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- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided to prepare the text for a cabinet decision on a deal with Hamas for Gilad Shalit and a cease-fire.
- Hamas claimed a”significant breakthrough” in ceasefire talks. Israeli security sources claimed BS.
- Israel has been exploring the option of freeing arch Fatah terrorist Marwan Barghouti.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
10:30PM: Guess which Israeli leader said this today?
“We need to strengthen the Palestinian moderates and weaken the radicals by pursuing rapid economic growth and bolstering the security apparatuses of the Palestinian security authority. If the Palestinian Authority is willing to work with us, and together with the US administration and perhaps other governments we can move very rapidly to change reality on the ground which is worth one thousand peace conferences.”
If you said Binyamin Netanyahu, you are correct.
And we’re screwed.
10:22PM: Footage of a Gaza building being destroyed in an IAF strike.
Feel free to guess why the streets are deserted.
9:25PM: Unexpected endorsement of the day.
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that among the Israeli leaders who took part in the recent elections, Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman is “the only one who has yet to lose (a war) in Lebanon.”
8:26PM: Game on: Kadima has accepted Israel Beiteinu’s list of coalition demands and Israel Beiteinu hopes Likud will follow suit.
The demands include the destruction of Hamas’ regime, submission of a citizenship bill to the Knesset requiring loyalty as a condition for citizenship, the formulation of a bill regarding Israel’s method of government within three months, the establishment of an emergency cabinet for immigrant absorption, and other demands on the issues of religion and state, including civil marriage.
Tzipi Livni making coffee was apparently not a demand, but a desired bonus.
8:14PM: Real evil or just some old guy driven by desperation?
From around 2:40, you’ll get to see the root cause of the Middle East conflict.
6:35PM: A ZAKA team is heading to the US from Israel to assist local emergency workers in “the recovery and identification of the victims” of Friday’s plane crash that killed 50 people near Buffalo, New York.
5:45PM: More on yesterday’s infamous “spidey” incident (reported in yesterday’s post, 7:52PM update).
Israeli drivers in Rosh Ha’ayin were met with an unusual sight Sunday evening, when a man dressed as Spiderman decided to use his superpowers to engage commuters sitting in evening traffic.
Several drivers on the scene called the traffic police hotline to report the superhero’s unique participation in the traffic jam. The man leapt from vehicle to vehicle, occasionally attempting to lasso cars with an apparent ‘web’ made of ropes.
Policewoman Ayala Cohen and police volunteer Uriel Dozriv arrived at the Rosh Ha’ayin junction, only to have their police car assaulted by a ‘spider web’. The two were able to subdue the man easily, upon getting out of the vehicle.
When asked why he had dressed up as the comic super hero and endangered drivers, the man replied that he had been hit by a car and had found himself in the hospital wearing the costume.
After taking the man into police custody, cops discovered that he was a 24-year-old resident of Ariel. He was sent to a psychiatric evaluation.
So there ya have it, folks. Spiderman’s a Jew.
5:18PM: Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu has vowed to forge a coalition with Likud’s “natural partners.” Which apparently includes Kadima.
“I plan to form a government as soon as possible with our natural partners and turn to the other parties, headed by Kadima, and tell them that in the face of the multitude of these threats, in the face of the multitude of these challenges, we plan to form a broad national unity government and I hope Kadima will accept this call of mine.
“In any case, we cannot leave the State of Israel without a government and we will form a government as soon as possible.”
3:58PM: More ignorant “celebrities” – including former Monty Python member Terry Jones – join Middle East expert Annie Lennox in condemning Israel.
Their ignorance is astounding. And embarrassing.
3:55PM: The IAF has hit two more tunnels.
3:05PM: Yesterday I posted that Ehud Olmert told Tzipi Livni that if she stays in the opposition, she’ll win the next elections. Now it is being reported that Olmert is encouraging Livni to join a coalition.
2:15PM: Israeli president Shimon Peres has stated he will begin coalition building talks on Wednesday.
He also said that he is in favor of changing the election system.
“One of the possibilities is to move from a national election system to a regional one, as well as raising the threshold.”
1:42PM: South Korea’s military has decided to buy Israel’s Oren Yarok radar warning system, in a deal worth $215 million.
Not to be confused with Ale Yarok.
12:12PM: The London-based Arabic language Al-Hayat has reported that Israel is insisting the arch terrorists it will free in exchange for Gilad Shalit be exiled to Syria or Lebanon.
11:58AM: As expected, the IAF has struck a smuggling tunnel in response to the firing of rockets at innocent Israeli civilians. A palestinian terrorist reportedly stubbed his toe as a result.
11:28AM: Lebanese and Hizbullah forces have reportedly arrested a man on suspicion of spying for Israel.
In other news, Lebanese and Hizbullah forces are working together.
9:28AM: Today’s Darwin Award winner:
A 25-year-old Gaza man was killed and five people were injured on Monday morning in an accidental explosion along the border with Israel, Palestinian hospital officials said.
Palestinian security officials said the blast in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya was caused when people who were melting down scrap metal for recycling inadvertently threw an explosive device into the fire.
