Free Republic

  •  Israeli report says Palestinian uprising unlikely this year  •  Palestinians expected to continue efforts to isolate Israel  •  Israel continues to dominate political discourseWhen will the Palestinians revolt? The answer, according to an Israeli official: not this year (as quoted by Agency France Press). An internal Israeli Foreign Ministry report last month also concluded that a third Palestinian intifada or uprising was 'unlikely' this year. According to the unnamed official, "This report, which is more than 100 pages long, judges that an explosion of generalized violence in the form of a third intifada is unlikely." Instead, it was resolved that Palestinians would "continue to...

Warning Hamas it will be hit hard in a future conflict, a senior IDF commander said on Wednesday that motivation to kidnap Israeli soldiers has significantly increased since the prisoner swap for Gilad Schalit. According to Col. Tal Hermoni, commander of the Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip are working to abduct Israeli soldiers and are digging tunnels that could be used in such an attack. “We believe that since there are additional Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails that these groups are working to kidnap soldiers,” Hermoni said during a briefing...

ATHENS, Greece - 235 years after the American colonies declared independence from Britain, the passenegers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza call for a new American Declaration of Independence, this time from Israel. The passengers issued their call from the decks of the U.S.-flagged boat, The Audacity of Hope, which is currently confined to a Greek military pier near Athens, while its captain sits in jail. Like the Founders in Philadelphia, the passengers in Athens recognize that "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them to another, a...

s a resident of Berkeley and therefore one of your constituents, I am writing with two purposes: a) to let you know that I will be sailing later this month to the Gaza Strip aboard a vessel called The Audacity of Hope, which will join 10 or 12 other ships, with more than 1,000 passengers from all over the world, in this year's Gaza Freedom Flotilla; and b) to request that you use your good offices to demand that the Israeli government not interfere with our mission and to insist that the State Department and other branches of the U.S....

JERUSALEM – An anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip struck a school bus in southern Israel Thursday, wounding two people, one of them critically, and prompting fierce Israeli retaliation that killed five Palestinians. Israel unleashed airstrikes and tank fire against Hamas targets across the border. It was the heaviest assault on the coastal territory since a broad military offensive two years ago. Besides the dead, more than 30 Palestinians were wounded, said Palestinian health official Adham Abu Salmiya. He said one of the dead was a 50-year-old civilian who was sitting outside his home when he was struck by...

Justice Richard Goldstone dropped a bombshell last week by appearing to repudiate parts of the 2009 report that bears his name. The 575-page report, compiled under United Nations mandate by Goldstone and three highly esteemed experts, investigated 36 incidents during Israel's 2008-2009 assault on the Gaza Strip, including allegations of indiscriminate and disproportionate attack, illegal use of white phosphorous, using Palestinian civilians as human shields, and deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure. The team concluded that Israel had launched "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work...

On CNN earlier this week, American Edward Peck, an activist who sailed with the Free Gaza Movement flotilla, asserted, "The purpose of the movement was humanitarian." Sorry, but the video of so-called peace activists clubbing Israeli soldiers and tossing one onto a lower deck didn't exactly exude the Kumbaya spirit to me. While Peck argued that the flotilla was not "hostile," its goal was provocative - to break Israel's military embargo against Hamas. Activists knew they were taunting a standing army. They also knew they couldn't lose. Israel already delivers food and other relief to the Gaza Strip. As for...