Israellycool

Yesterday, UN envoy Robert Serry gave a report to the UN Security Council. As can be expected, most of the report was more of the same - blaming Israel for how it is dealing with Gaza, blaming settlements for creating a humanitarian crisis (not quite sure how that works), claiming that Israel has not removed any outposts (um, remember Amona? Neve Daniel North? Tapuach West?) and similar naive statements.

As usual, he has no real idea about what Israel should do, only what it should not do:

A different and more positive strategy for Gaza was a humanitarian, security and strategic imperative, for Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.

Any idea what this strategy should be? Well, nothing that can possibly involve the remotest possibility of hurting civilians, of course, so possibly he is calling for Israel to move from “condemning” Qassam attacks into “deploring” them. Perhaps providing them with more potassium nitrate so they can fertilize their crops.

Buried in his speech, however, is something that I have never seen the UN say before:

His visit to Sderot, which had been the target of over 4,300 rockets since 2004, had brought out the physical and psychological damage to the population. Those crude rockets were aimed at hurting civilians and clearly constituted terrorism. Their continued firing was completely unacceptable and must be halted unconditionally.

The “T word” is hardly used even in the Western media to describe Qassams, with sickening words like “resistance” used far more often. The fact that the reliably anti-Israel UN classifies rocket attacks as terrorism needs to be publicized and the Arab terrorists and their friends need to be forced to respond, so that the world can see their hypocrisy.

At least one Israeli has been killed, and several others wounded after palestinians fired as least 30 Qassam rockets into Sderot and surrounding communities.

The dead man was a 30-year-old student in his car, who suffered lethal shrapnel wounds to the chest after a Qassam hit Sapir College.

The deadly barrage came hours after the IAF killed five Hamas terrorists apparently planning a large scale terrorist attack against Israel after having been trained in Iran.

Updates (Israel time)

6:08PM: Infolive.tv reports that the dead man was a student in his twenties.

6:18PM: The last person to be killed by a Qassam was Oshri Oz, who was also killed when a rocket landed near his car.

6:22PM: About 10 minutes ago, 4 Qassams landed in Ashkelon, including one which landed in the Barzilai hospital grounds. No injuries have been reported, but several people have reportedly been treated for shock.

6:27PM: Now reports that one man was lightly wounded in the Ashkelon attack.

6:35PM: Today’s Euphemism of the day is courtesy of the palestinian WAFA agency:

Israeli air strikes killed on Wednesday at least five citizens in the Gaza Strip city of Khanyounis, medical sources said.

They added that Israeli warplanes targeted a van, killing instantly five citizens and wounding others, some seriously. Nasser hospital reported that the bodies were torn into pieces.

Earlier, in a separate air attack, a citizen was killed east of al- Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

They are, of course, referring to the Hamas terrorists.

6:46PM: Prime Minister Olmert: “No one in Hamas, not the low-level officials nor the highest echelon, will be immune against this war.”

6:48PM: 2 more Qassams, bringing today’s total so far to 42.

Of course, people like John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the UN Human Rights Council, will tell you it’s not really terrorism.

7:05PM: Judging by this picture and caption, the wounded includes Arabs.

A wounded woman is taken for treatment after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza, landed in the Sapir college near the southern Israeli town of Sderot Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2008. A Palestinian rocket slammed into the college campus in southern Israel on Wednesday, killing one man and lightly wounding a second person, Israeli medical officials said, in a sign of a possible escalation in the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas. The Islamic militant Hamas militant, which controls Gaza, claimed responsibility for the rocket fire. It said it had launched more than 20 rockets at Israel, including eight at Sderot. (AP Photo / Tsafrir Abayov)

8:47PM: Contrary to earlier reports, the victim was not a 30-year-old, nor a twenty something, but rather a 47-year-old father of four.

9:05PM: More on the victim:

The victim, Ronnie Yechiya, 47, reportedly died shortly after sustaining massive wounds to his chest.

Yechiya, a father of four from the community of Bitcha near Ofakim, underwent a kidney transplant operation in the United States five years ago.

