Attacks continue, but the Israelis are hoping they will stop. And Condoleeza Rice, let us remember, said a few days ago: "We should be in a position of encouraging confidence, not undermining it. No party should be taking steps at this point that could prejudice the outcome of the negotiation." However, she was scolding Israel, not the Palestinians -- for whom she has not had an unkind word.
"Israel confirms: Truce to begin Thursday; Kassams continue," from the Jerusalem Post, June 18 (thanks to Sr. Soph):
Amidst confirmations from both Israel and Hamas of a cease-fire to come into effect Thursday morning, Kassam rockets launched from the Gaza strip continued to land in various areas of the western Negev on Wednesday.Government spokesman Mark Regev confirmed Wednesday that Israel has accepted the Egypt-brokered ceasefire. As the truce goes into effect, talks to kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit will intensify, Regev said.
Egypt announced a six-month agreement on Tuesday, saying it would begin Thursday at 6 a.m. Hamas confirmed the deal shortly afterward.
"Thursday will be the beginning we hope of a new reality where Israeli citizens in the south will no longer be on the receiving end of continuous rocket attacks," Regev said. "Israel is giving a serious chance to this Egyptian initiative and we want it to succeed." [...]
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal also spoke of the truce, telling Reuters Tuesday night that "The enemy tried...to merge the issue of Gilad Schalit with the truce. We rejected this and in the final Egyptian offer the two issues are not linked," he told Reuters.
"The Gilad Schalit issue is linked to an exchange deal ... whereas the truce involves a bilateral cease-fire, lifting the blockade and opening the crossings," Mashaal added.
Amos Gilad, the head of the Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security Bureau, stressed Wednesday morning that the truce is dependent on the cessation of Kassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with Army Radio, Gilad threatened that "if [firing of Kassam rockets] continues, it will constitute a violation of the cease-fire, and the IDF is also prepared for [this situation], regardless of where the Kassams come from, from Hamas or Islamic Jihad."
[...]
Despite the imminent truce, a total of ten Kassam rockets landed in the western Negev Wednesday, Israel Radio reported. One rocket hit a greenhouse, causing minor damage. No casualties were reported in the attacks.
Also Wednesday morning, Palestinian terrorists opened fire on Bezeq employees who were working along the Gaza perimeter near Karni Crossing. There were no wounded in the attack....
Hamas has never yet honoured a ceasefire!
I received the following email from Sderot media:
Comment Available About Last Year's cease fire
A formal cease fire existed between Nov. 21st, 2006 and May 15th, 2007, during which time our news agency covered 315 missile attacks from Gaza which were fired at Sderot and the Western Negev. We have plenty of footage and human interest stories from those attacks.
I am available to discuss this with colleagues in the media, in light of the fact that the Israeli government has just agreed to yet another cease fire in Gaza.
The media has generally forgotten to mention that Israel agreed last year to a failed cease fire.
However, the people of Sderot and the Western Negev have not forgotten what last year's cease fire was like
Noam Bedein
Director
Regional News Service for Sderot and the Western Negev
Sderot Media Center
www.SderotMedia.com
1 Histadrut Street
Sderot
Israel
I'd like to think that if Israel's population wasn't outnumbered 100:1 and if that nation had a more easily defensible real estate footprint, the question of Palestine and rights of return would have been settled long ago.
But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
So another chance to regroup for Hamas then. They must be running short of explosives and weapons and ammunition again.
Very sporting of their enemies to give them a fair chance, don't you know.
Same old story.
Israel ceases,Hamas fires.
"We should be in a position of encouraging confidence, not undermining it. No party should be taking steps at this point that could prejudice the outcome of the negotiation."
.............................
Yes, indeed. Having the temerity to mention that Hamas is still lobbing rockets at Israel could undermine confidence in the truce. The fact that Hamas is still lobbing rockets--well, how could *that* undermine confidence? Clearly, Israel should not point out that Hamas is not honoring the truce--that might endanger the truce!
Jerusalem Posts wrote:
"A formal cease fire existed between Nov. 21st, 2006 and May 15th, 2007, during which time our news agency covered 315 missile attacks from Gaza which were fired at Sderot and the Western Negev."
Thanks for reminding us. Even though this sham "cease fire" was in place barely a year ago, I think most people have forgotten about it. This works out to almost two rocket attacks a day--during a cease fire! Just think how much worse it would have been if no cease fire had been in place! sarc/off
from above:
"The Gilad Schalit issue is linked to an exchange deal ..." Mashaal added.
