Today's Situation

TURNING UP THE HEAT, May 18, 2007

As the Qassam rockets continued to fall on Sderot and elsewhere in the western Negev, Israeli ratcheted up its response by a notch or two on Thursday night and Friday morning.

According to Army Radio, a small IDF ground force entered the northern Gaza Strip, accompanied by tanks and other armored vehicles. An army spokesman stressed the small force was on a defensive operation. Earlier, IDF tanks crossed the border fence into the Gaza Strip, taking up positions in the Sajaiya area in the central part of the strip. The army said the tanks entered for observational purposes.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz, meanwhile, sent out a warning to Hamas, that if it continued to fire rockets at Israeli targets, it would pay a heavy price – including possible attacks against its leadership. Addressing a meeting of his Labor Party secretariat in Tel Aviv, Peretz also stressed that Israel had no plans for the mass evacuation of Sderot residents, but that anyone who wanted to leave the town for a few days would receive all necessary government assistance.

Peretz also announced that he was convening a special meeting of the heads of the military and other security services. The emergency meeting, scheduled for Friday afternoon, will discuss the developments in Gaza, the ongoing rocket attacks, as well as the IDF response to the attacks.

Elsewhere, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Friday morning that Israel had not yet determined what its goals were for the IDF operations in Gaza.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, meeting with foreign diplomats in Tel Aviv, said that Israeli citizens of the south 'are under attack. In the past few days more than 60 rockets have been fired with the intent of hitting civilians, children and families. Children aren't going to school, families can't leave their homes. The situation is intolerable,' Livni said.

In an interview with Army Radio, Lieberman said that Israel must send ground forces into the Gaza Strip, split the area in three parts, take control of the Philadelphi corridor, and after calm was restored, hand over control to a multinational force of NATO troops. He added that 'the target is not the Qassam cells. The State of Israel decided in its time that the goal was to achieve peace with the Palestinians. This is an illusion. It's impossible to reach a peace agreement.'

Army Radio also quoted defense sources on Friday as saying that the Qassam fire at Israel would continue for the next few days at least. At least eight rockets landed in the western Negev on Friday morning, wounding two people lightly and causing damage to several structures.

For its part, Israel carried out five strikes against Hamas targets Thursday night and Friday morning, Arutz 7 reports. The latest helicopter attack was on a training base east of Gaza City, where four terrorists were killed and six others wounded. The other four strikes were on a rocket-launching cell, eliminating two terrorists, a Hamas militia position, a vehicle carrying a senior Hamas commander and a building that housed the Executive Force militia.

There was more pessimism from former National Security Chief Giora Eiland, who told Israel Radio on Friday morning that Israel does not have the military capability for a direct assault on Qassam fire. Eiland said that Hamas' capabilities would only improve, including the range of their rockets. 'Gaza is a clear and hostile Hamas state in every sense of the term,' he said. 'The Palestinian Authority and Abbas are pathetic and irrelevant.'

The Jerusalem Post, meanwhile, reports that Fateh officials announced on Thursday night that Hamas members had planned to kill Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, head of Fateh, earlier in the day. Abbas canceled a trip to Gaza after hearing of the plan, they said. The Arab news source PNN announced that the visit was canceled after a bomb tunnel was discovered under a road that Abbas was to travel on. However, the Fateh officials said that terrorists had planned to kill Abbas using a car bomb.

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