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A Grad rocket struck an empty kindergarten in Ashdod on Monday, sending several people into shock and causing heavy damage to buildings in the area. The facility was empty due to a Home Front Command directive to keep schools and kindergartens closed. Local residents had complied with safety instructions, entering bomb shelters and safe rooms after hearing the warning siren. The epicenter of the day's rocket attacks was Ashkelon, where five Grads damaged structures and sent people into shock. Another four landed later, causing no damage. By Monday evening, the day's total stood at 37 rockets fired at the South....

Three years after being evacuated from settlements in the Gaza Strip, some of the evacuees are now returning - in uniform. Aharon Cruz, a paratroops officer, lived in Netzarim for two years before the disengagement. On Sunday, he and his unit, to which he had been recalled a mere day after his wedding last Thursday, were back at the settlement's ruins in central Gaza. "On one hand, there's a feeling of 'what did we leave for?'" said his father, Rabbi Ze'ev Cruz. "On the other hand, there's joy that he is returning to a place he knows." The ground operation...

Hamas representatives claimed on Sunday that their militiamen were fighting against IDF troops in the Gaza Strip with weapons confiscated from the Palestinian Authority in the summer of 2007. They said Hamas had managed to lay its hands on all the weapons that Israel, the US and other countries had given forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas had also seized dozens of armored vehicles used by Abbas's security forces, they added. After its men took full control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas announced that it had seized tens of thousands of rifles and pistols, including heavy...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli defense officials said Saturday that ground forces are crossing the Gaza border. Artillery units joined Israel's Gaza offensive for the first time Saturday, while warplanes and gunboats pounded more than 40 Hamas targets and a mosque where 10 people were killed.

(IsraelNN.com) The IAF hit a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City on Thursday evening. The strike targeted senior Hamas terrorist Nabil Abu el-Amrin.Powerful secondary blasts were seen from the air after Amrin's house was hit, confirming IDF intelligence according to which the building was used to store large quantities of explosives and ammunition. It was not immediately clear if Amrin was killed in the strike.On Thursday afternoon the IAF hit and killed Nizar Rayyan, making him the most senior Hamas terrorist to be killed by Israel in several years. Several others were killed in the blast as well. Paramedics believe...

NEW YORK, (AP) -- Israel's ambassador to the United Nations says the goal of the current offensive in the Gaza Strip is much broader than ending Palestinian rocket attacks. She says Israel wants to destroy Gaza's ruling Hamas movement. In an interview Tuesday, Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said Israel's main goal is to "destroy completely" what she called a "terrorist gang."

The government's decision to launch a political and media offensive before beginning the major military operation in Gaza was an important and necessary step. The moral case for using force to protect citizens against aggression is clear - the most basic human right is the right to life, and this point needs to be highlighted in every venue. In contrast, there is no moral justification for Hamas's terror and missile attacks, or for remaining silent in the face of the use of human shields in Gaza to protect terrorists from counterattack. But based on past experience, to make this moral...

(IsraelNN.com) President Shimon Peres said in a statement released to the media Sunday that it is time for the world to understand that Israel has been more than patient in waiting for the people of Gaza to come to their senses. Detailing all the agony and subsequent fallout of the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza, Peres said, "The story is simple. Israel has left Gaza completely… The passages were open. Money was sent to Gaza. We suggested aid in many ways – economically, medically and otherwise… Still I have not heard until now a single person who could explain to us...

Hundreds of people lined the busiest intersection near the Galleria on Sunday, chanting and waving Palestinian flags to protest the Israeli bombing in Gaza. "People are very upset, obviously. They are angry," said Said Fattouh, host of the radio talk show Arab Voices. "Nobody knows when it will stop." The protest grew spontaneously, with several Arab-American organizations spreading the word. People said they heard about it through e-mail, text messages and telephone calls and traveled to the intersection of Westheimer and Post Oak to participate. Members of the Houston Coalition for Justice Not War said they would hold a second...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Terrified prisoners fled a Gaza City jail bombed by Israeli warplanes on Sunday, their faces white with dust and red with blood as they stumbled over huge piles of rubble. Across the territory, grieving families pitched traditional mourning tents of green tarp outside the homes. Yet the rows of chairs inside these tents remained largely empty, as residents cowered indoors for fear of new Israeli strikes. Plumes of gray smoke rising into the sky marked the site of the latest Israeli attacks. Even for war-weary Gazans, who've lived through countless Israeli incursions, air attacks...