9:25PM: Yesterday,Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal had this to say at a protest tent he had established in a corner of Tel Aviv’s Kikar Rabin.

“The State of Israel has lost its dignity. Yes, countries have dignity, too. Any country that allows its sovereignty to be violated 50 times a day will eventually wither and fall.”

These words resonate even stronger today.

10:25PM: Israellycool friend and reader Noah has drawn my attention to this great article by Brett Stephens of the Wall Street Journal (formerly of the Jerusalem Post).

The Israeli town of Sderot lies less than a mile from the Gaza Strip. Since the beginning of the intifada seven years ago, it has borne the brunt of some 2,500 Kassam rockets fired from Gaza by Palestinian terrorists. Only about a dozen of these Kassams have proved lethal, though earlier this month brothers Osher and Rami Twito were seriously injured by one as they walked down a Sderot street on a Saturday evening. Eight-year-old Osher lost a leg.

It is no stretch to say that life in Sderot has become unendurable. Palestinians and their chorus of supporters — including the 118 countries of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement, much of Europe, and the panoply of international aid organizations from the World Bank to the United Nations — typically reply that life in the Gaza Strip is also unendurable, and that Palestinian casualties greatly exceed Israeli ones. But this argument is fatuous: Conditions in Gaza, in so far as they are shaped by Israel, are a function of conditions in Sderot. No Palestinian Kassams (or other forms of terrorism), no Israeli “siege.”
[The Sderot Calculus]

The more vexing question, both morally and strategically, is what Israel ought to do about Gaza. The standard answer is that Israel’s response to the Kassams ought to be “proportionate.” What does that mean? Does the “proportion” apply to the intention of those firing the Kassams — to wit, indiscriminate terror against civilian populations? In that case, a “proportionate” Israeli response would involve, perhaps, firing 2,500 artillery shells at random against civilian targets in Gaza. Or should proportion apply to the effects of the Kassams — an exquisitely calibrated, eye-for-eye operation involving the killing of a dozen Palestinians and the deliberate maiming or traumatizing of several hundred more?

Surely this isn’t what advocates of proportion have in mind. What they really mean is that Israel ought to respond with moderation. But the criteria for moderation are subjective. Should Israel pick off Hamas leaders who are ordering the rocket attacks? The European Parliament last week passed a resolution denouncing the practice of targeted assassinations. Should Israel adopt purely economic measures to punish Hamas for the Kassams? The same resolution denounced what it called Israel’s “collective punishment” of Palestinians. Should Israel seek to dismantle the Kassams through limited military incursions? This, too, has the unpardonable effect of resulting in too many Palestinian casualties, which are said to be “disproportionate” to the number of Israelis injured by the Kassams.

By these lights, Israel’s presumptive right to self-defense has no practical application as far as Gaza is concerned. Instead, Israel is counseled to allow goods to flow freely into the Strip, and to negotiate a cease-fire with Hamas.

But here another set of considerations intrudes. Hamas was elected democratically and by overwhelming margins in Gaza. It has never once honored a cease-fire with Israel. Following Israel’s withdrawal of its soldiers and settlements from the Strip in 2005 there was a six-fold increase in the number of Kassam strikes on Israel.

Hamas has also made no effort to rewrite its 1988 charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction. The charter is explicitly anti-Semitic: “The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!” (Article Seven) “In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad.” (Article 15) And so on.

It would seem perverse for Israeli taxpayers, including residents of Sderot, to feed the mouth that bites them. It would seem equally perverse for Israel merely to bide its time for an especially unlucky day — a Kassam hitting a busload of schoolchildren, for instance — before striking hard at Gaza. But unless Israel is willing to accept the military, political and diplomatic burdens of occupying all or parts of Gaza indefinitely, the effects of a major military incursion could be relatively short-lived. Israel suffered many more casualties before it withdrew from the Strip than it has since.

