Israel Update for March 2008

Hamas leaders then ordered around ten more Grad rockets launched at Ashkelon, and at the western Negev town of Ofakim-located just five miles west of Israel's fourth largest city, Beersheva. Similar to the rockets fired by Hizbullah forces at northern Israeli cities and towns during the 2006 war, the blasts left more Israelis wounded, including a 17 year old teenage girl whose Ashkelon home was directly hit during the fresh barrage. Almost three dozen Kassams were also lobbed at Sderot and other Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.

Paying The Price

Israeli military forces responded to the unprecedented volume and range of Palestinian rocket assaults with additional ground and air operations in the Gaza Strip. Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that a major military operation designed to sweep the Gaza Strip clean of Hamas militia and terrorist forces, and by implication Hamas political leaders as well, might be launched at any time. He said Israeli government officials would "not flinch from our duty to protect our citizens from rocket assaults," adding ominously that "Hamas will pay the full price for its activities."

Later in the month, Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, a former army general like Barak, said bluntly that the fundamentalist Hamas movement would soon be entirely uprooted from the Gaza Strip. "Israel will not exist side by side with this Iranian entity just three kilometers from Sderot and 10 kilometers (just over six miles) from Ashkelon."

Before the fighting died down on March 4, over 100 Palestinians had been killed, including the son of prominent Hamas parliament member Khalil Al-Haya.

Israeli forces suffered casualties as well. Two soldiers were killed and several others wounded during ground operations inside the northern Gaza Strip, from where most of the Kassam and Grad rockets were fired by trained Hamas and Islamic Jihad squads. A third soldier, an Arab Bedouin tracker from the Negev Desert, was killed on March 5 when a hidden landmine exploded under the vehicle he was patrolling in next to the Gaza border fence. Under condemnation from many Palestinians, Israeli Arab politicians and regional Arab news networks for allowing their son to serve in the IDF, his grieving parents asked local media outlets to withhold his identity from the public.

Sporadic rocket firings continued all month, spiking again on March 12 after elite IDF forces killed the head of the Islamic Jihad branch in Bethlehem, Muhammad Shehadeh, known to have been behind several terror attacks upon Israeli civilians in recent years. Three other wanted men were also killed in armed clashes with IDF soldiers. The militant Muslim terror group, which works closely with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and does not launch rocket attacks without its permission-and sometimes under its direct instructions-responded the next day by firing over 30 Kassams and mortar shells into areas around the Gaza Strip, causing damage but no casualties.

Saturation Arab and Iranian media coverage of Israeli military strikes on Gaza (amid scant reports on the Muslim rocket attacks upon Ashkelon or Sderot) were seized upon by Al Qaida leaders later in the month to urge revenge attacks against Jewish interests worldwide. With opinion surveys showing a large majority of Palestinians, 64%, strongly support Hamas rocket strikes upon Israeli civilian centers, Osama Bi Laden released an audio tape on March 21 calling for a new international "jihad war" to "liberate Palestine." His deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahri, then released a tape on March 24 calling upon Muslims "to strike at Israeli and American interests everywhere," since the Jews "gathered against us from everywhere."

Brothers In Arms

Regional media reports claim off the record ceasefire negotiations are underway in Egypt between Israeli and Hamas officials. Ehud Olmert's office strongly denied the reports. Despite this, many military analysts said some sort of back channel Egyptian-mediated talks did seem to be occurring, although undoubtedly indirectly.

Many Israeli politicians, including opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, condemned the reported talks, saying they only strengthened the stature of the radical Muslim group, which most agree scored major propaganda points once again during the early March Gaza fighting-using its women and children as human shields while decrying civilian casualties, and then hailing the same as shahid martyrs for the glorious Islamic cause. They added that previous experience demonstrated any military time outs only allowed Hamas and Islamic Jihad to get ready for the next round of rocket and terror assaults.

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas harshly denounced the Israeli military action as "criminal" and "totally unjustified," immediately breaking off American-sponsored peace talks with Israel. Analysts said this was largely due to massive street support for the Hamas bombing action, even by most Fatah leaders and supporters, intensified by the saturation Arab media coverage of the Palestinian non-combatant casualties. However Abbas backed down after visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arm twisted him into returning to the negotiation table, leading to the announcement that PA officials would resume peace talks when calm returned to the area. This came as both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators admitted that little actual progress has been made so far to reach George W. Bush's stated goal of finalizing a peace treaty that would establish a Palestinian state by the end of this year.

In an attempt to heal the deep rift between the ruling PLO Fatah group and Hamas, the Arabian Peninsula country of Yemen invited officials from both sides to hold reconciliation talks in the country's capital, Aden. After several days of acrimonious negotiations, Hamas leaders said they would not agree to the Yemeni proposal that they hand back control over the Gaza Strip to Fatah in order to be allowed to run once again in fresh Palestinian national elections. On a late March visit to Jerusalem, Russian Foreign Minister Sergie Lavrov urged both warring Palestinian sides to reach some sort of compromise accord, while Secretary of State Rice supported Israel's position that Hamas cannot be allowed to return to any form of leadership role in the Palestinian Authority.

Terror In Jerusalem