TEL AVIV | The threat of an Israeli invasion of the Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip loomed Sunday, with the call up of 6,500 reservists during the second day of an air offensive that sparked global protests and the deepest penetration yet by Palestinian rockets into southern Israel. Israeli bombers targeted 40 smuggling tunnels linking the Gaza Strip to Egypt, while Palestinian demonstrators clashed with Egyptian border police in an attempt to flee the bombing. The death toll approached 300 and demonstrations erupted throughout the Muslim world. The Syrian government broke off indirect peace talks started earlier this year with Israel. A...

IAF planes targeted a guest palace used by the Hamas government and the house next to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's home in a refugee camp next to Gaza City early Monday morning. Haniyeh was not home, as Hamas leaders have gone into hiding. Israel Radio reported that 307 Palestinians have been killed the IDF 'Operation Cast Lead,' which began on Saturday.

Israel Shatters Key Hamas Targets Breaking News 11:37pm UK, Sunday December 28, 2008 Israeli warplanes have bombed a significant Hamas cultural symbol in a new wave of air strikes on Gaza. Israeli airstrikes have continued on Gaza for a second day Six airstrikes pummelled the Islamic University as Israel widened its deadliest-ever air offensive against Hamas targets. Some 40 smuggling tunnels running under the border with Egypt have been attacked, destroying a network that is a lifeline to the outside world. Meanwhile more tanks and artillery have been sent towards the Gaza border, increasing the threat of a ground invasion....

Crawford, Texas (AP) -- The deaths of hundreds of Palestinians in Israel's deadliest-ever air assault on the militant Hamas further complicates President-elect Barack Obama's challenge to achieve a Middle East peace — something that eluded both the Bush and Clinton administrations. The Bush administration has blamed the renewed violence on the militant Islamic group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, saying it broke a cease-fire by firing rockets and mortars deep into Israeli territory. The Arab world, however, has reacted with rage to the aggressive Israeli counterattacks, which have left at least 290 Palestinians dead and more than 600 wounded....

EIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Crowds of thousands swept into the streets of cities around the Middle East on Sunday to denounce Israel's air assault on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. From Lebanon to Iran, Israel's adversaries used the weekend assault to marshal crowds into the streets for noisy demonstrations. And among regional allies there was also discontent: The prime minister of Turkey, one of the few Muslim countries to have relations with Israel, called the air assault a "crime against humanity." Several of Sunday's protests turned violent. A crowd of anti-Israel protesters in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul...

World reaction to Israel's sudden, massive strike against terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip ranged from immediate condemnation and a call to halt all attacks to cautious acknowledgement of Israel's right to defend its citizens. Some international powers spoke against Hamas's bombardment of communities in southern Israel since the cease-fire ended last week; others wrung their hands over the humanitarian suffering in the Strip. In a statement released Saturday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for an immediate halt to all violence in both Gaza and southern Israel. "While recognizing Israel's security concerns regarding the continued firing of rockets from Gaza,...

Follow Link Above (IsraelNN.com) The IDF on Saturday night released aerial photos of Hamas facilities targeted by IAF fighter pilots on Saturday in Operation 'Cast Lead.' The photos show the military training facilities Hamas has developed in Gaza, where Israel forcibly evicted close to 10,000 of its Jewish citizens in August 2005 in hopes of establishing peace with its Palestinian Authority Arab neighbors.

Gaza Strip (AP) -- Israel launched an airstrike on Gaza early Wednesday after its troops clashed with Hamas militants who fired mortars into Israel, leaving six Palestinians dead. It was the first battle since a June truce mostly quieted violence in the volatile territory. The Israeli army said the clashes erupted late Tuesday after its forces uncovered a tunnel in central Gaza that militants planned to use to abduct Israeli soldiers. It said a special army unit headed to the area to destroy the tunnel. One Palestinian was killed in fierce gunbattles that ensued. Hamas then fired mortars across the...

'A people without walls is a people without any choice." So writes Aristotle in The Politics. In modern parlance, we might say that a nation that does not adequately defend or define its borders subjects its citizens not only to military risk but to political danger. A country that cannot maintain its deterrent capability vis-a-vis its hostile neighbors rapidly loses strategic maneuverability, becomes enervated and finds itself increasingly helpless. Israel, as recent events have once again made lamentably plain, risks becoming such a country. Fifteen Israelis were wounded Wednesday - four seriously - by a Grad-model rocket that hit a...

Hamas faces unprecedented crisis, as Israel, Egypt prepare for flare-up Alex Fishman 4/16/08 Egypt asked Israel to put its forces along the Gaza Strip border on alert, while at the same time the Egyptian army is on special deployment on the Philadelphi Route and south of it. Officials in Israel and Egypt estimate that Gaza is on the brink of eruption that may be violently manifested on the Strip’s border with the two countries. Israeli security officials estimate that Hamas’ Gaza regime has reached a dead-end and is facing an unprecedented crisis not seen since it took over the Strip....