Unleashing Conflict From A Terrorist Enclave

"Hamas issued an ultimatum recently to Israel, to have all Israeli police and soldiers removed from the al Aqsa plaza or else ... they would strike at the heart of Israel, meaning Tel Aviv. Al Aqsa has been used throughout Ramadan for stockpiling weapons and rocks used to attack Israeli police and, sometimes, Jewish worshippers at the wailing wall plaza below."

"The Sheikh Jarrah situation, where families await a court ruling on eviction, has been misrepresented as a grotesque land grab, but it really is a pedestrian landlord-tenant dispute, that happens to involve Palestinians and Israelis. It is complex and has been ongoing for 40 years."

"There is speculation that internal power struggles within Hamas are partially the cause of this latest round of rocket attacks, rivals jostling for position."

Vivian Berkovici, journalist, former Canadian ambassador to Israel, Tel Aviv

Hamas rockets light up the night sky as they are fired towards Israel from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 14, 2021, while Israeli Iron Dome interceptors rise to meet them (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)

 

"The sight of the pogroms in Lod and the disturbances across the country by an incited and bloodthirsty Arab mob, injuring people, damaging property and even attacking sacred Jewish spaces is unforgivable."

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Jerusalem

"We will not tolerate this; we need to restore calm."

"If this isn't an emergency situation, I don't know what is."

"We are talking about life and death here."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Paramedics observe a fire in Ramle caused by a rocket from Gaza that landed in the city, May 13, 2021. (United Hatzalah)

 

A not-surprising state of emergency was declared by Israel's prime minister responding to riots that have been spreading across the country, leading to schools, synagogues and cars being torched in Jewish neighbourhoods, set on fire by their Arab neighbours. The uneasy peace that prevailed between Arab and Jewish segments of the population in mixed Arab-Jewish towns has been rent asunder. In the central city of Lod a curfew was imposed in response to the wave of riots led by Israeli-Arabs and countered just as violently by resident Jews who have taken offence at their schools and synagogues set ablaze.

 

The protests, riots and violence have spread to other cities in Israel, including Haifa, Acre and Ramla, while Hmas continues to fire hundreds of rockets and Israel retaliates in kind, bombing the Gaza coastal enclave. The difference between the two is that the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists deliberately target crowded civilian areas in Israel with the intention of killing Jews, in a kind of match for locating their armaments and missile sites in Gaza in crowded civilian areas, inviting a military response from the IDF to hit those areas.

 

An Israeli man checks the damages in a residential building after a rocket attack from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva, on May 13, 2021. (GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP)

In contrast, the Israel Defence Forces directly target buildings and other infrastructures owned by Hamas, used as headquarters and weapons-producing depots. Even then, there is a precursor knock-on bomb to alert residents of the buildings to evacuate before the explosives follow, to destroy the designated building. Israelis hearing air raid sirens make directly for the closest shelters. Hamas has never seen the need to build shelters for Gazans; after all Hamas members have their tunnels to take shelter in.

 

Just a short while ago, the world was commiserating with Hamas bemoaning the fact that they had no money to purchase COVID vaccines with, to protect Gaza's Palestinian population, taking issue with Israel for launching a mass vaccination campaign, while ignoring the needs of Palestinians in Gaza whose rulers were too impoverished to fund vaccines for them. The very same rulers who are at the present time, sending off hundreds of rockets into Israel, at a cost far greater than vaccines.

 

The death toll will continue to rise. There will be more Israeli deaths, of both Jews and Israeli-Arabs hit by the incoming rockets. The deaths of Palestinians in Gaza always are greater in number because they are used as human shields. Hamas uses those deaths for public relations purposes, informing the international community that Israel deliberately kills innocent Palestinian civilians and children. It bothers them not one bit that many of their own rockets misfire and land in Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians and children.

 

A long exposure picture shows Iron Dome interception missiles fired as rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip to Israel, May 13, 2021. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

Israeli chiefs of police see in the current situation echoes of the riots of 2000 heralding the Second Intifada that lasted for five years, a mass Palestinian 'uprising' against Israel. Jewish families in Lod were at work clearing debris from their burnt-out school interior. Molotov cocktails had been lobbed at the building by a group of 30 masked Arabs, witnessed by Jewish families in the area. 

 

"I am a former soldier. I was not scared then, but when I looked out the window I knew that if I went outside I would be killed", stated a 28-year-old-father of two, Yedidya Harris. A synagogue, a school and a dozen vehicles were torched overnight during the riots in Lod. A Wednesday announcement by Israel spoke of the destruction of weapons manufacturing sites used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

 

A separate strike killed several high0ranking Hamas commanders, including the head of the Gaza City military division, Bassem Issa, which Hamas confirmed. Hundreds of strikes targeting Hamas were carried out by Israel, responding to the unprecedented barrage of 130 rockets fired from Gaza at Tel Aviv in the space of mere minutes, a planned challenge to the capacity of Israel's defensive Iron Dome system, overwhelming its ability to stop them all.

 

Smoke and flames rise after an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip, May 12, 2021. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

A similar barrage of 130 rockets set off in the space of five minutes took place over Ashkelon. Plumes of smoke from rocket and artillery hits from Israel into Gaza rose over Gaza City. In a Tel Aviv suburb a woman died when her house was destroyed by a rocket that also set vehicles ablaze. Since Monday, close to two thousand rockets were fired by Hamas into Israel.

 

Israel's friends and allies speak of her need and her 'right' to respond with force against the attacks constituting war crimes, targeting civilian populations, while with the same breath her friends such as the Biden Administration's Antony Blinken urged restraint on Israel, of which he said, there was a "clear difference" between Israel defending itself and Hamas raining down rockets on civilians.

"[The government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel] condemns these incessant rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip against Israeli cities in the strongest terms. [They] could not be justified."

"Israel has the right to self-defence against these attacks."                                             Spokesman Steffen Seibert

Rockets (l) are seen in the night sky fired towards Israel from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 14, 2021, while Iron Dome interceptors rise to meet them (Photo by ANAS BABA / AFP)