Israel Matzav

A green yellow light for the IDF

The headline in Thursday morning's JPost screams that the IDF has a 'green light' to strike Hamas in Gaza. But the story inside is very different.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Wednesday night that he had ordered the IDF to prepare itself to deliver a "response" to the rocket attacks. He said Hamas was responsible and would pay a price.

"Anyone who hurts Israeli civilians or soldiers will pay the price in a big way," Barak said in an interview on a Channel 2 talk show. "We will bring the solution, and we will not let this situation continue."

Defense officials said the IDF now had approval for a number of operations that would likely include heavy air strikes against Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets, as well as pinpoint ground operations against terrorist infrastructure.

Military sources said a major operation - such as conquering the Gaza Strip - was not currently on the agenda. The officials would not reveal the timing of the planned operations so as not to tip off Hamas, but said that it depended on a number of factors, including the stormy weather in the South.

Hamas is not operating under any restraints.

In Ashkelon, one rocket slammed into a home seconds after a father rushed his children from the living room into a bomb shelter. A massive hole gaped in a wall of the living room, which was sprayed with shrapnel. Baby toys lay covered in rubble and dust, and a crib was pocked with splinters and filled with pieces of concrete.

Unlike Sderot, Ashkelon is in my back yard. It's Ashkenazi (Jews of European - as opposed to Middle Eastern (Sephardi) - origin) and middle class and it has three strategic targets that are critical to the country as a whole.

While it's clear to me that the government is trying to put off the inevitable Gaza operation for as long as possible so that it becomes more of a factor in the elections, in Defense Minister Barak's case, unless the operation is an overwhelming success, it is likely to be too little too late.

The public does not trust government leaders to defend the State of Israel without being influenced by politics, according to a new Geocartographia poll. The survey, broadcast Tuesday night on Channel One television, reveals that 68 percent of Israelis view politics as a decisive factor in how to deal with rocket and mortar attacks on Israel. Only 21 percent disagreed. ['Politics' generally means internal politics here, and not our foreign relations. CiJ].

Defense Minister Barak, who also is chairman of the Labor party, has the confidence of only 24 percent of the respondents, who have not been convinced by his recent statements criticizing "babbling politicians" who "do not know what war is" and that "we know when and how to retaliate." [That 'we know when and how to retaliate' brings back memories of Barak's initial reaction to the Oslo War in the Fall of 2000. Barak was thrown out of office four months after it started because he was afraid to react - let alone take the initiative. CiJ]

You can't fool all of the people all of the time, Arrogant Ehud.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:34 AM