Israel is sending in enough diesel and cooking gas to Gaza to keep Gazans in electricity for a week. As a thank-you note, Palestinians sent only nine kassams into southern Israel on Monday, and only four so far today. Reuters and the AP both buried and minimized the rocket attacks. And though Condi Rice called the Israelis and told them not to cause a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, there is no word whether she mentioned the rocket attacks, which caused the blockade to begin with. As an extra added bonus, Palestinian snipers are firing at Israeli farmers today.
Palestinians opened fire Tuesday morning at farmers working in a field near Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha in southern Israel. There were no reports of injuries. An IDF force fired back at the shooters, and the farmers stopped their work and were removed from the field.
An Ecuadorian volunteer was murdered by a Palestinian simper in the same area last week.
Seven Qassam rockets and one mortar shells landed in Israel since the morning hours. There were no reports of injuries, but damage was caused to crops in a kibbutz at the Sdot Negev regional council.
Two barrages were fired shortly before 8 am, as Sderot’s children were making their way to school.
That’s a regular tactic of the Palestinians. They deliberately fire the rockets when they know Israeli children are walking to school, in the hopes of killing them. So far, they’ve missed. So far. The world thinks that this is a perfectly fine result. And so, apparently, do Israeli ministry spokesmen.
Despite protests from the international community and aid agencies against the lockdown, the Israeli government said the policy had been effective in halting rocket fire.
“What we see is that the number of Qassam rockets was decreased dramatically,” foreign ministry spokesman Mr Mekel told the BBC.
“Last week there were about 200 rockets altogether. And now there was two today, and four yesterday… So since we are monitoring it we decided that at this time we could ease this blockade,” he said.
And the very last paragraph of the BBC story?
However another rocket struck the nearby Israeli town of Sderot on Tuesday.
Even Israeli defense officials think they’ve achieved something:
A senior defense official told Ynet Monday evening that the sharp decrease in rocket attacks from Gaza in the last couple of days proves that “the Palestinians got the message,” conveyed by Israel through the closure on the Strip.
“We got the message across. Hamas understood the equation: A continuation of the rocket fire would lead to Israeli pressure against armed groups and civilians.
“We do not plan to cause a humanitarian catastrophe and we will transfer diesel fuel to the power plant, as well as medicines, but not fuel for cars or other commodities, but they now realize they will not get fuel or other luxuries as well.
This is the message that the Palestinians received:
Two Qassam rockets fired from northen Gaza Tuesday landed near the Sdot Negev Regional Council.
No injuries were reported, but some of the council’s crops were damaged.
And this:
A Qassam rocket fired from northern Gaza Tuesday landed south of Ashkelon.
No injuries or damage were reported.
And this:
Palestinians opened fire at IDF forces near the border fence in the southern Gaza Strip, in two separate incidents.
There were no reports of injuries or damage in both incidents.
The message: Israel will not follow through with measures needed to stop Palestinian terrorists in Gaza from trying to murder Israelis.
And the world got the message, too: Any time Israel tries to defend herself from terrorists, slap her down, hard. Israel will cave.
The UN Security Council was to meet in emergency session Tuesday on the humanitarian crisis triggered by Israel’s crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip, in response to the firing of rockets into the Jewish state.
The 15-member body was to meet at 10 am (1500 GMT) at the request of Arab UN ambassadors and the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The decision to hold the emergency session was made during closed-door consultations late Monday amid a growing international outcry at what the European Union termed the “collective punishment” of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents.
The strong international reaction and warnings of a humanitarian crisis led Israel Monday to ease its blockade of Gaza, allowing in some fuel and medicine.
Watch for a condemnation of Israel’s actions. And the UN Human Wrongs Council will be meeting on this issue as well. And probably another statement from Condi telling Israel not to cause hardship—sorry, a “humanitarian crisis”—in Gaza.
Looks like I was dead wrong last night. Israel loses another one.