The rocket war

The "rocket war" continues in the south, with Palestinian terrorists firing
rockets on a daily basis from Gaza into Israel, forty this week alone, and
the IDF retaliating in two ways. First they fire artillery at sources of
rocket firing and second they target the terrorists who are carrying out
these attacks.
Although most of the rockets cause no damage, one fell last week in a mattress
factory in the industrial zone of Ashkelon, and several people were treated
for minor injuries and shock. One also fell on a soccer pitch making a hole
in the middle of it. In retaliation the IAF dropped a bomb on a soccer pitch
in Gaza. Surprisingly, FIFA, the international football association sent an
official complaint to Israel for this, although not to the PA. Is this a case
of bias or what?
On Friday afternoon, the IDF caught a team of three rocket firers red-handed,
after they entered a car to drive away from their firing site. Their car was
blown up by a missile fired from a helicopter and they won't be firing any
more rockets into Israel, two were killed and one wounded. Later on Saturday
a senior leader of the Popular Resistance Committees (an umbrella group of
several terrorist organizations) Iyad Aynayn and 5 others were killed as his
car left a terrorist training camp in Rafah. Unfortunately, his 5 year old
child was with him in the car, although the IDF had dropped leaflets a few
days before warning civilians and children to keep away from terrorist
targets. Responses from the PA confirmed his death, and the official PA
spokesman, Abu Rodeinah, called this "an unforgivable crime," and threatened
unnamed consequences. A Hamas Government spokesman also warned that
they will not be able to restrain the terrorist organizations (not that they
have been doing so).
This comes at a difficult time for Hamas, since they have been trying to show
restraint to support their argument that they are unilaterally maintaining a
ceasefire (hudna) and therefore deserve continued funding from the EU and US.
As of Friday both of them announced a stoppage of all payments to the Hamas PA
Government, although the US doubled its payment to UNRWA to m$250 for
strictly humanitarian purposes (food, medicine, education). However, not even
the US can prevent this money from being used for other purposes (graft,
corruption, salaries and bombs). Nevertheless, it is predicted that the PA
will not be able to meet its obligations for March and will face a severe cash
flow problem. Whether or not this will cause Hamas to modify its hardline
stance of not recognizing Israel and not accepted previous PA agreements is a
matter of debate. Some think that necessity will force them to change, while
others see that this reasonable face is presented only to the West to get the
money, while to the Arabs they still insist that they are not giving up their
hardline stance of intending to destroy Israel. This situation seems vaguely
familiar!
There is no doubt that if the Hamas-led PA stopped the firing of rockets into
Israel, there would be no need for IDF retaliation. The ball is in their
court.
On a related topic, an explosion occurred in Nablus last night, wounding three
Palestinians. This was a classic "work accident" in which terrorists
preparing a bomb made a fatal error. The IDF found a secret bomb factory in
an apartment, with several bombs prepared, and proceeded to demolish it.
They will also hopefully break another terrorist ring from this intelligence.
The struggle goes on.