*Hours after Sharon's death, rocket fired from Gaza at
Israel*<http://www.timesofi
Times of Israel 11 Jan by Ilan Ben Zion -- A Kassam rocket was fired from
the Gaza Strip at southern Israel Saturday evening, not far from where
relatives of late ex-prime minister Ariel Sharon gathered at the family
home at Shikmim Farm. Red alert sirens sounded in the area near the coastal
city of Ashkelon, but no impact was reported, an IDF spokesperson said.
Palestinian sources reported Israeli retaliatory airstrikes into the Gaza
Strip shortly thereafter. There was no confirmation of the reports
http://www.timesofi
*Slow but steady escalation between Gaza,
Israel*<http://www.al-
Al-Monitor 10 Jan by Shlomi Eldar -- After months of relative quiet, the
Gaza Strip is back on escalation track. Salah Abu Latif was killed two
weeks ago on Dec. 24; the Rahat resident and employee of the Ministry of
Defense was fixing the fence that runs along the Gaza border when he was
shot and killed. Since then, the war of attrition in the region has been
renewed. Armed Palestinians fire mortars and rockets at Israel, and the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) respond with aerial assaults at the sources of
the attacks, or at various Hamas targets. Last week alone, the Israeli air
force attacked the Gaza Strip
<http://www.jpost.
seven separate occasions, wounding eight Palestinians. After one of these
attacks, the IDF released a
statement<http://www.idfblog.
“The Hamas terrorist organization is the right address, and it
bears responsibility.” The gradual but steady escalation stands in stark
contradiction to all of the assessments by key figures in Israel’s security
establishment, which claims that Hamas is too weak and too isolated at this
time, and will therefore do everything it can to avoid another round
of military
clashes with Israel<http://www.al-
.
http://www.al-
*Soul searching at a West Bank
demonstration*
972blog 11 Jan by Noam Rotem (translated by Jordan Michaeli) -- *‘I go to
demonstrations as a private person protesting the injustice done to the
inhabitants of the West Bank. For them, however, I’m an Israeli before
anything else, and this dissonance stands at the basis of the soul
searching you are now reading.’ -- ...*Only when you see the
incomprehensible amounts of tear gas showered on residents’ homes can you
understand how an 85-year-old man
suffocates<http://972mag.
and only then do you realize that army commanders can’t argue that they
weren’t aware of the amount of damage caused by their weapons. Only when
looking at settlement houses built on territory that used to belong to the
village, and by observing where the soldiers are, practically anywhere
except for the space between the village and the settlement’s houses, only
then do you understand that the name, Israel “Defense Forces” is a sad
joke. Only when you see children aged four, six and ten, choke from tear
gas the soldiers shoot and escape in terror from armed men shielded head to
toe, do you truly understand the price and effect on the human experience
of those people Israel chooses to oppress. The violence, the stupidity, the
wickedness – all that for a false ideal. For me, that’s the main benefit of
being there – a true and deep understanding of the crime, the pain and the
price, an understanding which gives strength to continue fighting.
http://972mag.
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