombardment bring re-election-seeking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to an unprecedented tipping point — does he really want to go all in, inviting the full wrath of the Arab Spring that surrounds him?
Thus far the diplomatic cover is extraordinary, including an overt signal from Washington that U.S President Barack Obama will merely watch from afar. “The Israelis are going to make decisions about their own military tactics and operations. What we want is the same thing the Israelis want, which is an end to the rocket fire coming out of Gaza,” the White House deputy national security adviser said Saturday.
That apparent green light sparked another round of tub-thumping from Netanyahu’s hawkish inner circle. Interior Minister Eli Yishai later pronounced that “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for 40 years.”
Yishai’s remarks followed a day in which the Israel bombarded Hamas-ruled Gaza with some 300 airstrikes, expanding the target list to include the militant Islamist group’s political offices, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s now-flattened three-storey headquarters.
Hamas officials said a building used by Hamas and foreign media outlets for broadcasts was bombed, according to the Associated Press.
The onslaught brought the reported death toll in Gaza to 48 since the strikes began, including 15 civilians. Three Israeli civilians have been killed thus far from a barrage of some 500 Palestinian rockets since the beginning of what the IDF calls Operation Pillar of Defense. Iron Dome batteries had intercepted 246 of the projectiles as of Saturday evening, Israeli officials said, including another rare longer-range rocket bound of Tel Aviv.
Israel has authorized the mobilization of as many as 75,000 reservists and many of them could be seen reporting for duty in various locations south of Ashkelon as night fell. A soldier manning a flying checkpoint just north of Erez, the main crossing to Gaza, prevented the Toronto Star from continuing south, saying, “It’s not just dangerous. It’s a closed military zone.” Asked whether an invasion was imminent, the soldier shrugged, “I hope not.”
Hamas is detaining 22 foreign nationals trying to exit the Gaza Strip, one of them being a Canadian, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
In Egypt, meanwhile, frantic diplomatic efforts toward a ceasefire continued, including meetings involving Qatar, Turkey and exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal. The Arab League met separately, drafting a tentative plan to send chief Nabil Elaraby and a team of Arab foreign ministers to Gaza on Sunday.
Israelis, meanwhile, continued to rally around their flag, galvanized by collective determination to rid Gaza of the capacity to threaten the previously untouched cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with rocket fire. Only a few lone voices, thus far, are daring to awaken the memory of just how often Israel wins the ground war, only to lose the larger war of global opinion, when major conflict erupts.
Analyst Chemi Shalev, writing late Saturday in Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, was one such voice in the wilderness, concluding that even with sympathetic sounds from world leaders and a small army of Israeli spokespeople working social media, “It’s all downhill from here.”
The “inevitable bottom line,” wrote Shalev, is that the continuing occupation of the West Bank “prevents Israel from maintaining the higher moral ground for any length of time.
“No matter how despicable the specific group Israel is fighting against, how villainous his deeds or how depraved his ideology, the ‘David versus Goliath’ scenario inevitably kicks in, and it is Israel, much to its surprise, that is once again cast as the giant brute imposing his will.”
Clarification: The article states that in June 2006 an Israeli shell killed a Palestinian family on a beach picnic. An Israel Defence Forces probe cleared itself of any responsibility and suggested that a Hamas explosive was the likely cause. Subsequent investigation by Human Rights Watch disputed those findings and called for an independent investigation. Israel rejected calls for an international inquiry.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Mitch Potter
No comments:
Post a Comment