8:50AM: Earlier this morning, terrorists fired 2 more Qassams into Israel, with one striking an open area in the Sha’ar Hanegev region, and the other exploding inside a kibbutz. While there were thankfully no injuries, some property damage has been reported.
5:58AM: Here’s a CNN report on tennis player Shahar Pe’er’s visa rejection by the UAE, who are now claiming that the rejection is due to “security concerns.”
Yeah, that’s their story and they’re sticking to it.
Also noteworthy is the toothless response of the WTA Tour CEO.
5:50AM: IDF figures now show that the civilian death toll in Operation Cast Lead was no higher than a third of the 1,200+ fatalities.
Four weeks after the cessation of Operation Cast Lead, the IDF finally opened its dossier on Palestinian fatalities on Sunday for the first time, and presented to The Jerusalem Post an overview utterly at odds with the Palestinian figures that have hitherto formed the basis for assessing the conflict.
While the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose death toll figures have been widely cited, reports that 895 Gaza civilians were killed in the fighting, amounting to more than two-thirds of all fatalities, the IDF figures shown to the Post on Sunday put the civilian death toll at no higher than a third of the total.
The international community had been given a vastly distorted impression of the death toll because of “false reporting” by Hamas, said Col. Moshe Levi, the head of the IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), which compiled the IDF figures.
As an example of such distortion, he cited the incident near a UN school in Jabalya on January 6, in which initial Palestinian reports falsely claimed IDF shells had hit the school and killed 40 or more people, many of them civilians.
In fact, he said, 12 Palestinians were killed in the incident – nine Hamas operatives and three noncombatants. Furthermore, as had since been acknowledged by the UN, the IDF was returning fire after coming under attack, and its shells did not hit the school compound.
“From the beginning, Hamas claimed that 42 people were killed, but we could see from our surveillance that only a few stretchers were brought in to evacuate people,” said Levi, adding that the CLA contacted the PA Health Ministry and asked for the names of the dead. “We were told that Hamas was hiding the number of dead.”
Anas Naim, a nephew of Hamas Health Minister Bassem Naim, who was killed on Jan. 4 in Gaza City, was described in Palestinian reports as a ‘medic.’
As a consequence of the false information, he added, the IDF was considering setting up a “response team” for future conflicts whose job would be to collect information, analyze it and issue reports as rapidly as possible that refuted Hamas fabrications.
Basing its work on the official Palestinian death toll of 1,338, Levi said the CLA had now identified more than 1,200 of the Palestinian fatalities. Its 200-page report lists their names, their official Palestinian Authority identity numbers, the circumstances in which they were killed and, where appropriate, the terrorist group with which they were affiliated.
The CLA said 580 of these 1,200 had been conclusively “incriminated” as members of Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Another 300 of the 1,200 – women, children aged 15 and younger and men over the age of 65 – had been categorized as noncombatants, the CLA said.
Counted among the women, however, were female terrorists, including at least two women who tried to blow themselves up next to forces from the Givati and Paratroopers’ Brigades. Also classed as noncombatants were the wives and children of Nizar Rayyan, a Hamas military commander who refused to allow his family to leave his home even after he was warned by Israel that it would be bombed.
The 320 names yet to be classified are all men; the IDF has yet complete its identification work in these cases, but estimates that two-thirds of them were terror operatives.
The CLA gave the Post the names of several fatalities who it said had been classified by the Palestinians as “medics,” but who it stated were Hamas fighters, including Anas Naim, the nephew of Hamas Health Minister Bassem Naim, who was killed during clashes with the IDF on January 4 in the Sheikh Ajlin neighborhood of Gaza City.
Following the clashes, the Palestinian press reported that Naim was killed and that he was a medic with the Palestinian Red Crescent. The Gaza CLA, however, produced photographs of Naim posing holding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and a Kalashnikov assault rifle that had been posted on a Hamas Web site.
Levi stressed that on no occasion were civilians deliberately targeted, and that every effort was made to minimize civilian casualties.
Work on the death toll list was started during Operation Cast Lead under Levi’s direction. A special team was set up and led by an officer in the CLA who coordinated efforts with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and worked from statistics and information on the dead from the Hamas Health Ministry, the media in Gaza, and other Palestinian and Israeli intelligence sources.
Much controversy and confusion has surrounded the number of Palestinian noncombatants killed during Israel’s three-week campaign against Hamas, with the IDF and the Shin Bet refusing to release official numbers to refute Hamas allegations. Israeli estimates were intermittently leaked to the press but not published in official press statements.
I don’t think Israel have handled this particularly well at all. For a start, why is this being revealed to the Jerusalem Post only? The profile of the average Jerusalem Post reader is someone who already doubted the palestinian version of events. Why hasn’t Israel called a press conference for this, inviting the world’s media? Why aren’t Israeli representatives going on CNN, Fox and the like to present the findings?
Secondly, why didn’t Israel announce beforehand that it is in the process of investigating the palestinian death toll, and initial indications reveal that the figures have been distorted? As usual, I fear much of the damage has been done, and these findings come too late. Israel needs to learn to strike while the iron is hot.
