Posted on 07/05/2006 11:04:43 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Halutz: Striking Hamas will end Kassams
IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz said Wednesday in a meeting of the security cabinet that striking Hamas' military wing would bring an end to Kassam fire on Israeli communities.
Thus far, Halutz said, the army had barely acted against Hamas.
During Wednesday's meeting, the Security Cabinet called for prolonged and gradual military action in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as discussing the crisis over the kidnapping of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit and how to respond to Tuesday's rocket attack on Ashkelon.
A communique issued after the meeting said that in light of the kidnapping and the continuation of the rocket fire on Israel, "preparations will be made to bring about a change in the rules of the game and mode of operating with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas."
The security cabinet approved the following steps:
The statement said this would be done while trying to prevent Palestinian civilian casualties as much as possible and ensuring that the humanitarian needs of the population will be met.
Immediately after the security cabinet meeting, Olmert held consultations with Defense Minister Amir Peretz and top security officials to approve the operative steps to achieve these goals.
Simultaneously, the IDF was gearing up for large incursion into northern Gaza through the Erez crossing. Armored vehicles were stationed at Mefalsim and were being loaded on to trucks.
The IDF has been given the green light to enter residential areas, but will not reoccupy the Gaza Strip, an official at the meeting said. A buffer zone will be created in the northern part of the Strip in order to prevent Kassam fire.
Prior to the meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert issued a warning to the Hamas-led government. "[The firing of a Kassam at Ashkelon] is a major escalation that Hamas is responsible for," said Olmert. "The criminal attempt to hurt Israeli citizens will be met with an extraordinary response and the Hamas movement will be the first to feel it," added the prime minister.
The rocket fired Tuesday night traveled 12 kilometers before landing in Ashkelon.
Ashkelon Mayor Roni Mehatzri said that the city's 120,000 residents could not continue to be under threat. "This is a new situation," said Mehatzri, adding, "Although we knew there was chance this would happen, it still surprised us. Our circumstances have now changed," he added.
The security establishment was set to decide whether to comply with the requests of the Ashkelon Municipality and introduce a Kassam rocket early warning system modeled on the Red Dawn system currently used in Sderot. The IDF had previously turned down the request, claiming it was liable to create unnecessary panic among residents.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered the IDF to increase its activities in the Gaza Strip as part of "Operation Summer Rains."
Peretz stressed that one of the goals of the operation was to "remove the threat of Kassams."
Ze'ev Boim, a member of the cabinet said, "as far as I'm concerned, the people of (northern Gaza towns) Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya can start packing."
Security Cabinet member Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the only solution to the Kassam crisis is continued targeted assassinations, while speaking to Army Radio on Wednesday morning.
"The only thing that changed the picture was when we went to the terror leaders - when we removed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi - then the picture began changing. Then they understood that no one is immune."
MK Ephraim Sneh (Labor), former deputy defense minister, said that there was "no escape from prolonged ground presence at the launch sites."
Responding to a comment by his Army Radio interviewer that the Palestinians had been launching Kassams in spite of an IDF presence in the Gaza Strip, Sneh said that the government must provide Israel with maximum protection.
"If you want to tell your citizens: I did the maximum," he said, "then this is the maximum."
As for the target of Israeli pressure, Sneh noted that the Hamas leadership in Damascus was behind the recent attacks. He asserted that the Hamas military wing did not listen to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, but rather to Khaled Mashaal in Syria.
AP contributed to this report
July 05, 2006
Israeli Cabinet Approves Deeper Gaza Incursion, Buffer Zone
*****************************AN EXCERPT *********************************
After Hamas fired a longer-range Kassam rocket that hit the city of Ashkelon, the Israeli cabinet has decided to respond to this escalation by pushing the Palestinians farther away. The IDF will deepen their northern incursion into Gaza and start leveling residential structures in their rocket-staging area, intending to set up a permanent buffer zone:
The Security Cabinet approved a deeper military incursion into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, following the Kassam that demonstrated a new, longer rage by landing in an Ashkelon school on Tuesday night.The IDF has been given the green light to enter residential areas, but will not reoccupy the Gaza Strip, an official at the meeting said. A buffer zone will be created in the northern part of the Strip. ...
Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered the IDF to increase its activities in the Gaza Strip as part of "Operation Summer Rains."
Peretz stressed that one of the goals of the operation was to "remove the threat of Kassams."
Ze'ev Boim, a member of the cabinet said, "as far as I'm concerned, the people of (northern Gaza towns) Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya can start packing."
If the Israelis mean to set up a buffer zone that encompasses Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, it looks like they will take the first two miles or so off the top of Gaza, according to this map. Four former settlements will be reabsorbed, but the Israelis do not plan on annexing the land. They want to clear the area and set up what amounts to a no-man's-land to keep those 40 square kilometers or so from acting as a staging ground for the Kassams. (One frustrating aspect of this conflict is the lack of good maps of Gaza, even from this Palestinian source. Beit Hanoun is the orange blob next to the arrow showing the passage to the West Bank.)
As we have noted numerous times, the Kassams represented a casus belli long before the Palestinians invaded Israel from Gaza and abducted Gilad Shalit. The Israelis have now responded, somewhat tardily, to this series of provocations, and only when they escalated into a real threat to Ashkelon. The IDF will place themselves within range of these rockets instead of their civilian population being the targets, and the reaction time to future launches will shrink dramatically. The new Olmert government appears more ready to use military action to counter terrorist threats.
As for eliminating these two towns, the Israelis can expect plenty of diplomatic heat over that solution. That sounds like ethnic cleansing, and the memory of Slobodan Milosevic will hang heavy over that threat. However, Israel cannot simply allow Hamas and Islamic Jihad to continue to shoot rockets into Israel, and the fact is that the Palestinian Authority has never taken any steps at all to stop them. The role of Hamas in these attacks makes them an act of war, and Israel has the right to respond -- but they cannot simply demolish residential areas to do so, at least not under common interpretations of the rules of war. The Israelis will need to refine that idea, perhaps by establishg the buffer close enough to both towns to see the specific launch sites and demolish them as an acceptable response to the provocation.
It also points towards a much longer Israeli operation than described by the IDF and the media. Even if Shalit gets released unharmed at this point, the Israelis will not back down on the rocket attacks. Hamas in the West Bank apparently cannot and/or will not force an end to the attacks, and therefore Israel must put some plan into place to protect its civilians from random aerial attacks.
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BTW let's not forget what General Sherman did to Atlanta just before he set off an his march to the sea--he forcibly evacuated all the residents and burned the city to the ground to keep an enemy city from being in his rear. The Israelis should bone up on their American Civil War history.
Ethnic cleansing requires that one race/religion be removed from an area so it can be can be "purified" or occupied. In this case, Israel just wants a buffer zone.
Whose seed was spread far and wide to the North.....Vlad The Impaler?
Assyrian kings were depicted [sculpture] as pretty muscular individuals. Vlad, IIRC, was portrayed as rather thin. Not much family resemblance there.
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