Those frustrating Qassams

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

nce again, the IDF rolled into Gaza this moring trying to stop Qassam rocket fire, which once again struck Sderot and the western Negev. No matter what the army does – cutting roads in Gaza to prevent Qassam rocket teams from moving their launchers, demolishing homes and buildings in areas where the Qassams were fired from, maintaining a constant presence in those areas – still the rockets manage to fly. :

The rockets cause mostly physical and psychological damage. There’s no early warning, and while statistically, only two people have been killed by the 450 Qassams that have hit Sderot since the Gazan Palestinians started producing them two years ago, the townspeople are increasingly frustrated by the failure to stop them and the nervewracking existence not knowing when one will fly into town. They land harmlessly in fields and backyards or disastrously on tiled rooftops, smashing into living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens, or into the small plazas outside commercial centers.

Mostly, people are traumatized by the shock and at least once a week there’s a human interest type story in the press about the ‘miraculous’ survival of an unharmed baby in a crib or a person who just stepped out of a room when the primitive missile struck. A radar-based early warning system, much touted only a week ago, is still far from perfected, and anyway only would provide 20 seconds advance notice of the extremely inaccurate rockets.

When Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz went to Sderot early this week to express support for the citizenry, he sounded more like an opposition politician complaining about the government’s inability to provide security for the people of Sderot than a defense minister meant to come up with answers.

The goddess loves -- Mixed media on paper, 50x70 cm by Silvia Rosenberg

sraeli officials meanwhile are blaming ‘either Hamas or Islamic Jihad’ for the kidnapping, with no evidence to prove anything. Hamas has condemned the kidnapping, and there has been high-profile reporting on how the Palestinian Authority’s security services are conducting a massive hunt for the missing producer-translator. Israeli government sources were also telling the press that Yasser Arafat could arrange for the producer’s release – ‘if he wants’ – while Palestinian government sources were saying that Arafat has ordered the PA’s security services to find the producer. According to a Palestinian reporter interviewed by Israel Radio, the fact that no group has claimed responsibility is an indication that the kidnappers had ‘criminal’ rather than ‘nationalist’ motives, meaning are possibly holding him ransom for money. But so far nothing has been published or reported about any ransom demands being made of CNN.

n other developments on the day the Palestinians call the fourth anniversary of their intifada, masked men speaking English attacked two members of the Christian Peacemakers Team from Hebron who were accompanying Palestinian schoolchildren on a road that Jewish settlers are allowed to use in their cars, but Palestinians are only allowed to use as pedestrians. The attackers beat the two, a man and a woman, stealing the woman’s bag. The two were hospitalized in Israel, at Be’er Sheva’s Soroka Hospital.

Meanwhile, the state, backed by police, is appealing this morning against a Kfar Sava Magistrate’s decision to send to house arrest a man who shot dead a Palestinian driver on an empty road in the Nablus area. The man, a new immigrant settler, claims he thought the driver meant to run him over. Witnesses – passengers in the driver’s van – said the settler got out of his car and waited with his weapon as the van approached. The witnesses said the driver pulled up next to the settler to ask if he needed help. The settler then fired. The Kfar Sava judge called the witnesses unreliable ‘because they are biased.’ Police tended to believe them, and wanted a remand of the man into their custody, at least until the investigation is over. Another Magistrate Court in Kfar Sava will decide some time today whether to accept the state appeal against the lower court ruling and send the Itamar settlement resident into police custody.

On another front, the celebrations in the Galilee Druze village of Maghar went on all night as Israeli Druze CNN producer Riad ali Ghanem returned home after a bizarre 24 hour kidnapping in Gaza. He said the kidnappers said they were from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Briagdes, the armed wing of Fateh. But the group denied they were involved. No ransom or any other demands were made of CNN, or anyone else, during his stay with the kidnappers, through he did record for them a video appeal to Israeli Druze to refuse to serve in the Israeli army. He later said the statement was made under duress. The Israeli Foreign Ministry meanwhile is convinced that the kidnapping will cow foreign press reporters in Gaza, who will be afraid of offending Palestinian groups. The head of the Foreign Press Association called that nonsense. But all agreed that the incident proved once again that despite all of Israel’s efforts, Yasser Arafat is still in charge. He ordered the release of the producer and sent the PA’s myriad security services into the streets of Gaza to find him.

In Jerusalem, the attorney general decided to order a criminal investigation against Nadia Matar, head of the radical Right group Women in Green, for calling Yonatan Bassy, head of the disengagement administration, ‘worse than the Judenrat,’ the Nazi collaborators. She’ll likely be prosecuted for ‘insulting a civil servant.’ But the state won’t be prosecuting Uri Elitzur, a former chief of staff for Binyamin Netanyahu, for warning that he would use violence if the army tries to forcible evict him from his West Bank home (which meanwhile is not up for evacuation). On the other hand, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz last night told settler leaders that he is losing patience with increasingly incendiary rhetoric of the settler movement. Jailed Marwan Barghouti meanwhile told a London-based Arab-language paper that the disengagement is a victory of the intifada. He has been promoting a general cease-fire plan from behind bars in an Israeli prison where he is serving life sentences for his role in the orchestration of terrorist attacks in the Jerusalem area in the first year of the intifada.

And in Eilat, the queue of Israelis lined up to go into Sinai for the long weekend created by the start of the Sukkot holiday tonight, was nearly five kilometers long. There are tens of thousands of Israelis already in Sinai for the holidays. This morning’s line was also affected by a slow-moving protest convoy of Eilat residents demanding that the government cancel plans to reimpose the 17 percent VAT that applies throughout all of Israel, on the southern resort town. VAT was lifted from Eilat purchases in the 1980s, as a way of encouraging Israeli domestic tourism to the town. Since then, Eilat has become a tourism boomtown for both Israelis and Europeans, particularly in winter, when the nearly perpetually sunny skies draw dozens of charter flights a week.

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation