Israel: Wars and Preparations for More Wars

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April 4, 2007: There are still about a dozen Kassam rockets a week being fired from Gaza, into southern Israel. This, despite a ceasefire that was to have halted the rocket attacks. The Palestinians have too many factions to make a peace deal that will be fully effective. The Palestinians expect the Israelis to accept this. The Arab League has again demanded that Israel pull out of the Palestinian territories, using the 1967 borders, and then the Arab League will help work out a final peace deal. The Israelis don't trust the Arab League, or the Palestinians, to to what they say they will do. Everyone, Arab and Israeli alike, has lost faith in the Palestinians, who will, apparently, have to fight their civil war to a finish, before meaningful peace talks can resume.

April 3, 2007: Western journalists and aid workers have largely abandoned Gaza, because it's too dangerous. One Western reporter, kidnapped three weeks ago, has not even been heard from, and his captors remain a mystery. Aid workers are shot at and threatened. Despite all this, millions of dollars worth of Western food and other aid enters Gaza each week.

April 2, 2007: Egypt is becoming alarmed at the growing arms race in Gaza. Hamas is building a force of 10,000 armed men, and Fatah is trying to match it. Hamas is also building a new Kassam rocket, with a range of 16 kilometers, enabling it to reach the Israeli town of Ashkelon. The Hamas plan is to launch an attack, in coordination with another Hizbollah rocket barrage from the north. But the Israelis are preparing for this, and intend to clean out Gaza and southern Lebanon the next time around.

April 1, 2007: Egypt is alarmed at the increased rate of arms smuggling into Gaza. Not wanting to be accused of being "pro-Israel," the Egyptians have never made a major effort to stop the smuggling, but now they are discussing just such a move with Israel. The negative publicity is seen as preferable to the flood of refugees into Egypt, if Gaza blows up in civil war, and there's an Israeli invasion. Many of those Gaza refugees would be militants, willing to attack Egyptians for "betraying" the Palestinian cause. Egypt has seen the future, and they don't like it.

March 31, 2007: Both Fatah and Hamas have been recruiting, arming and training new gunmen. Apparently the current ceasefire in Gaza is only seen as an opportunity to get ready for a new round of fighting. This has upset Iran, which bankrolls and supports Hamas. Iran believes that if Hamas wins the civil war, Fatah will join the rising chorus of anti-Iranian sentiment in the Arab world. Iran wants to support the Palestinians, but until the Palestinians can finish with their civil war, there is no unified Palestinian government to deal with.

March 30, 2007: Terrorist groups affiliated with Fatah and Hamas continue to attempt terror attacks inside Israel. They are having no success. But to keep it that way, Israel has several thousand counter-terror specialists in action. This includes running an informant network in the West Bank, and frequent raids, to act on information from the informers.

 

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