Israel Update for March 2008

David Dolan

March roared in like a lion as Hamas continued to pulverize Israeli communities in what became the group's largest rocket barrage since Jewish residents and IDF forces evacuated the Gaza Strip in August 2005. An Israeli man was killed when a rocket exploded in the besieged town of Sderot. For the first time, longer range Grad rockets supplied by Iran were aimed at the coastal city of Ashkelon, hitting several homes and cars. Israeli ground forces then entered the Gaza Strip, attacking rocket firing positions amid heavy Hamas counterattacks, which caused additional casualties on both sides.

The threatened Hamas terrorist reaction to "Operation Hot Winter" came swift and furious, as a young Arab resident of Jerusalem infiltrated a Jewish seminary in the heart of Israel's capital city. The lone terrorist fired hundreds of bullets at dozens of young students studying there, killing seven teenage males and one young adult, and wounding eight others. That in turn ignited Orthodox-led rioting one week later in the Jerusalem Arab neighborhood where the terrorist had resided with his parents.

Meanwhile Israeli forces were ordered on heightened alert as the 40 day official mourning period for an assassinated Hizbullah leader with close ties to Iran came to an end. The rogue Iranian regime and its Lebanese militia proxy force have vowed to avenge the Damascus slaying-which they blame on Israel-in a major way. Saying Iranian, Syrian and Al Qaida leaders were whipping up war fever with both Palestinian and Lebanese Islamic militant groups, security officials announced that the largest ever home front exercises will be held throughout the country in early April.

The end of the mourning period coincided with a visit to Israel by American Vice President Dick Cheney, which closely followed a two day stopover by Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain. Both US politicians spoke strongly about the continuing Iranian-Hizbullah-Hamas threat against Israel, vowing to stand with the Jewish state if any major military action breaks out.

Hamas On The Warpath

The Hamas rocket blitz against Israeli civilian centers began just one day after last month's news report was filed. On Tuesday night, February 26, Israeli military forces spotted a wanted Islamic Jihad terrorist leader operating near the Gaza border fence. They said he was apparently involved in an operation to plant landmines near the security fence (one later killed an Israeli soldier). He was quickly shot dead by IDF marksmen.

Early the next day, Israeli troops entered the Palestinian town of Nablus, north of Jerusalem, to arrest members of a Fatah terror cell they said was planning to carry out an imminent attack in a nearby Israeli city. In the ensuing firefight, one of the wanted men was killed and four others wounded. Later that morning, Israeli Air Force jets went into action over the Gaza Strip, bombing a van that officials said was transporting five wanted Hamas gunmen who had recently returned to the area after receiving military training in Syria and Iran.

Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip then ordered their rocket squads into full-scale action, lobbing over 40 Kassam rockets into the nearby Israeli town of Sderot in just a matter of hours. One rocket killed a 47 year old student from the Sderot's Sapir College, which has struggled to stay open during the past few months of escalating rocket assaults upon the beleaguered town.

The victim, Ronnie Yechiya, left behind a bereaved wife and four children. Several of the 7,000 students who attend the college were wounded as the rocket exploded in a parking lot next to Yechiya's car. Israeli jets went into immediate action, targeting the Palestinian squad that fired the rockets. At least one of the shooters was killed in that action.

Ashkelon Under Fire

Within hours of the rocket barrage and IDF response, the Israeli coastal resort city of Ashkelon-with around 120,000 residents-came under sustained Palestinian rocket assault for the first time ever. At least four Grad rockets landed in the city just after sunset, one close to the city's Barzilai hospital where some of the Israeli students wounded earlier in the day were being treated. Another landed in the Mediterranean Sea close to the Dan Hotel, the city's largest seafront resort. A third Grad, apparently targeting city hall, destroyed the car of Ashkelon's mayor.

Security officials say the advanced rockets, with a range of at least 10 miles compared to the Kassam's average four mile limit, and with explosive warheads some three times more powerful than the homemade Palestinian rockets, were recently smuggled into the Gaza Strip after being supplied to Hamas by Iran, possibly via Syria. A media source at the scene of the Grad explosion that destroyed the mayor's car told me officials found markings in the Iranian Farsi language on fragments of the rocket.

Israeli government and military leaders had always warned that a major attack upon the bustling coastal city would be considered a serious escalation in the Iranian-backed Muslim fundamentalist jihad war against the detested Jewish state. The decision was then taken at the highest levels to target the Gaza City offices of former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, despite the fact that the senior Hamas politician was known to be in hiding since the group stepped up its rocket attacks in mid-February. The Air Force operation, carried out in the early hours of February 28, partially destroyed the empty offices. Sadly, the raid also killed a baby and wounded around 30 Palestinians living nearby.

Hamas leaders cynically expressed their "outrage" over the unintended casualties, despite the fact that they have been deliberately targeting Israeli civilians for many years now. The frenzied scenes of several funerals were repeatedly broadcast all over the Arab world by Al Jazeera and other satellite news networks, whipping up anti-Israel passions throughout the turbulent region.