Yesterday’s Qassam attack against Ashkelon didn’t yet make it into the NY Times report about the fighting between Israel and Hamas, but this did:
Military officials said that the initial army raid was a “pinpoint†operation aimed at thwarting a specific threat, and that Israel remained committed to the truce.
The truce has largely held so far, despite some sporadic rocket and mortar fire by Gaza renegades and complaints from Hamas that Israel has not gone far enough in easing the economic embargo on the area.
Note how the violations of the “truce” are attributed to “renegades.” It’s as if Hamas couldn’t stop the attacks if they wanted to. And then without qualification there’s the mention of Hamas’s complaint against Israel, with no context.
How about this:
Hamas, the dominant faction in the Palestinian government, is building its military capacity in the Gaza Strip, constructing tunnels and underground bunkers and smuggling in ground-to-air missiles and military-grade explosives, senior Israeli officials say.
The officials, including a top military commander who spoke in an interview on Friday, said that Hamas had learned tactics from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, which brought in and stored thousands of rockets in bunkers near the northern Israeli border before its war with Israel last summer.
So that was before the truce? Fine, this example have been since the truce.
Everything that goes into Gaza, either from Egyptian tunnels or from Israel, gets taken by Hamas. Hamas takes everything it needs first and then places the rest on the market, heavily taxing it to ensure that the “international boycott” against that terror organization is meaningless.
Cement is a major item that Hamas covets. As the Shin Bet’s Yuval Diskin testified yesterday, Hamas is using the cement it is receiving to build fortified bunkers and tunnels to transport and store weapons.
And why is this relevant? The end of the Times’s report tells us:
On Tuesday, a World Bank delegation opened a sewer project, long delayed by the standoff between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza to prevent raw sewage from spilling into residential areas, The A.P. reported.
The $63 million project is the initiative of Tony Blair, the international envoy for the Middle East, and the opening brought the highest-level World Bank delegation to visit Gaza in three years.
The delegation met with representatives of the Palestinian Water Authority, but not with members of Hamas, which has run Gaza since it seized power in June 2007.
But it doesn’t tell us the rest of the story. Backspin though, didn’t forget.
Israel’s blockade of Gaza is neither capricious nor arbitrary. It may not be airtight, but it is designed to prevent Hamas from building up its capacity to attack Israel. Hamas has shown that it will use anything to build up its fortifications or to attack Israel. The “truce” has simply been downtime as Hamas prepares to attack Israel again. What’s remarkable (if somewhat unwise, in my view) has been Israel’s forebearance.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
