This morning, two Grad missiles were fired from Gaza at Israel's seventh largest city, Beersheba, and a third Grad missile was fired at the Israeli city of Ofakim. Two of the Grads were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome anti-rocket system, while the third landed in an open field. Islamic Jihad, Iran's proxy in Gaza, has denied any involvement in the missile fire.
In short, we are witnessing a return to "normalcy," i.e. several rockets and mortar shells fired every day at civilian targets in southern Israel, which go ignored by pundits such as the Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, who recently portrayed Netanyahu as "trigger-happy" (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/opinion/dowd-liz-cheney-desist.html?ref=opinion).
Iran is intent upon provoking a Israeli ground operation against Gaza, which would deflect world opinion from its ongoing efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Thus far, however, even Islamic Jihad has avoided rocket fire on Tel Aviv, which is well within range of the Fajr missiles that have been smuggled into Gaza.
Interested in preserving its "militant" reputation vis-a-vis Fatah, Hamas has yet to rein in Islamic Jihad. The question today is whether Israel will accept a return to the preexisting status quo, i.e. daily rocket and mortar fire into southern Israel.
This is not over.
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The missiles aimed at Israeli cities will go unreported by the world media. They only start reporting when they can present the situation as tit for tat. They never report tit alone.
ReplyDeleteAnd everything out here is initiated by Palestinian-Iranian tit.
Correct. I totally agree.
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