.........
Yeah, you bet it is. Assuming this poor man is still alive, I'm sure he'll be traded for dozens--perhaps hundreds--of violent jihadists now safely locked up in Israeli jails. It will also encourage more attempts at kidnapping members of Israeli security forces.
When, oh, when, will the Israeli Jews - and the Thai Buddhists, and the Hindu indians, and the Filipino Catholics, and everyone else who has ever 'negotiated' with jihadis - wake up and realize that when Muslims make 'treaties' with kafir, they make them on toilet paper and sign them with disappearing ink?
Israel.
Hamas, and Fatah, will lie to you, they will always and everywhere lie to you and then stab you in the back, because lying is permitted in order to advance Islam. Advancing Islam is about Muslim individuals, or Muslim groups, gaining physical, political, economic and social dominance over a non-Muslim person or group, dominance that will then be shamelessly and gleefully used by the Muslim Ubermensch to hurt, humiliate, exploit and, at worst, murder, the non-Muslim victim who is viewed as an Untermensch.
So: time to stop playing their games. Ignore the web of lies.
Start at one end of Gaza, giving no notice whatever, and proceed to the other. With overwhelming force of all kinds, obliterate every armed combatant, taking no prisoners, turning the place inside out and upside down. Destroy all weapons discovered. Gazan Christians will be assisted to migrate to Christian-majority countries, or invited to live as citizens of Israel, provided they swear NEVER to enable the Jihad against Israel, and to renounce anti-semitism. Evict the surviving Gazan Muslims.
If the Europeans squawk about it, broadcast every one of the MEMRI clips of Hamas' poisonous antisemitic and anti-kafir mosque sermons, and those ghastly 'come be a martyr in Paradise after killing Jews' music videos, and the schoolbooks rotten with hate, and the kiddie TV programs, especially the ones designed to encourage little kids to become suicide assassins and slay and be slain in the cause of 'allah'. Rub people's noses in the fact that it is the Muslims of Gaza, especially those who have led and instructed them, who have been working themselves up to emulate the worst excesses of the Nazis.
Annex Gaza and resettle it en masse. Rebuild the synagogues; rebuild and repair the churches.
If Gilad Shalit is not found, or if he is discovered to have been murdered after having been tortured, mutilated, etc., then take out of Israeli jails half of the local Arab Muslim prisoners who are definitely known to have murdered Jews, and shoot them. Let it be known that if Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, alive or dead, are not released forthwith, the remaining local Arab Muslim prisoners who are known to have murdered Jews, will be next up for the firing squad.
Time for fire from heaven.
To any new readers who may find my above posting somewhat dismayingly aggressive: please go to the main pages of jihadwatch and dhimmiwatch and read Mr Spencer's discussions of the meaning of jihad, and dhimmitude, respectively.
Allow yourself to think about the fact that the local Arab Muslims, in and around eretz Israel, are and have been conducting a classic Jihad against the Jews there, from the moment that they perceived that the traditional dhimmi Jewish communities were being reinforced by Jews returning out of Exile, and that those Jews were becoming 'uppity'.
Allow yourself to consider the possibility that the supremacist mindset of Islam makes it unendurable for Arab Muslims, and indeed, Muslims generally, to contemplate the continuing existence of an autonomous Jewish state whose citizens, inhabiting part of the traditional historic homeland of the Jews (formerly stolen by Muslim imperialists, but now reclaimed by its indigenous owners) enjoy the freedom, prosperity and human rights that, if they were dhimmis under Muslim rule, would be ruthlessly denied them.
Then reread the paragraph in which I discuss what Muslim children - and adults - are taught, in Gaza. Not only in Gaza, either. And not only in the past ten years, but for many, many years.
Indeed, O new reader, I commend to you Dr Andrew Bostom's 'Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism', which will show you that the leitmotifs of Hamas' and Egyptian and Saudi and Iranian hatred of Jews and of Israel, a hatred which is shared by many Muslims in places as far away as Malaysia and Bangladesh, derive from the teachings of the Muslim sacred texts, and are merely a modern manifestation of the way that - from the outset - the Muslim world has generally felt, and behaved, towards the Jews.
Then perhaps you will understand why I believe the Jews of Israel would be completely justified in razing to the ground, by fire and sword, the jihad fortress and arsenal and abyss of genocidal hatred that Gaza has become.
I do not weep for the destruction of Hitler's Berlin. I would not weep for the razing of Gaza.