Perhaps the answer is to wait for a technological fix and, in the meantime, hope for the best. Israel is at work on a missile-defense program called “Iron Dome” that may be effective against Kassams, though the system won’t be in place for at least two years. It could also purchase land-based models of the Phalanx Close-In Weapons System, used by the U.S. to defend the Green Zone in Baghdad.

But technology addresses neither the Islamic fanaticism that animates Hamas nor the moral torpor of Western policy makers and commentators who, on balance, find more to blame in Israel’s behavior than in Hamas’s. Nor, too, would an Iron Dome or the Phalanx absolve the Israeli government from the necessity of punishing those who seek its destruction. Prudence is an important consideration of statesmanship, but self-respect is vital. And no self-respecting nation can allow the situation in Sderot to continue much longer, a point it is in every civilized country’s interest to understand.

On March 9, 1916, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa attacked the border town of Columbus, N.M., killing 18 Americans. President Woodrow Wilson ordered Gen. John J. Pershing and 10,000 soldiers into Mexico for nearly a year to hunt Villa down, in what was explicitly called a “punitive expedition.” Pershing never found Villa, making the effort something of a failure. Then again, Villa’s raid would be the last significant foreign attack on continental U.S. soil for 85 years, six months and two days.

11:03PM: Hamas have reportedly claimed that the IAF bombed the Gaza Interior Ministry building.

11:15PM: Further to the last update:

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh also holds the post of Interior Minister although he was not in the building at the time of the attack.

Let me guess. He was out playing soccer?

The YMCA in Gaza was attacked:

A band of 14 masked gunmen forced its way into YMCA offices in the Gaza Strip and exploded a library there, Israel Radio reported Friday.

Thousands of books were reportedly burnt in the ensuing fire. The YMCA in Gaza also operates a gym and a wedding hall.

The gunmen laid a second explosive device near a computer in the library but it failed to detonate. Two security guards on the scene were not able to block the intruders; they were taken by them from the YMCA and later released in the northern Gaza Strip.

The latest incident is another link in an ongoing chain of attacks against Palestinian Christians which has worsened since Hamas took power of the Gaza Strip last June.

Notice their target - the library. Any knowledge that is not Islamic is “haram” for the Islamists, so much so that they want to destroy it everywhere.

What they fear most, apparently, is the possibility that any other points of view might be more valid than theirs. Which says a lot about their confidence in their own beliefs.

(cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon)

M&C reports:

Egyptian security forces found a cache of explosives near the border with the Gaza Strip in the Sinai peninsula, security sources said Tuesday. The cache, which contained 250 kilos of TNT, was found in a secret depot in Masura in Rafah, three kilometres from Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip.

Palestine Press Agency adds that these explosives were found in a cemetery:

The source said that “explosives were seized inside the cemetery, packed inside seven plastic sacks,” and added that security forces received information from confidential sources is the fact that some smugglers conceal explosives inside abandoned graves.

“Abandoned graves” must mean wither their occupants found a better place to stay, or these holy explosives smugglers are discarding bodies to hide their product.

(cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon)

The mystery of the identity of the Dimona suicide bombers seems to have been solved.

You will recall that a number of terrorist organizations claimed responsibility for the murderous attack, including Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the PFLP, and Hamas. Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Hamas even released names of the bombers, with the former claiming they were Luay Al-Ghawani and Mousa Arafat, and the latter claiming they were Mohammed Herbawi and Shadi Zghayer.

When Israeli media released images of the “second” bomber, who had been shot before he did the explosive deed, Al Aqsa tried to explain away the fact he did not look like Mousa Arafat.

“Luay Al-Ghawani was the one who blew himself up, while Mousa Arafat was hit by several bullets to the head resulting in changes in his facial features, yet Al-Aqsa Brigades identified him from his body features..”

As I said yesterday, this sounded like a really bad lie.

Now it looks like I was correct, and the bombers were from Hamas.

Here’s the Hamas-released photographs of the bombers:

And here’s a picture of the “second” bomber’s body:

He seems to be wearing the same clothes as we see in the Hamas-released photographs.

This, coupled with Al Aqsa’s pathetic attempt to explain the dissimilarity between the body and who they claimed was the bomber, indicates that the bombers were indeed from Hamas.

