Saturday 17 November 2012

Jerusalem, Stones of Sijjeel and Tel Aviv under fire


Source

Shocked Israel requests a long-term trucewithout stopping military buildup on the border of Gaza. They can not accept the present reality and looking defeated, but also afraid that the situation may lead to dire consequences.

On the other side, Palestinian resistance, having regained self-confidence through the process of "Sijjeel stones" , do not want to lose the new equation imposed, but also trying to avoid known human and material cost off all-out confrontation.

Egypt, despite its efforts to restore its regional role, still adheres to the legacy of Hosni Mubarak, and its role as a mediator between the two parties.

 
However, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, for the first time since 1948, are within the Palestinian resistance arms, and that Israel is witnessing an attrition war destroying what is left of their prestige, and Benjamin Netanyahu chance to win the election. 

Has Israel’s Assault on Gaza Made Tel Aviv Vulnerable?

For Israel, the assault on Gaza has multiple aims. The most immediate is to intimidate the Islamist militants who operate out of the coastal enclave.......The message from Israel is: “Resistance is futile.”...

Israeli officials make clear they do not want to destroy Hamas, which though categorized as a terrorist organization is nonetheless the most moderate group currently operating in Gaza. It has launched missiles only rarely since the last offensive Israel launched, in December 2008, in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed......Since then, most rockets are fired by other militant groups, such as the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, and an assortment of Salafist groups like the Army of Islam.


Hamas actually worked hard to prevent the launches – most of the time. 
Occasionally it looked the other way, and on rare occasions even joined in the firing, mostly to demonstrate it hadn’t gone pacifist. Since surprising even itself by winning parliamentary elections in Gaza and the West Bank in 2006, notes Benedetta Berti, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv....."In order to stay in power, they need to deal with Israel, they need stability, so they have to make sure things are almost quiet. But if it’s entirely quiet, they lose credibility and people defect from the Iz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades,” the military wing of Hamas.

“Up until yesterday we had pretty clear rules of the game,” says Berti, who recently co-authored a book on Hamas and Hizballah.
“Hamas through the Iz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades basically was policing the border for Israel 90% of the time. Then every few months we had these short-lived escalations ended by a cease-fire, then we had a few months of relative calm.”
In recent months, however, the escalations became more frequent, and the calm more relative. 

The increase in attacks reflected a change in policy within the organization. The number of rockets launched into Israel - where a million civilians were vulnerable, running to shelters when sirens sounded -  increased after Hamas’ longtime political chief, Khaled Meshaal, failed to persuade a majority of the leadership to set aside violence and join forces with Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the secular Fatah movement and head of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, the other Palestinian territory. 

Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, argues for ending the 45-year Israeli occupation through nonviolent means, including a current effort to win recognition as a state from the United Nations General Assembly on Nov. 29.
 
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