via memeorandum
A Grad missile hit a shopping mall in Ashkelon yesterday injuring 15.
Israel believes Islamic Jihad is getting the Grads from Iran. “It’s part of the Iranian war against Israel,” former deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh told Israel Radio.
That’s pretty clear. And it’s been with Egypt’s connivance.
Peres is now speaking in front of Bush. The part about “we’ll respond at the right time” and wishing a speedy recovery to the wounded was said in Hebrew, not in English.
Number of days since last Israeli injured by rocket/mortar fire: 0
Number of days since last Israeli killed by rocket/mortar fire: pending updates.
The Washington Post barely covered the attack, focusing instead on President Bush’s visit to Israel.
Four Palestinians were killed in Gaza during clashes with the Israeli military. Medical officials said that two of the dead were civilians. Later, a rocket fired from Gaza slammed into a busy shopping mall in the coastal city of Ashkelon. Sixteen people were wounded, three of them seriously, including a mother and her daughter, according to Israeli hospital and police officials. A group affiliated with Hamas took responsibility for the attack.Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the attack “entirely intolerable” and said Israel will “take the necessary steps so that this will stop.”
The violence was a reminder of the obstacles facing negotiators as they attempt to cobble together a peace deal — one that Bush has said he wants completed by the end of his term in January.
By this account, a firefight between the IDF and terrorists is as much a problem as a terror attack against civilians.
President Bush did make a nice statement.
“I suspect if you looked back 60 years ago and tried to guess where Israel would be at that time, it would be hard to be able to project such a prosperous, hopeful land,” Bush said after meeting with Peres. “I doubt people would have been able to see the modern Israel, which is one reason I bring so much optimism to the Middle East, because what happened here is possible everywhere.”Bush elicited a raucous standing ovation from a crowd that included other world leaders and prominent Jewish figures at a ceremony Wednesday night marking the U.S.-Israel alliance.
And I suspect that if you went back 15 years and anticipated what the nascent Palestinian state would look like it would look like you wouldn’t necessarily be surprised. It was foolish to trust Arafat. The changes necessary in the Palestinian world for their to be peace have yet to take place. As long as Palestinian nationalism is motivated more by the destruction of Israel than the building of a society, that society won’t be built.
The New York Times focused more on the terror attack and picked up this amusing bit.
The timing, though, has been difficult for Mr. Bush, in part because Mr. Olmert is the subject of a corruption investigation that some say could cost him his job. When Mr. Bush arrived in Tel Aviv Wednesday morning, Mr. Olmert’s banter with the White House national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, was picked up by a sensitive microphone.“Holding on, holding on. Don’t worry,†Mr. Olmert was overheard telling Mr. Hadley.
No word if Secretary Rice accepted DM Barak’s invitation.
See Meryl’s post from yesterday.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