Update: Ok, it’s official.

Hamas on Tuesday claimed responsibility for Monday’s suicide bombing in Dimona, saying it was carried out by two operatives from Hebron. The organization identified the bombers as Mohammed al-Hirbawi and Shadi al-Zaghair.

Hirbawi, 20, had been arrested when he was 15 and spent two and a half years in an Israeli prison.

Hamas’ announcement put an end to more than a day of speculation about the identity of the terrorists and their place of residence. A gag order remains on publishing details of the Shin Bet security service’s investigation. Palestinian sources in Hebron said that the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet have arrested several relatives of the two bombers.

Update: WorldNetDaily reports that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades erred in naming their people as the bombers, since it alerted Israel to the fact that the men they named are on their way to perpetrate an attack.

A terrorist gaffe has provided Israel with crucial information that could help stop a potentially imminent suicide attack, WND has learned.

Yesterday, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the Israeli Negev desert city of Dimona, killing one woman and injuring 11 others, including at least one man who is in critical condition.

—-

Immediately after the attack, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group called both WND and a reporter from Israel’s popular Ynetnews website to take credit for the bombing on behalf the Brigades and another terror organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

—-

The Brigades leader provided WND with the names of the two bombers – Mussa Arafat, a PFLP terrorist from the Gaza city of Khan Younis, and Lawai Lawani, an Al Aqsa Brigades member from Gaza’s Sabra neighborhood.

Calls by WND to the families of both Arafat and Lawani in Gaza discovered the two men, both in their 20s, left their homes and have not been heard from all week.

Later yesterday, the Brigades temporarily released on its official website short videos of Lawani and Arafat professing their faith in Allah and willingness to become a “martyr.”

The two suicide bombers were believed to have crossed into Israel from Egypt after Gaza-based militants 13 days ago blew up the Gaza-Egypt border wall, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to stream into the Egyptian Sinai desert. Israel has a long border with Egypt, much of which is unprotected.

Today, Israeli forensic experts who coordinated with Palestinian security officials discovered Lawani and Arafat were not the bombers who exploded themselves, according to security sources.

The Hamas terror group today claimed responsibility for the suicide attack in text messages to journalists and on Hamas’ official TV station. Hamas identified the two attackers as Mohammed Herbawi and Shadi Zghayer.

According to terrorist sources and Palestinian security officials in Gaza speaking to WND, when the Egypt-Gaza border was breached two weeks ago, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the PFLP and several other terrorist organizations sent several suicide bombers with explosive belts into the Egyptian Sinai desert with instructions to attempt to infiltrate into Israel along the country’s long border with Egypt.

Israeli security officials realized the Al Aqsa Marytrs Brigades – after hearing of yesterday’s successful suicide operation – mistakenly thought it was their bombers who had reached Israel and detonated their explosives and, in a rush to take responsibility, the Brigades released the names of their two bombers.

Thanks to the Brigades’ mistake, Israeli security agencies now have the identities of two potential Brigade suicide attackers.

Israeli and Palestinian security sources said it is estimated either the two equipped bombers are still in Egypt or may have infiltrated into Israel. Security has been beefed up along the Egypt-Israel border, and Israeli police and military units have been acting on intelligence leads regarding potential bombers in Israel.

Which explains their obvious lie after seeing the body. They wanted to cover up their gaffe.

As Ma’an News reports, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have dispelled all doubts about the identify of yesterday’s “second” suicide bomber.

Al-Aqsa Brigades dispell doubts about identity of second Dimona bomber

A prominent leader in the armed wing of Fatah, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, has confirmed the identities of the two bombers who attacked a shopping center in the Israeli city of Dimona on Monday.

Speaking to Ma’an on Tuesday, Abu Al-Walid reiterated that the bombers were Luay Al-Ghawani and Mousa Arafat, saying that photographs of the two attackers published by the Israeli media were in fact of them.

Israeli security officials had expressed doubt about the validity of the image of the second bomber, who was shot dead by an Israeli police officer.

