The Secretary General of the United Nations has condemned Palestinians for directing their rockets against Israeli civilians, and Israel for a disproportionate response.
Both condemnations are appropriate. Israel's response is disproportionately light. Seven years ago the IDF should have begun sending one artillery shell into a neighborhood of Gaza with for every missile that landed in an Israeli settlement.
Better late than never.
The operation began with the killing of a student as Sapir College, alongside Sderot, and the use of more accurate and powerful missiles that began landing in the city of Ashkelon. Those missiles came to Gaza from the international market, through the Sinai and nominal Egyptian control of Gaza's southern borders.
Ashkelon is somewhat further from Gaza than Sderot. It is a city of more than 100,000, compared to Sderot's 20,000. It also has a major hospital and power plant, as well as numerous industries.
If we did not have tickets for one of today's flights to Italy, I would be glued to the radio for as long as this lasts. My obsession for details had me listening to all hourly bulletins yesterday, and two hours of reports and commentary in the evening.
During the Sabbath we heard about five Israeli soldiers injured. Typically, the news about two combat deaths came only after the end of the Sabbath. This morning there were details about the young men and their families, as well as the times and locations of funerals.
News about more than 60 Palestinian deaths and many more injuries do not make as much of an impression. We have seen pictures of the children killed that are purveyed to international media. We heard official Palestinian reports that 4 young boys were killed while playing football. Other Palestinians reported that the men who fired rockets sent the boys to retrieve the launching tubes so they could be used again, and that the boys died when an IDF helicopter fired against the people seen working at the launching site. The adults who did the work saved themselves by having neighborhood kids do what was exciting for them, and produced a claim for the international community about four innocent boys killed by the Israelis.
Also this morning there is news from a French court about a forensic expert who testified about the iconic picture from 2000 showing a Palestinian father sheltering his son while being targeted, presumably by the IDF. The scene ended with the death of the boy. The expert testified that the film was fabricated; and if it was real, the direction of the shots were likely to have come from Palestinians rather than Israelis.
Mahmoud Abbas has called the Israeli operation worse than the Holocaust. We remember that his doctoral dissertation at Moscow's Oriental College in 1982 claimed that Jewish victims of the Germans were less than one million. http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=ia&ID=IA9502 Abbas is making the conventional Palestinian demand of world powers to pressure Israel to desist what he calls disproportionate responses to sporadic missiles. He has also declared a suspension of the peace talks. In this he is saving Edud Olmert's the need to disappoint President Bush by informing him that the peace talks show little chance of accomplishing anything.
It is too early to know how this will develop. Speculation is that it will become the general invasion of Gaza that numerous commentators have been saying is inevitable. If so, it is likely to involve the call-up of reserves and control over the southern borders of Gaza through which armaments have been flowing from Egypt, and a general search for weapons caches and workshops. Already the IDF has destroyed the offices of the Palestinian prime minister and the interior ministry. Palestinian ministers themselves are said to be on the target list, but are reported to be somewhere deep in their bunkers.
Hopefully Sicily will be quieter, and that we will not spend too much time with our short-wave radio, the Herald Tribune, or trying to decipher headlines in the Italian press.
Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Home tel: 972-2-532-2725
Cell phone: 054-683-5325
Fax: 972-2-582-9144