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A tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip was punctured Wednesday by a deadly Israeli airstrike that triggered rocket and mortar fire at Israel.
After 48 hours in which air attacks were suspended, an Israeli drone strike killed Ismail Asmar, a senior member of the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad group, in his car in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, according to the military and local medical officials.
Seven Palestinians were killed and at least 30 injured as multiple Israeli airstrikes targeted Gaza overnight Wednesday.
Hisham Adnan Abu Harb was killed as an airstrike hit a smuggling tunnel in Rafah, southern Gaza.
Earlier, reports said that three people were unaccounted for after the Rafah airstrike. Four bodies were later pulled from rubble in the Rafah area.
Hamas official Imad Muhammad Hamada had earlier said that crews were searching for the missing persons.
Eight Palestinians, including two children and three women, were injured this week by rockets fired in populated areas across the Gaza Strip, a human rights group charged Wednesday.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights says a woman was seriously injured.
After one incident, according to the PCHR, an ordinance disposal unit arrived at the scene and collected the rocket's shrapnel, but the civil police never showed up to investigate.
UN special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry on Thursday expressed deep concern over a resurgence of violence in Gaza and southern Israel.
"In the interest of protecting the lives of civilians and for the calm to succeed, a complete halt to the firing of rockets from Gaza and a display of maximum restraint by Israel are required,” Palestinian news agency WAFA quoted Serry as saying.
The UN official urged all sides involved "to immediately take steps to prevent any further escalation.”
Former Fox TV personality Glenn Beck capped a contentious visit to Israel Wednesday with a strong call of support for the Jewish state in a rally alongside a hotly disputed holy site in Jerusalem's Old City.
The conservative commentator has won fans among Israel's far-right with his unabashedly pro-Israel, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and 2,000 people turned out to hear him speak next to the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
As the situation in the South escalates and the Palestinians prepare for their statehood bid in the United Nations next month, the Knesset has been busy arguing over a report criticizing Israel's readiness for this upcoming September.
The report, initiated by the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (FADC) Chairman Shaul Mofaz (Kadima), is set to be publicized on Sunday. However coalition members have been hard at work to try and prevent its publication.
On the evening of 18 February, a Palestinian engineer boarded a train in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov.
Dirar Abu Sisi was the manager of Gaza's main electricity power plant. He hoped to obtain Ukrainian citizenship, and was travelling on the overnight sleeper to Kiev.
He spoke to a friend on the telephone just as the train was pulling out of the station. All was well, he said, he was settling into his bunk for the night.
But when the train arrived in Kiev the following morning, he was nowhere to be seen. Somewhere along the line, Dirar Abu Sisi had vanished.
An unlikely noise can be heard in the Old City of Hebron in the southern West Bank - the sound of Ramadan bargain hunters dipping in and out of shops and buying cut-price goods.
The crowds milling in the ancient streets are a change of pace for vendors here, who for years have suffered the consequences of Israeli-imposed security restrictions that brought business to a near standstill.
Israel says the restrictions are necessary to protect 600 hardline Jewish settlers who live in the heart of the city among a Palestinian population of about 6,000.
Until 1923, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. In December 1917, British troops entered Jerusalem and ended 400 years of Ottoman rule. In 1922, the League of Nations issued the Mandate of Palestine which authorized the United Kingdom to become the Mandatory Power in Palestine.
The Mandate Document, however, included several paradoxical stipulations contrary to the Mandate System as set forth in Article 22 of the League's Charter.
Major stipulations
Against the backdrop of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his spokesmen call the "delegitimization" of Israel, a "support event" was held in Jerusalem yesterday evening led by American preacher-broadcaster Glenn Beck. Beck was accompanied by personages identified with the Republican Party's extreme right and a group of Christian Zionist evangelical leaders.
The chances that Israel will establish even low-level relations with a new regime that takes shape in Tripoli are not great. This assessment is based on a Haaretz interview this week with Ahmad Shabani, a Libyan opposition leader. Since the rebel government formed about six months ago in Benghazi, envoys have been trying to figure out if there are hopes of establishing a diplomatic relationship with Israel.
There’s a feeling of instability in the atmosphere, of built-up pressure hanging motionless. The air is hazy, the sky is pale and miasmic. Earthquake weather, it’s called. That’s the atmosphere in this country, geopolitically speaking.
And while no one can predict an earthquake, I don’t know of any aware, realistic person who would predict that the relative calm we’ve known for nearly three years, since Operation Cast Lead, is going to last very much longer. A few months, maybe a year. More than that is hard to imagine.
The terrorist attack launched from Egyptian Sinai, just north of Eilat, on August 18, brought Israel into a headlong collision with the problematic fruits of the Egyptian revolution.
Benjamin Netanyahu is an example of a politician who sees only what he wants to see. Indeed, this has been a characteristic of many Israeli leaders, including Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barack. Those two conducted negotiations with the Palestinians and never imagined a situation other than the Palestinian official [sitting in front of them] agreeing to their views and the Israeli plan.
Israelis and Palestinians are preparing for a showdown at the United Nations in September, when the Palestinian leadership will ask for recognition of a Palestinian state within the borders that existed before the Six Day War in 1967 (when Israel seized control of Jordanian-occupied territory).
The details of the bid remain unclear, and the effort entails serious risks. But a sober assessment of what might follow a UN endorsement of Palestine’s borders allows for some cautious optimism.
A political tsunami is expected in September, the politicians keep warning us. Obviously the recognition of Palestinian statehood, if adopted, is expected to yank the rug from under the feet of the refugees who were raised on the dream of returning to the fig tree, the spring and the village that no longer exist.
“The Corner of Rothschild and Tahrir,” reads one of the posters at the site where Israel’s summer of social protests began—on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, which has become the movement’s tent-city HQ. Few of the protest leaders would flinch at acknowledging the inspiration they drew from the Arab Awakening, but it is a new, challenging and often uncomfortable feeling for many Jewish Israelis to consider the surrounding Arab world as providing a spark worth emulating.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/20784
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/20784
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/20784
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.americantaskforce.org/atfp_sixth_annual_gala
[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/gaza-cease-fire-tested-by-israeli-airstrike-palestinian-mortar-fire/2011/08/24/gIQAYeOBbJ_story.html
[7] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=415898
[8] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=415905
[9] http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=235387
[10] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/glenn-beck-hosts-rally-in-old-city-of-1783094.html
[11] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4113900,00.html
[12] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14529749
[13] http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/ramadan-discounts-lure-customers-back-to-west-banks-ghost-town
[14] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=413956
[15] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-extreme-israeli-right-s-alliance-with-lunatics-1.380546
[16] http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/the-arms-race/despite-some-israel-libya-contacts-warm-ties-are-not-on-the-horizon-1.380554
[17] http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=235276
[18] http://www.forward.com/articles/141870/
[19] http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=2&id=26352
[20] http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=40738
[21] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/right-of-return-revisited-1.380549
[22] http://www.thenation.com/article/162964/can-tahrir-square-come-tel-aviv
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