“Luay Al-Ghawani was the one who blew himself up, while Mousa Arafat was hit by several bullets to the head resulting in changes in his facial features, yet Al-Aqsa Brigades identified him from his body features,” Abu Al-Walid added.

Why does almost everything you hear from the palestinians sound like a really bad lie?

Meanwhile, what these “body features” are, and how the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades could tell from “photographs…published by the Israeli media,” is anybody’s guess.

Update: Meanwhile, Hamas are claiming responsibility for the attack, and identified the bombers as Mohammed Herbawi and Shadi Zghayer.

Updated throughout the day. Scroll down for updates.

At least 3 people one person (see update below) has been killed in a suicide bombing in Dimona, with another 8 people moderately wounded.

Here’s more on the terrorist attack:

Police officials told Army Radio that there appeared to be two attackers, although only one managed to detonate his explosives belt. The other was shot dead by authorities before detonating his belt, police said.

—-

There was no indication that the bombers had entered Israel from the Gaza Strip.

“We heard a big explosion, and people began running,” a shopowner who gave her name as Ravital told Army Radio. “I saw pieces of bodies flying in the air.”

Witnesses described the explosion as “massive.”

A large number of rescue services and police crews rushed to the shopping center. Magen David Adom said at least 20 ambulances had arrived on the scene and were evacuating people to hospital.

The Zaka emergency service said the body of a “terrorist” and an explosives belt were found at the scene in the desert town.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which occurred several weeks after Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks opposed by Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Updates (Israel time)

11:30AM: Hezbollah TV have reported that the attack was carried out by the Fatah-linked Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Which means we can chalk another attack down to our “peace partner” Mahmoud Abbas, folks.

11:32AM: Following the attack, the Police Commissioner has raised the police’s alert level across Israel, focusing on the Seam Line, the Jerusalem vicinity and southern Israel.

11:38AM: From the Ha’aretz news ticker:

Hamas: Don’t know if our group was involved, but Dimona attack justified

Leaving aside the absurdity of not knowing whether their own group was involved, let’s instead reflect on the pure evil of commending the murder of innocent people.

11:40AM: Given that this is the first suicide bombing attack in a year, I would have to agree with Likud MK Moshe Kahlon, who said it was the direct result of the breaching of the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

11:45AM: Our peace partners Fatah have reportedly said that this will be the year of terrorist attacks. I wonder how much of this attack was funded by your taxpayer dollars.

11:50AM: The palestinian Ma’an News Agency reports:

Ma’an learned from special sources that the Palestinian bomber blew himself up in the middle of a mall where hundreds of Israelis were shopping. The sources said there is still another explosive device which has not exploded.

I hope they are referring to the undetonated bomb belt.

Ma’an also reports:

The military wing of the Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds Brigades told Ma’an that their fighters conducted the operation in cooperation with the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades.

Which contradicts the Fatah claim of responsibility. But we all know the various palestinian terrorist groups just love to claim responsibility for the wholesale murder of Jews, since it is good for their approval ratings.

By the way, that is the same PFLP founded by recently deceased terrorist George Habash, who was lauded by Mahmoud Abbas and even Israeli Arab MKs as a wonderful man.

12:00PM: Ynet confirms my last update, and adds that Hizbullah’s al-Manar television station reported that the two terrorists were residents of the Gaza Strip. Bingo!

12:02PM: Actually, it is not 3 people killed, but rather 1 person and 2 animals.

12:43PM: The victim was a woman.

12:52PM: Despite the fact a few hours have passed, the only foreign press photograph and caption on the attack is this:

A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up and police shot dead his accomplice in an attack in a shopping center in southern Israel on Monday that killed at least one Israeli, emergency services said. The suicide bombing in Dimona, a desert town where a top-secret nuclear reactor is located, was the first in Israel in a year. (Graphics/Reuters)

Not one photograph from the scene.

But blink and you’ll miss it, since it is surrounded by the mandatory “palestinians at the border” photographs.

12:56PM: My mistake. There’s also this one:

1:00PM: More details of the attack have emerged, including how the second terrorist was killed.

A police officer who was in the area, Superintendent Kobi Mor, shot and killed another terrorist. The explosive device on the second bomber’s body did not explode, and sappers were dispatched to the scene of the attack to detonate the device in a controlled manner.

1:07PM: The PA have responded in true PA fashion.

Mahmoud Habbash (related to George? - ed), a minister in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ government, condemned the attack, but blamed Israel for creating an atmosphere of violence with its ongoing attacks against militants in Gaza.

“We are against anything that would take us back to a cycle of violence, he said. “We carry Israel responsibility for this escalation, and for what happened.”

Yes. “We are against anything that would take us back to a cycle of violence” and not “We are against anything that takes the lives of innocent people.”

1:20PM: An IAF strike in northern Gaza has reportedly wounded 3 palestinians.

1:26PM: Ma’an reports that an Israeli raid on Beit Lahia killed top Popular Resistance Committees leader ‘Amir Qarmoot.

1:42PM: Contender for Weird Headline of the Day is this one from AP:

No palestinian suicide bomber to see here. Move along.

1:5oPM: A Fatah official has denied al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade involvement in the bombing.

1:55PM: Looks like the PRC terrorist we killed was none other than ‘Amir Qarmoot “My name is Earl” Abu As-Sa’id, who has proven to be quite the slippery little sucker in the past.

3:12PM: Ma’an news quotes an Al-Aqsa Brigades spokesperson who said the attack came “in retaliation for the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip.” Yet according to Ha’aretz:

Abu Fouad, a spokesman for the Fatah-allied Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades - which claimed responsibility for the attack - said the operation had been planned for a month, but was made possible after militants violently opened Gaza’s border with Egypt on January 23.

In other words, it was in retaliation for the so-called siege that hadn’t occurred yet.

This reminds me of what happened with the breach of the border wall. While palestinians and mainstream media alike were claiming it was the spontaneous action of a poor people just trying to break free from their Zionist shackles, we later discovered it had been planned by Hamas terrorists well in advance.

3:18PM: Egyptian police have detained a palestinian man carrying explosives.

3:23PM: Meet Israel’s answer to Jack Bauer.

Police officer Koby Mor told reporters a short time ago how he eliminated the second suicide terrorist in Dimona Monday morning. “I was in the area when I received a call about the terrorist attack,” he recalled. After he turned his vehicle around and arrived at the scene where one suicide bomber had set off his charge, people in the area pointed to an area where they saw a second suicide bomber. I saw him and shot him, but after two minutes he raised his hand towards the bomb, and I fired again,” killing him.

Police officials said that Mor will be awarded for his action, which prevented a worse tragedy.

And the beauty is that there are many others like him.

3:35PM: Even though Fatah have denied Al Aqsa involvement, the latter have identified the murderers as Raji al-Kilani and Iman al-Hadayan.

3:45PM: Well done international community. This is the people you are backing.

As word of the suicide bombing in Dimona spread Monday, Gaza residents were treated to celebratory wreaths of flowers as well as sweets that were handed to drivers and passers-by.

Gaza motorists receiving the treats and sweets also honked their horns in triumph and celebration.

Meanwhile, when the IDF inadvertently kills a palestinian civilian, there is remorse expressed, and constant debate within Israeli society.

I have said it once and I am going to now say it again: even if you accepted the palestinian’s historical claim to this land (which I don’t), they had forfeited this “right” a long time ago, due to their moral bankruptcy.

3:52PM: And here’s footage of the palestinians celebrating.

5:00PM: Another typical response from PA President Mahmoud Abbas:

PA President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement condemning Monday’s terror attack in Dimona but also censored the IDF for killing two gunmen near Jenin. He said the PA was against violence on both sides.

“The Authority condemns the attack [in Dimona] but also the IDF operation in which two Islamic Jihad members were killed” earlier Monday, the statement said.

Ahh yes, that cherished “but.”

Fact: Abbas has never once unequivocally condemned a palestinian terrorist attack on the grounds it is morally reprehensible.

5:10PM: The Director of the Soroka University Medical Center has said that the hospital admitted 48 people injured in the Dimona suicide bombing.

“These are predominately victims of shock who are in worse than usual condition, including one man that has experienced a suicide bombing before. One critically injured patient has been operated on and was sent to the intensive care unit.”

5:53PM: People in glass houses coming up against Egyptian border guards shouldn’t throw stones.

7:00PM: Egyptian forces have reportedly killed one palestinian in the Gaza-Egypt border clashes.

8:38PM: The Jerusalem Post reports that the security establishment is beginning to believe that the Dimona attackers came from Hebron, and not from the Gaza Strip as was earlier claimed by Fatah.

From Dion Nissenbaum of McClatchy Newspapers:

Before dawn, Palestinian militants blew up and tore down large sections of the concrete and iron walls separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt.

They had apparently been planning the attack for weeks. With the knowledge of locals, militants had spent weeks methodically using blow torches to cut along the bottom of the 30-foot-tall corrugated iron wall along the Egyptian border.

Before dawn on Wednesday, militants blew holes in the adjacent concrete slabs and then toppled the iron wall.

And The Times (UK) reports that this has been going on for months!

A Hamas border guard interviewed by The Times at the border today admitted that the Islamist group was responsible and had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches.

That meant that when the explosive charges were set off in 17 different locations after midnight last night the 40ft wall came tumbling down, leaving it lying like a broken concertina down the middle of no-man’s land as an estimated 350,000 Gazans flooded into Egypt.

The guard, Lieutenant Abu Usama of the Palestinian National Security, said of the cutting operation: “I’ve seen this happening over the last few months. It happened in the daytime but was covered up so that nobody would see.”

Asked whether he had reported it to the government, he replied: “It was the government that was doing this. Who would I report it to?”

Abu Usama, who normally works from a small guard cabin in no-man’s land, added: “Last night we were told to keep away from the wall. We were ordered to stay away because they were going to break the blockade.”

It looks like yesterday’s clashes between Gazan women and Egyptian border guards were staged specifically for the purpose of doing this pre-planned operation in such a way that Egypt would be unwilling to interfere.

And it seems probable that everything we’ve seen over the past few days - Hamas closing bakeries, shutting the fuel plant, perhaps even the rocket barrages themselves last week - were all meant to play to world opinion, create a fake “crisis”, all ultimately to force Egypt to open Rafah, something that Hamas has been trying to do for months.

(h/t Backspin and Israel Matzav)

Yasir Arafat was infamous for directing terror attacks while denying any responsibility as he used other front organizations to do the work. (And Arafat was copying his mentor, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who instigated anti-Jewish pogroms in the 1920s and ’30s while denying any responsibility to the British.)

The events of the past two days shows that Hamas is following the same game plan.

Yesterday’s demonstration by women at Rafah was orchestrated by Hamas, as they bussed hundreds of women from all over Gaza. The goal was to embarrass Egypt into allowing Rafah to open.

Then, this morning, 17 simultaneous explosions by “masked gunmen” took down the Rafah border wall with Egypt - and Hamas denied responsibility.

But Hamas immediately “took control” of the border, and even allowed a Caterpillar tractor to clear the debris so cars can pass through. This “control” has been what they have been demanding for months.

The denial is telling. It shows that, while Hamas used to be unusually honest about its actions and goals before it took over Gaza, it has now started subscribing to using other terror groups to do actions that might be considered distasteful to the international community and to Arab countries.

Yesterday’s barrage of 20 rockets - which Hamas did not take credit for - indicates the same thing.

(cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon)

From Ma’an:

The general commander of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the military wing of Fatah, in the West Bank announced an end to their three-month ceasefire on Friday.

Abu Uday said in a statement that the ceasefire was now over and that the Brigades will respond to the recent Israeli assassinations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

“We will not stand idly by while witnessing massacres of our people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We will respond to these massacres and we give the green light to all our brigades. Thus we will calm the hearts of the martyrs’ families,” he said.

But I thought that the Al Aqsa Brigades were dismantled by the PA! And then ten days later it was disbanded again!

And that after they were dismantled they were still taking credit for attacks from the West Bank!

And the last one occurred only yesterday!

And I could have sworn that Al-Aqsa in Gaza has been sending daily rockets towards Israel!

Could it be - just maybe - that murderous terrorists and their “moderate” Fatah leaders aren’t the most honest people in the world?

(cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon)

Some strange, unidentified people tried to blow up a UNIFIL team in Lebanon:

RMEILEH, Lebanon: A roadside bomb exploded yesterday near a UN vehicle travelling along a coastal highway south of Beirut, lightly wounding two Irish peacekeepers.It was the first attack on the expanded UN force in Lebanon since last summer, when six Spanish peacekeepers died after a bomb hit their armoured personnel carrier in June near the Israeli border in southern Lebanon.

In July, a roadside bomb struck a UN jeep near the southern port of Tyre, but there were no casualties.

Yesterday’s explosion rocked the town of Rmeileh, near the southern coastal city of Sidon. Smoke was seen billowing from the scene.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon’s force commander adviser, Milos Strugar, said one vehicle was damaged in the explosion and two peacekeepers in the vehicle were “lightly wounded” and taken to a hospital.

Lebanese TV stations said the wounded peacekeepers were Irish.

Well, some people claim to know who did it:

Hezbollah said the purpose of the terrorist act is “crystal clear” and the Amal Movement of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri pointed fingers of accusation at Israel, saying the attack only served Zionist interests.

Meanwhile:

In another incident, the [Lebanese] army has denied Israeli reports that two rockets were fired yesterday into northern Israel from Lebanon.

Yet:

UN peacekeepers from Italy and France examined the remains of a rocket fired from Lebanon into the northern Israel town of Shlomit in one of two attacks reported yesterday. (EFI SHARIR/AFP/Getty Images)

Any chance that the UNIFIL was attacked for checking out the non-existent Katyushas?

PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki has denied that the men who murdered two off-duty IDF soldiers were members of Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, and that the murders were nationalistically motivated, as was reported in the Israeli media yesterday.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian government said Wednesday that a shooting attack which killed two off-duty Israeli soldiers near Hebron last Friday was a “criminal” incident, and accused Israel of claiming it had a political motive in order to justify its failure to implement peace requirements. Government spokesman and Minister of Foreign Affairs Riad Malki told Voice of Palestine Radio that the two Palestinians involved in the shooting, in which a third attacker was also killed, have confessed that their purpose was to steal the soldiers’ weapons in order to to sell them for a profit.

He said the Palestinian security has arrested the two shortly after the attack and that its investigation has led the security forces to conclude the attack was criminally motivated.

The two did not belong to any political party, Malki said, rejecting Israeli accusations that they came from President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement and that one of them was a member of the national security force.

Malki said the Palestinian security forces returned the weapons the attackers took from the soldiers back to the Israeli authority.

Israel is demanding that the Palestinian Authority hand over the two attackers, who are currently held by the Palestinian security forces.

Malki charged that Israel took advantage of this attack to justify its failure to implement its obligations under the international road map peace plan, which calls on Israel to remove military road blocks in the West Bank and allow more freedom of movement for Palestinians.

The plan also demands the Palestinians crack down on militants.

Leaving aside the question of whether or not the men belonged to Fatah, I find it interesting that Malki would be playing the “criminal motive” card considering he admitted a few days ago that it was a terror attack:

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Malki strongly condemned Friday’s shooting attack near Hebron which claimed the lives of two IDF soldiers on leave, Private Ahikam Amihai (20) and Sergeant David Rubin (21).

“The group that carried out the attack seeks to sabotage peace negotiations and the Palestinian Authority’s plan to increase security in the Palestinian territories,” he was quoted as saying by Israel Radio on Saturday.

Malki added that severe steps would be taken against those responsible for the terror attack.

Oops.

If lying is an art form, these people are the Rembrandts of our times.